Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (39 page)

The bodies of queens were effectively public property, for their fertility was of prime importance to the nation and a legitimate object of speculation in courts, diplomatic circles, noble households, taverns, and humble hovels. The swift arrival of an heir would go far toward assuring the stability of the Tudor dynasty, and it would immeasurably increase Elizabeth’s standing with her husband the King and the country at large.

The news that any highborn lady was to bear a child was cause for great celebration in that dynastically minded age, and it was the subject of much interest on the part of both sexes. It was not expected that the Queen would retire from public view or swath herself in shawls like Queen Victoria, for there was then no sense of squeamishness or embarrassment about what was regarded as a highly desirable condition; and it was customary for relatives and friends to send good wishes for a safe delivery—a “happy hour.” Everyone was well aware of the risks involved in childbirth.

Henry VII might have claimed his crown by right of conquest, but now that he had married Elizabeth, it was indisputably his by right. It
should have ensured his security and been “the final end to all dissensions, titles, and debates,”
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yet it was already obvious that this marriage, which had been made to heal the breach between the warring royal houses, was insufficient to stifle treason and had not reconciled all the King’s opponents. Some diehard Yorkist activists just would not accept it, and they were making their opposition plain.

In the spring of 1486, Henry VII felt it politic to go on a progress to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire to be seen by his northern subjects and to “weed, root out, and purge men tainted with dissension and privy factions,” especially in Yorkshire, where Richard III had once been popular.
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Elizabeth stayed behind at the palace of Placentia at Greenwich with her mother. It has been suggested that Henry did not take her with him because he wanted to make it clear he did not owe his crown to her or “seek popularity on her account,”
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yet it is far more likely that she was suffering the nausea and fatigue common in early pregnancy; moreover, the King was visiting areas where pockets of Yorkist resistance were anticipated, so he would not have wanted his expectant Queen to be exposed to any risk.

Henry departed before Easter, which fell on March 26 that year, and he would be away for three months, visiting—among other places—Waltham, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Stamford, Lincoln, Doncaster, Pontefract, York, and Worcester. On the way, he had to suppress insurrections involving Humphrey Stafford, and Francis, Lord Lovell, one of Richard III’s closest adherents, and deal with a plot against himself—but generally he was well received, even in York. While he was away, he sent frequent letters to Elizabeth.

Placentia, where she was staying, was a beautiful palace built around 1427 as “Bella Court” by Henry V’s brother, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who had acquired the large hunting park surrounding it in 1433. The large stone mansion was seized by Margaret of Anjou on his death in 1447, and it was she who renamed it “Placentia,” meaning a “pleasance,” or pleasant place, and set about converting it into a palace. To that end, ranges of brick and timber were built, the floors paved with terra-cotta tiles bearing her monogram, beautiful glass windows decorated with marguerites and hawthorn buds inserted, pillars and arcades adorned with sculpted marguerites added, and a vestry
built to serve as a jewel house. Tapestries covered the walls of the royal apartments, and in the gardens there was an arbor for ladies to sit in. Queen Margaret’s house was arranged around two courtyards, and to the west she ordered a pier constructed, so royal barges could land.
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In 1465, Placentia was granted to Elizabeth Wydeville as part of her jointure.

The palace lay in a healthy setting, aired by breezes from the Thames, and nestling in two hundred acres of rolling parkland. Elizabeth had known this palace from childhood, and it was already one of Henry VII’s favorite residences. He was soon to rename it Greenwich Palace.

