In the midst of these military preparations, Queen Elizabeth pursued her charitable and educational interests. On 10 March 1475, she issued the first set of statutes to Queens’ College, Cambridge. From her first intercession in 1465, when Edward was dissolving institutions created by Henry VI, the Queen had been central in saving Queens’ College and securing pardons after Margaret’s defeat at Tewkesbury. A college historian writes about Elizabeth: ‘Piety, natural reason and her duties as queen combined to make her “specially solicitous concerning those matters whereby the safety of souls and the public good are promoted, and poor scholars, desirous of advancing themselves in the knowledge of letters, are assisted in their need.”’2
In issuing the statutes, Elizabeth formalised the administrative structure of the institution, providing for such essential details as the election of the president, the establishment of his residence, office and authority, the supervision of the land, and the designation of stipends for the president and scholars. By this time, Queens’ College had grown from four fellows to twelve, and a new college seal incorporating Elizabeth’s coat of arms with those of England replaced the coat of arms of Margaret, who was still imprisoned in the Tower.
A contemporary handwritten account of the college’s founding refers to Queen Margaret as ‘fundatrix nostra prima’ (our first founder), while a second account, apparently written after the death of Andrew Doket in 1484, refers to Queen Elizabeth as the ‘vera fundatrix’ (true founder), who, according to the law of succession, completed the founding of the college when Margaret was unable to finish the task. This historian credits Elizabeth with leading the college to its end, issuing its statutes, and obtaining many privileges from the King.3 The designation of Elizabeth as vera fundatrix has led subsequent critics to accuse her of trying to displace Margaret and take exclusive credit for founding the college. Such a view misconstrues the evidence, since the historical account not only gives due credit to Margaret, but was written by an anonymous cleric sometime after the death of Edward IV in 1483, when Elizabeth was in no position to influence anyone – even college historians.
A copy of the Statuta Collegii Reginalis in the collection of the University of Cambridge Library (QCV 65) names the ‘Co-Foundresses of this College’: ‘Queen Margaret of Anjou, wife to K. Henry the sixth’ and ‘Queen Elizabeth, wife to K. Edward the fourth’. Erasmus, who resided at the college from 1511 to 1514, referred to the institution as ‘Collegium Reginae’, or ‘College of the Queen’, implying that a single founder was credited. The issue was resolved in 1823, when the apostrophe was placed after the ‘s’, crediting both Margaret and Elizabeth as the joint founders of Queens’ College. Today, the most famous portrait of Elizabeth Wydeville hangs proudly in the Great Hall of the Old Court. The portrait’s place of honour over the hearth, surrounded by stained glass windows displaying coats of arms of England’s noble families, provides a stately and honoured setting for the Queen who held this institution so close to her heart.
That Elizabeth took such interest in education and domestic matters is significant, for Edward IV’s mind was focused on war. As assessed ‘benevolences’ slowly accumulated the money necessary to invade France, Edward secured the northern borders of England by arranging a marriage between his daughter Cecily, aged five, and Prince James of Scotland, aged three. To govern in his absence, the four-year-old Prince Edward moved from Ludlow to London on 12 May, assumed the title ‘Keeper of the Realm’, and became head of a regency government. The prince lived with his mother, Queen Elizabeth, who received £2,200 for his annual maintenance, in addition to her own allowance of £2,200.
Edward left London for Sandwich on 30 May 1475, to prepare for the voyage across the Channel. Elizabeth once more took charge of the family at home. Her brother Anthony, Earl Rivers, head of the Wydeville family, accompanied the King with two knights, forty lances and 200 archers, as did her eldest son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset. Elizabeth was left alone with five children, the eldest of which was the Princess Elizabeth at nine years of age and the youngest Richard at twenty-two months. The Queen was four months pregnant with the King’s seventh child. Surely she must have felt some qualms about her husband’s enterprise, while stoically repressing her feelings of abandonment.
