Myn hert ys set and all myn hole entent
To serve this floure in my most humble wyse
As faithfully as can be thought or ment,
Wyth out feynyg or slouthe in my servyse.1
On 1 August 1485, Margaret’s son Henry and her brother-in-law Jasper Tudor set sail from the Norman port of Harfleur. Henry was 28, intelligent and shrewd, tall and slender with blue eyes and dark hair. Even though he was describing him in later years, when the king’s hair was white, Vergil stated that ‘his appearance was remarkably attractive and his face was cheerful, especially when speaking’. Furthermore, ‘his spirit was distinguished, wise and prudent, his mind was brave and resolute and never, even at moments of greatest danger, deserted him’.
This time, good weather allowed them to cross the Channel safely. Henry’s allies within the English court had warned him to stay away from the area around Southampton, where Richard’s loyal friend Lord Lovell was awaiting his appearance with an army, so he headed for the Welsh coast, landing at Dale near Milford Haven on 7 August. Margaret certainly knew of his plans and, given her involvement in the uprising of 1483, had probably been encouraging them despite the personal danger to herself. It seems very unlikely that Tudor would have risked a second invasion had he not been confident of some support in England, including that of his stepfather, Thomas Stanley. Stanley had already heard of a plot launched by Richard against Henry in 1484, and sent Margaret’s chaplain Christopher Urswick to join Bishop John Morton in Flanders, after which Urswick travelled to France to gain a safe passage for Henry to travel from Brittany into France and escape the danger.
The news reached Richard in Nottingham on 11 August. According to Vergil, he was relying chiefly upon the support of Walter Herbert in Wales, who was married to the Duke of Buckingham’s sister, and Rhys ap Thomas, a Welsh magnate who had been in communication with Henry in exile. They declined to engage with Tudor, but joined his forces instead. Another of Margaret’s servants was waiting to welcome Henry in Wales that August: his former master of the household under Stafford, Sir Reginald Bray, had continued in her service after her third marriage: now he had gathered an army and a large amount of money to pay ‘marines and soldiers’, perhaps the 2,000 mercenaries Tudor brought with him. In his entourage were a number of Lancastrians who had served him in exile, including John de Vere, son of the executed Earl of Oxford, Henry’s secretary Dr Richard Foxe and the residue of Buckingham’s rebellion. As they marched inland, they were joined by other Lancastrians, like Sir Gilbert Talbot, the son-in-law of Margaret’s niece Anne Paston, who had an additional 2,000 men. He was ‘joyfully’ received in Hereford, where his grandfather Owen had been beheaded in 1461. By 20 August, the invading army was 3,000 strong.2
Henry’s claim was not a particularly strong one, traced through his mother’s Beaufort descent, but by this time, with the deaths of so many Lancastrian sons in battle, he was the most plausible dynastic heir. In letters written to muster support, he described his ‘rightful claim, due and lineal inheritance of that crown’ and the ‘just quarrel’ he had with the Yorkists. However, he also presented his claim as essential for England, presenting Richard III as a ‘homicide and unnatural tyrant, which now unjustly bears dominion’ over the realm. Henry was on stronger ground if he could win the country by right of conquest. Richard was prepared for his coming, having anticipated it since the end of 1483 and, when the threat became real in the spring of 1485, had focused on raising funds and building up his navy. He mustered his troops at Nottingham and purchased suits of lightweight Milanese armour and guns. On 23 June, before Tudor even set sail, Richard had issued a proclamation that he had no right to the English throne and was illegitimate through both family lines. If that was not enough, Richard added that Henry was driven by ‘ambitious and insatiable covertise’, which explained why he ‘encroaches and usurps upon him the name and title of royal estate of this Realm’.3 By all criteria, Richard had the advantage over the invader, with more troops, greater experience, the crown and its resources in his possession and his ability to command loyalty simply by virtue that any opponent to his regime could suffer a traitor’s death. It looked as if he would be able to dispatch Tudor easily and return to the business of rule.
At some point in the next few days, Sir William Stanley, Thomas’ brother, met with Henry in secret. The brothers had raised around 8,000 men in Cheshire and Lancashire but at that point, although their interactions with Tudor were already treasonous, their ultimate intention may have been undecided. It was also significant that Richard had taken into custody Thomas’ son by his first marriage, George, as guarantee for his father’s loyalty, a move that must have been made in response to fears that Thomas’ allegiance would be torn between his king and his wife. On 20 or 21 August, the Stanley brothers met with Henry at Atherstone in Warwickshire, where he was camped within sight of Richard’s army. It is impossible to know exactly what was agreed there; whether or not the Stanleys pledged their support, or if contingency plans were made for the eventuality of Henry’s defeat. Polydore Vergil, who may have been writing around twenty years later, but under Henry’s guidance, described how Tudor and the Stanleys shook hands with ‘mutuall salutation’ and their ‘myndes wer movyd to great joy’. Although at least one television drama has also placed Margaret at the scene, it is unlikely that she ventured into the camp itself, with all the potential dangers to her person and reputation that could bring. However, she had not seen her son for fourteen years and, as far as she knew, he might have been killed in the upcoming battle, so such a reunion is not impossible.
The armies met on the morning of 22 August about a mile and a half from Ambion Hill, near the small Leicestershire town of Market Bosworth. When Tudor’s troops advanced, they were fired upon by the Yorkist cannons, forcing them to regroup on marshy ground. In the initial encounter, Oxford counselled his men to remain together in one mass, instead of dividing them into the traditional three-part attack, the better to face Richard’s superior numbers. It proved to be a good decision, for by concentrating their efforts they were able to defeat the troops led by the Duke of Norfolk. Seeing this, Richard attempted to summon the waiting forces of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, but for some reason Northumberland did not engage. It has been suggested by some historians that the terrain made it impossible to do so, but others have believed the earl held back in order to favour Henry Tudor, recalling that his own father had been a loyal Lancastrian, killed by Yorkists at the battle of Towton. In addition, Percy was now married to Maud Herbert, with whom Henry had been raised at Raglan, and who had once been intended as his bride. When Percy let him down, Richard turned to the Stanley brothers, who also hung back and did not commit their troops. The king’s response was a brave one. Determined to seize the moment himself, he led a brave charge against Henry as he stood in plain sight near the marshy ground, and he got close enough to kill his standard bearer. This was the point when William Stanley finally engaged, and went to Henry’s assistance. Richard’s forces were beaten back into the marsh and the king was killed. Against all the odds, the Lancastrians had won the day. The crown is said to have been found in a hawthorn bush by Sir Reginald Grey or by Stanley himself, who either handed it to Henry or crowned him with it. If Margaret’s long-awaited reunion with her son had not yet taken place, it would have done so fairly soon afterwards.