On March 6, Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull confirming the dispensation issued by the Bishop of Imola. On March 27, in another bull, he gave his own dispensation addressed to “thou King, Henry of Lancaster, and thou, Elizabeth of York,” recognizing Henry as King, threatening anyone who rose against him with excommunication, and informing the royal couple that “as their progenitors had vexed the kingdom of England with wars and clamors, to prevent further effusion of blood it was desirable for them to unite in marriage.” He referred to Elizabeth as “the undoubted heir of that famous king of immortal memory, Edward IV.” The bull arrived in England in June, and copies of it, printed in Holborn by William Machlin, were distributed.
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Henry VII was at Worcester when the dispensation was brought to him, and he was present in Worcester Cathedral on Trinity Sunday to hear John Alcock, Bishop of Worcester, read it, proclaiming to all that “understanding of the long and grievous variance, contentions, and debates that hath been in this realm of England between the House of the Duchy of Lancaster on the one party, and the House of the Duchy of York on the other party,” and “willing all such divisions to be put apart, by the counsel and consent of his College of Cardinals,” His Holiness had approved, confirmed, and established “the matrimony and conjunction made between our sovereign lord, King Henry VI of the House of Lancaster of that one party, and the noble Princess Elizabeth
of the House of York of that other, with all their issue lawfully born between the same.” A copy was presented to the Queen at Sheen, and the text was printed, circulated, and read out in pulpits throughout the realm “for conservation of the universal peace and eschewing of slanders.”
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When the King was at Coventry Cathedral on St. George’s Day, John Morton, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, and many other bishops, all in their pontifical vestments, “read and declared the Pope’s bulls, touching the King’s and Queen’s right, and there in the choir, in the bishop’s seat, by the authority of the same bulls, cursed with book, bell, and candle all those that did anything contrary to their right, and approving their titles good.”
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In a third bull of dispensation, issued on July 23,
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the Pope confirmed that “if it please God that the said Elizabeth (which God forbid) should decease without issue between our sovereign lord and her of their bodies born, then such issue as between [the King] and her whom after that God shall join him to shall be had and born inheritors to the same crown and realm of England.” In other words, Henry’s title, and his children’s right to the succession, did not depend on his marriage to Elizabeth, but was vested in him independently. It was through him, not his wife, that the crown would descend. Again, Elizabeth’s title to the throne had been slighted, while this bull confirmed Henry’s title and threatened anyone challenging it with excommunication.

That summer, after suppressing “tumultuous sedition” in the North,
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Henry returned south via Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, and Bristol, rejoining Elizabeth at Sheen.
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By now she would have begun loosening the front laces of her bodice as her pregnancy began to show. There was no concept of antenatal care in those days, and a midwife would not have been engaged until near the time of the expected confinement. On June 5 the royal couple traveled by barge to Westminster for London’s official welcome.
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André says that “while the Queen was close to delivery,” Henry was administering affairs from Windsor. At the end of August the King and Queen moved to Winchester,
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the ancient capital of England, where Henry wanted his heir to be born, for he believed it to be the site of
Camelot, King Arthur’s fabled seat, and that being born there would be portentous for the prince who would bring a new golden age to England.

In Winchester Castle there was a round table, said to be King Arthur’s, but in fact dating from the mid-thirteenth century. It has been said that the Queen wished to give birth in the castle but that it proved inconvenient, so she moved instead to St. Swithun’s Priory, the ancient Benedictine monastery founded in
AD
642–43, attached to Winchester Cathedral. However, the city of Winchester was by then depopulated and run-down, and the castle in decline, the last major works having been undertaken in the fourteenth century,
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so it is likely that the Queen had intended all along to be confined in the priory, where most of the buildings dated from the later Middle Ages.

Prior Thomas Hunton gave Elizabeth the use of the luxurious Prior’s House, now the Deanery. It was originally built in the thirteenth century, from which time the triple-lancet-arched porch survives, but was largely reconstructed in the seventeenth century after becoming derelict. The Prior’s House stood at the southeast corner of the Great Cloister, on the edge of Little Cloister. It had a vaulted ground floor, above which was the Prior’s Chapel. Adjoining the house was his great hall with its magnificent timber roof, erected in 1459–60. Here, Elizabeth established her small court, with her mother, her sisters, and the Lady Margaret in attendance. “The prior’s great hall was the Queen’s chamber.”
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While Elizabeth rested, the King took advantage of the good hunting to be had nearby in the New Forest, braving the torrential rains that swept the land as autumn approached.
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Records survive of the expenditure laid out by the King on items for Elizabeth in preparation for her confinement, “both for her own use and also for the removal of the Queen to the city of Winchester, and afterward for the taking of her chamber before the birth, and also toward the birth, as in divers robes and divers other ornaments pertaining to the said lady Queen”: lengths of cloth of scarlet and of various other colors, white woolen cloth and cloth of frieze (a coarser woolen cloth); thirty-three timbers of whole ermines; thirty-nine timbers of ermine backs; 2½ timbers of ermine bellies; one pane (piece)
of ermine; forty-nine timbers and fifteen bellies of pure miniver; 13½ timbers of “lettuce” (“letoux”) miniver, which was white or pale gray; powderings of bogy; 66½ yards of cloth of “doubly set” velvet, probably having a two-pile warp; 42¾ yards of “singly set velvet”; 1¼ yards and three separate “nails” (yards) of cloth of gold; 23½ yards of damask; 5¾ yards of satin; 230 yards of sarcenet, to be furred with ermine and miniver; pieces of buckram, worsted, and fustian (a thick woven cloth of wool, Egyptian cotton, or linen); 440 ells of Holland linen cloth for napkins and kerchiefs; 119¾ ells of canaber cloth, a linen cloth for making hose; 4¼ ounces of silk; two pounds and twelve ounces of silk ribbon; one pound of gold-colored silk ribbon; fringe of silk and Venice gold; thread, cord, down, and wool. Among “divers other things necessary for the said Queen” were a chair of state, two beds, fourteen pommels of cypress wood, gilded; gilt nails, rings of lacquered iron, skins of leather, iron hammers, two pounds of feathers, four fustian cushions, seventeen yards of waxed linen, and two saddles covered with velvet.
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As much importance was accorded to the maintenance of the Queen’s royal estate during her confinement as to practical essentials.

Benjamin Digby, page of the Queen’s bed, was paid 16s.8d. “for preparing certain stuffs for the lady Queen against the nativity of the lord Prince,” while Thomas Swan, his colleague, received 40s. “for the making of divers bearing sheets [infant mantles] of Holland cloth.”
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There was no question of Elizabeth taking charge of her own confinement. Even though childbirth was an exclusively female preserve, even for queens, it was the King who regulated ceremonial affairs in the royal household. On December 31, 1494, evidently inspired by Olivier de la Marche’s
L’État de la Maison de Charles de Bourgogne
, commissioned by Edward IV in 1473 to facilitate the establishment of fashionable Burgundian protocols at his court, Henry drew up a series of ordinances governing the running of the royal household and laying down the ceremonials to be observed there. These included “ordinances as to what preparation is to be made against the deliverances of the Queen, as also for the christening of the child when she shall be delivered”; ordinances that were to be observed for many decades to
come.
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There is no evidence that they were drawn up by Margaret Beaufort, as is often stated, although it is likely that she was consulted. Elizabeth herself may also have contributed her views.

Little is known of royal birth conventions prior to the late fifteenth century, but Henry’s ordinances were modeled on procedures laid down in Edward IV’s “Royal Book”
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of court ceremonial, which had drawn on English, French, and Burgundian court ritual: we know that certain formalities had evolved in regard to royal confinements, for in 1456, Isabella of Portugal, Duchess of Burgundy, had consulted a book about the estates of France before preparing chambers for the confinement of her daughter-in-law.
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Henry VII himself expanded on the dictates of the “Royal Book,” which may have been based on the court ceremonial of the Lancastrian kings. Even if Elizabeth’s earlier confinements were not conducted according to the 1494 ordinances, she would have been subject to similar provisions laid down in the “Royal Book” for her mother, with which she was no doubt familiar. These determined the color and quality of the furnishings for her chamber and bed, which was to be made up with pillows of down and a scarlet counterpane bordered with ermine, velvet, or cloth of gold.
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Henry VII’s ordinances of 1494 reflected and formalized existing practice—it is stated in places that they were laid down “after the old custom”—and doubtless they embellished it. They provided for “the furniture of Her Highness’s chamber, and the furniture appertaining to her bed, how the church shall be arrayed against the christening, [and] how the child shall go to be christened.”
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