At Sandwich where the troops were gathering, Edward IV made his will, signed on 20 June 1475, ‘the year of our Reign the xvth’. In his will, he acknowledges the enormous debts he had accrued for the foray into France and gives repetitive instructions that they be repaid in case of his death. But the King also paid specific and meticulous attention to the welfare of his children and his ‘dearest Wife the Queen’. His two eldest daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, were each bequeathed 10,000 marks as a marriage dowry, as long as ‘they be governed and ruled in their marriages by our dearest wife the Queen and by our said son the Prince, if God fortune him to come to age of discretion’. If either of the daughters married ‘without such advice and assent so as they be thereby disparaged’, the dowry money would be diverted to paying Edward IV’s debts.4
Similarly, he provided for the child the Queen was then expecting, by allocating a dowry of 10,000 marks if the child was a daughter, ‘so always that she be ruled and guided in her marriage as afore is declared in the article touching the marriages of our said daughters Elizabeth and Mary’.5 Those protests seem a bit much, given his own defiance of tradition in making a happy marriage, but as a father Edward IV decreed that similar actions by his daughters could cost them their dowries.
Cecily, already betrothed to the son and heir of the King of Scots, was bequeathed a dowry of 18,000 marks, over and above the 2,000 already paid, but the King’s Council would have to agree that the marriage would advantage the realm. If Cecily married ‘any other [husband] by the counsel and advice of our said Wife and any other afore named’, the 18,000 marks – or what remains – would be paid to that husband. To make sure that all the dowries were funded, the will designates specific properties in the Duchy of Lancaster responsible for paying the money.
The will conveys to Richard, Duke of York, when he reaches the age of sixteen, all the traditional York lands that had belonged to his grandfather, with the provision that the Duchess of York have a lifetime interest in the estates. In addition, Richard would receive the Bolingbroke lands currently enfeoffed to Thomas, Cardinal and Archbishop of Canterbury. Prince Edward, of course, would assume the crown of England. References to him are poignantly ironic in light of subsequent events. In the language that characterises wills, the naming of ‘Edward the Prince’ is always followed by ‘or such as shall please almighty God to ordain to be our heirs’ or ‘if God fortune him to come to age of discretion’, phrases that eerily foreshadow the disasters to ensue in just eight years.
Queen Elizabeth received consideration equal to their children: ‘our said dearest Wife’ received ‘during her life all the revenues, issues, and profits’ of the lands and manors she currently possessed. After her death, half of her estate would pay the King’s debts and the other half her own, with any remaining monies going to the unborn child, if a son, when he reached sixteen years or to Richard, Duke of York, if the newborn was a daughter. The Queen also received all personal property of the royal household, including ‘bedding, arrases, tapestries, verdours, stuff of our household, ornaments of our Chapel with books appertaining to the same’. Specifically excluded, however, were the plate and jewels, designated to pay burial costs of Edward IV, as well as those ornaments and books bequeathed to the College of Windsor. Curiously, the will twice mentions the Queen’s rights to her personal goods:
And over this we will that our said wife, the Queen, have and enjoy all her own goods, chattels, stuff, bedding, arrases, tapestries, verdours, stuff of household plate and jewels, and all other things which she now hath and occupieth, to dispose it freely at her will and pleasure without let or interruption of our Executors.6
The reiteration ironically calls attention to the inappropriate actions of the executors, who s
eized these goods following Edward’s death, and to the meagre possessions owned by Elizabeth when she died seventeen years later.
In appointing his executors, Edward IV names first and foremost ‘our said dearest and most entirely beloved wife Elizabeth the Queen’. Nine additional executors follow, including bishops and high officials of the kingdom, but the will reiterates that it is ‘our said dearest Wife in whom we most singularly put our trust in this party’. This formal declaration speaks eloquently of Edward’s respect and love for his wife of eleven years.