For Margaret, the moment must have been euphoric. Having borne Henry at such a young age, been separated from him for most of his life and lived in fear for his safety as well as her own, the almost unthinkable had happened. On a personal level, she could now rejoice that her son was to be king and that she would be guaranteed a position of influence at his court, while on a dynastic level, he had successfully restored the Lancastrian line, the connection of blood going back through Margaret herself, her father and her grandfather, all the way back to John of Gaunt and Edward III. It was a shame that Margaret’s namesake, the Lancastrian queen Margaret of Anjou, had not lived to see the family’s restoration, having died in 1482, but this did not stop Henry honouring her memory and that of her husband Henry VI and son Prince Edward, via the rather academic exercise of restoring their properties to them and reinstating their positions. Still, it was a mark of posthumous honour and reinforced Henry’s own links with the dynasty.
Henry VII went first to Leicester, where he arranged for the burial of the body of Richard III in the church of the Grey Friars. The former king’s body was displayed for two days, to prevent future reports of his survival, before being lowered into a grave in the church choir, where it would rest until its rediscovery in 2013 in a car park occupying the site, the priory having been demolished after its dissolution in 1538. Henry then left Leicester and marched to the symbolic location of St Albans, where the first battle of the Wars of the Roses had been fought before his birth, and stayed there overnight. On 27 August he made a triumphal entrance into London, riding in a closed chariot, and was met at Shoreditch by the mayor ‘and his brethren’ who were dressed in scarlet and other ‘worshipful’ citizens in violet. From there Henry went to St Paul’s, gave thanks for his victory and made offerings. These were accompanied by his three standards from the battle: the image of St George, a Welsh dragon against a backdrop of the Tudor colours of green and white, and a dun cow upon yellow, denoting the Warwick connection that came to him through the Beauchamp line.
From St Paul’s, Henry went to private lodgings nearby in the Bishop’s Palace. It is likely that Margaret joined him there, or else he saw her in October, when he travelled to Guildford, then on to her home with Stanley at Woking. Their reunion after such a long separation must have been cause for great celebration for them both: the 14-year-old boy who had fled England in fear of his life was now a man of 28. No doubt they had kept in touch by letter, although none of their correspondence from this period survives, but they still had to adjust to each other, and Margaret needed to get to know the man her son had become. From Woking, Henry gave orders for Coldharbour House to be repaired for her London residence, for ‘my lady the Kinges moder’, sections rebuilt and painted, windows reglazed and Margaret’s arms set on the building so that they were visible from the river. Margaret was also granted the wardships of Edward Stafford, the 5-year-old son of the Duke of Buckingham and Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, son of George, Duke of Clarence, who was then aged 10. Henry awarded her an annual income of £500 to cover the boys’ expenses and the ability to bestow certain gifts to her loyal servants, such as the presentation to Christopher Urswick of the church of All Hallows in the Great, which was ‘in the King’s gift by reason of the minority of Edward, Earl of Warwick’.4 Until recently, both had been living at the Yorkist stronghold of Sheriff Hutton, where another Yorkist exile, Elizabeth of York, had awaited the outcome of the battle. Rooms were prepared for both boys at Coldharbour. The coronation was planned for 30 October.
There was no guarantee, though, that the coronation would go ahead. Henry may have overthrown the Yorkist dynasty but there was a potentially more dangerous enemy in the city that he was powerless to defeat. A new disease had hit England. The random savagery of the plague was still part of cultural memory, but Londoners were stunned by the arrival of a completely unknown disease which seemed to strike hard and fast without warning. No one knows exactly how or why the dreaded sweating sickness arrived, but its concurrence with Tudor’s invasion was enough to suggest a divine cause in 1485; today it is thought to have been brought by Henry’s French mercenaries. Sixteenth-century chronicler Edward Hall describes these forces as comprising ‘a sort of vagabonds, rascals and runaways, a scum of Bretagnes, and base lackey peasants’, who sound scurvy enough to have been the source of the epidemic. The illness was first noted in the capital on 19 September, claiming the lives of thousands of citizens, including the mayor. Forestier, a contemporary writer who witnessed the outbreak at first-hand, believed that the distant causes were ‘the signs or the planets’, while a more immediate cause was
the stynkynge of the erthe as it is in many places … and this corrupteth the air, and so our bodies are infect of that corrupt air … specially where the air is changed into great heat and moistness, they induceth putrefaction of humours, and namely in the humours of the heart; and so cometh this pestilence, whose coming is unknown, as to them that die sodenley.5
Victims suffered sudden shivers, headaches and giddiness, followed by pains and exhaustion. There was a period of cold, followed by hot sweats, delirium and intense thirst. It did not always prove fatal and survivors might be unfortunate enough to suffer several bouts. By the end of October, though, the disease had claimed a couple of thousand lives.6
Prior to the coronation, Henry rewarded those who had been loyal to him: Jasper Tudor became Duke of Bedford; Thomas Stanley, the king’s ‘right entirely beloved fader’, was made Earl of Derby, promoting Margaret to Countess; grants were also given to her essential servants Christopher Urswick and Reginald Bray. Margaret was granted the right to arrange marriages for two of her kinsfolk: she put in motion the arrangements to wed her nephew Richard Pole, son of her half-sister Edith St John, to Margaret, Duchess of Clarence and arranged for her half-brother John Welles to be married to Cecily of York, making him Henry’s brother-in-law. From this point onwards, Margaret stopped signing her papers ‘M. Richmond’ and began to sign simply as ‘Margaret R.’, which echoed her son’s H.R., Henrici Rex. She also altered her personal seal to include the Tudor crown and the caption et mater Henrici septimi regis Anglie et Hibernie (And mother of Henry VII, King of England and Ireland). Thus Margaret cast off her old identity and stepped into a very different future; she had reached it by being pragmatic, by surviving against the odds, sitting out danger and never ceasing to hope.
From the start, Henry understood the significance of appearances and ceremony, symbols and pomp. On the afternoon of 30 October, he wore a gown of purple velvet, or purple tissue of gold, edged with miniver to walk into Westminster Abbey under a canopy held by four knights, at the head of a long procession. He also had a second outfit made for later, of crimson cloth of gold, designed to impress his majesty upon those assembled, some of whom might still be questioning the legality of his claim. The Abbey and Tower were draped in almost 500yd of fine scarlet and London’s streets were swept and cleaned. Among the other expenses for decorations were yards of white cloth of gold embroidered with the red rose of Lancaster, crimson velvet to make Welsh dragons and St George crosses, embroidered falcons, the arms of St Edward and the Welsh hero Cadwallader. Lord Stanley was close at hand, carrying the sword of state, and Jasper was steward at the banquet that followed. Henry was anointed by Cardinal Thomas Bourchier, a grandson of Eleanor de Bohun and Thomas, Earl of Gloucester.
