Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (31 page)

What Elizabeth felt about the “secret rumors and whisperings” of the survival of her brothers is not recorded. Maybe she believed there was no truth in them; but if there was doubt in her mind, then soon the realization would have followed that she faced a massive conflict of
interests in marrying the man who occupied the throne to which they had a better claim, and that his hold on it—not to mention her own position—might then prove precarious. If so, she might have reasoned that she had done well to survive the past two years with her legitimacy restored and a crown within her grasp, and that it was better to accept the status quo than to stir up controversy; and of course she was in no position to challenge Henry Tudor’s title. But it may be that her brothers were never far from her mind, and that the possibility of their survival was to haunt her for many years to come.

Now that Parliament had recognized Elizabeth Wydeville as Edward IV’s rightful queen, it restored her “estate, dignity, preeminence, and name” and repealed Richard III’s act confiscating her property.
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This was not returned to her, but she was allowed her widow’s jointure of thirty manors plus rents, as well as the rights and privileges normally enjoyed by a queen dowager. Parliament restored to Margaret Beaufort all the estates confiscated in 1483, and granted her rights as a sole person, “not wife or covert of any husband,”
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which gave her control over her huge fortune. Thereafter the King, grateful for all she had done to further his cause, “allotted her a share in most of his public and private resources.”
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Her status at court as “my lady the King’s mother” was to remain unchallenged. It was such that, from 1499, after years of signing herself “M. Richmond,” she began using the royal style “Margaret R.” The R stood for Richmond, of course, but it sounded suitably regal, and the Lady Margaret was already enjoying commensurate influence; effectively, she acted as an unofficial queen dowager and wore her countess’s coronet whenever she appeared in public, whereas the King and Queen only appeared in their crowns on state occasions.

During this Parliament the King rewarded those who had served him loyally and helped him to win the crown. Lord Stanley was made Earl of Derby and given the offices of Constable of England and Chief Steward of the Duchy of Lancaster. Jasper Tudor, Henry’s uncle, was created Duke of Bedford. On November 7, Elizabeth was probably present at Jasper’s wedding to her aunt, Katherine Wydeville, widow of the Duke of Buckingham.

Henry Tudor had triumphed. But “although all things seemed to be brought to a good and perfect conclusion, yet the harp still needed tuning to set all things in harmony. This tuning was the marriage between the King and Elizabeth.”
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There was no cause now for any further delay. Elizabeth had been legitimated, and a dispensation for her marriage to the King could be applied for. By November 4 a new coinage was being minted with a double rose symbolizing the union of Lancaster and York on the reverse—proof of Henry’s firm resolve to proceed to the marriage.
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But he still appeared in no hurry to fulfill his vow to wed Elizabeth. He clearly did not want it to be thought that their union was a matter of political necessity.
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Bernard André asserts that, as Christmas drew nearer with no sign of any marriage preparations, Elizabeth grew anxious, for she had heard reports that the King had considered marrying Anne, Duchess of Brittany, who could bring him a great duchy coveted by the French king; or, it was said, his personal choice was Katherine, the youngest daughter of his former guardian, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, a girl he had known since childhood, and whom he had considered as a bride earlier that year.

There was no substance to these reports, but they “bred some doubt and suspicion in divers that [the King] was not sincere, or at least not fixed in going on the match England so much desired, which conceit also, though it were but talk and discourse, did much afflict the poor Lady Elizabeth herself.”
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Bacon says she greatly desired this marriage, and to corroborate that we have Stanley’s evidence that her love for Henry had grown on acquaintance during the few weeks they had been seeing each other.
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Elizabeth did not know it, but Maximilian of Austria had his sights on her as a bride. His late wife, Mary of Burgundy, had a claim to the throne of England through her grandmother, Isabella of Portugal, a descendant of John of Gaunt, which Charles the Bold had unsuccessfully asserted in 1471. Now Maximilian began entertaining the idea of marrying Elizabeth, which he felt would be sufficient to make good his claim.
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It is doubtful that Elizabeth would have been interested, with
her hopes set on Henry, and certain that the King would not have permitted such a marriage.

In a Latin epithalamium commissioned by Henry as Elizabeth’s morning gift, to be given to her after their wedding night, Giovanni de’ Gigli tells how Elizabeth was longing to marry her king, and frustrated at being made to wait.
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Given Lord Stanley’s evidence that she had come to love Henry deeply and intimately,
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this may be no fanciful portrayal, and it chimes with her earlier eagerness to marry Henry Tudor (or Richard III), and with André’s testimony to her anxiety. Possibly she regarded Henry as the chivalrous knight errant who had rescued her and her family from the slur of bastardy and the clutches of the man who had spurned her. Gigli imagines her agonizing:

Gigli then presents a touching picture of Elizabeth whiling away the waiting time, longing for Henry to name the day:

