Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World (64 page)

Suffolk was Elizabeth’s first cousin, and he had played a prominent part at her coronation and in court ceremonials. He was part of a circle that included her brother-in-law, William Courtenay, and her kinsman, Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex.
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She was close to his mother, her aunt Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, and possibly to him too, so his defection must have come as a shock to her.

Numerous people suspected of being in contact with the de la Poles had been under surveillance in recent months, and Henry learned that Courtenay had banqueted and dined with Suffolk just prior to his defection. The King’s agents also uncovered disquieting intelligence that Courtenay had corresponded with Suffolk, and he was suspected of having invited the de la Poles to invade England in the West, where his family had their power base.

That was enough for Henry. Late in February, Courtenay was suddenly seized—taken without night clothing, body linen, or cloaks
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—and
imprisoned in the Tower on charges of conspiracy. But as Hall makes clear, Courtenay was “rather taken of suspicion and jealousy than for any proved offense or crime.” Probably he was dealt with severely because he was married to a Yorkist princess and might conceivably have had designs on the throne; Katherine, his wife, was said to have disparaged Henry VII’s claim to the throne,
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but this seems unlikely.

Courtenay was to be attainted for treason in 1503, and his estates given to his father, after whose death they were to revert to the crown. He escaped the death penalty, perhaps because the King did not want his brother-in-law made a public spectacle on the scaffold.
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But for Katherine his imprisonment was cataclysmic. She had as yet no guarantees that Henry would spare her husband. Impoverished by the confiscation of his property, with her children likely to be disinherited, the depths of her distress can be imagined. Despite her own trials, Elizabeth offered strong support to her sister during the coming difficult months, unhesitatingly welcoming Katherine into her household and succoring her both emotionally and financially.
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We know this from entries in Elizabeth’s account book for the period March 24, 1502, to March 15, 1503, which survives in the National Archives and has many pages checked in her own hand.
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It contains details of purchases made by her during that time, from minor items such as a pair of small enameled knives, to payments to French embroiderers working all hours on hangings for her great bed of state. During this period, Elizabeth kept herself solvent, which had not always been the case. Her chamber receipts amounted to £3,585.19s.10½d. [£1,743,150], and her expenditure was £3,411.5s.9¼d. [£1,658,230]. Most fascinating of all, these accounts give us invaluable and detailed insights into the last months of her life and the daily existence of a queen.
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Elizabeth was already paying Katherine a pension of £50, but she now augmented that with gifts.
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She must have had some warning of Courtenay’s arrest—proof that Henry did confide some state secrets to her—because on February 1, nearly a month beforehand, she had taken charge of the Courtenay children, Henry, Edward, and Margaret, paying for them to be brought from Devon and installed in Sir John Hussey’s country seat, Dagenham’s Manor, a pretty moated courtyard
house not far from the royal manor of Havering, Essex. There, Elizabeth established a nursery household under the care of a governess, Margaret, Lady Cotton, with nurses and rockers for Edward and Margaret, two women servants, and a groom. Lady Cotton was already in charge of a child the Queen had taken under her wing, one Edward Pallet, whose schooling, diet, and clothing Elizabeth funded; he was a companion for the Courtenay children. In June 1502 the Queen’s accounts show that she was providing 4s.4d. [£110] a week for the children’s food and servants, and that month she paid 4s. [£100] to her tailor for making two coats of black camlet (a valuable fabric woven from goat’s hair) for her young nephews, and the same amount for velvet ones.
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How Elizabeth felt about the King’s decision to imprison Courtenay and so plunge her sister into deep trouble when she herself was anxious about Arthur’s health is unrecorded, but her kindness to all the Courtenays implies that she felt sympathy for her brother-in-law. Such charitable acts were expected of a queen, in emulation of Christ’s exhortation to comfort those in prison, but—as subsequent events tend to suggest—Elizabeth may have resented Henry allowing mere suspicion to subvert family loyalties.

