Royal Mistress

by Anne Easter Smith

  “God bless you, sir. You have an old lady’s gratitude,” Jane replied, her smile revealing her former loveliness. Then, unable to contain her glee, she continued without hesitating,

  “Jane Shore met Thomas More,

  Both beloved of kings.

  She rose and fell;

  But he cannot foretell

  For him what fate’s in store.”

  The royal mistress and the royal councilor had shared a laugh on the steps of Westminster Hall before Sir Thomas had walked away.

  How sad, he thought as he laid down his pen, that, now well into her sixties, the quick-witted, beautiful, generous Jane was reduced to begging. He determined right then that her story would live on in his manuscript, and he prayed that one day history would look upon her kindly.

  * * *

  I. actual text

  II. actual text

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Sir Thomas More’s poignant description of his meeting with Jane Shore is the most detailed information we have of this remarkable woman, who captivated three of England’s most powerful men before she settled into marriage and motherhood with the upstanding Thomas Lyneham (or Lynom, as the name is sometimes written). The story of their meeting in Ludgate gaol when Jane was a prisoner is factual, and we know Jane had a daughter, Julyan, because John Lambert’s will of 1486 is extant, and he bequeathed the child forty shillings. Julyan Lyneham disappears from the records after that, so perhaps she died long before her mother.

  We also do not know for certain what happened to Thomas. There were two Thomas Lynehams that Jane’s latest biographer, Nicolas Barker, discovered in his research. One died around 1516, having returned to Middleham after Henry VII came to the throne, and the other went on to have a brilliant career in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII and was still active in 1531. The latter would have been well in his eighties and rich enough to take care of Jane, if he was our man. I think he was the former, and perhaps still being loyal to the White Rose he retired to that part of the country still staunchly Ricardian. Perhaps he and Jane fell on hard times there, and upon his death, she returned to her beloved London to seek aid from her old acquaintances. But these are my conjectures.

  The description in my epilogue is taken directly from More’s Historie of King Richard III, which he probably wrote around 1518 but which was only published after his death (1535). Sir Thomas spent some of his early life in the household of John Morton, bishop of Ely and later Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VII, one of Richard’s bitterest enemies. It is presumed by historians that Morton is the source of some of Sir Thomas’s information on the events of that fateful June day when Hastings lost his head and Jane was arrested. No other contemporary source mentions the story, so famous in Shakespeare, about Richard accusing the queen and Jane Shore of withering his arm with sorcery. This book formed the basis of Shakespeare’s inaccurate portrayal of Richard, and much of our present-day layman’s understanding of Richard’s short, two-year reign comes from that well-known play, unfortunately.

  All texts taken from contemporary documents are marked with an asterisk.

  As always, I like to own up to inventions in my novels, and the relationship between Jane and her father is one of them. We do know that John Lambert was involved in a violent argument that caused him to lose his alderman status when Jane was a young girl, and I took this piece of information to create his volatile character. The theme of the novel is the nature of love and how many different ways a woman can love men. Jane’s lack of a loving father figure was the impetus behind her search for true love. However, we have proof from the will that Jane was in good standing with her father at the end of his life: “To Elizabeth Lyneham, my daughter, a bed of arras with the vilour [velvet] tester and cortaynes, and a stayned cloth of Mary Magdalene,” and thus I effected a reconciliation scene to fit history. I wondered if he purposely chose the latter bequest as a reminder to Jane of her former reputation!

  As well, John must have been pleased with the match with the king’s solicitor and thought so highly of his new son-in-law that he named Thomas executor of the will and left him a small sum, as well as a velvet gown to “Isabel Thomson, Master Lyneham’s servant,” which is where I found that snippet of information, and so could add her to the household after the marriage of Jane to Thomas.