The army amassed by Edward IV was one of the best prepared that England had ever placed on the field. With peace at home, the nation was delighted to take up arms against an enemy abroad, and its citizens ultimately contributed generously to Edward’s solicitations for money and men. But the Duke of Burgundy, who had first summoned Edward’s aid, was fighting in Germany and ill-prepared to help take on the French. Neither did Louis XI wish to engage in battle, much preferring to negotiate a compromise. Surreptitious efforts began to settle the quarrels diplomatically. In one of the most curious encounters of antagonists ever to occur, the kings of England and of France met on 29 August 1475, on a bridge over the river Somme at Pécquigny, to conclude a treaty:
In the middle of the bridge a strong piece of trellis-work, such as lion’s cages are made from, was erected. The holes between the bars are just big enough for a man to push his arm through easily. The top alone was covered with boards to keep off the rain and it was big enough for ten or twelve people to get under it on either side. The trellis-work stretched right across the width of the bridge so that no one could cross from one side to the other.7
Louis XI offered Edward IV an immediate payment of 75,000 crowns (£15,000 sterling) and an annual stipend of 50,000 crowns (£10,000) if he would return to England and leave France unmolested. Edward’s closest advisors, including the Chancellor, Lord Chamberlain (Hastings), and the Marquis of Dorset (Elizabeth’s son by Sir John Grey), would receive 16,000 crowns, plus an annual pension.8 A free-trade agreement would abolish tolls and fees between merchants of the two countries.
What sealed the deal for Edward IV, however, was the betrothal of the Dauphin, heir to the French crown, to the Princess Elizabeth – or to her sister Mary, if Elizabeth should die. Why fight, if France could be achieved via marriage rather than by bloodshed? Why attack French cities, if stipends paid to the King of England turned France into a fiefdom – and paid off Edward’s enormous debts in the bargain? Edward IV could not refuse. The past fifteen years of bloodshed and intrigue had produced an older and wiser Edward IV:
The missal was brought and the two kings placed one hand on it and the other on the Holy True Cross. Both swore to keep what had been mutually promised, that is to say, a truce of nine years which included the allies of both parties, and to complete the marriage of their children on the terms agreed in the treaty.9
Edward IV went home, where the French tribute, paid faithfully until Louis XI signed the Treaty of Arras with Burgundy on 23 December 1482, made him a rich king.
Not everyone was happy. The soldiers, always ill-paid, had expected to line their pockets with French booty. They gained nothing for their efforts except the time lost from their farms and trades. Now they had to sail home with no gains and no glory. From their perspective, English honour had suffered a serious blow. Richard, Duke of Gloucester angrily opposed the treaty at Pécquigny, a stance that made him popular with the soldiers who went home empty-handed and with the citizens who had paid taxes to fund an expedition that now seemed futile.10
Queen Elizabeth sustained a personal loss from the whole encounter. Her uncle, the Count of St Pol, lost his life because of duplicitous promises to support both sides of the conflict. St Pol’s position as Constable of France compelled loyalty to Louis XI, but his blood ties to the Queen of England and political alliances with Burgundy aligned him with Edward IV. Promising aid to each, he succeeded only in alienating both. After the English had gone home, Louis XI expeditiously beheaded him.
Margaret of Anjou’s fate remained unresolved. Edward had taken her to France with him to prevent her from causing trouble in England during his absence.11 The former Queen was imprisoned at Calais, then returned to England with Edward’s troops. Later that summer Louis XI offered to pay Edward IV £10,000 in ransom for the deposed Queen. Margaret renounced all claims to her title and property in England, and on 13 November 1475 Edward released her to the custody of his counsellor, Thomas Montgomery, for delivery to Louis of France.12 Margaret returned home, where she lived in poverty and penury until her death on 25 August 1482.
Edward IV returned to England two months before the birth of the child who had been anticipated in his will. With Anne’s birth on 2 November 1475, the royal household settled down to the business of raising its growing family, a business always intertwined with the nation’s best interests. Within three years, Anne was betrothed to the son of Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Her dowry of 100,000 crowns, larger than that of her older sisters, indicates both the relative wealth that Edward IV was accumulating and the expanding political agenda of England.
To mollify some of the ill feelings harboured by those who regarded the Treaty of Pécquigny as capitulation to the French, Edward IV spent liberally on public events that displayed his royal presence as King. No occasion was more elaborately staged than the reburial of his father, Richard, Duke of York and his brother Edmund, Earl of Rutland, who had been killed at Wakefield in 1460. York’s body, initially desecrated when his head was stuck above Micklegate Bar in York, had been interred by Edward at the family estate at Pontefract after his victory at Towton in 1461. Now with money and stature sufficient to bury his father properly, Edward used the occasion to demonstrate not merely his wealth and prestige, but the lineage through which he claimed the throne of England.
