A Northern Lord in London: The City Richard III Knew.

                                     Panorama of C16th London from the south bank.

 

Richard III is well known for having been a northerner. The current debate raging over the reburial of his bones indicates the strength of feeling about him in his home county. Yet he was a man of two halves; one foot amid the rolling dales and another firmly rooted in the teeming lanes of the medieval capital. Pleasure may have drawn him to the north but business made him return to London throughout his life and reign.

Born at Fotheringhay, Northamptonshire, in 1452, Richard spent much of his adult life at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire, or the nearby Sheriff Hutton, home to his influential Council in the North. He was a son of York by name and inclination, choosing it as the location for the investiture of his young son as Prince of Wales.

Just weeks after his 1483 coronation, he left London behind and headed north on progress, taking his southern Lords along for the ride, in order to display to them the extent of his support in his homelands. After his death at Bosworth Field, it was the York city’s chronicler who lamented his demise, recording how the King was “piteously slain” through treason, to the “great loss” of his subjects.

Over the centuries, Richard has been accused of many things but being a Londoner is not one of them. Yet throughout his life, he was frequently in the capital, attending sessions of Parliament and ceremonial occasions at court. London was the heart of Government; his presence there was unavoidable. It was a city whose churches, streets and palaces would have been familiar to Richard as a boy and would have proved a cosmopolitan and exciting capital for its future King.

                             This Elizabeth map shows a city comparable in size to Richard's.

 

The London of the 1460s was much smaller than the present city. It was also greener, with a higher proportion of private gardens and open spaces. Early medieval maps show that most people lived between the Tower in the East and Fleet Street to the West. There was not much development to the north beyond Bishopsgate and Cripplegate, although several large monastic establishments, like St Bartholomew’s, St Mary Spital and St Catherine’s lay outside the walls. Richard would have found London dominated by the estates of the wealthy, whose grand stone townhouses were built around courtyards backing onto the river, with their own gardens and orchards. The high gates of their properties would have been locked and guarded at night by men in brightly coloured livery. Often there would be a swarm of poorer citizens waiting outside at nightfall, for the leftovers from that day’s meals to be distributed by the almoner.

Extremes of poverty and affluence sat side by side. Disease, illness and dirt were everywhere but the city did take steps to clean the streets, regulating the disposal of waste and the wild animals that had historically been a problem. One fourteenth century baby girl was killed in her cradle after being bitten by one of the pigs that roamed loose, scavenging for food. Inquest records also report a large number of drownings, particularly of women and children, who had travelled to one of the many ditches or tributaries of the Thames in order to gather water. There were accidents with runaway horses, heavy carts, collapsing walls, fires, fatal brawls between retainers, drunks and rioting apprentices. Death and violence must have never been very far away.

In contrast with the poverty and danger, the second half of the fifteenth century also saw a surge of upward social mobility. City merchants had got wealthy trading in wool and London was a major international port, with ships arriving from the continent and beyond, bringing and exporting luxury goods. This was one of the reasons they had largely remained loyal to Richard’s brother, Edward IV, whose pro-Burgundian policies had encouraged such trade and the glut of luxury items available. Roads were named after the goods they sold, with signs for the illiterate. Italian diplomat Mancini described three principal streets: Thames Street with cranes and warehouses for the loading and unloading of ships, Candlewick Street with its cloth merchants and Cheapside, where luxury goods such as tapestries, gold and silver, jewellery and silks were on sale.

The Scottish poet William Dunbar, who visited the “sovereign” city of London in 1501-2, compared it with the city of Troy. His pleasant beryl-coloured Thames throngs with swans and sailing barges, running under bridges with white pillars. In the streets, merchants and knights appear dressed in velvet gowns with chains of gold; it was a beautiful city full of wise, attractive inhabitants: the merchants’ wives were fair and “lovesom, white and small” while the girls were “clear” which suggests good health, “but lusty.” The merchants’ modern dwellings spread upwards rather than outwards, several storeys high, with their glazed windows, painted mortar and timber.

Shortly before he became King, Richard would acquire one of these houses himself; one of the grandest and newest of them all. Some time between 1475 and 1483, he rented Crosby Place in Bishopsgate, which was described by Elizabethan antiquarian, John Stow, as a “great house of stone and timber,” with rear gardens, courtyard, great chamber, chapel, solar, great hall with marble floors, carved ceiling, minstrels’ gallery and an oriel window. According to Thomas More, it was here that Richard would hold informal council meetings during the tempestuous summer of 1483 and where, with Buckingham, he would plan his coup. When Shakespeare included references to Richard’s ownership of Crosby Place during the funeral procession of Henry VI, he was out by at least five years!

                             Nineteenth Century Engraving of the Great Hall of Crosby Place

After Edward’s succession, the nine-year-old Richard lived for a while at the Palace of Placentia, at Greenwich. It was a luxurious residence which had previously been used by his family’s adversaries Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. Greenwich itself was barely a village, surrounded by countryside. As late as 1554, Wyngaerde’s illustration shows a only scattering of small houses on either side of the waterfront Palace with its enclosed gardens. It had been built in the 1440s by Henry VI’s ill-fated uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, which was fitting as the same title had just been bestowed upon the young boy. Richard was provided for in the King’s household accounts of 1461, during his stay at the Palace and for the transportation of his goods between there and his childhood home of Fotheringhay. It was amid the tranquil green surrounding of Greenwich, that his other brother, George, Duke of Clarence, began his chivalric training as a “henxman,” although Richard would leave the city in order undergo his own military education under his future father-in-law, Warwick, at his northern home, Middleham Castle.

The young Richard also spent time in the London household of Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor. Bourchier was also related to the Yorks through marriage and was himself a grandson of Edward III. Having recently crowned Richard’s elder brother, he extended his hospitality to the boy, receiving compensation for supporting the King’s brothers “for a long time and at great charges” so Richard may well have been resident in his household for a period of time. His main residence was at Knole, in Kent, but during Richard’s youth, his title brought with it the use of Lambeth Palace, across the water from Westminster. The present red-brick gateway post-dates Richard, being built by Morton, Bourchier’s successor; the boy would have known a simpler gateway housing the Palace archives, where beggars would gather for alms or “Lambeth Dole.” Richard may even have watched from a window as they were issued with their weekly allowance of fifteen loaves and cuts of beef. Richard would have dined with Bourchier in the Great Hall, recently modernised by Archbishop Chichele, with kitchens to the north and pantry and buttery to the west. An impressive four thousand people could be fed there. Richard would also have known the cloister with its newly build galleries on the first floor and the thirteenth century presence chamber and chapel. By the time he was a guest there, the moated gardens and orchard were flanked by a river walk, allowing the boy to glimpse the comings and goings across the Thames.