The coronation was a bittersweet moment for Henry’s mother. Bishop Fisher later described Margaret’s intense emotion on the day: ‘when the kynge her son was crowned in alle that grete tryumphe and glorye, she wept mervaylously’, for even when she experienced great joy, life had taught Margaret to be wary: ‘she let not to saye, that some adversyte would follow.’ Only a week followed for celebrations, as Henry’s first Parliament met on 7 November. Some historians have questioned why Henry’s marriage did not immediately follow, given the pledge he had made at Rennes on Christmas Day 1483, but there was essential business to conduct, not only for the realm, but in order for the wedding ceremony to take place. Parliament had to approve the match and to repeal Titulus Regis, by which Elizabeth of York had been declared illegitimate, ordering that all copies should be destroyed. In addition, the close affiliation of the couple meant that a papal dispensation was required, although Henry was thorough enough to request two. It is also likely that he and Elizabeth had not previously met, or that they had done so briefly when she was just 4 or 5, and the intervening months of the winter of 1485 allowed them a chance to get to know each other. This was something of a luxury for monarchs, even at the best of times: Henry VI had married without having met Margaret of Anjou, but there were many precedents for matches of affection and personal choice within the dynasty, such as John of Gaunt and Katherine Swynford and Henry IV and Joan of Navarre, as well as genuine love within politically expedient matches such as Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster and Henry IV and Mary de Bohun. Nor was it insignificant that Elizabeth’s parents had defied the odds to marry for love. Perhaps Henry visited Elizabeth at Coldharbour House and wooed her as a courtesy in expectation of their mutually beneficial match. Perhaps he was making sure of his bride, given the unsavoury rumours that had circulated about her affections in the winter of 1484–85.
Richard III’s second and final Christmas as king had been an eventful one. The beautiful 18-year-old Elizabeth had already been at his court, under his protection, for a number of months, while her mother was under the care of Sir John Nesfield. Celebrations were held at Westminster, as recorded by the Croyland chronicler, who added that he was ‘grieved to speak’, that ‘far too much attention was given to dancing and gaiety’ and hinted at ‘things so distasteful, so numerous that they can hardly be reckoned’, though he declines to be more specific. This is unlike Robert Fabyan, who was actually in London at the time and in 1486 was auditor of the city’s accounts, later becoming sheriff and alderman. He described the events of that season as traditional enough, the ‘feast of the nativity kept with due solemnity’ and Epiphany celebrated with ‘remarkable splendour’, Richard appearing in the Great Hall wearing his crown. He does not mention what appears to have offended Croyland’s author: the fact that Elizabeth of York appeared in the same dress as Richard’s queen, Anne Neville. Given that costumes were often exchanged and fabrics and designs selected in order to compliment and match those of rank, the event might have been interpreted by modern sensibilities as less than the innocent act it may have been. This would not have been sufficient to cause doubt, had rumours not arisen at court.
Anne Neville fell ill in early 1485, possibly never having overcome the loss of her only child the previous spring. She died on 16 March and shortly afterwards Richard issued a declaration that he had no intention of marrying his niece Elizabeth. In fact, he was already organising a joint match for both of them with the royal family of Portugal. Why was Richard required to make this public statement? Either he was actually considering the rumoured marriage, the barriers to which could have been circumvented with a dispensation, or else this gossip had reached a certain level that the story had gained some credibility at court. There was no question that Elizabeth was attractive and had the advantage of being young and fertile. Richard was in his early thirties and now had no heir of his body; a simple remedy to this would have been to marry his niece and ensure the continuance of the dynasty. It may be that genuine affection had developed between them. Perhaps he was also responding to reports that Henry Tudor had pledged to wed her. Yet there must have been a good reason why he did not take this course of action and that is likely to have been the advice of his council, who recognised that it would not be a popular match. A surviving letter reputedly written by Elizabeth to the Duke of Norfolk, known as ‘Buck’s letter’ after the two related seventeenth-century antiquarians who discovered and ‘translated’ it, remains too full of holes, literally and metaphorically, to be helpful. In all likelihood, it expressed conventional emotions and refers to the impending Portuguese matches, rather than being the love letter described by some historians. That spring, Richard sent Elizabeth away to Sheriff Hutton, where she remained until after Bosworth and never saw her uncle again. Henry cannot have been unaware of these rumours. It is likely that he was taking his time to establish for certain exactly what had happened. A cynic might also suggest that he was waiting to be sure she was not pregnant.
Elizabeth was not pregnant. Not yet, anyhow. The truth of whatever affection she may have felt for her uncle went unrecorded and, over the coming months, Henry became convinced that she was a worthy wife for him. Their courtship may even have become physical. On 18 January, Henry VII married Elizabeth of York at Westminster. It was the marriage Margaret had hoped for back in 1483, and there is no indication that she was anything other than pleased at its culmination. The eldest daughter of Edward IV was just short of her nineteenth birthday and, as the eldest successor of his line, the match united the previously warring sides, though Henry had been very clear to establish that his claim was based on his own birth and his successful conquest. The Croyland chronicler appears to have overcome his disdain for Elizabeth’s actions at Christmas 1484, writing that in her ‘person it appeared that every requisite might be supplied, which was wanting to make good the title of king himself’ and that the marriage ‘from the first had been hoped for’. Within a couple of months, it became clear that Elizabeth was pregnant. There is a chance she may even have conceived before the wedding.
Henry had a very definite idea about where he wanted his first child to arrive, while Margaret made the necessary practical arrangements. Tudor was keen to capitalise on his Welsh descent and harness his new regime to the story of the legendary King Arthur. He had already used the red dragon symbol on his banners at Bosworth and now planned Elizabeth’s lying-in to take place in Winchester, one of the sites associated with Arthur’s court of Camelot. There was a long tradition of such legends in England, which had been gaining in popularity during the fifteenth century. The early twelfth-century chronicler William of Malmesbury had built on existing Welsh legends to suggest that Arthur’s return was imminent, which also appeared in the popular romances by Chrétien de Troyes. Geoffrey of Monmouth had located Arthur’s coronation at the Roman town of Silchester, 30 miles north of Winchester, but the latter location had been preferred by Edward I, who created a round table which was still in the great hall when Henry Tudor arrived there in the summer of 1486. Edward IV had also been interested in the legends, seeking to trace his descent through Arthur and back to Adam and Eve in a genealogy commissioned in 1470. In 1483, William Caxton had printed John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes, which predicted that Arthur would return ‘out of fayrye’, or out of the fairy realm, and among the printer’s titles for 1485 was Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, which located Camelot at Winchester. The time was right to harness the myth, with its emphasis on chivalry and a new chance for England, its optimism for the rebirth of a legendary king to unite the country and the union of a Red King and White Queen. Tudor chronicler Edward Hall stated that the name Arthur had a mythical potency for Englishmen, who ‘rejoiced’ to hear it, while foreign princes ‘trembled and quaked’ in fear. So Elizabeth was sent from Westminster to Winchester to deliver her first child.