The splendour of the Duke of York’s reburial especially engaged the north of England.13 As King, Edward did not participate in the ten-day procession from Pontefract to Fotheringhay, which was led by Richard of Gloucester as chief mourner and attended by nobles, officers of arms and 400 ‘poor men’ on foot carrying torches. The King met the procession at the family estate of Fotheringhay where he, Queen Elizabeth, and two daughters gathered for the reburial ceremonies.
Fotheringhay had been granted to Edmund Plantagenet, founder of the House of York, by his father, Edward III, and had become a principal residence of his descendants. The Duke of York and Cecily spent much time at the castle, where three of their sons were born, including Richard, Duke of Gloucester. After the death of her husband, Cecily had lived there until 1469. Now the family gathered to pay tribute to the father of the first Yorkist King.
When the procession arrived at Fotheringhay on 29 July 1476, the King met it at the entrance to the cemetery of the collegiate church of St Mary and All Saints. Unlike the other mourners dressed in black, the King wore a blue habit, with mourning hood furred with miniver. The large group of mourners included the King’s brothers Gloucester and Clarence, the Queen’s brother Anthony Wydeville, her eldest son, Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and her chamberlain, Lord Dacre. The effigy and coffin were removed from its carriage and placed inside the church, on the hearse especially constructed for the occasion.
The hearse was the size of a small house, with pillars at the four corners rising high to hold an ornamental roof and candelabra that illuminated the coffin and its effigy. Fifty-one wax images of kings, painted and gilded, and 420 gilded angels decorated the pillars of the hearse, which was itself gilded and ‘powdered with silver roses and a gold sun’.14 Pennons displayed symbols of the Duke, including ‘two with a white lion, and two with a black bull’. Twenty banners depicted ‘diverse saints and arms’, along with 150 streamers and ‘218 scutcheons of paper beaten with gold and silver with the arms of the said late duke of York [and] 120 scutcheons of paper in the colours of the same arms’. Lining the ceiling was ‘le maieste cloth’, painted with the image of Christ si
tting on a rainbow. Barriers along the side of the hearse allowed mourners of rank to stand next to the coffin, separated from the less eminent mourners who stood outside the barriers. The coffin placed in the centre of the hearse was covered by a blue cloth of gold, with a white satin cross. A lifelike effigy of the Duke, dressed in a gown of dark blue furred with ermine, lay atop the coffin. A purple cap of maintenance was on the effigy’s head, behind which a white angel held a crown to indicate the Duke’s royal right to the throne he had never possessed.
Services began on the evening of 29 July where, during the Magnificat, Lord Hastings, representing the King, offered to the body seven pieces of cloth of gold, each five yards long. Lord Dacre, the Queen’s chamberlain, offered five yards for Queen Elizabeth, each piece laid across the body in the shape of a cross. The Queen attended the service dressed in mourning and accompanied by two daughters and many other ladies wearing mourning.
On Tuesday 30 July, three High Masses were sung by the Bishop of Lincoln. During the gospel, the Queen’s brother Anthony, Earl Rivers offered to the body three pieces of cloth of gold five yards long, followed by similar offerings by Essex, Kent, Northumberland, Lincoln, Suffolk, Gloucester and Clarence. The King offered seven pieces and the Queen six, all of which were placed in the form of a cross. Symbolic offerings reflecting the Duke’s knighthood followed, after which a black horse in full-length black trappings decorated with the royal arms was led to the choir by barons, knights and heralds. Lord Ferrers, holding an axe with its point downwards, rode on the horse. The King then offered the Mass penny and:
…in passing did his obeisance before the said body. Next the queen came to offer, dressed all in blue without a high headdress, and there she made a great obeisance and reverence to the said body, and next two of the king’s daughters came to offer in the same way.15
After offerings from the ambassadors of France, Denmark and Portugal, the common people followed with their pennies.
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