Elizabeth

by Arlene Okerlund

  Among Eleanor’s convicted accomplices, Thomas Southwell, a canon of St Stephen’s Chapel at Westminster, had the good fortune to die in the Tower. Roger Bolingbroke, an Oxford priest, was hanged, beheaded, disembowelled and quartered. His head was spiked above London Bridge, and the four quarters of his body disbursed to Hereford, to Oxenford, to York and to Cambridge, to warn their citizens against sorcery. Margery Jordemaine, the ‘Witch of Eye’, was burned at Smithfield.

  Twenty-eight years later, the Duchess of Bedford faced the same charges. But Jacquetta had both personal and political allies. Recalling her visit to Queen Margaret after the second battle of St Albans – the meeting that saved London from Lancastrian pillaging – the Duchess asked the Mayor and aldermen of the city to intervene. The investigation proceeded, but even though her accuser Thomas Wake could not persuade John Daunger to corroborate his testimony, Jacquetta’s fate remained unresolved. The entire experience must have terrified Queen Elizabeth. She was alone in London with three daughters, aged three years, two years, and five months. Her husband imprisoned, her father and brother murdered, and her powerful, elegant mother charged with sorcery, the Queen could not have been more vulnerable.

  Warwick’s initial success faded after Parliament refused to support his coup. The London merchants and citizens, afraid that commerce with Burgundy would suffer, began to riot, and the Duke of Burgundy prepared to defend his wife’s brother. As Edward IV gathered supporters at Pontefract and began to reassert his authority, Warwick freed him from imprisonment on 10 September 1469. By the end of the year, Edward IV returned to London where he once more ruled as King.

  Edward commanded that the charges against Jacquetta be examined by the Bishop of Carlisle, the Earl of Northumberland, Lord Hastings, Lord Mountjoy and Master Roger Radcliff. At the hearing, Thomas Wake testified that he had received the lead image from John Daunger, who admitted sending it to Wake at his request but insisted that ‘he heard no witchcraft of the Lady of Bedford’. The two men fell to accusing each other, and the investigating council cleared the Duchess of Bedford of ‘the said slander’ on 19 January 1470. The King’s Great Council endorsed that action in the Parliament chamber on 10 February.13 The six months between accusation and exoneration, however, must have been harrowing for both Jacquetta and Elizabeth.

  Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, then threw her considerable influence into reconciling the brothers and cousins. Edward IV, for reasons hard to discern, issued a general pardon that brought Clarence back into the family fold and aligned Warwick once more with Edward IV’s court. Edward naively tried to appease his older cousin by betrothing the threeyear-old Lady Princess Elizabeth to Warwick’s nephew. The liaison did not come close to satisfying Warwick’s overweening ambition, and even while pretending loyalty, he began plotting his next coup.

  Rebellion broke out almost immediately in Lincolnshire. When both Warwick and Clarence were implicated, Warwick fled to Calais in April 1470. As he passed through Wiltshire, his men captured Anthony Wydeville and John, Lord Audley, sending them to the Castle of Warder to await execution. But a Dorset man named John Thornhill learned of their capture and during the night ‘with a good company of hardy fellows… found the means to deliver these two Lords from captivity’.14

  Edward IV, finally suspicious, ordered that Warwick not be admitted to the port of Calais. The defenders of the city followed their King’s order, stunning Warwick, who had dominated the region for so many years. While his ship lay off the coast deciding where to go, a storm arose that brought tragedy to his family. Among the passengers was his daughter Isabel, who gave birth in the midst of the storm to a stillborn child fathered by Clarence.

  Ultimately Warwick’s ship landed in Honfleur, where the Earl sought out the French King, Louis XI. Having burned his English bridges, Warwick now committed the unthinkable. On Louis XI’s urging, Warwick and Clarence aligned themselves with Margaret of Anjou. The Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence, cousin and brother of the first Yorkist King, plotted to restore the Lancastrian Henry VI to the throne of England. The way these Yorkist warriors turned their coats to Lancastrian colours defies ordinary comprehension.