This reads convincingly, for we know from her privy purse expenses how frequently Elizabeth made offerings at shrines, especially in times of stress.
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Her fears were soon to be allayed. The rumbles of discontent about her delayed nuptials could be ignored no longer. Parliament wanted her for Queen consort and was keen to see the King honor his vow to wed her. Some members were of the opinion that his claim to rule by right of conquest rather than by right of blood “might have been more wisely passed over in silence than inserted in our statutes, the more especially because in that Parliament, a discussion took place with the King’s consent, relative to his marriage with the Lady Elizabeth, in whose person it appeared to all that every requisite might be supplied which was wanting to make good the title of the King himself.”
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On December 10, as Henry VII sat enthroned in the Parliament chamber, Sir Thomas Lovell, Speaker of the Commons, announced that the King wished “to take for himself as wife and consort the noble Lady Elizabeth, daughter of King Edward IV, from which marriage, by the grace of God, it is hoped by many that there would arise offspring of the race of kings for the comfort of the whole realm.” The emphasis was not on Elizabeth’s title, but on her eminent suitability to be Queen and bear Henry heirs, for—as the speaker emphasized—the succession “is, remains, continues, and endures in the person of the lord King, and of the heirs legitimately issuing from his body.” All the Lords Spiritual and Temporal rose to their feet and, facing the throne with bowed heads, urged the King to proceed to this union of “two bloods of high renown”; to which he replied that “he was very willing to do so; it would give him pleasure to comply with their request.” And so “it was decreed by harmonious consent that one house would be made from two families that had once striven in mortal hatred.”
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In a Latin oration made to the Pope after the marriage,
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Henry VII’s envoy explained that “the King of England, to put an end to civil war, had, at the request of all the lords of the kingdom, consented to marry Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV,” on account of her beauty and virtue, “though he was free to have made a profitable foreign alliance.” This last was a bluff, part of Henry’s strategy to show the world
that his crown was his by right, not in right of his wife, whose title he omitted to mention. Given the abysmal history of the warring royal houses over the past thirty years, marriage to the Yorkist heiress was probably the most profitable match he could have made, with peace being far more crucial to the future welfare of his kingdom than a fat foreign dowry—and it was surely what he had intended all along. It is highly unlikely that he had ever seriously contemplated marrying anyone else. He was aware that marriage with Elizabeth was a political necessity if he wanted to secure the loyalty of the Yorkists, and that, if he did not fulfill his vow to wed her, and thus publicly humiliated her, he risked alienating the many people who saw her as the true successor of the Plantagenets.

As Lord Stanley was soon to testify, the King was “moved and led to contract marriage with the lady for the sake of the peace and tranquillity of his realm, and by the entreaties and petitions of the lords and nobles, both spiritual and temporal, and of the whole commonalty of the same realm, who in Parliament assembled requested him to do so, and made prayers and great entreaties to him.” William de Berkeley, Earl of Nottingham, would add that “in conscience he believed that the King intends to contract marriage with the lady, if it can be done by the law of the Church, both on account of the singular love which he bears to her, and also on account of the special prayers and entreaties of the lords and nobles, both spiritual and temporal, and of the whole commonalty of his said realm of England.”
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Thus Henry’s motives in marrying Elizabeth seem to have been largely political. But there was more to it than that, on both sides. Lord Stanley, under oath, was to tell the papal legate “that the aforesaid lady has not been captured nor compelled, but of great and intimate love and cordial affection desires to contract marriage with the said King, to the knowledge of this sworn [witness], as he says in virtue of his oath.”
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Stanley knew Elizabeth well, so his testimony is good evidence that her heart was involved as well as her ambitions; this being so, it is easier to understand her future relations with Henry. Loving him, she was all the more prepared to mold herself to what he wanted her to be, especially now that her hopes of a crown were to be fulfilled. Sir Richard Edgecombe and Sir William Tyler were also emphatic that
Elizabeth had not been “ravished,” or captured, as the word meant then. Nottingham’s testimony to “the singular love” Henry bore Elizabeth
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is corroborated by André’s statement that, even before being petitioned by Parliament, the King “had come to know [Elizabeth’s] purity, faith, and goodness,” and “God [had] inclined his heart to love the girl.”

Having made a show of giving in to Parliament’s request, Henry, “like a prince of just faith and true of promise, detesting all intestine and cruel hostility, appointed a day to join in matrimony ye Lady Elizabeth, heir of the House of York, with his noble personage, heir to ye line of Lancaster: which thing not only rejoiced and comforted the hearts of the noble and gentle men of the realm, but also gained the favor and good minds of all the common people.” The latter were soon “much extolling and praising the King’s constant fidelity and his politic device, thinking surely that the day had now come that the seed of tumultuous factions and the fountain of cruel dissension should be stopped, evacuated, and clearly extinguished.”
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On December 10, after the date of the wedding had been set for January 18, the Lord Chancellor prorogued Parliament, announcing that, before it reassembled, “the marriage of the King and the Princess Elizabeth would take place.”
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From that day, Elizabeth was treated as Queen of England. On December 11, the King ordered that preparations for the nuptials were to go ahead: a celebratory tournament was proclaimed, “then wedding torches, marriage bed, and other suitable decorations were made ready.”
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Elizabeth was declared Duchess of York, as heiress to her father and her other illustrious forebears,
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a move calculated to please the Yorkist faction.