Westminster was the heart of the court, set outside the central residential area of the city, connected to it by river and a single long road leading to Charing Cross. Charing was still recognisable as the hamlet it had once been, located on the bend of the Thames, where Edward I had erected a cross in tribute to his wife Eleanor. The Palace grounds were a self-contained little community catering for the court. Shops and workshops catered to the royal family’s physical needs, while the Abbey provided spiritual comforts and printer William Caxton set up his first English press there in 1476, under the patronage of Edward IV’s in-laws, the Wydevilles. The prosperity and bustle of Westminster is captured in London Lickpenny, a poem composed during the reign of Henry VI, once thought to be by John Lydgate. He describes tradesmen calling “Master, what will you copen or buy? Fine felt hats or spectacles to read?” and cooks offering “bread, with ale and wine, Ribs of beef, both fat and full fine; A faire cloth they gan forth to spread…”

                                    Engraving of Westminster Palace as it appeared in 1647

Beyond the confines of Westminster, the narrator is offered strawberries, cherries, pepper and spices, hot sheep’s feet, mackerel, rushes, pies and peasecods as well as fine velvet, silk, lawn and Paris thread. What could be seen of the Palace in the 1470s was mixture of medieval architectural styles, building on the foundations laid by Edward the Confessor. Closely connected with the Abbey, much of the ceremonial business took place in the Great Hall and painted chamber, while the royal apartments formed a right angle overlooking the river and gardens. It was a peaceful location, as the opposite bank was marshy and undeveloped, save for the view of Lambeth Palace. From the steps, Richard could take a barge downstream into the city itself, past the backs of aristocratic homes, along to the imposing white bastion of the Tower. 

The Thames was the city’s main thoroughfare, wider than it is today and bobbing with vessels of all types but there was only one way across on foot.  Already hundreds of years old, London Bridge had played witness to a series of important moments in the history of the city. When Margaret of Anjou had arrived in 1445, Humphrey, the previous Duke of Gloucester had met her on the bridge amid much civic pageantry with men dressed in gilt badges and the blue and scarlet gowns of office.  Only five years later it was the scene of rebellion as Jack Cade’s men advanced across the bridge, slashing its supporting ropes to prevent the royal troops from following. After Cade had been hunted down and killed, his head adorned the bridge as a deterrent to other would-be traitors. More recently, Edward IV had passed over it in triumph on his way to his coronation and a decade later, attacks on the capital designed to free the Lancastrian Henry VI saw the bridge engulfed in flames. Thirteen houses had burned before the citizens had seen the rebels off. By the time of Richard’s succession, the bridge was in poor repair, with houses regularly falling down and drowning the residents.

 

               London Bridge from an Elizabethan image, showing the impaled heads of traitors

Richard would have been familiar with much of the Tower of London as it stands today. It had long stood as an inviolable fortress, representing the power of the crown, as opposed to the sinister reputation it would later attract. In the 1470 though, while Richard was in exile, it had been attacked by rebels and witnessed the readeption of the unstable Henry VI. Rumours of Richard’s involvement in Henry’s murder the following year are unsubstantiated but persist through popular literature. It was also the site where the volatile Clarence finally met his end, in the legendary butt of Malmsey, in 1478.

Such portrayals are responsible for many of the overriding negative associations between Richard and the Tower, also attributing to him the deaths of his nephews incarcerated there. Yet it was within those thick walls that he passed the day before his coronation, as tradition dictated. It was a multi-functional complex, containing the royal apartments where Elizabeth Wydeville had planned to give birth to Edward V before being evicted by the rebels, chapels, spaces for recreation, offices where coins were minted, the Great Wardrobe, the Crown Jewels and a menagerie, as well as being a prison. He also made some improvements to one of the towers during his reign.

                                                The Tower of London, from a C15th MS

Several great houses of London were also known to Richard through his family connections. His brother George, Duke of Clarence lived at Coldharbour House in Thames Street, in the parish of All-Hallows-the-Less, or perhaps All-Hallows-in-the-Hay, named after an adjoining hay wharf, near where the London Brewery now stands. It was an ancient and important “right fair and stately” house, according to John Stowe, originally two fortified buildings on the river front, which had been home to Henry IV in 1400 and to Henry V during his tenure as Prince of Wales. Following the attainder of Anne of York’s husband, Henry Holland, the property came into the possession of the crown and was used by various members of the York family. It is mentioned in a mid-seventeeth century play, by Heywood and Rowley, as having twenty chimneys, and was reputed to have a number of turrets built around a courtyard and believed to be impregnable. In the 1460s it had been owned by the Lancastrian Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, but was confiscated after his involvement in the Battle of Barnet.

On a more personal note, Richard’s future wife, Anne Neville, was sent to Coldharbour House after being widowed at the battle of Tewkesbury. Aged only fifteen, she was under her married sister’s guardianship. Richard visited them there at Christmas 1471, which was when he may have wooed her and planned their elopement the following spring. The rumours that Clarence concealed her in his kitchens, disguised as a kitchen maid stem from this period. Richard’s sister Margaret of York, wife of Charles the Bold, stayed at the house when visiting the city in 1480, where new beds with red and green hangings were prepared for her comfort, along with fine bed linens, curtains, screens and tapestries, one depicting Paris and Helen of Troy. Richard would give the house to the city Heralds for their support of his succession but after the battle of Bosworth, it passed into the hands of Margaret Beaufort.

                                      Nineteenth century illustration of Coldharbour House

After the death of his brother Clarence, the house named the Erber came into Richard’s possession. It had been owned by his mentor the Earl of Warwick, Anne’s father, but had originally been passed on to Anne’s elder sister, Clarence’s wife Isabel. After 1478, the Gloucesters again had the use of it. It had been used to lodge Yorkist troops during the late 1450s and the kitchens were reputed to be able to feed 2,000 a day, with six oxen needed for breakfast alone. Richard carried out some repairs to it and renamed it, briefly, the “King’s Palace.” In his absences, the property was looked after by a Ralph Darnel, a yeoman of the crown and it reverted to Clarence’s son, Edward, after Bosworth. Anne may well have stayed here in 1475, while she waited for Richard to return from accompanying the King on his campaign to France; they were reunited in London that December, making payments to city merchants on the third and sixth of the month.

Then there was Baynard’s Castle at Blackfriars, residence of the Duke of York, Richard’s father since 1457. It was an impressive waterfront mansion, fortified with turrets and thick walls enclosing a courtyard, originally built in Norman times for a supporter of William the Conqueror. Rebuilt on the water’s edge following a fire in 1428, its huge river frontage was set with narrow turrets flanked by hexagonal towers at each end, enclosing a private courtyard; improvements in the 1440s had created four wings in a trapezoid shape and by the early 1500s it was considered “beautiful and commodious” as well as strong. Supposedly inviolable, the family had recourse to it on many occasions when they, or the city, were under attack. Edward and his Queen, Elizabeth Wydeville stayed there between his return from exile and the Battle of Barnet. Richard would have spent time here during his childhood and after his father’s death, his mother continued to use the property. It was in the hall there, in 1461, that Edward IV summoned a council and declared himself King.

