Queens Consort

by Lisa Hilton

  With hindsight, the main protagonists of the rapid events following Edward IV’s death have been too easily sorted into the categories of heroes and villains. Anti-Richard writers have him immediately plotting to seize the throne, while his apologists have him battling an attempted coup by the Queen’s relations, the Woodvilles. With regard to Elizabeth herself, we may imagine first that she was still reeling from the shock of her husband’s death, for though Edward was no longer the beautiful man she had married, his tall figure now marred by a bulging stomach and his features coarsened through dissipation, he had still been only forty years old, and no one had expected him to die so suddenly. Secondly, her entirely reasonable aim was to have her son crowned and the succession smoothly assured. It was perhaps unwise of her to depend so closely on the counsel of her supporters, her nearest relatives, but it is nevertheless hardly surprising that she did.

  Edward’s extant will, made in 1475, named Elizabeth ‘his dearest and most entirely beloved wife’, as his chief executor and guardian of his children, but a subsequent codicil named Richard of Gloucester as lord protector. (In fact, neither instruction was binding, as legally only the council and Parliament could decide on the governance of the realm in the minority of the King.) In the absence of the amended will, it has been suggested that Elizabeth was excluded from her role as executor, as is supposedly confirmed by the fact that she did not attend an executors’ meeting on 7 May. Her absence was due to the very good reason that she was in Westminster Sanctuary, so nothing can be proved either way. It has also been mooted that Elizabeth personally worked to prevent Richard of Gloucester from taking up his position as protector. According to Alison Weir, ‘The Woodvilles were firmly entrenched and meant to stay that way, having determined to resist all attempts to make Gloucester protector. Their intention was to ignore Edward IV’s will and use Edward V as a puppet.’2 The Woodvilles certainly knew that their power was threatened, but until later in the month they had no reason to fear a direct attack from Richard.

  The Croyland Chronicle emphasises that when the council met after the funeral, the desire to see Edward V crowned was unanimous, but the company was divided as to the most appropriate arrangements for his guardianship, and that of the realm, until he reached his majority. Prominent among the anti-Woodville contingent was Lord Hastings. Croyland suggests that Hastings feared the Woodvilles because ‘if power slipped into the grasp of the Queen’s relatives they would avenge the injuries they claimed he had done them’. If Edward were crowned quickly, the role of protector could be dispensed with and the Woodvilles could then rule through the King. Croyland adds that the situation was saved by the ‘benevolence’ of the Queen, who seems to have grasped that this was no time for personal antagonisms. Hastings was supported by the prominent Cheshire magnate Lord Stanley, the third husband of Margaret Beaufort, but the large pro-Woodville faction, as well as neutral figures such as the Archbishop of Canterbury, overruled the ‘wiser’ element and the coronation was fixed for 4 May.

  Hastings had, however, been able to effect one modification to the Woodville plans, which was the size of the escort that would accompany Edward south from Ludlow. Hastings threatened to return to Calais if the Prince’s escort were not reduced to 2,000 men. This is an indication of just how intimidated the anti-Woodville party felt. Edward’s arrival with a large army would be perceived as highly aggressive and Hastings was prepared take an equally aggressive position (holing up at Calais with the country’s only standing army) to counter it. It was Elizabeth who persuaded her supporters that Hastings was right. This gesture has been interpreted as an enactment of her ‘peacemaking’ role, and of her sensitivity to the feelings of the magnates, but it could equally well have been a piece of realpolitik: Calais was loyal to Hastings and he had made powerful friends at the courts of France and Burgundy during his governorship. The new King could not afford to have him as an enemy.

  Richard of Gloucester was in the north at the time of his brother’s death, and it was Hastings who wrote to him with the news, which he received on 13 or 14 April, at the same time as the messengers to Ludlow informed the twelve-year-old Edward he was now King. One view of Richard’s feelings at this time comes from Dominic Mancini, who asserts that Richard had sequestered himself in the north to avoid the ‘jealousy’ of the Queen and the ‘insults’ of her ‘ignoble family’. Mancini also claims Hastings advised Richard that he could ‘avenge’ such insults if he took the young King under his protection before the boy arrived in London. Mancini’s reports are valuable in that he wrote down the information he picked up about London, that is, what people believed to be happening, but for the same reason there is inevitably a strong element of hearsay in his accounts. He claimed Gloucester hated Elizabeth because of Clarence’s execution, and vowed to be avenged, but this seems excessively simplistic, given the brothers’ feud over the Neville inheritance and Clarence’s earlier history of treachery to the crown.