Rooms were prepared for her at St Swithin’s Priory, rather than at Winchester Castle, which had seen better days. It was one of the richest monasteries in the land and the new prior, Thomas Silkested, turned over the Prior’s Lodgings, now the deanery, for the queen’s use. It was a luxurious, three-storey building with an arched portico, set within the Close walls. From that Easter, Margaret had been drawing up a series of ordinances to specify her daughter-in-law’s exact requirements, down to the last cushion, which would come to serve as a future standard for the arrival of royal heirs. Under Margaret’s direction, the chambers were sealed off and the walls, ceiling and windows were hung with heavy tapestries, chosen for their scenes of romance or chivalry, which would not startle the queen and imprint violence upon the unborn child. Just one window was left uncovered ‘so she may have light when it pleases her’. An immense bed measuring 8ft by 10ft was prepared, its crimson satin stuffed with wool and down, on which Elizabeth would labour. Margaret’s instructions specified exactly how the furnishings should be arranged, what should be embroidered upon them and what colour they should be: ‘two pairs of sheets … every one of them four yards broad and five yards long and square pillows of fustian stuffed with fine down; a scarlet counterpane, furred with ermine and embroidered with crimson velvet or rich cloth of gold’.
What Elizabeth thought of the joint efforts of her husband and mother-in-law has not been recorded. No doubt Margaret was an efficient organiser, but there is no evidence to support the suggestions that she overshadowed Elizabeth; it may well have been that, given her inexperience, the new queen was happy to let others make the necessary arrangements, knowing that she would be well cared for. It may even be that Margaret drew up her ordinances in conjunction with her daughter-in-law. She would have awaited the birth with Elizabeth at Winchester, possibly along with the queen’s mother, Elizabeth Wydeville, who may have brought her own favourite midwife Marjory Cobbe to assist. Once the queen’s formal withdrawal from society had taken place and the chamber doors were sealed, the birth room was a female-only zone. Elizabeth gave birth to a son on the night of 19–20 September 1486. It was exactly eight months after her wedding, so either the pair consummated their relationship before the ceremony or the boy was born a month early. He was named Arthur. The Tudor dynasty had its first heir. Margaret recorded his birth in her Book of Hours: ‘in the morning afore one o’clock after midnight’ on St Eustace’s day. Her husband, Lord Stanley, was one of the boy’s godparents at the formal christening in Winchester Cathedral on 24 September.
No sooner had it seemed Henry was secure, than a dangerous threat arose from surviving members of the house of York. John de la Pole was the nephew of Edward IV and Richard III, the eldest son of their sister Elizabeth, who had married the grandson of Geoffrey Chaucer. As a child in 1467, he had been made Earl of Lincoln and had been a strong supporter of his uncle Richard’s rule, being appointed by him as head of the Council in the North and the recipient of an annuity of £500. Part of this sum was drawn from the Duchy of Cornwall, which was traditionally awarded to the Prince of Wales. After the death of Richard’s son and heir in April 1484, Pole was considered a plausible successor to his estates and crown, although this was never formally clarified and was complicated by the existence of Richard’s illegitimate son, John of Pontefract. After Richard was killed at Bosworth, John had little choice but to accept the new regime and took a leading role at the christening of Prince Arthur, although he refused to swear an oath of allegiance. In March 1487, he fled to Burgundy, the home of his aunt, Richard’s sister Margaret, who was married to Charles the Bold. Margaret offered to support his attempt to invade England and displace Henry; she equipped him with troops, with which he set sail to Ireland. There, he met a 10-year-old boy by the name of Lambert Simnel, who had been schooled in aristocratic ways and was claiming to be his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, son of the Duke of Clarence. Simnel was crowned Edward VI in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin on 24 May and coins were issued bearing his image. Whether or not Lincoln believed his claim, he seized it as an ideal opportunity to reinstate the Yorkist dynasty.
When Henry heard of Lincoln’s flight, he had assumed that the earl would bring a Burgundian invasion force across the North Sea. He had ridden into Norfolk to patrol the coastline and to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham when news reached him in May that Lincoln had actually sailed around to Ireland. Now, Henry feared for his heir and sent Elizabeth to collect him from his nursery at Farnham in Surrey. Then, Henry hurried to Kenilworth Castle and summoned his mother and his ‘dearest wife’ to join him there. Early in June, he set out in person to meet the invasion force while Margaret and Elizabeth waited in the Lancastrian stronghold. The armies met at Stoke Field in Nottinghamshire on 16 June, the Lancastrian forces led by Henry, Jasper Tudor, Edward Wydeville and John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. After about three hours of fighting, Lincoln was dead and Simnel had been captured, while Richard III’s old friend Lord Lovell was missing, presumed dead. The last battle of the Wars of the Roses had been won by the Lancastrians. Only Lincoln’s brothers Edmund and Richard remained as the last of the white rose claimants; both thought it prudent to flee the country, but Edmund would be executed by Henry VIII in 1513 while Richard would die at the battle of Pavia in 1525. Lambert Simnel was pardoned and given a job in the royal kitchens, later being promoted to be Henry VIII’s falconer. Margaret, who was becoming something of the Tudor dynasty’s recorder, listed the event in her Book of Hours: ‘the xvith day of June, the year of our lord 1487, King Henry the VIIth had victory upon the rebels in battle of Stoke.’ The threat removed, arrangements could finally go ahead for the coronation of Elizabeth of York.
On 25 November 1487, Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England, almost two years after marrying its king. Two days before, Margaret had accompanied Elizabeth in travelling to London from Greenwich and had been met by the mayor and aldermen in splendidly decorated barges, one of which bore the image of a dragon breathing fire. She had been part of the procession when Elizabeth passed through the streets from the Tower to Westminster, her fair hair hanging loose and her person dressed in white cloth of gold of damask, decorated with gold lace and tassels, her train borne by her sister Cecily, who had recently become Margaret’s sister-in-law. Margaret rode in a litter, also of white cloth of gold and the streets were hung with ‘rich cloth of gold, velvet and silk’ or hung with coats of arms. Jasper Tudor rode alongside and behind; in one of the gold chariots was his new wife Catherine Wydeville, sister of the former queen and daughter of Jacquetta. Margaret sat at Elizabeth’s right hand in the Parliament Chamber but she and Henry watched the actual proceedings in Westminster Abbey from behind a screen. This allowed Elizabeth to be the focus of attention as their high status would have necessitated reverence being paid to them.