  I am very grateful to Mr. Barker, the author of an article in Etoniana (the scholarly magazine published by Eton College) in June 1972. It is in the lore of Eton that Jane persuaded Edward to finish building the school, and there are three portraits of her (none, however, contemporary) in the Eton archives that I was unable to see, as the archivist was on holiday during my visit. Barker shed new light on Jane Shore’s life that was unavailable to one of my favorite authors from the 1960s, Jean Plaidy, whose novel The Goldsmith’s Wife first introduced me to a rounded portrait of Mistress Shore. We know now that she was born Elizabeth Lambert, not the only child of mercer Thomas Wainstead as previously thought, and that William Shore was a mercer, not a goldsmith. We do not, however, have a date for her birth, and no matter where I look, it is different, so I picked 1453 to make her old enough to be mentioned by More as almost seventy when he met her.

  Why Elizabeth Lambert became known as Jane is anyone’s guess, and I invented Aunt Elizabeth as a possible explanation. From a brass rubbing, we know that Amy and John Lambert had six children, two of them girls. John’s will mentions only three of his sons: John; William, parson of St. Leonard’s; and Robert, who inherited his father’s Plumstead property in Kent. As the second daughter is not mentioned in the will, I assumed she died before the will was written in 1487. We have no name for her, and with the author’s permission, I chose Isabel from Vanora Bennett’s novel Figures in Silk, in which Jane’s sister is the protagonist. However, my account of Bella is as fictional as Vanora’s had to be without a scrap of extant historical evidence of her life!

  How I wish I could have included so many tidbits I learned about the London guilds or merchant companies, also called mysteries. The Mercers’ Company was the richest of the many guilds, and as well as wool, they imported and sold all kinds of rare and luxurious textiles such as silks, lace, velvets, cloth of gold and silver, wall hangings, and bed linens. The merchant guilds of London, of which the Loriners’ Company (who made bits and strirrups) was the oldest at two hundred years in 1475, ran the city and because of their wealth had a certain degree of independence from both the Crown and the royal court. After seven years of apprenticeship, a man could set up a business on his own and became a freeman of the city, which meant he did not have to pay tolls at markets and fairs anywhere in England, he could not be pressed into the army, and he could vote in parliamentary and ward elections. He might also become a guild member, although not all merchants did. Jane became a freewoman of London as soon as she married William Shore.

  My guides through the records that still exist at the Mercers’ Company Hall on Ironmonger Lane in the city, around the corner from Cheapside (modern spelling), were Jane Ruddell and Donna Marshall, who sat me at a desk between them for the best part of the day and plied me with documents and huge ledgers as well as their years of knowledge of the intricate guild system. Guild members of the mercers had a list of rules a mile long that would incur a fine if broken, such as: for being late for a funeral service; for attending fairs outside London; for “conniving” with others; for defective weights and measures; for striking someone, drawing a knife, carrying a dagger, quarreling, fighting or attacking; for not riding in processions; for playing dice; and, my favorite, for bad language. Each company changed their livery every third year, and woe betide if you wore the wrong color in the wrong year, or there was yet another fine.

  That Jane Shore, known by her fellow citizens as the Rose of London, became the concubine of Edward IV, William Hastings, and Thomas Grey is fact. I have stayed true to the chronology of those liaisons, even though my imagined Jane should have dumped Tom long before she did! But because of the timing of Ri
chard’s proclamation and Jane’s second imprisonment (this based on the extant letter from Richard to Chancellor Russell about Thomas Lyneham), I had to keep Dorset in the picture until Buckingham’s pathetic rebellion. Richard’s postscript about Buckingham and other extant documents were too perfect to paraphrase, even if the language is a little flowery for our contemporary ears.