  Gloucester had made a great public show of grief, true, but this had not prevented him from scooping up his brother’s share of the Neville booty. On the surface, Richard, unlike Hastings, appeared to have no quarrel with the Woodvilles in 1483, nor did Elizabeth seem to have any especial dislike of him. Indeed, Lord Rivers had requested Richard’s arbitration in a property dispute in Norfolk just a few months before. And whatever his private feelings, Richard had been quick to write a letter of condolence to the Queen, assuring her of his loyalty. Richard did come to give the Woodvilles cause to hate and fear him, but even then there is no reason to assume it was personal. He merely turned on them, as on so many others, when they got in his way.

  It is not necessarily correct then, to suppose that Richard’s actions were the result of a longstanding grudge against the Woodvilles. Much has been made of the fact that it was Hastings, rather than the Woodville faction, who informed Richard of Edward’s death, with the implication that the Woodvilles were trying to crown Edward before he had a chance to take up his role as protector, but in Hastings’ capacity as lord chamberlain, it was appropriate that he should break the news, and Richard would have had ample time to reach London for 4 May, if he had intended to accede to the arrangements. Recall that Edward’s death had come as a great surprise. Even Richard’s enemies had to concede that he was an outstanding military commander, as he had so often proved in the service of his brother. He was used to making difficult decisions quickly. One reading of the evidence, then, is that Richard made his choice in the days between receiving Hastings’ letter and setting off for Northampton. This would also explain why Anne Neville came to arrive in London as late as 5 June. If she knew before her husband departed that the coronation would be delayed, it made sense to put off her journey rather than start for the capital at once.

  Whatever the case, by 29 April, Richard had concluded that the Woodvilles had to go. In this he was aided by a magnate who did hate the Queen’s family, even though he was her brother-in-law. Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, was the grandson of the Duke of Buckingham who had died fighting for Henry VI at Northampton. He had been married aged eleven to Elizabeth’s sister Katherine and, as a descendant of Edward III through Thomas of Woodstock, his pride smarted under the disparagement. Buckingham loathed the Woodvilles. Like Hastings, he saw Richard as a natural ally now that it appeared the family was poised to take control of the King, and the two men had been in rapid correspondence since hearing of Edward IV’s death.

  On 29 April, Richard and Buckingham met at Northampton. Lord Rivers, Elizabeth’s second son Sir Richard Grey and the new King had passed by on their route from Ludlow and were resting at Stony Stratford, fourteen miles closer to London. In a further example of the Woodvilles’ confidence in Richard at this point, Rivers and Grey now rode back to meet Richard and spent a pleasant evening dining and talking with the two dukes. Grey’s presence has been interpreted as Elizabeth’s last, desperate attempt to prevent Richard from assuming the protectorship. ‘Soon after his arrival [at Northampton] the K
ing was joined by Sir Richard Grey, hot-foot from London and probably bearing orders from the Queen to Rivers, urging him to press on to the capital without delay,’ suggests Alison Weir.3 If Grey were carrying any such orders, whether as a warning or in an attempt to rush Edward to London for his coronation, why did he and Rivers turn back after they had conveyed Edward to Stony Stratford? If they feared Richard, and were conspiring to deprive him of the protectorate, why have dinner with him? If their cordiality was a feint, it backfired. In the morning, Richard had Rivers and Grey arrested and imprisoned.