Sir James Tyrell was charged with treasonably corresponding with the disaffected Edmund de la Pole. Tyrell had prospered under Richard III, and at the time of Bosworth had been serving abroad as Governor of Guines in the English-held Pale of Calais; but soon afterward he was deprived of his offices and estates by Henry VII. However, in 1486 he received two pardons and was reappointed to his former post and given land in Calais, where he remained for the next sixteen years. Vergil suggests that Tyrell aided Edmund de la Pole, Edward IV’s nephew, out of guilt at having murdered Edward’s sons, the Princes in the Tower, whom he could easily, “without danger to his own life, have spared, and carried to safety.”

Tyrell refused to obey the order recalling him to England in 1502 for questioning about his association with the de la Poles. At length he was lured out of Guines Castle on the promise of a safe conduct, but arrested once he had boarded ship. On arrival in England he was hauled off to the Tower.

Later evidence that will shortly be discussed shows that Prince Arthur’s health was now in serious decline, and bulletins on his progress must have been sent to the King and Queen. In March, Elizabeth paid two priests, Sir William Barton and Sir Richard Milner, to make pilgrimages and offerings on her behalf at no fewer than thirty-five important religious shrines.
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The number of intercessions they were to make to the Virgin Mary, patron of mothers, bears testimony to the Queen’s desperate fears for her son’s health.

Barton was sent to “Our Lady and St. George” and “the holy Cross”—the “Cross Gneth,” said to be a splinter of the True Cross—in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, and to the tomb of Henry VI, who had a reputation for saintliness and whose tomb was already visited by many pilgrims. Barton’s pilgrimage continued to the college of “Our Lady of Eton,” and the “Child of Grace” of Reading Abbey, an ancient image of the infant Christ given by Henry I in the twelfth century, of which it was said that “everyone who prostrates himself in its chapel always obtains by the grace of God the fulfillment of his devout prayer in any trouble.”
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Barton also offered at the ancient, silver-plated image of Our Lady of Caversham; Our Lady of Cockthorpe;
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the shrine of the Holy Blood at Hailes Abbey, Gloucestershire; “Prince Edward,” meaning the grave of Henry VI’s son, Edward of Lancaster, at Tewkesbury Abbey; Our Lady’s shrine in Worcester Cathedral; the Holy Rood—a cross said to have been found buried at the site of the Crucifixion—in St. Gregory’s Church, Northampton; the image of Our Lady of Grace in the church of the Austin Friars, Northampton; Our Lady of Walsingham, where the largest offering, 6s.8d. [£160] was made, demonstrating that shrine’s importance to the Queen; Our Lady’s shrine in the chapel of the College of St. Gregory, Sudbury; the popular image of Our Lady of Woolpit, Suffolk; Our Lady of Grace of Ipswich; and the chapel of the Blessed Virgin in the College of Stoke-by-Clare, which was under the patronage of the queens of England. It took Barton twenty-seven days to visit all these shrines.
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At this time, Henry VII was doing his best to have Henry VI canonized. Elizabeth’s offerings at Eton College, Henry VI’s own foundation,
St. George’s Chapel, his burial place, and Tewkesbury Abbey, where his son’s tomb was also attracting pilgrims at this time, were an acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the Lancastrian line that her husband represented, and a tribute to the sanctity of her father’s rival. Ten years earlier, Caxton had included an oration to Henry VI in his book,
The Fifteen Oes
, commissioned by Elizabeth and Margaret Beaufort.
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Elizabeth, suffering anxiety and fear over her son’s health, was perhaps haunted by thoughts of the last Lancastrian heir, who had met his untimely death at eighteen.