  Those who have read my other books will know that I have never believed Richard III was responsible for the deaths of the princes in the Tower. I am, however, of the school that believes they were indeed done away with, and I have repeated my Buckingham theory in this book. From mid-April to July 1483 are four of the most confusing and puzzling months in English history. Other than conversations among my main characters, I have meticulously researched and reported every detail of that time as it pertains to historical fact. The timing of the revelation of the precontract—a witnessed pledge between two people that they will marry and which was considered binding—between Edward and another beautiful widow, Eleanor Butler, has had historians bickering for centuries over whether it was real or a ploy by an ambitious Richard to take the crown. These precontracts (or plight-troths) were sometimes used to persuade a reluctant female to succumb to a lover’s ardor before a more formal marriage ceremony. I believe this plight-troth existed and that it was very typical of Edward’s behavior. After all, he then went on to marry Elizabeth in secret and kept it from the council and the country for six months! Eleanor Butler was a sad figure of history and a victim of Edward’s lust. Her father was dead, her noble husband was dead, and she had no man to speak for her who might remind the king that he was pledged to her. She went into a nunnery when Edward tired of her, presumably when his eye lit upon the incomparable Elizabeth, and she died there in 1468, relieving Edward of his guilt, no doubt. We have no idea whether Elizabeth Woodville was aware of this precontract, but I think not.

  Those few months in 1483 play out to us like a tragic opera, culminating in the disappearance of the princes and winding down to the execution of one of the key players, Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham. I was lucky enough to have a month of sunshine and quiet in a small town in Mexico in which to piece together what happened in what is now referred to as the Year of the Three Kings: Edward IV, uncrowned Edward V, and Richard III. There are many theories about the disappearance of the two princes; mine implicating Buckingham is a popular one. That Bishop John Morton conspired with Margaret Beaufort to put her son, Henry, on the throne is fact, and because we know Buckingham caught up with Richard at Gloucester on the king’s progress, and yet was seen very shortly after arriving galloping toward Wales (where Morton was his prisoner), led me to believe this was the beginning, and cause, of why Harry decided to rebel. Morton was there to feed into Buckingham’s insecurities. I hope, though, I have elicited enough interest in the time period for readers to do more research and come to their own conclusions. Believe me, there are many variables.

  This leads me to explain the most difficult aspect personally of writing Royal Mistress. I firmly believe Richard of Gloucester was not the monster Shakespeare created in his brilliant play Richard III, but because I was having to look at the man from the point of view of Jane and Will Hastings, both of whom were ill-used by Richard, I became acutely aware of how perception is key in looking at motivation. I do not believe Richard hurried down from the north upon Edward’s death in order to seize the crown. He had never shown any inclination to overthrow his brother, as George of Clarence had. If I showed Richard’s character as one of duty, piety, and morality, then I could let Richard believe he was doing the right thing every step of the way. Thus he remains true to his character. The extraordinary obsession with morals in his proclamations following Buckingham’s rebellion (taken directly from the texts) told me Richard was acting out a fanatical and puritanical desire to clean up his brother’s court, and that in order to do God’s work, he had no choice but to punish those responsible. It was then clear to me that those who did not understand his character or his motivations would see only ambition and deception. Hence his negative reputation. I hope I have succeeded in creating an enigmatic personality with flaws but one with humanity and empathy as well. Not a monster.

  For readers unfamiliar with my first book, A Rose for the Crown, I have to confess that Kate Haute is the fictitious mother of Richard’s bastard children, John of Gloucester and Katherine Plantagenet, who are not imagined but who did indeed grow up in Richard’s household. We do not know with whom Richard had these two children, allowing for my fertile imagination to conjure and use her as a vehicle to tell a more truthful version of Richard’s life than Shakespeare did. I could not resist having the two royal mistresses bump into each other in this book and go across the street to the pub for a cup of ale and a chat.