In some ways, Margaret was taking a slightly less hands-on role now that Henry had established himself as king. She retained Coldharbour House on the north bank of the Thames but, from 1487, her and Stanley’s main country home was the manor of Collyweston in Northamptonshire, an extensive estate with chapel, library, almshouse and garden, as well as the usual range of private apartments, public and service rooms. It was also a location for business, with a prison and council buildings located near the gates, in order for her councillors to hear the pleas brought by local people. Stanley was rewarded for his loyalty with the earldom of Derby, a regular place on the royal council and other advantages relating to his estates; his brother William became Henry’s Chancellor. Yet whilst dividing her time between court and country, Margaret still had an important role to play. Vergil claimed that Henry ‘allotted [her] a share in most of his public and private resources’. Thirteen years after Henry’s accession, the Spanish ambassador could confirm that ‘the king is much influenced by his mother’ but others, including the king’s biographer Francis Bacon, thought that Henry listened to his mother but was not unduly influenced. At court, there was also the question of precedence when it came to her and Elizabeth, which opens the further issue of what the relationship was like between the queen and her mother-in-law. It may be an anachronism to even consider the possibility that Elizabeth was oppressed by Margaret’s more dominant character, given the familiar mother-in-law meme of modern culture, but the evidence that this applied to Henry’s wife and mother is slender.
The evidence that Margaret and Elizabeth worked in unison far outweighs any suggestion of antagonism between them. After all, Margaret had wished the match to take place in 1483 and had overseen the actual courtship, probably inviting Elizabeth into her home, as well as the wedding, the birth of Arthur and the coronation. Margaret also maintained a suite of rooms for Elizabeth at Collyweston and they must have been together frequently, as their names were often conflated into the formula ‘the queen and my lady the king’s mother’. The two women also wore complimentary clothing to assert their connection, although this has never attracted the sort of negative responses that Elizabeth’s similar co-ordination with Anne Neville has done. Such gestures indicated respect and comparable rank. At the Twelfth Night festivities in January 1488, Margaret and Elizabeth appeared in ‘like mantle and surcoat’ and four months later, on St George’s Day, they wore matching red and miniver Garter robes for their shared inauguration at Windsor. They all remained there together for Whitsun, then went to Woodstock for the summer, before returning to Windsor, Westminster and Richmond in a year that typically shows how close the family were. It is perhaps the comment made by the Spanish ambassador that has set the tone for the interpretations of Margaret and Elizabeth’s relationship, but this may be misleading. He commented that the queen was ‘kept in subjection’ by her mother-in-law and that Elizabeth ‘did not like’ Margaret’s influence over Henry, but this was an observation made by an outsider who dismissed the family in generic terms, stating that the queen disliked her mother-in-law ‘as is generally the case’. Margaret may well have been controlling, even dominating at times, but she was also an indefatigable and highly competent organiser: exactly the sort of person needed to help the smooth running of things. There is no evidence of Elizabeth ever complaining.
Henry deliberately kept his mother and wife close. In 1487, when the nation was under threat from the invasion force of pretenders to the throne, he awaited them at Kenilworth, requiring that his wife and mother were both at his side. In June 1495, the king and queen embarked on progress into Lancashire, ‘there to recreate his spirites and solace himselfe with his mother the lady Margaret wyfe to the erle of Derby, which then lay at Lathome in that country’. Margaret was frequently present when Henry and Elizabeth travelled, especially on other summer royal progresses, including those of the following year, when they all travelled to the Beaufort estates in Dorset and in 1497, when they were all together at Norwich and 1498 at Cambridge. Margaret’s rooms were often closely connected with Henry’s, too. At Woodstock, her apartments were linked to his by a withdrawing chamber and in the Tower, her rooms adjoined his.
On 11 September 1490, Margaret’s own home of Woking Palace was the location for an important international treaty that determined the dynasty’s future. Shortly after Arthur’s birth, the possibility had arisen of a future match between him and a princess of Spain. The kingdoms of Aragon and Castile had been united in 1469 by the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose youngest daughter Catherine was nine months older than the Tudor prince. In March 1487, they had approached Henry and suggested a union, which was agreed in the Treaty of Medina del Campo two years later. Now, at Woking, Henry VII and ambassadors for the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I made a pact to unite against their common enemy in France, ratifying the arrangements already put in place to marry Prince Arthur to Catherine of Aragon. It was a moment of great significance for Margaret that such an event should have taken place in her home whilst she acted as hostess to the various dignitaries involved. She would also play a role in the later negotiations for her granddaughter and namesake to be wed to James IV of Scotland, although on that occasion she was protective of Princess Margaret, delaying the match until the girl had physically matured, so that she did not undergo the same early labour that Margaret herself had experienced. Shortly after the Scots marriage took place in 1503, Margaret gave up Woking for Henry to extend it into a royal residence and lived increasingly at her other properties of Latham, Hunsdon and Collyweston.
Margaret was clearly an affectionate mother during her absence from court, as all her surviving letters testify. In fact, it is only the correspondence between mother and son from after 1485 that survives, although its tone gives a sense of the letters that passed between them during Henry’s childhood and exile. In one such letter to Henry from Collyweston on 14 January 1501, Margaret wrote:
My own sweet and dear King and all my worldly joy
In as humble manner as I can think, I recommend me to your grace, and most heartily beseech our Lord to bless you. And, my good heart … I wish my very joy as oft I have shewed, and I fortune to get this, or any part thereof, there shall neither be that or any good I have but it shall be yours, and at your commandment, as surely as with as good a will as any ye have in your coffers ; and would God ye could know it, as verily as I think it … And our Lord give you as long good life, health and joy, as your most noble heart can desire, with as hearty blessings as oure Lord hath given me power to give you.7
In response, Henry referred to the ‘grete and singularly moderly love and affection’ he bore for Margaret. The King’s Mother’s ordinances were put to good use again with the arrival of more Tudor children: her eldest granddaughter arrived in November 1489 and was named Margaret in her honour, followed by Henry in 1491 and Mary in 1495; two or three other siblings did not survive. Prince Arthur was established in his own household at Ludlow Castle on the Welsh border while the others were raised at Eltham. Margaret took an interest in their education and was a frequent visitor to the palace nursery.