  Queen Margaret was rightly suspicious of the Yorkist traitors and resisted their initial proffers of assistance:

  Up to the present the queen [Margaret] has shown herself very hard and difficult, and although his Majesty [Louis XI] offers her many assurances, it seems that on no account whatever will she agree to send her son [Prince Edward of Lancaster] with Warwick, as she mistrusts him. Nevertheless it is thought that in the end she will let herself be persuaded to do what his Majesty wishes. 15

  To allay Margaret’s suspicions and provide a guarantee of loyalty, Warwick’s youngest daughter, Anne, was proposed as a wife for Prince Edward of Lancaster, an alliance that, not incidentally, moved Warwick close to the Lancastrian throne. Warwick had apparently forgotten the rumours of Edward’s bastardy that circulated at his birth in 1453. Margaret’s chancellor, Sir John Fortescue, writes in his notes presented to Louis XI:

  The marriage will take place between the Prince of Wales and the daughter of the Earl of Warwick. By means of which marriage the said Earl of Warwick and his friends will live in security and the said earl will have the principal role in government of the kingdom; and by favour of him and the friends and loyal subjects of King Henry, the queen and the prince will be able to enter more easily into the kingdom.16

  As Clarence discovered to his dismay, the agreement between Margaret and Warwick moved him further away from any crown. As brother to King Edward IV, he had a much better chance of obtaining the throne than as brother-in-law to the Lancastrian heir, Prince Edward, now married to Warwick’s daughter Anne. Ever the slow learner, however, Clarence transferred his support to the House of Lancaster and plotted to invade England to regain the crown for Henry VI.

  In the midst of such turmoil, it is amazing to learn that some business as usual was transpiring in England. Whether Queen Elizabeth or the ever-vigilant President Andrew Doket brought the needs of Queens’ College to Edward’s attention, the King issued a pardon to the college on 1 September 1470. The pardon covered

  …all offences committed before 25 December 1469, with the proviso that it should not extend to his enemy Henry VI, late de facto, but not de jure king of England, nor to Margaret his wife, nor to Edward son of the said Margaret, nor to any persons who were with Margaret and Edward out of England, or who adhered to them.17

  The pardon implies that the College had supported Warwick, or at least had accommodated itself to the rule of the rebels while Edward was imprisoned in the north. Clearly, someone was watching over the interests of Queens’ College and interceded to secure its pardon at a time when the King was focused on restoring his power and authority. The logical intercessor would be his Queen, responding to the request of President Doket. The respite would be short-lived, however.

  Late in July, Edward accompanied his troops north to Yorkshire to quell a rebellion led by Warwick’s brother-in-law, Henry, Lord Fitzhugh. For safety, he moved Elizabeth and their daughters to the Tower. While Edward was still in the north, Warwick and Clarence landed their Lancastrian troops at Dartmouth and Plymouth in mid-September 1470. Warwick announced his support for Henry VI, gathered around him Lancastrian supporters in Devon and Cornwall, marched to London, and freed the hapless Henry VI from his long sequestration in the Tower.

  Edward IV, outmanoeuvred and outmanned, received word that his own capture by Warwick’s supporters was imminent. Leaving Doncaster with a small band of followers, the King almost drowned while crossing the Wash. Arriving at King’s Lynn, they secured ships through the influence of Anthony Wydeville, who had property in the area, and set sail for Holland on 2 October 1469. The King was accompanied in exile by his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester; his best friend and chamberlain, William, Lord Hastings; and the Queen’s brother, Anthony Wydeville, who now carried his dead father’s title, Earl Rivers.

  W
ord of Edward’s plight reached Elizabeth in the Tower. Eight months pregnant with their fourth child, the Queen recognised her extreme vulnerability. The day before Edward sailed off to exile, Elizabeth gathered her family and fled into sanctuary in Westminster Abbey.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Elizabeth in Sanctuary

  Survival of her family depended on Elizabeth. Her husband and her brother Anthony (now head of the Wydeville family) were in exile, her father and brother John murdered. Warwick’s intentions were luminously clear. In the dark of night on 1 October 1470, the Queen left the Tower with her children and boarded a barge that rowed the small group up river to sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.1 The Duchess of Bedford joined her there, while the Bishop of Ely and others entered sanctuary at St Martin’s.2

  Sanctuary was a right guaranteed by the medieval church to anyone who needed protection from secular powers. Criminals athwart of the law could enter a church, register in the sanctuary book, and escape further pursuit. Murderers, common thieves and debtors commonly used sanctuary to escape punishment for their misdeeds, causing distress among their victims who could not pursue justice as long as the criminal stayed within the church’s boundaries. London merchants particularly disliked sanctuary, since it protected felons and debtors, but the privilege usually prevailed, with canon law asserting its power over secular authority. The kings of England, as anointed representatives of God, traditionally supported sanctuary, and Richard II had affirmed the rights in 1388. Only the crimes of sacrilege and treason were not protected by sanctuary.