Father Milner spent thirteen days visiting the shrine of Our Lady of Crowham; the mechanically moving Rood of Grace in Boxley Abbey, Kent; the shrine of the martyred St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, to whom, as we have seen, Elizabeth’s devotion had been fostered in childhood by her mother; Our Lady of the Undercroft at Canterbury Cathedral; the shrines of St. Augustine and St. Adrian in St. Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury; St. Mary de Castro in Dover Castle; the great rood over the north door of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; the image of Our Lady of Grace in St. Paul’s; images of St. Ignatius, St. Dominic, St. Peter of “Melayn,” and St. Francis at unidentified locations in or near London; St. Saviour’s Abbey, Bermondsey; Our Lady of the Pew in Westminster Abbey; Barking Abbey, Essex; and the shrine of the Black Madonna in St. Mary’s Church, Willesden (now in northwest London),
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which had been founded in 938 by the Saxon king Athelstan. This image had been famed since before 1249 for working miracles, and was a popular destination of pilgrims throughout the later Middle Ages.
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One day, less than forty years hence, Henry VIII would sweep away these shrines to which his mother had been so devoted, and in which she had invested so much faith.

Arthur was well enough to wash the feet of fifteen poor men on Maundy (or “shire”) Thursday, which fell on March 24, 1502,
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but thereafter his deterioration was rapid. Elizabeth must have been in torment when, on Maundy Thursday, at Westminster, she participated in the usual ceremonies, giving money and 105 yards of cloth to thirty-six poor women, to the number of her years. Bowls, baskets, and flowers were bought for this occasion. Payment for the material was made on December 1, and for three yards of cloth delivered on an unspecified
date “by the commandment of the Queen to a woman that was nurse to the prince, brother to the Queen’s Grace”—probably Richard, Duke of York. Again, the untimely death of a royal heir was in Elizabeth’s troubled mind. She was at Greenwich on Good Friday when she made her offering in the chapel, and at Richmond for Easter Sunday. Who knows with what fervency she offered to the Cross on the high altar after Mass?
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On Monday, March 28, she paid the gifted composer, Dr. Robert Fairfax, the princely sum of £1 [£490] “for setting an Anthem of Our Lady and St. Elizabeth,”
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which would invoke not only the protection of the Virgin Mother but, unusually, also that of the mother of the Virgin. Fairfax was the organist of St. Alban’s Abbey, and also the first Oxford scholar to obtain a doctorate in music; he had been a member of the Chapel Royal since 1497. The anthem, or votive antiphon, he composed for the Queen was a five-part motet entitled
Eterne laudis lilium
, in which the name Elizabeth features prominently, while the first letter of each line spells out the name elisabetha regina anglie.
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That same day, Elizabeth set out from Greenwich to stay for a few days at the Thames-side manor house of Hampton Court,
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owned by the military Knights Hospitalers of St. John of Jerusalem. It was on this site that Cardinal Thomas Wolsey would later build Hampton Court Palace. The Order of St. John, founded to succor wounded crusaders and protect the Holy Land from the Turks, had grown very wealthy. In the twelfth century the Hospitalers maintained an agricultural estate office at Hampton, selling produce to increase revenue. The manor house had been built before 1338, and was now a substantial property in the middle of an eight-hundred-acre estate growing crops and supporting two thousand sheep. From the fourteenth century it served as a grand guest house for visitors to the court at Sheen and, later, Richmond, and also provided accommodation for royal pensioners.

The Hospitalers’ house stood in a walled enclosure surrounded by a rectangular moat. It boasted a great hall (traces of which remain beneath Henry VIII’s great hall of the 1530s), a chamber block with a tower lodging, and a separate chapel; it also had a garden and a pigeon house. In 1494 the house was leased to Henry VII’s loyal chamberlain and friend, the powerful Giles, Lord Daubeney, who had been in exile
with his master and fought valiantly for him at Bosworth. The lease gave Daubeney the right to “take, alter, transpose, break, change, make, and new build,” and immediately he started converting Hampton Court into a great courtier house, making extensive changes. He erected a new courtyard range, a gatehouse, and a great hall, all of brick. North of the hall he built a new kitchen with a massive fireplace, which survives today as the Great Kitchen at Hampton Court Palace. By the time Henry VII visited in October 1500 and July 1501, the house was a fashionable mansion sufficiently grand for entertaining royalty. Elizabeth had probably accompanied the King on these visits, and evidently she enjoyed the hospitality of Lord Daubeney, whose epitaph in Westminster Abbey describes him as “a good man, prudent, just, honest, and loved by all.”
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