Margaret was a literary and religious patron of the printed word. Since the arrival of William Caxton’s printing press at Westminster in 1476, patronised by Edward IV and Anthony Wydeville, the printed word had been gaining momentum in England. Caxton had published editions of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, de la Tour Landry’s The Book of the Knight in the Tower, de Voragine’s The Golden Legend and Wydeville’s translation of The Sayings of the Philosophers. From the 1490s, Margaret sponsored a number of devotional and instructional texts and she and Elizabeth of York presented one of their ladies, Mary Roos, with a copy of Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and Mixed Life. In addition, she arranged for the printing and circulation of Latin liturgical texts, such as for the celebration of the feast of the Holy Name in 1493. She was the patron of at least three books printed by Wynkyn de Worde, the Nicodemus Gospel, a Life of St Ursula and the Parliament of Devils, and was also the owner of a Sarum Book of Hours and a series of prayers known as the Fifteen Oes, among other texts. Margaret also undertook the translation of texts for herself, rendering the fourth book of The Imitation of Christ into English in 1504 and the Mirroure of Gold and the Synfull Soule in 1506. She surrounded herself with sympathetic clergymen who were engaged in debates, interpretations and translations of religious questions and leading texts, as well as being employed by her in secular roles, creating an intellectual climate of scholarship among the servants of her household. There were also a significant number of university men. Historian Rebecca Krug argues that this community distanced itself from monastic values, while echoing their religious and intellectual activity, creating an elite community that Margaret was able to facilitate with her patronage, time and finances.8 She was also the founder of Christ’s College, Cambridge in 1506 and of the Lady Margaret Professorship of Divinity; and she left instructions in her will for the founding of St John’s College. It is not too difficult to see this in the context of the growth of the Renaissance in England, building a community in which her confessor, Bishop Fisher, Bishop Morton and his protégé Thomas More would play a key role, connected with leading European scholars, such as More’s correspondence with Erasmus. On a more light-hearted note, in December 1497, a payment was made by Henry of £3 6s 8d to a poet resident in Margaret’s household, ‘my lady the kings moder poet’, presumably for the composition of verses.
The royal accounts also show evidence of Margaret’s piety, for which she was granted the right to found chantries and for priests to say daily masses for her soul and those of her family, such as those celebrated in 1496 and 1497 at the Westminster shrine of St Edward, St George’s in Windsor and at Wimbourne in Dorset, where both her parents were buried. She also made the arrangements for the burial of her half-brother, John Welles, who died early in February 1498 and directed in his will that he should be laid wherever his sister and wife saw fit. Margaret buried him in the Lady Chapel at Westminster. Shortly afterwards, she stood as godmother to a new grandson, the third son born to Elizabeth of York, whom they named after Henry’s father, Edmund Tudor, and who was bestowed with her father’s title Duke of Somerset. Sadly, the little boy did not survive.
Margaret’s chaplain and confessor, John Fisher, later described her daily routine, in which she rose soon after five in the morning and began her day in prayer, first with her ladies then with her chaplain:
After that [she] daily heard four or five masses upon her knees, so continuing in her prayers and devotions until the hour of dinner which was … ten of the clock and upon a fasting day, eleven. After dinner full truly she would go her stations to three altars daily [and] daily her dirges and commendations she would say and her evensongs before supper, both of the day and of Our Lady, beside many other prayers and psalters.9
It may have been reasons of piety or health, or simple inclination, that led Margaret to make a dramatic personal statement in 1499. With Stanley’s permission she swore an oath of chastity before the Bishop of London and made her permanent home at Collyweston in Northamptonshire, while Stanley was based at Lathom. Her husband continued to visit her, but was assigned separate rooms. This raises a number of questions about the Stanleys’ marriage, but the public nature of the gesture could imply that it had not always been chaste, necessitating such a redefinition. Her husband’s agreement shows that this was probably a mutual agreement, arrived at after a stage of discussion and an acknowledgement that the personal aspect of the marriage was over. It may also have been a recognition that Margaret was no longer in need of the protection that Stanley had given her during the troubled period before Henry’s accession: now her son was king and she was the most powerful woman in the land, after the queen.
Those related to Margaret also found her to be a powerful advocate on their behalf. At some point between 1497 and 1503, the king’s mother intervened in a land dispute to assist her cousins in the Paston family. Sir John Paston was the nephew of her niece Anne Beaufort, and Margaret wrote to him regarding the inheritance of Anne’s heirs, which John retained:
there was a full agreement made and concluded, and also put in writing, between our trusty and right welbeloved Sir John Savile, knight, and Gilbert Talbot, esquire, on th’one partie and yow on the other, for divers lands which they ought to have in the right of their wives, daughters and heyers to William Paston, esquire, their late fader deceased, which lands ye by mighty power kepe and witholde from them without any just title, as they afferme.
She asked him to remedy the situation without delay. John appears to have acted on her request, as she wrote again to him two months later, enclosing a bill for him to convene so the parties concerned would have ‘no cause reasounable to pursue further unto us in that behalve’.10
Margaret was also interested in medical matters, particularly when it came to preventing and curing the plague. This may have been because the illness claimed the life of her second husband, Edmund Tudor, though death and sickness had been a constant theme throughout her life, with the outbreak of the Sweat providing the latest example. Bishop Fisher later recalled her horror of the plague, which still broke out sporadically in London and the sea ports, and that horror was not hers alone. The plague is something of a thread uniting the lives of the Lancastrian women; from the dreadful outbreaks in the 1360s through to Edmund’s death, it claimed the lives of rich and poor alike, a terrifying reminder of the indiscriminate nature of fate and the fragility of life. It had clearly been on Margaret’s mind for years. By 1500, she had acquired a manuscript collection decorated with the Beaufort arms, which contained information on diets, medicines, prayers and chants to saints Anthony and Sebastian, who were traditionally considered to intercede in cases of illness. She may also have been prompted to obtain it by the increasing age of herself and her husband: Stanley was around eight years her elder and turned 65 in 1500, and may have been experiencing ill health before his death four years later.
Other figures from Margaret’s past had also been lost in the final years of the fifteenth century. On 8 June 1492, the dowager Yorkist queen Elizabeth Wydeville passed away at Bermondsey Abbey. After having attended her daughter during the birth of Arthur, and been his godmother, she had retired to the abbey with a scaled down household and expenses, choosing to end her days in quiet contemplation. It has been suggested that this was some form of punishment meted out to Elizabeth by Henry, perhaps for negotiating with Richard III in 1484 or supporting Simnel in 1487, but there is no evidence for this. Henry continued to refer to her in affectionate terms as his ‘dear mother-in-law’ and even considered arranging a marriage for her to James III of Scotland in 1489, which assumes a relationship of trust between them. Additionally, in 1490, Henry increased her allowance to £400 a year, which was not inconsiderable given that she was not maintaining a household or any degree of finery. Elizabeth was 50 and her life had been turbulent and marred by loss. Just as Margaret Beaufort and Cecily Neville lived the pure lives of vowesses, Elizabeth retired into peace and quiet, perhaps already suffering from illness. She died in June 1492. Her will suggests her humble state of mind, requesting that no pomp or ceremony accompany her burial and that whatever small goods she left behind should be used in the payment of her debts. This is quite in keeping with the choice to enter a holy establishment, and her son-in-law respected her wishes, laying her to rest alongside Edward IV in St George’s Chapel, Windsor.
Three years later, treason and tragedy struck at the heart of Margaret’s family. After the failed efforts of the Earl of Lincoln and Lambert Simnel, a more serious pretender to the throne had emerged. Perkin Warbeck claimed to be Richard of York, the younger of the two Princes in the Tower, although it is more likely that he was the son of a couple from Tournai who had received an education in Antwerp before being apprenticed to a silk merchant, who took him to Ireland. The young man’s good looks and regal manner proved convincing to many of his contemporaries, and later historians have suggested he may have been an illegitimate son of Edward IV, conceived during his exile of 1470–71. Just as Lincoln had done, Warbeck sought the support of Mary of Burgundy, who may have schooled him in the history and ways of the Yorkist court, as well as providing him with funds to invade. Warbeck’s attempt to land in Dover in 1495 failed when he was repelled by locals, forcing him to flee up to Scotland. However, rumours had reached Henry that Margaret’s brother-in-law, William Stanley, was feeling ambiguous towards the rebels. Vergil reported that Stanley had stated that if Warbeck proved to be the true son of Edward IV, ‘he would never take up arms against him’, which was tantamount to treason. He may have sent Sir Robert Clifford to make contact with Warbeck as early as 1493, taking the initiative to discover exactly who the young man was. William was arrested in 1495 and, despite stressing the conditional nature of his support, he was executed in February. Warbeck was eventually arrested and, after a period of imprisonment, died a traitor’s death in 1499.
The year 1495 also witnessed the death of Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, whose fortunes had gone full circle and ended up in a far less fortunate place than Margaret. A daughter of the Lancastrian dynasty, Cecily had come to be the mother of their greatest rivals, the Yorkists, and seen two of her sons crowned king. Having lost them both, she had spent the last ten years in retirement, living like a vowess at Berkhamsted Castle in Hertfordshire, but had witnessed the rise of her granddaughter Elizabeth to become England’s queen. In her will, dictated at Berkhamsted on 4 April, she left a bequest to Henry VII of two gold cups and any customs money owing to her, while Elizabeth received a small diamond cross, a psalter covered in green cloth of gold with silver clasps and a pyx, a reliquary containing the flesh of St Christopher. To her great-grandson Arthur, she left an arras hanging for a bed, and a tester and counterpane embroidered with the motif of a wheel of fortune; to his brother Henry, she left three wall hangings depicting biblical scenes. Margaret was also a beneficiary of her will, receiving a service book covered with black cloth of gold with gold clasps. Cecily died at the end of May and was buried alongside her husband the Duke of York at Fotheringhay church.
Another disaster followed in 1497, which could have had far more serious implications for the dynasty. Margaret and her family had been celebrating Christmas at Richmond Palace on the Thames when a fire broke out overnight. According to an eyewitness account, it began about nine o’clock at night, on the feast day of St Thomas, 29 December: ‘a great fire within the King’s lodging and so continued until twelve of the night and more … a great part of the old building was burned and much harm done in hangings, as in rich beds, curtains and other appertaining to such a noble court’. The Venetian ambassador believed that the fire had started when a beam in the queen’s apartments caught fire, presumably from a taper on the wall below. Although there have been suggestions it was deliberately started by Perkin Warbeck, who was a prisoner in the palace at the time, this location seems to suggest it was accidental, and the ambassador noted that it was ‘not due to malice’. Margaret, Henry, Elizabeth and their children escaped unharmed and the king saw it as an opportunity to rebuild Richmond into a splendid Renaissance palace in the Burgundian style. Out of the disaster came something magnificent: the old manor was transformed into a fantasia of three storeys with pepper pot domes and oriel windows, a chapel decorated with roses and portcullises, sophisticated plumbing, a great hall of carved statues and a library full of illuminated manuscripts. One contemporary visitor described ‘wyndowes full lightsome and commodious’, courtyards paved with ‘marbill in whose mydill there is a conducte [fountain]’, galleries ‘pavyed, glasid and poyntid, besett with bagges of gold’ as well as ‘pleasaunt dauncyng chambers … most richely enhanged’. There were orchards, vines and gardens encircled by a two-storey walkway overlooking topiary mythical beasts: ‘lyons, dragons and such other diver kynde … properly fachyoned and carved’. The new palace was a fitting location to play host to an important national event.
The marriage of Catherine of Aragon and Prince Arthur finally took place in 1501. After years of treaties and discussion, Catherine’s ship limped into Portsmouth harbour after a terrible storm on 16 October and was given a warm impromptu welcome by the locals. She and Arthur met at Dogmersfield in Hampshire after an impatient Henry rode down from London and insisted upon the meeting against the usual protocol. The young pair conversed a little in Latin, assisted by bishops as their pronunciation likely differed, and Catherine summoned her minstrels and watched Arthur dance. She was given a splendid welcome to London, where pageants and decorations had been assembled in the streets, overlooked by giant figures of St Katherine and St Ursula, featuring the imagery of the Tudor dynasty: Arthur’s three ostrich feathers as Prince of Wales, Lancastrian red roses and the Beaufort portcullis. There were suns and moons, virgins and saints, heraldic beasts and mythical creatures, while the fountains ran with wine and musicians played and sang. It was probably on this procession that Margaret first saw the girl who was to marry both her grandsons, watching her pass by from a house hired in Cheapside at 13s 4d from a merchant called Whiting, probably the same location from which she had watched Elizabeth back in 1487. Perhaps Margaret agreed with Thomas More when he observed that by English standards of beauty, the Spanish princess ‘possessed all the qualities that make for beauty in a very charming young girl’, even if her foreign clothing drew some criticism. Catherine was conducted to lodgings in the Bishop’s Palace and later visited Baynard’s Castle, where she was introduced to Elizabeth of York. Margaret acted as hostess to members of the Spanish delegation at Coldharbour House, just along the river.
Aged 15 and 16, Catherine and Arthur were married in Westminster Abbey on Sunday 14 November. Margaret sat behind a screen with Henry and Elizabeth to watch them process along a specially built platform covered in red worsted that extended the entire length of the cathedral, culminating in a round stage. Arthur was wearing a suit of white velvet and gold, matching that of his younger brother Henry, Duke of York, who was to give the bride away, while Catherine was dressed in a white silk dress and farthingale, with a silk veil to her waist embroidered with pearls, gold and precious stones. The wedding feast was held in the Bishop’s Palace, followed by disguisings and interludes, before the bride and groom were formally put to bed back at Baynard’s Castle. Further celebrations stretched on until the end of the month, the Spanish entertained at Henry’s splendid new palace at Richmond until their departure on 29 November. Catherine and Arthur remained at the English court for a further month before departing to their own establishment at Ludlow.
The spring had barely arrived the following year when bad news reached London. The prince and princess had both been taken ill, perhaps with some form of the sweating sickness that had broken out in the area. While Catherine recovered, the illness may have exacerbated an existing condition in Arthur, or else simply coincided with it, as the young prince died on 2 April 1502. His parents were devastated and the news can only have exaggerated Margaret’s existing fears of pestilence and belief in the inevitability of misfortune. Elizabeth had borne another son in February 1499, named Edmund, but he had died of unknown causes at the age of 16 months. For a brief period, Henry had enjoyed the security of having three sons but these losses focused all the dynastic imperative upon the shoulders of young Henry, Duke of York, who was only 10 when news of Arthur’s death arrived and made him heir to the throne. It was these events and this vulnerability which led Henry and Elizabeth to conceive another child for by the summer of 1502 the queen was pregnant again for the seventh time.
There was also a new royal marriage to be arranged, in which Margaret had played a key role. On 25 January 1503, the proxy wedding of James IV of Scotland and Princess Margaret took place in the queen’s great chamber at Richmond Palace. The Earl of Bothwell represented the Scottish king, dressed in cloth of gold, standing beside the diminutive 13 year old, which must have brought back memories for her grandmother of her own marriage at the same age. Margaret had requested that the princess not be sent to Scotland at once, as she did not trust the King of Scots to wait to consummate the match – he was then almost 30 and had a number of illegitimate offspring. A feast followed the ceremony, with jousts, pageantry and dancing, and items were prepared for Margaret’s anticipated departure, including a pair of crimson state bed curtains embroidered with Lancastrian roses. The match would be celebrated in verse by the Scottish poet William Dunbar, using the iconography of the thistle and the rose.
The surviving accounts of Elizabeth’s household from February 1502 to March 1503 give a flavour of life at the court at which Margaret and Stanley would have been frequent visitors. Piety is a regular feature, defined by the calendar year but also by specific, personal acts of charity; these include payments to old servants, those seeking alms and offerings on saints’ days, alms to a hermit and to a poor man for guiding the queen. Elizabeth rewarded those who brought gifts to her various palaces, largely local items, often homemade, to supplement the royal diet: she was given carp, almond butter and game, cushions, rabbits and quails; a poor man brought her apples and oranges, a poor woman brought chickens, a servant brought pears, an abbess sent rose water, a servant of the Archbishop of Canterbury brought cheese, the wife of William Greenweye brought peasecods. Elizabeth looked after her servants, paying 20s for the upkeep of the queen’s fool while he was ill and 6d for a pair of shoes for him, and gave money for the care and keep of the queen’s woman Anne Saye during a period of sickness. Edmund Burton was given 6s 8d for keeping the little garden at Windsor and 4s 8d was paid to two men for building a little arbour there; 5s was paid to grooms and pages for making bonfires on the eves of St John the Baptist and St Peter; 5s 8d was paid to a servant of the Mayor of London for bringing chairs for the queen; and a London tailor was rewarded for covering chairs in crimson cloth, crimson satin, blue cloth of gold, purple velvet and cushions of cloth of gold.
Elizabeth’s wardrobe accounts, her costumes overlapping with Margaret’s on occasion, indicate the kind of splendour that Henry’s family enjoyed: she purchased gold Venice lace, Venice silk and gold damask for making lace and buttons at 50s, yards of black tinsel satin to edge a black velvet gown, yards of green satin, crimson satin and 4yd of russet and tawny green sarcenet; 56s 8d was paid to a coppersmith for silver and gold spangles in the shapes of stars, squares and points to be sewn on to jackets for a disguising and 13s 4d to the royal embroiderer; at the other end of the scale, 12d was paid for a night bonnet. The accounts expose some of the business of court life, which would have been familiar to Margaret; there were preparations for a visit to Richmond of the Hungarian ambassadors, the hiring of boats and rowing of possessions and people up and down the Thames, payments for ropes and repairs to the royal barges and rowers required to collect certain items that were needed from other residences. The prosaic aspects of daily life appear too, with the expenses for ‘hir hors meat’ of the queen’s laundress Agnes, strings bought for the lute of Margaret’s eldest granddaughter and 5s 4d for four rolls of white wax and the same again for ten rolls of yellow wax.
One particular payment stands out in the accounts: 6s 4d was paid in December to a monk who brought the girdle of Our Lady from Westminster to the queen. This was a relic commonly used by women in childbirth as the focal point of prayer, and serves as a reminder that by the Christmas of 1502, Elizabeth was in her final trimester of pregnancy. She planned to lie in at Richmond but her labour pains began at the end of January, while she was staying at the Tower. Perhaps Elizabeth miscalculated or the baby was premature, but something was clearly wrong when she delivered a daughter on 3 February. The child was named Katherine but she and her mother both died, Elizabeth on 11 February. The gap of eight days between delivery and death suggests that the cause of the queen’s death was puerperal fever as some postpartum infection set in, although the delivery may have proved difficult and caused injury. Margaret responded to the death in the way she knew best: by organising and remaining busy. She drew up a series of mourning ordinances, describing in detail the correct protocol and clothing for all those involved, including the size and shape of hoods worn and the length of trains. Elizabeth was buried in Westminster Abbey, her coffin draped in black and white, topped by a gold cross and a life-like wax effigy of the queen in robes of state, which survives in the museum at the abbey today. From that point onwards, with the disbanding of the queen’s household, Margaret became the principal lady of the land, the most senior and authoritative feminine face of English royalty.
And Margaret was soon to suffer more personal losses of her own. In December 1503, her stepson, Stanley’s heir George, Lord Strange, died in unusual circumstances after a banquet at Derby House on the Strand. He had gone from being the hostage for his father’s loyalty at Bosworth to a father of seven children and died as the result of what was considered to be food poisoning. He was in his early forties when he was laid to rest in the nearby church of St James Garlickhythe. Perhaps George’s premature death hastened that of his father. Stanley was at Lathom when he died on 20 July 1504, at the age of 69. He was laid to rest in the Stanley family chapel at Burscough Priory in Lancashire. Over the remaining five years of her widowhood, Margaret continued her pious works, her patronage and charity, taking a place at her son’s side, each supporting the other in their solitude and overseeing the education of the children in the royal nursery.
1 Ridley.
2 Ridley.
3 de Lisle.
4 CPR, March 1487.
5 Creighton.
6 Ibid.
7 Norton.
8 Krug.
9 Hymers.
10 Norton.