  News of the arrests reached London that night. Elizabeth panicked. Her first thought was to attempt to raise an army with her son the Marquis of Dorset, but they found little support, as it was not considered odd or threatening that the King should be in the company of his only uncle, his official protector. Desperate to safeguard herself and her children, Elizabeth decided once more to take sanctuary at Westminster. Thomas More gives an imaginative picture of her flight, of the ‘rumble, haste and busyness, carriage and conveyance of her stuff into sanctuary, chests, coffers, packs, fardels, trusses, all on men’s backs, no man unoccupied, some loading, some going, some discharging, some coming for more’. Distraught, the Queen herself could do little more than slump to the floor and weep, and when the archbishop of York tried to comfort her with a reassuring message from Hastings, More has her hissing bitterly, ‘Woe worth him, for he is one of them that labours to destroy me and my blood.’ Elizabeth, her daughters Elizabeth, Cecily, Anne, Katherine and Bridget, her brother Lionel Woodville and her sons Richard, Duke of York and Thomas Grey were received into sanctuary by the abbot of Westminster, John Easteney, and housed in his own quarters. By morning, the river was ominously full of the patrolling barges of Gloucester’s men, ensuring that no one left or entered the sanctuary’s precincts.

  Was Elizabeth’s flight a mistake? Richard’s imprisonment of Rivers and Grey made it clear that he intended to take up the protectorship, but Elizabeth was the Dowager Queen. Had she really so much to fear? Once again, her reaction has been interpreted as evidence that she had been planning to exclude Richard from the government all along, and was now terrified of his discovering this. But such a response could equally have been prompted by the arrests alone. Elizabeth had lived through the Readeption, and she may have believed that it was her decisive action in taking sanctuary then which saved her life and those of her daughters and her unborn child. But now, she too, was effectively a prisoner, cut off from her eldest son and with limited means of communication with the outside world. And in removing herself from Richard’s clutches, she also deprived herself of one of her most powerful weapons: her symbolic presence as queen.

  At least Elizabeth’s accommodation in the sanctuary had improved since her first visit. For the eleven months she lived there, she had the use of the abbot’s Great Hall with its minstrels’ gallery, a private chamber and courtyard and for audiences and the grand Jerusalem Chamber, hung with tapestries. Elizabeth was able to receive visitors, and after Richard arrived in the capital with Edward V on 4 May, news began to filter through of his propaganda campaign against her family. When Richard had taken possession of the King, he had claimed that the Woodvilles were plotting to assassinate him to deprive him of the regency, and that he had evidence of ambushes prepared on the London road. He also wrote to the council, explaining that he had rescued Edward and the country from ‘perdition’ and hinting that the Woodvilles had been involved in the death of Edward IV. When the King’s party arrived in London, four carts of weapons were dragged through the streets to demonstrate to the people the ‘proof of the Woodvilles’ evil plans. There is something painfully modern about Richard’s disregard for the truth at this point. He had chosen his lie very effectively, and he stuck to it adamantly By 10 June, he was writing to the representatives of the city of York asking for a muster of men to be sent south ‘to aid and assist us against the Queen, her blood adherents and affinity, which hath intended and doth daily intend to murder and utterly destroy us’. The notable aspect of Richard’s request is that it is a public one. The Woodvilles by this stage posed very little threat: the King himself was with Richard, the Queen and Dorset were in sanctuary, Rivers and Grey were being held captive and Elizabeth’s brother Sir Edward Woodville, the commander of the fleet, had been forced to flee. Richard was using the perceived menace of the Woodvilles to raise men for his own purposes.

  Officially, his aims were still peaceful. A new date of 22 June had been set for Edward’s coronation, and Richard had already held an oath-swearing at the King’s temporary lodging of the Chapter House of St Paul’s, where lords and citizens gathered to profess their loyalty to the new monarch. On 10 May, Richard had been formally invested as protector until the coronation, after which a regency council was to be selected. Edward was moved to his new lodgings in the royal apartments at the Tower, so recently vacated by his mother. Elizabeth’s continued residence in the sanctuary was now proving an embarrassment to Richard, particularly as some members of the council were expressing concern, according to Croyland, that ‘the Protector did not, with a sufficient degree of considerateness, take fitting care for the preservation of the dignity and safety of the Queen’. Richard now began a campaign to persuade Elizabeth to leave the abbot’s quarters, sending members of the council to visit her and reassure her that she and her children had nothing to fear, but Elizabeth remained obdurate.

