The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family (7 page)

As for the Duchess of Norfolk, she was the aunt of both Warwick and the king. First married to John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, she had subsequently married Sir Thomas Strangways and John, Viscount Beaumont; the Strangways marriage had been without royal licence. Since Norfolk’s death in 1432, she had been enjoying much of the family estates, thanks to her jointure and doubtless to the dismay of the Norfolk heirs. The duchess did not scruple to dower her daughter by Strangways with some of the Mowbray and Beaumont lands.
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Clearly the point of the match with the duchess was to give John a handsome income, and Warwick may have regarded the match as exploitation of his aged aunt, as suggested by Charles Ross,
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but nothing indicates what the old lady herself thought of the match. She may have enjoyed the company of the young man, or may have relished the thought of putting yet one more obstacle between her estates and her heirs. Nothing suggests that she was a woman easily cowed. After John’s death, a Humphrey Gentille, attempting to settle an account owed to him by John, brought a chancery suit in which he claimed that ‘the great might of the said lady’ was preventing him from collecting his debt.
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One other specific person is said to have resented this burst of matchmaking: the Duke of Buckingham, Katherine Woodville’s groom. According to Dominic Mancini, writing in 1483 after Richard III had taken the throne with the aid of Buckingham, Buckingham ‘had his own reasons for detesting the queen’s kin: for, when he was younger, he had been forced to marry the queen’s sister, whom he scorned to wed on account of her humble origin’.
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While this may or may not be true (no one bothered to record the thoughts of Buckingham, then a mere child, in 1465–66), as J.R. Lander has noted, there are good reasons not to take the comment at face value, given the anti-Woodville propaganda that was being circulated by Richard III at the time.
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Moreover, as Carole Rawcliffe points out, it is perhaps because of this royal connection that Buckingham was allowed to enter his inheritance three years before he came of age and to recover the lordship of Cantref Selyf, which made him £3,000 the richer.
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His Stafford relations do not appear to have resented the match: Henry’s grandmother, the dowager Duchess of Buckingham, would later play a prominent role at Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation, bearing the queen’s train.
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In 1470, the duchess lent the queen money after Edward IV was forced to flee the country.
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The duchess’s second husband, Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, and her two surviving sons, Buckingham’s uncles, would prove loyal to Edward IV in 1470–71.

As for the families of the other grooms, Michael Hicks has laid great emphasis on the material inducements Edward offered to them.
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It would surely, however, have been commented upon disapprovingly had the king
not
offered some sweeteners as part of the marriage negotiations. Since none of the spouses, except for Buckingham in later life, is known to have complained of his or her lot, the arrangements must have been satisfactory to those concerned.

Other than marriage, Elizabeth’s siblings made some smaller gains from their sister’s marriage. John became the queen’s master of the horse for which he received £40 per year, while Anne, Lady Bourchier, headed the list of Elizabeth’s ladies and also received £40 per annum. Anthony Woodville’s wife also served Elizabeth at that salary.
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In 1468, following the death of the prior of the Knights Hospitaller (the Order of St John of Jerusalem), Edward IV tried to get the order to accept Elizabeth’s brother John as his replacement, but the order, presumably not wanting an outsider in their ranks, elected John Langstrother instead.
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While the Woodville sisters were being married off, plans were underway for Elizabeth’s coronation, which took place on 26 May 1465. The ceremonies began on Friday 24 May, when London’s mayor, aldermen, and guild members went to meet the queen at Shooters Hill. From there they conducted her to the Tower, as was traditional. At London Bridge, Elizabeth was greeted by a man dressed as St Paul, most likely a reference to Elizabeth’s St Pol ancestry, and by another person dressed as St Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist. Mary Cleopas, the half-sister of the Virgin Mary, also stood upon the bridge along with her four sons.
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As was customary, the king had summoned a number of boys and men to be made Knights of the Bath, a ceremony which most likely took place on Saturday, following ritual baths and a night vigil on Friday. Among the new knights were Richard and John Woodville, two of Elizabeth’s brothers, and William Haute, Lord Rivers’s nephew by his sister Joan. The Woodville grooms were also well represented: the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Maltravers, and Anthony, Lord Grey of Ruthin. That Saturday afternoon, Elizabeth rode from the Tower to Westminster, passing through Cheapside and preceded by the newly made knights. Most likely, as did queens before and after her, she wore white cloth of gold and sat in a litter draped with the same material, her hair worn down.

On the following day, Sunday, the king’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, rode into Westminster Hall on horseback, his horse trapped from head to hoof with a richly embroidered cloth garnished with gold spangles. Behind him rode the Earl of Arundel and the Duke of Norfolk (John Woodville’s step-grandson), both on coursers trapped in cloth of gold extending to the ground. The three noblemen rode about the hall, keeping the spectators from pressing against the queen as she entered the hall.

Preceded by the Abbot of Westminster and walking under a canopy carried by the four barons of the Cinque Ports, the queen wore a purple mantle and a coronal upon her head. She carried the sceptre of St Edward in her right hand and the sceptre of the realm in her left. The elder Duchess of Buckingham bore the queen’s train, while the Bishop of Durham walked at the queen’s right hand and the Bishop of Salisbury on her left. Following the queen were the queen’s mother and two of Edward’s sisters, Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, and the unmarried Lady Margaret.