Riding out of the city and heading north, Richard would have passed through the green fields that lay beyond the walls. Much of this land was undeveloped, dotted with hamlets. The sixteenth century historian Stow described the area known as Moorfields as a “waste and unprofitable ground.” It was often marshy and when it froze over in winter, was used for sliding on; the monk Fitzstephen, writing in the twelfth century described the “London youth” tying the leg bones of animals to their shoes to make primate skates. In the early fifteenth century, a new gate had been built allowing access out onto the fields. Another open space was Spitalfields, or the Hospital Fields of St Mary; Richard may have known it as Spittellond, as it appeared in records of 1399. In the shadow of the Tower, it is depicted on maps, with women laying out their washing flat on the ground to dry. There was also Smithfield, a large grassy space or “smoothfield,” long used for livestock markets, public gatherings, executions and drying laundry. It was situated on the Eastern side of the Tower, accessible by the Postern Gate and used for tournaments. In 1467, the teenaged Richard may have witnessed the jousting there between Anthony Wydeville and Anthony, Comte de la Roche, the “Grand Bastard of Burgundy, who was heading a party of Burgundians negotiating Margaret’s marriage. Ten years later, he returned to attend another significant occasion, a feast hosted by his seven-year old nephew, Edward V, with whose fate he would become irrevocably linked. On that occasion, Richard was the first to kiss his hand and swear loyalty.

Old St Paul's, before the fire of London.

Richard was a northerner by birth and by choice. There is no doubt though, that the capital city was of great importance to him. It was where many of the significant events of his life took place: his wooing of Anne, their marriage, the events that led to his succession in 1483, his wife’s death and the important political decisions of his reign. However, Yorkshire was his home; it was here that he established his marital home and where his son was born and died. Perhaps the two locations may suggest the dichotomic struggle between the personal and political which underpinned his downfall.

 

Roads, Hospitals and Shrines: Richard III and the Canterbury Pilgrimage Route

 

                Detail from a wall painting of the Annunciation inside St Nicholas, Harbledown

On Tuesday 5 March, I published an article in the New Statesman about some information I unearthed regarding a visit Richard III made to Canterbury early in 1484. The King was described in the city accounts as having stayed there on his way to, and on the way back from, the port of Sandwich. The visit had already been identified by a previous scholar, Anne F Sutton, although I had previously seen little other non-fictional material on it. The Victoria County History series, as well as local historian Tim Tatton-Brown, mentioned that Richard stayed in a tent at Blene le Hale. Edward Hasted refers to it as the Tentorium Tent or Pavilion in the Blean. He also relates that in 1481, Edward IV made his last visit there, accompanied by his son Edward, the elder of the Princes in Tower. The present village of Blean overlaps that of Harbledown, which was the established pilgrimage route into the city and in fact, the end of The Pilgrims' Way that connects Winchester and Canterbury, as well as linking with the road from London. I discovered that in advance of Richard’s visit, the city repaired these roads, already documented as being in a poor state, partly from the wear of thousands of penitent feet making the journey down the hill to the cathedral and Becket’s shrine.

                            C19th engraving showing the church and wooden hospital to the left.

I am also aware of another description of this road, written in 1512 by the visiting Humanist scholar Erasmus in Pilgrimages to St Mary at Walsingham and St Thomas at Canterbury. Now, Erasmus was writing to satirise pilgrimage, which by the early sixteenth century, was increasingly coming in for criticism as a vehicle for the exploitation of travellers and the bad behaviour of those considered to be using it as an excuse for a “jolly.” However, he does provide us with an interesting picture of the road leading immediately out of the city in the direction of London, which is roughly the route of the present A2. He describes it as very “hollow and narrow” with banks on either side “so steep and abrupt that you cannot escape,” which is still true of part of this stretch of road as it bisects modern Harbledown. Erasmus then describes the Leper hospital, founded by Lanfranc, just north of the city. The church of St Nicholas, associated with this building still stands in Harbledown, with its sloping floors, allowing for regular cleaning, along with a row of hospital alms houses, although the hospital itself does not. A twelfth century Order of St Thomas of Acre, established in the Holy Lands, for the care and provision of Lepers, was named after Canterbury’s Thomas Becket, although no direct evidence has yet been uncovered to suggest that the establishment at Harbledown was part of this order. The twelfth century chronicler Eadmer describes it as being two wooden buildings, segregating the sexes, built on the hillside. In Erasmus’ day, it housed around sixty old men, one of whom would run out “as soon as they perceive any horseman approaching,” to sprinkle them with holy water and offer them Becket’s shoe to kiss. Erasmus muses whether they may be offered some spittle or other “bodily” excrements to worship before they are allowed to resume their journey.

 

A map or 1810/1 showing the relative locations of Canterbury and Harbledown; London is to the North West.

 

Of course none of this proves that Richard killed the Princes. He was a devout King and pilgrimages were undertaken by all medieval Kings and Queens as well as a large number of their subjects. He could have gone to any number of shrines to offer up his prayers, for any number of reasons. We know for a fact that Richard was present in the city, that he stayed in the Tent at Blean/Harbledown, that the route was used by penitent barefoot pilgrims and that the roads were repaired for him. Again, this does not prove guilt of any sort but it interested me in the context of other discussions relating to Richard and the Princes. I was aware of the theory, already seen as credible by many, that the boys may have died in circumstances similar to those in which Thomas Becket lost his life. Following this theory, with Becket’s Canterbury connection, it is possible to speculate that these details offer an alternative reading of Richard’s visit.

 

   Early C19th interior of the church of St Nicholas with its sloping floor, to allow for cleaning

 

I offer no apologies for speculating on what “may have” been. Although amazing archaeological discoveries do still happen, we cannot all dig up a king in a car park and a valid aspect of historical study is the continual reinterpretation of known facts to seek plausible new solutions. It is possible that Richard did penance at Becket’s shrine, if a servant of his had killed the Princes. It is equally possible that he did not. It is the discussion of this as a possibility that helps clarify further understanding of his character and motivation, which is certainly not a debate with closed answers. One of the energising aspects of studying the past is that everyone can read the facts and form their own opinions, within the academic world and outside it. There is a place for the academic citation of detail and also for the popular celebration of the man in art, film, literature and discussion groups. Richard is an enthralling figure, who is rightly the subject of ongoing study and able to incite passionate defence. I am pleased to have been able to offer another possible reading of one small slice of his life. My forthcoming biography of his wife, Anne, will continue to seek a balance between the known facts and possible interpretations. I will present all the evidence and theories as fully and clearly as I can and I warmly invite my readers to draw their own conclusions from them.

 Here is the link to the original article:

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/03/new-evidence-was-richard-iii-guilty-murdering-princes-tower

All the Women We've Never Heard Of: Women's History Month.

March is Women’s History Month or International Women’s Month, depending on whereabouts you are in the world. This is an interesting recent innovation, coinciding with Women’s Day on March 8 and indicative of the increasing social awareness of centuries, perhaps millennia, of female marginalisation. In terms of historiography, the emancipation and study of women’s lives really only moved into focus in the twentieth century. Biographies of queens did exist before that time but they were typically the products of a post-Romantic movement, focusing on figures whose lives had been tragic or dramatic, like Mary, Queen of Scots or Anne Boleyn. A key innovator in the study of women’s lives was Eileen Power, whose work on medieval women in the 1920s made her one of the first to place them on the historical stage in their own right, rather as appendages to their more important menfolk.

                                                                     Joan of Arc

Since then, in the post-Feminist world, the emphasis on the female experience has greatly increased in all fields of study. For historians, the study of queenship in particular has blossomed as a valuable genre, allowing exploration of important women beyond just their function as child bearers or figures to distract men and be wedded or divorced. Significant steps have been taken towards the evaluation of the contributions individual queens made to national politics, the personal nature of their influence and how certain women contributed to discourses of disaffection. In particular, we know the names of women who caused trouble in the past, rather than those who towed the line. Those who lived lives that did not show up in the legal records, who avoided conflict, escaped terrible illnesses and died quietly in their beds are still relatively unknown. This is partly a problem of documentation. The higher up the social scale a woman was, or the more difficult she was in refusing or failing to conform, the more paperwork she created. We know about the glorious coronations of Queens, the rumours about their sexual behaviour and the adoration they inspired. Figures such as the visionary Joan of Arc, Protestant Martyr Anne Askew and the “holy maid” of Kent, prophetess, Elizabeth Barton, along with others who suffered the ultimate price for their beliefs during the Marian burnings or the Seventeenth Century witch trials, are well recorded. So basically, if you were rich or naughty, you got noticed; do things ever change?

Yet, in terms of understanding the female experience, historians have still only scratched the surface. A browse through Amazon’s listings proves that tastes still veer towards the anointed queens and mistresses of Kings. Our current examples would equate to the modern study of a foreign country simply by analysing the lives of their celebrities. The experiences of “average” women in the past are far less recoverable although the existence of such an “average” or “typical” female life is as unlikely as it is for women today.  These are the women who appear on the margins of illuminated manuscripts, scattering corn to chickens, herding pigs or cutting corn. Continual narratives rarely exist for them, which is unsurprising when we consider that even hugely famous women’s birthdates, like those of Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard are uncertain. They did not know they were going to become famous, whereas the birthdates of Catherine of Aragon, Mary I and Elizabeth I are practically carved in stone, so significant as they were.

There seem to be two categories of women in the past; the “famous” and the “other.” Often, only a slice of the lives of these others exist, for example, when they fall foul of the courts or are married, divorced or create some scandal, such as falling pregnant outside marriage. That is, at the interface of where their lives clash with the legal and moral codes of men. For Women’s history month, I would like to explore a few experiences of those “others,” the millions and millions about whom little or nothing is known, but whose existence was essential in roles behind the scenes as administrators, facilitators, mediators, educators etc. These are the women we have never heard of and some, no doubt, will question whether they are worthy of study. The answer to this lies in female roles today: we are not all Queens or martyrs. Modern women have many more opportunities than their counterparts in the past and each life is different, shaped by individual choice but we can only come close to understanding how our roles have evolved by studying the breadth of female existence rather than the extremes. I suppose it also depends on whether you think the human experience is an interesting subject matter in itself. I do. These are a few of the women I have uncovered whilst researching other things.

I love seeking out women from the past who have broken the rules. Decades before the Reformation took hold, when the seventeen-year-old Henry VIII succeeded to the throne of England as a good Catholic, there were already criticisms raised against the trappings of religion. In 1509, an Elizabeth Sampson, or Simpson, of London visited the church of St Mary, Willesden. It had long been associated with miracles, possibly named after an early healing spring and by the late fifteenth century, was very popular. Pilgrims visited from all over the country and carried away small phials of holy water to cure all sorts of ills. The famous statue that stood within the church was blackened by centuries of candle smoke and when Elizabeth visited that year, she described the Black Madonna as a “burnt- tailed elf and a burnt-tailed stock.” Then, she added that if the statue could not even take care of itself it was not of much use to those who sought its aid. Elizabeth was made to do penance for her criticism; probably declaring she was wrong and swearing an oath in public, or even receiving lashes in the market place. What made her speak out ? Elizabeth was from London and the church is now in the north-west of the modern city, although in her day, it was a distant village beyond the walls. Did Elizabeth have some particular purpose in making a pilgrimage there? Did she hope for the intercession of saints for her health or fertility, as the traditional association went? Perhaps she had already tried some of the holy water and had not seen the results she had hoped for. This may have been a personal response or an ideological one; was she an early critic of the excesses of Catholicism, or reflecting an increasing discourse of satire against those who exploited it? Only three years later Erasmus would produce his famous satire on pilgrimage. We will never know what motivated Elizabeth. She did her penance. Did she have a choice?

Next, a typical tale of late sixteenth century illegitimacy developed around Sarah Smythe of Elm, Ely, Cambridgeshire, who was at the centre of a paternity debate. In 1584, shoemaker William Wylson of Brentwood, Essex, confessed to having fathered a child with his servant Sarah. According to the Assize rolls, he claimed that “after “divers and several times the use of her body”, Sarah became pregnant and delivered a boy at the house of Wylson’s brother. Wylson was examined at the time and acknowledged the child, declaring that he and Sarah were man and wife. Sarah disagreed; she denied it and ran away. Still Wyslon did not give up but pursued her and brought her back to Brentwood, whereupon she was questioned by the justices and confessed that the child’s father was actually one Abraham Smythe, another of Wylson’s servants who had absconded. Wylson was then “absolved” of both woman and child. This case illuminates only a fragment of the complex connections and legal implications of social and sexual relations of the time. Wylson appears to have acted honourably for the most, despite having had relations with his servant: as he was later calling her his wife, it seems that this was consensual and the he was unaware of her relationship with at least one other man. Abraham and Sarah Smythe were servants in the same household with the same surname and may have been cousins or more distantly related. It would have benefited Sarah socially to have accepted Wylson as her husband but either love or her conscience dictated otherwise. The case raises questions as to her motives in entering a sexual relationship with her master and the degree to which she had a choice; also it seems that Sarah and Abraham were able to find some privacy on at least one occasion and that Wylson was ignorant of the behaviour and morals of his own servants. There is of course, the possibility that Sarah was not telling the truth, accusing a man she desired and who was not present to testify in his defence but that opens more questions than the records of this case can answer.

It’s always interesting when women get accused of using speech as a weapon. One court roll of High Roding in the early Sixteenth century, requested the removal from the village of a woman named Agnes for being a “common scold” and “disturber of the peace to the great annoyance of her neighbours.” At Barking in 1581, the wives of Edmund Body and Geoffrey Wood were reported as “common scolds”, as was Matilda Glascock of Becontree in 1575, although no punishment was recorded. It is difficult not to wonder what they said; it was likely to have been something that damaged the good reputation or “common fame” of an individual that was considered so valuable at the time. This must have been part of a long-running dispute between neighbours, which reached a head when one was deemed to have overstepped the mark. Yet it was clearly a common problem, which men loathed. Bald’s Leechbook contained a cure against a woman’s chatter: the advice to eat a radish at night whilst fasting and one the next day, to ensure the chatter cannot harm you, suggests a real belief in the possibility of tangible harm being done through speech, either bodily, or to a man’s reputation. The potential overlap of female disobedience, secrecy and witchcraft becomes even more apparent in the pseudo-religious advice of receipt books and almanacs. Men might make a salve “against women with whom the devil copulated”, using hops, wormwood, lupin, vervain, garlic, fennel and other ingredients. They should place these in a vat under an altar, sing nine masses over it, boil it in butter and sheep’s grease, add holy salt and strain the liquid through a cloth into running water. The man who anointed himself with this salve would be saved from “evil temptation”. With the majority of women being so powerless in legal terms and voiceless through illiteracy, this social silencing was particularly brutal.

Some of the saddest cases I have come across have featured infanticides. I originally had a section on this in my first book “In Bed with the Tudors” but I found it so upsetting that I took it out. When you study pregnancy and childbirth, there are inevitably sad stories. In this case though, it seems that a stillbirth was mistaken for murder. In May 1566, Margaret Cybson of Writtle, Essex, wife of a labourer, was accused of killing her newborn son. Thirteen men gave their oath that Margaret had given birth at home between the hours of eleven and twelve at night on the last day of March, then took the child and threw it down the well on the green, known as “Greneburie” where it drowned. The child was neither baptised nor named. At the Chelmsford Assizes that July she was found not guilty, with the judge ruling that the child had been dead when born. How exactly did this verdict come about? It may have been a question of gender. Margaret’s accusers were male. Perhaps the women who actually attended her birth were able to verify her version of events, marking a real divide between their knowledge and male supposition and suspicion, as they were traditionally excluded from the birth room. We cannot help but wonder why Margaret was accused with such certainty or exactly how these men thought they had gained their information. Even given the late hour of her delivery, Margaret’s female network would have been on alert and ready to attend her, if indeed she had one. There must have been some women with poor social connections, marginalised by choice, distance, necessity or social tensions who lacked this support. Somehow Margaret was able to convince the justices that what the men may have witnessed was the disposal of a body rather than a murder. And where was her husband in all this? Whatever the circumstances, relations between the Cybsons and their neighbours cannot have been easy after such an accusation.

Some women were making their mark in the medical profession too, albeit unofficially. Two female practitioners in late Sixteenth century London came to the attention of the authorities for their activities. A Thomasina Scarlett made her first appearance in December 1588,when she admitted giving emetics and medicines to in excess of a hundred people and agreed to cease practice. However it seems she did not. For many, lacking the essential funds for a male doctor, such women with their knowledge of herbal treatments represented the only attention they could access; the numbers of Thomasina’s patients testify to her good reputation. Some time before 1595, she was in trouble again and imprisoned, for in February that year, she obtained a letter from “various people of rank” requesting her release. It was denied. Only a week later, still in prison, she confessed to having administered an ointment and purge to a Mr Neeme, despite being illiterate and having no knowledge of the theory of medicine. When pressed, she “utterly refused” to refrain from practice. She was imprisoned again and fined in 1598, 1603, 1610 and 1611. After this, she disappears from the records. More successful was an Alice Leevers, described in April 1586 as an “unskilled and demented old woman who had long practised medicine,” who had the backing of Lord Hunsdon despite having made “errors, harms and offences” in the past. At her appearance before the court, she made the unusual step of asking to admitted as a member of the College of Physicians. In deference to her aristocratic patron, despite the court’s guilty verdict, Alice was permitted to administer external medicine and perform non-dangerous surgery.

The great period of witchcraft accusations and trials was the seventeenth century. Yet, this was always a critical part of the misogynistic dialogue that underpinned gender relations in the past. Such accusations were difficult to substantiate and prove; even if a claim was thrown out of court, the associated mud could stick. Royal women and commoners could suffer alike from this. In 1481, soon after the accusations made against Joan of Navarre, Eleanor Duchess of Gloucester, Jacquetta of Luxembourg and Elizabeth Wydeville, a London woman was brought to the bar under similar charges. Named as a sorceress or sortilege, she had reputedly used magic to win lovers for herself, two of whom had nearly killed each other. Her husband lived in terror of her and she had tried to resort to poison when her spells had failed. Her fate is not recorded.

I could go on. As I research, the names of hundreds of women appear on the pages of court records, letters, accounts and manuals. Their complete lives are beyond my grasp but in these small anecdotes, they can be briefly glimpsed in their moments of conflict, which were just one part of their continuing struggle for survival. These are the “others,” all the women of the past we’ve never heard of. And of course, there are all the rest, of whom we will never hear: our great, great, great, great etc grandmothers.

 

 

 

 

Richard III: "Might I very politely request a fresh horse?"

Shakespeare’s dramatic version of Richard III's story was not the only one produced at the end of the Sixteenth Century. Nor was it the first. However, it is the one that has lasted, while the existence of others has been forgotten. Why?

 

                         Richard losing his crown at Bosworth Field, from Southwark Cathedral.

 

Richard III’s reputation and appearance have dominated the press since the discovery of his remains was confirmed by Leicester University on 4 February this year.  The world had been eagerly anticipating the DNA results, which would prove his identity, but the skeleton yielded some further unexpected and dramatic evidence. It seems that Richard may not have been too far removed from the “hunchback” that centuries of his supporters had been trying to deny. His spine displayed clear signs of idiopathic adolescent-onset scoliosis, which would have reduced his height and possibly given him protruding ribs on one side, while the comparison drawn between each end of his clavicle indicated that the right was more worn than the left. It is probable that one of his shoulders was, in fact, higher, although this would not necessarily have been visible under clothing. This is precisely the sort of detail that loyal subjects would have ignored during life and enemies exaggerated after his death. With sixteenth century accounts using the politically incorrect terms “hunch-back” “cripple” and “deformed” interchangeably, before the recognition of scoliosis as a condition, the age-old literary stereotype of Richard’s appearance was confirmed by the discovery of his bones.

                              Steve Weingarter as Richard III in 2009 at A Noise Within

Shakespeare’s vision of Richard was drawn from a number of sources. The earliest and most extreme descriptions are to be found in the second Rous Roll, (1491) by the Neville family chronicler, John Rous. These included the legend of the King's supposed two year gestation, a physical impossibility, and his arrival with a full set of teeth. However, Rous’s first version of the history, presented to Richard’s wife, Queen Anne, in 1484, contained nothing but fulsome praise. Later, he was unable to access it after the advent of the Tudors, so produced a second, condemnatory work in the possible belief that Richard had poisoned his wife, Rous' patroness, Anne Neville. Thomas More further exaggerated the legends of deformity, when writing between 1512 and 1519, adding in details of Richard's “breech-birth” and “hard-faced” appearance. More may have been a mere child when Richard was King, being born in 1478, but he did spend the years 1490 to 1492 as a page in the household of John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury, who had known Richard throughout his life and was a supporter of Margaret of Anjou. More’s version of events formed the basis of later histories by Vergil, Hall and Holinshed, which Shakespeare used as his sources. The majority of seventeenth century depictions of Richard conform to this presentation of the King as a villain whose moral turpitude was correlative with his misshapen body. It was not until the eighteenth century, when writers and historians began their reassessment of Richard’s reputation and appearance, with Prime Minister, Horace Walpole, Jane Austen and poet laureate Colley Cibber presenting him in a more favourable light.

                                            David Garrick as Richard III, 1745, by Hogarth

However, the existence of two pre-Shakespearean plays depicting Richard’s story have hitherto been overlooked outside academic circles. The nineteenth century editors of the anonymous “The True Tragedie of Richard III” suggested that Shakespeare must have seen this earlier version and possibly also, the Latin “Richardus Tertius” by Thomas Legge (1535-1607). Legge’s play was composed while he was master of Caius College, Cambridge, and performed at St John’s in 1579 and 1583. It is quite possible that the young Christopher Marlowe, who was awarded his BA degree in 1584, also saw these productions or subsequent ones, along with fellow dramatist Thomas Nashe, who is thought to have been in the audience. It is unclear though, whether this play was enacted outside university circles and was actually seen by Shakespeare, or if their overlap is explained by their mutual sources. “Richardus Tertius” was written over a decade before Shakespeare’s play and prepared for publication in 1582/3 but never printed.  It portrays Richard as a complex man, although he is still “evil” but interestingly, features no physical deformities. The account is very close to More and Hall’s versions of events with little new material; there are rumours of his wife Anne’s death before her demise and like Shakespeare, the playwright intimates that she was poisoned. Richard goes on to woo his niece Elizabeth of York but she refuses him.

  St John's College, Cambridge, where Legge's Richardus Tertius was performed in 1579 and 1583

The other play, “The True Tragedie of Richard III” was performed “often” even though its later editors considered it to be a “humble work” which uses some “corrupt Latin” and a “bad,” ie. poorly crafted, play. It does seem from several references, particularly the scene prior to the deaths of the two Princes in 1483, that the unknown author had read More’s history and perhaps others. The King in this early play calls for “a horse, a fresh horse,” in comparison with the more famous “a horse, a horse, my Kingdom for a horse!” The surviving manuscript of “The True Tragedie of Richard III” dates from 1594 but the play was written and produced several years before. It reputes the deaths of Henry VI and George, Duke of Clarence to Richard, who is depicted according to More’s tradition, as ill-shaped, crook backed and lame-armed. Interestingly, this play makes frequent use of the voices of witnesses and citizens, giving a sense of public feeling. One citizen speaks up for Richard, saying that before he was King, there were “no men, no laws, no Princes, no orders” and recalling “what fraies had we in the streets” before Richard’s peace with England and Scotland. A key narrative role is taken by the King’s page, who tells Richard that there is “murmur” in the streets among the people of the “baser” sort, one of whom, an innkeeper calls the King “the worst guest” who ever came to his house. A serving man, Morton, informs us that Richard has named John, Earl of Lincoln, his nephew, his heir and relates that Richard and Buckingham have fallen out. Much of the story is put into the mouths of witnesses, which perhaps reflects the author’s awareness of the nature of oral history and his own use of common beliefs and myths.  However, this lessens the dramatic impact, as important action takes place off stage. Richard’s wife Anne is not mentioned, nor is his son; we only see Richard pressing his suit to Elizabeth of York, in a similar way to a 1614 poem "The Ghost of Richard III". At the end, after Henry Tudor has been victorious on Bosworth Field, Richard’s body is drawn stark naked through the streets of Leicester on a collier’s horse, reminiscent of the findings of Leicester University regarding the opportunistic, humiliation wounds inflicted on his body after death.

                      William Shakespeare, who wrote his version of Richard's story in 1591/2

 When Shakespeare came to write his version of Richard’s story, he had a variety of sources to draw on. Apart from the expected More, Hall and Holinshed though, his play was written within what appears to have been a surge of interest in the King’s reign in the late 1580s and early 90s. This period also saw the composition of other plays dealing with the usurpation of power, like Marlowe’s Edward II, the anonymous Edmund Ironside and Peele’s Edward I. The publication of Holinshed’s 1587 chronicle provided them with a wealth of historical narratives to choose from. Shakespeare may have seen, or even acted in, one of the extant versions of Richard’s tragedy and decided that he could improve on the story. Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II was believed to have been influenced by it and must have been a fairly immediate response, as Marlowe died in 1593. However, the timing would not necessarily be so tight if Marlowe had witnessed the performance of Legge’s play at Cambridge in 1579 or 1583. The diary of Philip Henslowe for December 1593 and January 1594 records the performance of a popular play called “Buckingham” which may have been an early version of Shakespeare’s "Richard III". The depictions of Richard in popular culture, a century after his death, did continue the negative portrayal of the King that had begun soon after Bosworth. What does seem surprising though, is the sheer amount of interest, even then, given the existence of these additional plays. Shakespeare was not being original when he wrote his version of the story. Yet, originality was not his intention, entertainment was. He saw a good story, which he could make his own, and improved on the attempts of existing dramatists, less skilled than himself. It is because of his superior abilities as a dramatist, rather than any historical insight, that his version has shaped modern popular concepts of the King, while others have been forgotten.

Elizabeth of York, the Forthcoming Biography: Interview with Amy Licence

To coincide with the publication of “Elizabeth of York; The Forgotten Tudor Queen,” later this month, I invited questions about my biography, my views and anything else relating to my work. Thank you for all the replies on the blog and facebook page; the responses show just how much interest and knowledge there already is out there about this fascinating lady. I think if I were to try and answer all of them in as much detail as they deserve, I would end up rewriting my book here on the blog. So, I’m not giving everything away but here is a taster of what to expect in the biography- I hope it whets your appetite. If you don’t see your question exactly as you wrote it, it’s because I’ve combined questions whenever I’ve had several that are similar.

                                       Elizabeth, by Victorian Artist Edward Corbould 

Why Elizabeth of York?

I’ve always been interested in Elizabeth; I think it stemmed from my initial fascination with her children. If you’ve read about the lives of Henry, Margaret and Mary Tudor, it seems logical to want to explore their childhoods and the relationships they had with their parents. The children, particularly Henry, were so colourful and charismatic; they had such a vitality and majesty in everything they did, yet tradition had often presented their parents as quieter, cautious and understated figures. I thought this was, in part, due to their overshadowing by the next generation in modern popular works and perhaps due to the infancy of their dynasty. Both were survivors and throughout Henry VII’s reign, there was no guarantee that the turbulent decades of their own youth were over. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Often, I see authors drawing an imaginary line in the sand in 1485 (or 1487) and almost breathing a sigh of relief but this was by no means a given at the time and I wonder how much their descendants’ inimitable style and self-fashioning was borne out of this early insecurity. Also, when I read the primary sources about Elizabeth’s life and death, I was struck by just how popular she was and by the hints of scandal associated with her name, so I wanted to find out more. I was keen to move slightly away from the traditional biography style; on one level, this is a narrative of the events of her life, but I’ve also taken a thematic approach. I wanted to use Elizabeth to explore fifteenth century ideals of queenship and judge what model she chose.

Why does the book’s subtitle refer to her as a “forgotten” Queen?

Elizabeth is one of the least well known Tudor Queens. Henry VIII’s wives and daughters have received a lot of attention, of the popular and academic kind and, in comparison, Elizabeth is less well known. Even in studies that explore the establishment of the Tudor dynasty, she is something of a two-dimensional figure, a foot note or appendage in the story of Henry VII. I have read a lot of books that simply repeat the same old “facts” about her lineage and marriage but I still struggled to form a rounded picture of her in my mind. Elizabeth’s problem is that she is such a convenient foil for other people; she’s always presented as someone else’s daughter, wife or mother, rarely just herself. Her image also obscures her; the long-standing mask of her demure beauty and goodness has reduced her to something of a stereotype and it is only recently that writers have started to challenge this. After all, this was a real woman, with real emotions, who lived a passionate and turbulent life. I wanted to try and dig her out of history’s margins and put her back in the centre of the stage.

                          Margaret Beaufort, Elizabeth's devout and formidable mother-in-law 

 What was her relationship with her mother-in-law Margaret Beaufort like? Were they generally close? Did Margaret Beaufort resent her for having so much royal blood or being from the House of York?

 This is a tricky one, because I think that today, we might judge relationships to be successful according to different criteria than the Tudors. I do feel that Margaret’s character has been massaged over the centuries into something of a harridan. A few assumptions made by distant observers, like foreign ambassadors, have been taken as gospel, like that Elizabeth was overshadowed by Margaret, but these are only assumptions. Likewise, records of Margaret walking just a pace behind the Queen and supposedly jostling with her for precedence only reinforce what would have been the correct courtly protocol. Margaret’s claim to the throne was as good as Elizabeth’s and they did often appear in tandem to reflect this. Only one person knew how Elizabeth really felt about Margaret and she did not commit it to paper. If we look at what we can deduce about the King’s mother, she was clearly a dynamic, formidable, determined and energetic lady; just the sort of woman you would want to have on your side. If Elizabeth did find her at all “overbearing”- and this is a modern reaction- she may well have accepted that, as it was balanced by the assistance Margaret was able to offer. Having an experienced older woman at her side, particularly when she pregnant or in Henry’s absence, may well have been reassuring. As for being “close,” again, this is subjective and perhaps, a bit of a misnomer; in terms of the late medieval impulse for survival and the need to forge alliances, Elizabeth and Margaret found a sort of equilibrium that allowed them to be allies. I think their mutual interest bound them together. Elizabeth was married to Margaret’s son. She would have been pragmatic and wise enough to overcome any “dislike” she felt for her daughter-in-law’s Yorkist roots. After all, Margaret’s marital history had necessitated a good deal of diplomacy and “getting into bed with” the enemy. It does seem that particularly for the women of the era, personal alliances could overcome family loyalty, such as with Elizabeth Wydeville, who married a Lancastrian, then a Yorkist King.

 What was the relationship between her Elizabeth and her mother? How did she cope with being separated from her?

From what I can deduce, Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydeville appear to have been loving parents and their children were close, having been raised together at Greenwich. They eldest three girls shared their mother’s sanctuary in 1470, when she gave birth in conditions of comparative deprivation and fear, which may have united them through shared sufferings. Later, in 1483, their flight again brought them together through a difficult time and I suspect, Elizabeth as the eldest had been her mother’s support at this time. The Princesses leaving their mother behind in sanctuary in March 1484 certainly constituted a significant separation but it was politically and personally expedient to all concerned. They coped with this because they had to, there wasn’t a lot of choice so I can only guess that they just tried to put it out of their minds and carry on.

                        A copy of the 1538 Whitehall Mural, commissioned by Henry VIII,
                                          featuring himself, Jane Seymour and his parents

Was there any kind of rift between mother and daughter when Elizabeth was married to Henry Tudor and crowned Queen? From what I've read, Elizabeth kept in close contact with the rest of her family, but not a lot of contact with her mother is recorded. Do you think Elizabeth Woodville was involved in any of the Yorkists plots after Bosworth and as a result her daughter stayed away from her?

 From looking at the evidence I don’t think there was a rift. Also, the processes by which such material is recorded and its survival over 500 years means that absence of evidence can’t be taken as evidence itself. Elizabeth Wydeville had worked for the match with Henry; she had no reason to fall out with her daughter about it. Even if she believed one of her sons had survived, I’m not sure she would have taken the risk to plot against the new regime. Henry VII may have privately distrusted her but he referred to her as his “beloved” mother-in-law and wanted her and Elizabeth with him before the Battle of Stoke. I remain to be convinced that Elizabeth would have schemed against her daughter and grandchildren. The York-Tudor marriage was the best possible outcome for her and to jeopardise this would have been foolish. Her stay in Bermondsey Abbey, between 1487-1492, and the reduction of her income, has been interpreted as a form of imprisonment but what if it was done voluntarily, even willingly? At fifty, Elizabeth Wydeville had lived a turbulent life; been widowed twice, outlived many of her children, feared for her life, fled into sanctuary and seen the wheel of fortune turn through many cycles. She had been a devout Catholic all her life and may have been ill in her final years. Perhaps she chose to retire and spend her years in contemplation, as many widows of the era did, recognising that she had achieved all she could and happy that her daughter was now on the throne. Not a lot of contact with her daughter is recorded, yet Bermondsey Abbey stood just over the Thames from the Tower, hardly any great distance away. I’ve not yet seen any evidence to support an estrangement but I am always open to new material. I have a lot more to say in the book about Elizabeth Wydeville’s reputation and the judgements made by historians about her character.

                                      The earliest surviving portrait of Richard III c1520,
                                                         a copy of a lost original

What do you think about the supposed relationship between Elizabeth of York and Richard III?

Without giving too much away here, I will just say that there are two sources that I think need to be re-evaluated. Quite a lot of theories have been built on very slender evidence, which is fine for historical fiction and helps bring the characters and the times to life. And, after all, when evidence is lacking, imagination and empathy have to fill the gap. When aiming at strict factual accuracy, though, I think the historian can only look at what is known rather than trying to interpret sources according to how these individuals “may have felt.”  Equally, this can’t be ruled out automatically just because it is offensive or incomprehensible to the “modern mind”, if such a universal concept exists! It does appear that some of Richard and Elizabeth’s contemporaries believed in his intention to marry his niece and weren’t happy about it: twelve doctors of divinity were summoned by Parliament in order to put forward their objections and Richard later issued a complete public denial that this had ever been his intention. However, as with all these figures, the gulf between the public persona and the private sentiment can only be guessed at.

                                       Henry Tudor, whom Elizabeth married in January 1486

 

Was she ever really in love with Richard III or Henry Tudor?

I don’t know if Elizabeth’s position allowed her the luxury of love. While there are many notable exceptions, particularly her own parents and son, the companionate marriage was a later phenomenon and duty often had to override personal inclination. I’m not denying Elizabeth’s humanity or capacity for love but maybe she approached these men in a different way. What constitutes love? It may be as different for individuals then as it is today. Perhaps part of these men’s attraction lay in the role and status they could offer: they had the whole package, including the crown. This doesn’t mean Elizabeth was mercenary but that she made shrewd alliances which were appropriate to her own status. From what I’ve read, I believe her marriage with Henry was a successful one, with them working in a partnership and being united at time of danger and grief. Her pulse may not have raced when he came into the room but their mutual goals kept them close; what was good for one was good for the other. Henry’s reaction to Elizabeth’s death also suggests genuine grief.

Do you think Elizabeth was forbidden from seeing Perkin Warbeck, as is often claimed, or whether she chose not to see him?

I have often pictured Elizabeth taking a sneaky peek out of a window at Sheen Palace in 1497 to get a glimpse of Perkin! I think the answer to this depends upon what she knew about the fates of her brothers. If she had incontrovertible evidence of their deaths, she may have chosen not to see him. If there was any doubt in her mind about their survival, I think she would have tried to have a look at this young man who claimed to be her close relation. His activities may have stirred up past grief but with so many deaths and losses in her life, I don’t think it would have necearily destabilized her to see him. The notion of Henry forbidding Elizabeth to see Perkin doesn’t sit comfortably with the impression I have formed of their marriage. Do we know for certain that she never saw him, at any time? He seems to have been quite publicly paraded about.

                                                        Bust of Henry VIII as a child

I've watched the BBC miniseries, "The Shadows of the Tower" which covers the reign of Henry VII. In the episode when Elizabeth gives birth to Prince Arthur, Margaret Tudor and Henry repeatedly fret about Elizabeth being "delicate". Alternatively, I've heard about her becoming increasingly sick after increasingly difficult pregnancies. Is there any truth to this? I consider this quite interesting in light of the fact that Henry VIII supposedly inherited his height and athleticism from her side of the family.

 Elizabeth bore seven (possibly eight) children over a period of eighteen years and died as a result of her last live birth. There does not seem to be much evidence to suggest she was “delicate” before her marriage and her first pregnancy and delivery in 1486 appear to have been straightforward. However, she did suffer from an “ague” or fever, afterwards, which delayed her churching. She did not conceive again, so far as we know, for two and a half years. Perhaps this was the couple being cautious regarding her health or complications that arose as a result.
Concern emerged again in 1500, when she was pregnant with Edmund, although the nature of this is unknown and may have related to her advancing age. The more children a woman bore, the greater the risk of experiencing some sort of complication and the more severe the toll on her body, which was not getting any younger. At least two of her babies were born close together, with Elizabeth conceived only 3 months after she had borne Henry in 1491, so her body can hardly have had much chance to recover before the process began all over again. While the demands of childbirth clearly left their mark, with one foreign ambassador remarking that by 1501 she had become a little stout, I would be inclined to place her experiences within the “normal” bracket for women of the time. It would be more unusual if she had seen through seven confirmed pregnancies through to term and not had some sort of difficulties.
 Something clearly went wrong with her last birth, though. Her death in 1503, over a week after bearing Katherine, suggests a postpartum infection, but her labour started early, catching her by surprise while she was at the Tower, where she had not intended to deliver. When something went badly wrong, as it clearly did in 1503, the midwives did not have the skill or knowledge to save her.

Yes, Henry VIII was reputed to look like Edward IV but of course these things can skip a generation and the transference of genes is notoriously complex. We do know that, later in life, Henry referred to his mother’s death as a tragedy and her influence was undoubtedly missed.

 

  
                               The tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth, in Westminster by Torrigiano

 

Do you think Elizabeth was forced or chose to be "apolitical" Queen Consort?

Elizabeth would have been aware of three models of queenship before her own succession. Margaret of Anjou was generally distrusted as being “warlike” and aggressive, Elizabeth Wydeville for haughtiness and nepotism, while Anne Neville’s lack of fecundity could have led to problems. (These are summaries of “common fame” rather than my view of them.) Henry was very keen to stress that his claim to the throne was independent of his marriage and did not require Elizabeth’s validation, so I don’t think he would have welcomed her taking a public role in politics. I think Elizabeth very wisely followed the model of Queenship put forward in some fifteenth century texts that we know she had access to, like Christine de Pisan and Caxton’s A Game of Chess. These advocated an ideal queen whose sphere of influence was more domestic or behind the scenes. Elizabeth’s influence over Henry was of a personal nature, as a helpmeet and confidant, and through the charitable and religious offices of her household. She was a softer, more accessible side of queenship, a maternal figure who was sympathetic to supplicants and balanced the “war-like” masculine component of government. I think this was a very sensible decision that suited them both.

                                Elizabeth's wooden funeral effigy which topped her coffin in 1503

 

How do you cope with motherhood and writing, do you have a routine?

It's a wonderful achievement to have three books published within one year! How many months/years have you worked on each and how many hours a week?

Thank you. I can’t say it has been easy! When I wrote In Bed with the Tudors, I was pregnant, had a toddler running round me and hadn’t had an unbroken night’s sleep in almost three years! Then, I gave birth in the middle of writing Elizabeth of York, the Forgotten Tudor Queen. The funny thing is though, this actually helped focus me. Before I had my children, when I had more time to write and research, I was less disciplined about it. Now that I had my sons’ needs to see to and impending deadlines, I had to extract every minute I could and make the most of it. I often stay up to write after they are in bed and my husband is very supportive, looking after our eldest son, so it is easier for me to get some work done. It’s hard sometimes to balance it all but we do make sure we got quality family time together whenever we can. I don’t follow a pattern or set hours of work, I just do whatever I can whenever I can. I do believe in the notion that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” and have treated each day as a single step, completing one paragraph here and another there, whenever and wherever! I have produced three books in a relatively short space of time but they are the culmination of years of reading and research. I did my MA in 1995-6 and have carried on reading and studying independently since then. I consider myself to be a continuing student of history and try to approach the past with an open mind and no particular agenda beyond my own interest. I am always open to persuasion and new sources or interpretations.

I have also received a number of questions relating to Anne Neville, but as this has turned into a bit of an epic post, I will hold on to them and do a separate question and answer session prior to the release of my biography on her, this April.

Thank you to Susan Abernethy, Susan Higginbotham, Suzanne Israel Tufts, Geoff Licence, Sylwia S Zupanec, Debra Al-Bayani and Anonymous for your interesting and well informed questions.