  Richard now grew impatient, and his next act began to reveal his true plans. On 13 June Lord Hastings, the archbishop of York, the bishop of Ely and the King’s secretary were suddenly arrested during a council meeting at the Tower. Hastings was dragged outside and immediately beheaded. Why would Richard so ruthlessly dispose of one of his chief allies? If he was now scheming to seize the crown, then he needed both heirs to the throne in his power. professor Gillingham’s hypothesis is that Hastings had opposed the use of force to remove the Duke of York from sanctuary, but since he was unaware of Richard’s ultimate ambition, would not have realised the significance of his opposition.4 This would explain why Richard needed to eliminate him, and why Hastings was apparently caught unawares. Richard put out a story that Hastings had been plotting against him, and now, with the council silenced, he could move against Elizabeth.

  On 16 June, the Queen handed over her son Richard to the protector. Why did she do so, particularly as the news of Hastings’ execution was now common knowledge? For weeks, Elizabeth had been pressured to deliver the boy. One of Richard’s main advocates was Thomas Bourchier, the cardinal archbishop of Canterbury, the man who had crowned Elizabeth and Edward and who had been for years a trusted friend, not to mention the highest spiritual authority in the country. Bourchier swore to the Queen that he would defend Richard if he was released from sanctuary. Morever, the protector had made it clear that if necessary he would use force. With the sanctuary surrounded by troops and the archbishop’s well-meaning promises in her ear, Elizabeth, sobbing, gave up her child. It was probably the greatest mistake of her life.

  Now that he had both princes in his control, Richard no longer troubled to disguise his intentions. He rounded up the last male claimant, Clarence’s son, the eight-year-old Earl of Warwick, and gave him into the keeping of his aunt, Anne Neville. Richard had stayed at his mother’s home, Baynard’s Castle, when he first arrived in London, but on the day Anne arrived they took up residence at Crosby Place, Bishopsgate, so it was here, in the city, that Anne stayed with Warwick. Her own child, Edward, was still at Middleham. The removal from Baynard’s Castle was politic, for the Duchess was in town for the coronation, and Richard’s next step was to accuse her in public of adultery. On Sunday 22 June, the day set for Edward V’s anointing as king, Dr Ralph Shaa, the brother of the mayor of London, preached a sermon at St Paul’s entitled ‘Bastard Slips Shall Never Take Deep Root’. He declared that Edward IV and the Duke of Clarence had been illegitimate, that Edward had therefore never been qualified to rule and that the only true heir to the
house of York was now Richard of Gloucester.

  Needless to say, the eighty-year-old Duchess of York, whose life was seen as a model of piety and who was well known for her strict religious observance, was less than delighted at her son’s preposterous conduct. Other sermons preached that day declared that the marriage of Elizabeth and Edward had been invalid, as Edward had agreed a precontract with one Lady Eleanor Butler (who was conveniently dead), and that therefore Edward V, his brother and all his sisters were illegitimate. On 24 June the Duke of Buckingham addressed prominent citizens at the Guildhall and confirmed the precontract accusation.

  The fact that no one believed these stories was by now immaterial. Richard had been very clever in choosing to resurrect the memory of Elizabeth’s marriage, even going so far as to have Lady Eleanor’s story mirror Elizabeth’s own. She was described as a young widow who had petitioned Edward IV for the restoration of her lands in 1461. In digging up the old scandal of the King and the widow, Richard spread doubt and confusion. The arrests of the thirteenth, and Hastings’ execution without trial, had also done their work. Finally, it appeared that Richard had soldiers everywhere. His troops were occupying the houses of his prisoners, parading at Westminster, and Simon Stallworth, one of the chancellor’s clerks, reported in a letter that a fearsome army of 20,000 was expected any day from the north. Richard’s manipulation of the public alarm was very sophisticated. Even before the northern forces arrived, people were afraid that soldiers could be hidden everywhere, so that ‘the possibility … was more fearsome than the fact’.5 On 25 June, the lords who were in London for the aborted coronation gathered at Westminster to hear Buckingham request a modestly hesitant Richard to take the crown. Meanwhile, at Pontefract Castle, Earl Rivers and Sir Richard Grey were beheaded. The next day, Richard III was proclaimed king.