Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (66 page)

“After she was come and saw the King her lord in that natural and painful sorrow, she, with full great and constant and comfortable words, besought His Grace that he would first, after God, consider the weal of his own noble person, of the comfort of his realm, and of her.”

“And remember,” she said, “that my lady your mother had never no more children but you only, yet God, by His Grace, has ever preserved you and brought you where you are now. Over and above, God has left you yet a fair prince and two fair princesses; and God is still where He was, and we are both young enough. As the prudence and wisdom of Your Grace [is] sprung all over Christendom, you must now give proof of it by the manner of taking this misfortune.” Considering that her life had been feared for in her last pregnancy, it must have taken courage to assure Henry that they could have more heirs, but no doubt that was a bravado born of the need to console him—and herself.

Henry thanked Elizabeth for “her good comfort.” But when she returned to her own chamber, she collapsed. The “natural and motherly remembrance of that great loss smote her so sorrowfully to the heart that those who were about her were fain to send for the King to comfort her. Then His Grace, of true, gentle, and faithful love, in good haste came and relieved her, and showed her how wise counsel she had given him before; and he for his part would thank God for his son, and would [that] she would do in like wise.”
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Elizabeth rallied. On April 6, when she must have felt raw with grief, she paid for two of William Courtenay’s former servants to ride to the West Country to see his father, the Earl of Devon,
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no doubt to inform him of the tragic news, and perhaps to ask him to send her sister Katherine immediately to court, so that they could comfort each other.

Elizabeth’s mourning attire conformed to the ordinances laid down by the King: “The Queen shall wear a surcoat with a train before and behind, and a plain hood, and a tippet [shoulder cape] at the hood, lying a good length upon the train of the mantle. And after the first quarter of the year is past, if it be her pleasure, to have her mantle lined; it must be with black satin or double sarcanet; and if it be furred, it must be with ermine, furred at her pleasure.”
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On April 19, Richard Justice, page of the robes, was paid for mending a gown of black velvet. On May 2 black tinsel (taffeta) satin was purchased as edgings for another and a gown of crimson velvet. On June 7 six yards of black velvet for a gown and a yard of black buckram
for stiffening the bodice were delivered for the Queen, and two days later Henry Bryan, a London mercer, supplied eight yards of black damask for a cloak, black sarcenet for the lining, and black velvet for the edging. The bodice of a gown of black velvet of Princess Margaret’s was relined, and “a black satin gown for my Lady Mary.” On June 21 more black damask was bought for a gown for the Queen, and on August 2 payment was made for a black velvet mourning gown with wide sleeves lined with sarcenet.
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In November we find Elizabeth ordering sixty yards of blue velvet for her own use; this seems to have been for “the covering of a litter of blue velvet lined with sarcanet and bordered with satin figure[s] that was given to a lady of Spain,” probably a member of Katherine of Aragon’s household. Cushions of blue damask were made for the same litter. Elizabeth also bought seven yards of black velvet for a gown, and thirteen yards of black satin for a riding gown, as well as black velvet for the border and cuffs, black sarcenet for the “vents” (slashes), and black buckram and canvas for the lining; she sent Richard Justice to fetch a gown of blue velvet and seven yards of black damask. In December she bought eight and three-quarter yards of black velvet, and at the end of January 1503 blue worsted. Around that time she had a kirtle of black satin lined and hemmed. To pay for these and other items, she had once more to pawn her plate, and the King was obliged to give her money.
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The Queen remained in mourning for Arthur for most of 1502, although on state occasions she wore her normal queenly attire.
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A contemporary composer, John Browne, wrote a Latin antiphon,
Stabat iuxta Christi crucem
, which speaks of the grief of the Virgin Mary for her crucified Son, evidently drawing a parallel with Elizabeth’s grief for her own son.
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Elizabeth’s health—she was reportedly well before the tragedy
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—was undermined by the shock of Arthur’s death. The first indication of this comes on April 29, when she paid John Grice, her apothecary, the huge amount of £9.13.4d. [£4,700] for “certain stuff of his occupation.”
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What he supplied was clearly more than something to dull unbearable grief or help her to sleep. Given the other references to
Elizabeth’s poor health in the months to come, it would seem there was some more fundamental medical problem.

“The calamity and the pitiful misfortune” of Arthur’s unexpected death had “touched the entire kingdom.”
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It would have long-reaching repercussions that no one could have envisaged. He had been “the delight of the Britons,” “the glorious hope of the realm,” and “the most renowned heir of our magnanimous King,” but now he was no more, and England had perforce to weep “since your hope now lies dead.”
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Arthur’s corpse—disemboweled, boiled, cered, and spiced
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—lay in state in the great hall of Ludlow Castle until it was carried with mournful pageantry to St. Laurence’s Church nearby on April 20. The prince’s heart and viscera are said to have been buried in the church, where his coffin lay before the altar for three days, but there is no contemporary evidence for this, and heart burial had been in decline in England since 1300.
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On St. George’s Day, conducted by a vast cortege headed by Sir William Uvedale and Sir Richard Croft, Arthur’s body was conveyed to Worcester Cathedral. Katherine did not attend the funeral, as custom would not have allowed the widow to be present, and she was too ill anyway; neither did the King and Queen, Henry represented by Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, as chief mourner. The black-draped hearse rested at Tickenhill Palace, Bewdley, on the way, brought there on “the foulest cold windy and rainy day,” and the escort was “in some places fain to take oxen to draw the chair, so ill was the way.”

At his father’s wish, the prince was buried “with great funeral obsequies”
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on the right-hand side of the chancel. Gruffydd ap Rhys was chief mourner; he would later be buried near his young master. There was “weeping and sore lamentation as Prince Arthur was laid to rest.” Thomas Writhe, Wallingford Pursuivant, “weeping, took off his coat and cast it along over the chest right lamentably.”
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A beautiful chantry chapel was erected over Arthur’s plain granite tomb, but Elizabeth did not live to see it built. Half a century after her death, her grandson Edward VI ordered it to be despoiled along with the other chantries that were swept away by the Reformation; but among the ruined stone carvings that remain can be seen Tudor roses,
Beaufort portcullises, Katherine of Aragon’s pomegranate, and the Yorkist falcon and fetterlock. The arms of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York appear on the south screen of the chantry.

The reaction of Arthur’s siblings to his death is not recorded. Margaret was to name one of her sons after him, in the year when he would have succeeded his father to the throne. Possibly Henry did too: the names of two short-lived boys borne by Katherine of Aragon are unrecorded. But Henry cannot but have found some satisfaction in the knowledge that, with Arthur gone, he was now, as his father’s next and only surviving son, heir to the throne. He was not immediately given his brother’s titles since it was not yet known whether Katherine of Aragon was with child.
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It is unlikely that the two boys had known each other well, or were close, as they had grown up apart, with Arthur at Ludlow and Henry usually at Eltham.

Cardinal Pole, the son of Margaret of Clarence, was later to claim that Henry VII disliked his second son intensely, “having no affection or fancy unto him.”
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Pole had little that was good to say about Henry VIII, so this may be an exaggeration, but Pole’s mother had known both kings, so there may be some truth in what he wrote. But in 1502 young Henry was barely eleven, and may not yet have aroused the antipathy of his father—unless Henry VII resented him for being alive when Arthur, in whom so many of his ambitious hopes had been vested, was dead.

Arthur’s death did have an unfortunate consequence for his younger brother. The previous summer the King had considered giving young Henry his own household at Codnore Castle, Derbyshire (then vacant due to the death of its owner, Henry Grey), once Arthur was married,
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which would have given him a degree of independence. The King, perhaps having the boy’s measure, may also have reasoned that, living so far from court, his younger son would pose less of a threat to Arthur. What Elizabeth thought of this beloved child being sent to live such a distance from her is not recorded. But now the boy, the sole heir, would stay at court, or with his sisters, heavily protected, even isolated, and would not enjoy any independence while his father lived.

There were the garter ceremonies to get through; the annual calendar of the court did not allow for private grief. Elizabeth paid “Friar Hercules” £5 for golden fabric and silk from Venice, and gold damask, which he made into laces and buttons for the King’s garter mantle.
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On April 27 she left Greenwich by barge for the Tower, where she lodged for five days. During her visit she was in contact with Alice FitzLewes, Abbess of the Minoresses’ convent at Aldgate; Alice had been a nun at “the Minories” since about 1493, and was elected abbess by 1501.
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On May 1, Elizabeth rewarded her with 6s.8d. [£160] for sending a present of rosewater. She also gave 11s. [£270] for the succor of “Dame Katherine and Dame Elizabeth, nuns of the Minories in almshouse, and to an old woman servant to the abbess and a daughter of William Crowmer, also a nun there.”
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During her sojourn at the Tower, Elizabeth may well have met with the abbess, whose convent was a stone’s throw away; this was probably how she learned of these needy cases. They must have known each other already, because Alice FitzLewes was cousin to Elizabeth’s aunt, Mary FitzLewes, Lady Rivers, the widow of Anthony Wydeville, and Elizabeth appears to have been close to her aunt, who is known to have attended her on several occasions. Interestingly, the abbess’s mother, Joan FitzSimon, widow of Philip FitzLewes, was a cousin of Sir James Tyrell, the man named by More as the murderer of the Princes in the Tower, who was then in the Tower awaiting trial for abetting the de la Poles.
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It seems significant that the Queen chose to visit the Tower at this time. The rosewater and the charitable gifts may have been genuinely intended, but they might also have been the cover for something of far greater import, because residing in a house within the precincts of the Minories at that time were several ladies who were well placed to know the truth about the fate of Elizabeth’s brothers. Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk and mother-in-law of Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the Princes in the Tower, lived there until her death in 1506. With her was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Brackenbury, Constable of the Tower at the time of the princes’ disappearance, whose will of 1514 provides for her burial there; Mary, sister of Sir James Tyrell; and one of Tyrell’s cousins, the daughter of John Tyrell.
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Also living in the house was Joyce Lee, a widow who took the veil and was interred in the church of the Minories in 1507. Her brother Edward later became Archbishop of York, and he was friends with Thomas More; their families lived in the same London parish, and More was to dedicate a book to Joyce Lee in 1505.
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It is conceivable that More visited her at the Minories when he was a young lawyer living at Bucklersbury in London, and that it was there he first heard the truth about the fate of the princes from people who had the means of knowing what had happened to them. Alice FitzLewes must have known Joyce Lee and all the other ladies in the house in the close. She could perhaps have told the Queen much about the fate of her brothers. But Elizabeth was probably at the Tower for another reason entirely.

She was back at Greenwich on May 2; the next day, Ascension Day, she made her offering at the altar.
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During that first week of May those accused of conspiring treason with Edmund de la Pole were arraigned at Guildhall and condemned for “matters of treason.” Sir James Tyrell was beheaded on May 6, 1502, on Tower Hill.
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Vergil observed that “he paid by his own death the appropriate penalty for his previous crimes.”

Afterward Henry VII “gave out” that, while in the Tower, Tyrell was “examined, and confessed” to murdering the princes nineteen years earlier.
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Either he let slip something compromising or he was already suspected of having been involved, although Henry was reluctant to believe any ill of him.
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If the King gave out such information, it was probably by a proclamation
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that does not survive. Of the sixty-two extant proclamations of Henry VII, some are lost,
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notably the one proclaiming his accession. Others that are missing are referred to in contemporary documents, such as one issued in 1496 for expanding legislation on conditions of work for laborers;
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no one has ever disputed its existence, although rivers of ink have been spilt in denying that Tyrell’s confession was ever the subject of a proclamation. It is true that no written confession or deposition by Tyrell survives, but that is not unusual or necessarily significant in Tudor treason cases.