Covering the path from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey was a carpet of ray cloth, upon which the queen walked barefoot (or perhaps in her stockinged feet). Before her walked the Archbishop of Canterbury and other bishops and abbots. Clarence, Arundel, and Norfolk, now on foot, had also joined the procession, along with the 9-year-old Duke of Buckingham, carried upon a squire’s shoulders. The king’s sisters and Jacquetta still followed the queen, along with Buckingham’s little duchess, who like her husband rode upon someone’s shoulders. These ladies and the rest of the thirteen duchesses and countesses wore robes of red velvet and ermine, while fourteen baronesses were clad in scarlet and miniver. Seven ladies of lesser rank followed in scarlet.

Having passed into the monastery and through its north door, Elizabeth knelt at the high altar, then prostrated herself while the archbishop prayed. Rising, she was anointed and crowned, then led to the throne.

After the royal procession left the abbey in the same order in which it had entered, the queen was led to her chamber, where she was dressed in a purple surcoat and brought into Westminster Hall to dine, with John de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk (married to Edward’s sister Elizabeth) standing on her right hand while she washed and the Earl of Essex holding the royal sceptres. John de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, served the queen her water, while the Duke of Clarence held the basin. The Countesses of Shrewsbury and Kent knelt beside the queen, holding up a veil before her whenever she ate. Each time the queen took a bite, she herself removed her crown, putting it back when she was finished. The Archbishop of Canterbury sat at the queen’s right hand, the Duchess of Suffolk and the Lady Margaret on her left.

To cap off the ceremonies, on 27 May, a tournament was held at Westminster. Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony, must have surely appeared there, but the honours went to Lord Stanley, who was awarded a ruby ring.

Conspicuously absent from the coronation ceremonies was King Edward himself. This was not a snub but custom; Henry VI had been absent from Margaret of Anjou’s coronation, as Henry VII would be from Elizabeth of York’s and Henry VIII from Anne Boleyn’s. (Richard III was crowned with his queen, as was Henry VIII with Catherine of Aragon; both had married their brides before their own coronations.) It is possible that Edward IV was able to watch the ceremonies unobserved, as would Henry VII when his own queen was crowned.
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An equally conspicuous absence was that of the king’s mother, Cecily, Duchess of York. This may well have been a snub, but the duchess also missed her son Richard’s coronation in 1483. The Earl of Warwick was on an embassy to Burgundy. Jacques de Luxembourg, Jacquetta’s brother, came to the coronation as the representative of the Duke of Burgundy, which served the doubly pleasant purposes of allowing a kinsman of Elizabeth to see his niece crowned and of lending the event an international cachet.

Lord Rivers is not specifically named as taking place in the ceremonies; probably his rank was not sufficiently high or his role so prominent to merit comment. It is clear, though, that he was a proud father. Later he purchased a romance,
Alexander
, which, he wrote in its inscription, had been bought on the fifth anniversary of the coronation of Edward IV ‘
et le second de la coronacion de la tres vertueuze royne Elizabeth
’.
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Soon after her crowning, Elizabeth Woodville would have noticed another change in her life: she was pregnant. The child, another Elizabeth, was born on 11 February 1466 at Westminster Palace. The birth of the king’s first legitimate child served to lure even the baby’s paternal grandmother, Cecily, Duchess of York, to court, where she and the Duchess of Bedford (smiling hard, one imagines) served as the child’s godmothers at the christening at Westminster Abbey. The Earl of Warwick (also smiling hard, one imagines) did duty as the child’s godfather. The elder Duchess of Buckingham served as the child’s godmother at the confirmation.
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Over the next few years, Elizabeth gave birth to two more daughters: Mary, born at Windsor shortly before her baptism there on 12 August 1467, and Cecily, born at Westminster on 20 March 1469.
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The birth of Cecily, the queen’s third daughter, prompted a Milanese ambassador to write that the queen ‘gave birth to a very handsome daughter, which rejoiced the king and all the nobles exceedingly, though they would have preferred a son’.
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It is not for her fecundity in the 1460s, however, that Elizabeth is remembered. Three events that occurred during this period – a churching, an execution, and a trial – have marred her reputation, so much so that they deserve a chapter to themselves.

Following childbirth, a medieval mother was expected to remain in her chamber for about a month, after which a purification/thanksgiving service known as a ‘churching’ would mark her return to public life. For a medieval queen, a churching was a particularly grand event. An observer from Nuremburg, Gabriel Tetzel, travelling in the suite of Leo of Rozmital, a Bohemian nobleman, happened to be on hand in 1466 to witness Elizabeth’s. He reported:

    The Queen left her child-bed and went to church in stately order, accompanied by many priests bearing relics and by many scholars singing and carrying lights. There followed a great company of ladies and maidens from the country and from London, who had been summoned. Then came a great company of trumpeters, pipers and players of stringed instruments. The king’s choir followed, forty-two of them, who sang excellently. Then came twenty-four heralds and pursuivants, followed by sixty counts and knights. At last came the Queen escorted by two dukes. Above her was a canopy. Behind her were her mother and maidens and ladies to the number of sixty. Then the Queen heard the singing of an Office, and, having left the church, she returned to her palace in procession as before. Then all who had joined the procession remained to eat. They sat down, women and men, ecclesiastical and lay, each according to rank, and filled four great rooms.
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