  Queens seldom sought sanctuary not only because they could retreat to fortified palaces such as the Tower, but because chivalric tradition generally preserved royal women from execution. The decision of Queen Elizabeth to join the motley crew in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey indicated not only the extraordinary mayhem in the nation, but her profound distrust of Warwick. Fortunately, the compassionate and courageous Abbot Thomas Millyng became her protector.

  The exact quarters where the Queen lived during her first sequestration in Westminster Abbey are unknown, but if she resided in one of the fifty or sixty tenements within the sanctuary grounds, her home was dark, cramped and surrounded by a hubbub of cacophonous sounds and noxious smells that would intimidate any modern visitor. The area known as sanctuary lay just north and slightly to the west of the main door to the abbey’s nave, bounded by a path aptly named ‘Thieving Lane’, since thieves were led that way to the gatehouse.3 The Great West Gate leading outside to Tothill Street was nearby, next to the Almonry and its public latrine, whose stench was so overwhelming that it made renting the adjacent shops difficult.4 The marshy land surrounding the abbey created drainage problems, although it provided running water for the washerwomen who plied their trade in Long Ditch, which forked off Thieving Lane.

  Within the sanctuary area, residents lived side-by-side with shops set up to serve the extensive enterprise that constituted the medieval abbey, with its fifty or so monks, 100 servants, and countless visitors. The 400 residents at nearby Westminster Palace kept business especially brisk, a commercial advantage that the printer Caxton exploited in 1488–9 when he moved to a new stall between the abbey and the palace.

  On Fridays and religious feast days, fishmongers set up shop within the North Gate to sell oysters, mussels and fresh fish delivered from London or brought by local fishermen from the nearby Thames. Indeed, the shopkeepers – butchers, brewers, bakers, tailors, barbers/bloodletters, carpenters, smiths, tavern keepers – may have been preferable neighbours to the horse thieves, counterfeiters, heretics, beggars, bankrupts and debtors who sought refuge in sanctuary.

  The monks had realised the commercial potential of their valuable property early on and by 1400 rented houses in Westminster Sanctuary for ‘upwards of £80 a year’, an amount that had decreased by mid-century because of a national recession caused by the plague and by decreased immigration.5 The monks had recently begun leasing their land to developers, who built and maintained the tenements rented for profit. In 1475, Robert Powle, a chandler, leased ‘a row of eight old tenements in the sanctuary’, with the promise that he would build seven new ones within four years. Entrepreneur Powle actually added ten new tenements on the site, which measured only 112 foot by 28 foot 7 inches. Each residence, built on a footprint of 10 by 20 feet, included a cellar, a ground floor (frequently used as a shop), and a kitchen above.6 If the Queen lived elsewhere than these typical sanctuary quarters, the tenements were just around the corner and the Almonry, with its latrine, was next door.

  From sanctuary, the Queen attempted to defend her husband’s rights while tending to the needs of her three tiny children and awaiting the birth of her fourth. Elizabeth sent Abbot Millyng to the Mayor and aldermen of London, asking them to take command of the Tower in the name of the King. The City Council’s minutes reveal that Elizabeth feared that Warwick’s men would invade Westminster sanctuary and ‘despoil and kill her’. The citizens of London were no match, however, for the rebels invading from Kent, and they soon surrendered the Tower. They managed only to secure an agreement allowing residents to seek sanctuary before the rebels took it over.7

  Immediately after Warwick’s men seized the Tower, they released Henry VI from his quarters there, an imprisonment that had lasted five years. John Warkworth describes the King as ‘not worshipfully arrayed as a prince and not so cleanly kept as should seem such a prince’. The rebels ‘new arrayed’ Henry VI and took him to Westminster Palace where, on 15 October, he was restored to his crown. The King was totally dependent on Warwick and little more than a puppet. In one of the minor ironies of these wars between cousins, Henry VI returned to the Tower and moved into the quarters that had been prepared for Queen Elizabeth to give birth to her fourth child.