  Readers of that first book will remember Kate consulting with a lawyer about proving impotence for an annulment, and I use the same quote in this book from Thomas of Chobham’s twelfth-century law book that I found cited in Henrietta Leyser’s excellent Medieval Women. For though all women were disenfranchised in medieval times, they did have rights, including an expectation of intimacy and the chance to bear children once they were married. Jane’s annulment (the word divorce did not exist then) from William Shore was granted by three bishops in early 1476 and, very unusually, the cause was impotence. He did not contest it, probably because he knew he would have to prove it by what to us would be very primitive means: allowing several “wise” women to witness the wife try and arouse him and report their findings. I’m surprised more wives did not try it. It is possible he was bought off by the king, as I suggest, because William was given letters of protection from the king to enable him to start a business in Antwerp, where he remained as a merchant adventurer until his documented return to London in 1484. I am sure he was happier as an adventurer, which meant being celibate for the duration of one’s time abroad.

  Although we know the date that Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, escaped sanctuary, we do not know his whereabouts for the next few weeks of that summer in 1483. He must have been with Jane at that time or she would not have been accused of “lying with him” in Richard’s proclamation. We know he was with his uncle, bishop of Salisbury, in Wiltshire at the time of Buckingham’s rebellion in October, and he did flee to join Henry Tudor in exile in Brittany and was attainted by Richard. But in an odd turn of events, he deserted Henry when he learned his mother, Elizabeth, had reconciled with Richard. On his way through France to return to his beloved parent, he was captured by the French and held for ransom until Henry repaid a loan from the French government. He was left behind during Henry’s invasion of 1485, Tudor having no use for the unstable Dorset, who could not make up his mind which side to support. Eventually, he returned to England but was never again allowed any influence at court. In 1487, when the loyal Yorkists rose in rebellion under a pretender, Lambert Simnel, Henry clapped Dorset in the Tower in case he changed sides again and joined the rebels. A few years later, during the Perkin Warbeck rebellion, he signed a pledge to the Tudor king that he would never again commit treason, and he died at age 45 in 1501, his wife, Cecily Bonvile, having given him fourteen children. One account of him says it all for me: Thomas Grey was a man of “mediocre abilities.” He certainly was not worthy of our Jane.

  Jane’s belief in romantic love was a device to support my theme to show how humans can love in many different ways. Thomas was her first real romance, and I thought it useful to bring back the fashionable idea of courtly love from earlier centuries to better describe her infatuation with him. Knights and nobles would idealize a lady, meet her in secret, pass secret messages back and forth, and write her poems and songs. The lady was supposed to pretend to rebuff the advances, all the while leading the poor man on and occasionally deigning to let him kiss her. It was a courtly dance that may have been born in Aquitaine in the twelfth century, and its rules were set down by Andreas Capellanus. The two rules I chose to have Jane remember were: “When love is made publ
ic, it rarely endures”; and “The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.” Hence Jane is convinced Thomas is obeying the rules by suggesting they meet in secret, and that by not giving in to him, she makes herself more valuable.

  I may be a writer, but I am not a poet, and thus I must confess to my paltry prose in the form of Jane’s little poems. They were often the hardest writing I tackled! Only the poem on pages 407-408 is borrowed from a popular ballad, The Woeful Lamentation of Jane Shore, from the Bagford Collection printed in the first part of the seventeenth century. Each stanza ends with the apt lines:

  Then maids and wives in time amend

  For love and beauty will have end.

  Once again, as with the story of Perkin Warbeck in my third book, The King’s Grace, I am reminded of how much stranger fact is than fiction in Jane’s astonishing rise and fall. It is a tale that has resonated through the centuries in English literature, giving rise to many written works, from plays such as Shakespeare’s Richard III and Nicholas Rowe’s The Tragedy of Jane Shore (1714); ballads such as A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore (1671) and the seventeenth-century verse Woeful Lamentation of Jane Shore, cited above; an Epistle from Edward the Fourth to Jane Shore by the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton; a long anonymous poem published in 1749 entitled “Jane Shore to the Duke of Gloster” (sic); and the poem used to punctuate the four parts of this book, “How Shore’s Wife, King Edward the Fourth’s concubine, was by description King Richard Despoyled of all her goods and forced to doe open Penance.”