  Though no longer Queen, Elizabeth and her daughters did not want for basic necessities. A London butcher provided half a beef and two muttons a week to sustain her household. Neither was she without attendants. Henry VI’s council appointed Elizabeth, Lady Scrope, to wait on Elizabeth and paid her a salary of £10. On 2 November 1470, with her husband in exile, Elizabeth gave birth to a son, a birth assisted by midwife Marjory Cobbe and physician Dominic de Serigo. Perhaps Elizabeth had brought these trusted attendants with her into sanctuary. Margaret Cobbe, wife of John Cobbe, had received a grant of ‘£10 yearly for life’ on 15 April 1469, following the birth of Cecily, and would receive another lifetime grant for £10 on 8 November 1475, indicating long-term and dedicated service to the Queen.8 Dominic de Serigo had been present at the birth of her first daughter. Characteristically, Elizabeth would have planned ahead when facing the harrowing and dangerous ordeal of giving birth in such unknown quarters and uncertain circumstances.

  The newborn baby was christened Edward after his father in a ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Abbot Millyng and the Abbey Prior stood as godfathers, with Lady Scrope as the prince’s godmother. No one could know that the inauspicious beginnings of this newborn baby would also foretell his end. At this bleak moment in Elizabeth’s life, the child’s very arrival on earth must have provided his mother with her one glimmer of hope. She had produced a male heir for the Yorkist throne.

  The next six months were spent in Westminster Close, where mother, newborn son, and three daughters under the age of four were largely confined within their rooms. Communications between Holland and England were uncertain, and from her sequestration inside the Abbey Close, Elizabeth must have wondered about the future for her husband, herself and the four children under her care. She drew comfort from her knowledge that Edward IV was in Burgundy where his sister Margaret of York was the Duchess.

  Margaret’s husband, Charles the Bold, was not pleased, however, with hosting a penniless, deposed King whose presence complicated his own uneasy relations with France, where Margaret of Anjou and Edward, Prince of Wales, were living in exile. Edward IV and his few followers were housed at the Hague under the care of Louis, Lord of Gruuthuyse. Their poverty was so great that Ri
chard of Gloucester had to borrow money to pay for his personal expenses, and Gruuthuyse had to send men into the countryside to catch rabbits for their food.

  Fearing outright war with France, Charles the Bold and Margaret kept their distance from the English exiles, although Charles sent money to cover their expenses and Margaret sent secret letters via messengers. Louis XI, exultant in his renewed alliance with Lancastrian England, declared open war with Burgundy on 3 December 1470. At that point, Charles was forced to support Edward IV, who was finally invited to join the Burgundian court at Hesdin. Charles and Edward IV met on 2 January to plan an invasion of England, funded by a £20,000 grant from Burgundy. Three days later, Duchess Margaret met her two brothers, Edward IV and Richard, and began to take an active role in gathering support for them. At her request, merchants and bankers in Flanders, Holland and Zeeland lent money and ships to the expedition. On 24 February, five Dutch towns approved a loan of 6,000 florins to ‘my gracious lady of Burgundy and the King Edward of England, her brother, if my gracious lord [Charles] will approve’.9

  The seven months spent in the Low Countries produced unexpected benefits for the English exiles. Edward IV and his brother-in-law Anthony, Earl Rivers encountered the artistic and literary renaissance already underway in this most erudite of European duchies. Their host, Lord Louis of Gruuthuyse, owned one of the finest libraries in Europe, which after his death was bought by Louis XII of France and ultimately became the basis of the French Royal Library. Bruges was a centre for the bookmaking business, an enterprise in which Edward’s sister Margaret took great delight. Duchess Margaret had hired William Caxton, the English governor of the Merchant Adventurers at Bruges, to supervise her financial and commercial dealings, and when she learned that he was translating Lefevre’s Recueil des Histoires de Troie into English, she asked to read it. A learned and cultured woman, Margaret’s excellent knowledge of French and English immediately caused her to correct parts of Caxton’s text. Caxton writes rather charmingly in his prologue: