Elizabeth of York | |
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A portrait of Elizabeth is thought to be the basis for the queen's picture found in a deck of cards[citation needed]. | |
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Tenure | 18 January 1486 – 11 February 1503 |
Coronation | 25 November 1487 |
Spouse | Henry VII of England |
Issue | |
Arthur, Prince of Wales Margaret, Queen of Scots Henry VIII of England Elizabeth Tudor Mary, Queen of France Edmund, Duke of Somerset Edward Tudor Katherine Tudor |
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House | House of York (by birth) House of Tudor (by marriage) |
Father | Edward IV of England |
Mother | Elizabeth Woodville |
Born | Westminster Palace |
11 February 1466
Died | 11 February 1503 Richmond Palace |
(aged 37)
Burial | Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey |
Elizabeth of York (11 February 1466 – 11 February 1503) was Queen consort of England as spouse of King Henry VII from 1486 until 1503, and mother of King Henry VIII of England.
Elizabeth of York is the only English queen to have been a daughter (of Edward IV), sister (of Edward V), niece (of Richard III), wife (of Henry VII), mother (of Henry VIII) and grandmother (on the paternal side of Mary I, Elizabeth I and Edward VI) of English monarchs.
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Daughter of the king
She was born at Westminster, the eldest child of King Edward IV and his Queen consort, Elizabeth Woodville, the former Lady Grey.
Her christening was celebrated at Westminster Abbey, her sponsors being her grandmothers Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford. Her third sponsor was her cousin, Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick.
She was named a Lady of the Garter in 1477, along with her mother and her paternal aunt Elizabeth of York, Duchess of Suffolk.
In 1469, she was briefly betrothed to George Neville, son of John Neville, Earl of Northumberland, who initially supported Edward IV against his brother Warwick's rebellion. The Earl of Northumberland switched sides, however, and the betrothal was called off. In 1475, Louis XI agreed to let her marry his son, Charles, the Dauphin of France, but Louis reneged on the promise in 1482.
Sister of the king
In 1483, Edward IV died and Elizabeth's younger brother, Edward V, became King. Her uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was appointed regent and protector of his nephews.
Shortly after his brother's death, Richard began taking steps to isolate his nephews from their Woodville relations. He intercepted Edward V on his way from Ludlow (where he was living as Prince of Wales) to London to be crowned. Edward was placed in the royal residence of the Tower of London, ostensibly for his protection. Elizabeth Woodville fled with her younger son, Richard, and her daughters into sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. Gloucester requested Richard go to the Tower to keep his brother company and Elizabeth agreed.
Two months later, on 22 June 1483, Edward IV's marriage was declared invalid (Edward, it was claimed, had at the time of his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville already been betrothed to Lady Eleanor Butler); this made the children of the marriage bastards and ineligible for the succession. Parliament issued a bill, Titulus Regius ("The Title of the King"), in support of this position: it legally bastardised the children of Edward IV, and declared Richard the rightful king. Richard then ascended the throne as Richard III on 6 July 1483, and Edward V and his brother disappeared shortly afterwards. Soon rumours began to spread that they had been murdered.
Niece of the king
Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth Woodville, made an alliance with Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor, who was the closest to Royalty the Lancastrian party possessed. Although Henry was descended from King Edward III,[1] his claim to the throne was weak, due to the clause barring ascension to the throne by any heirs of the legitimized offspring of his great-great-grandparents, John of Gaunt (3rd son of King Edward III) and Katherine Swynford. Despite this, his mother and Elizabeth Woodville agreed Henry should move to claim the throne, and once he had taken it, he would marry Woodville's daughter, Elizabeth of York, uniting the two rival Houses. In December 1483, in the cathedral in Rennes, Henry swore an oath promising to marry her, and began planning an invasion.
Meanwhile, Richard III made plans to marry her to an unimportant naval officer, a son of Robert Stillington. However, he was captured by the French along the coast of Normandy and imprisoned in Paris, where he died "of hunger and poverty".
In 1484, Elizabeth and her family left Westminster Abbey and returned to Richard's court. It was rumoured that Richard III intended to marry her: his wife, Anne Neville, was dying and they had no surviving children. Richard denied this and the Crowland Chronicle claims he was forced to do so by enemies of the Woodvilles, who dreaded the family's return to royal favour. There is no conclusive evidence of Richard's intention to marry Elizabeth (which would have been subject to the Pope granting dispensations for such marriages), although Sir George Buck later stated to have uncovered a now lost letter from Elizabeth which indicated she was involved and willing. In fact, very soon after Queen Anne's death, Richard opened negotiations with John II of Portugal for a double marriage alliance, by which he would have married the king's sister, Joanna, and Elizabeth their cousin, the future Manuel I.[2]
However, on 7 August 1485, Henry and his army landed in Wales and began marching land-inwards. On 22 August 1485, Henry and Richard fought the Battle of Bosworth Field. Richard, despite having the larger army, was betrayed by some of his most powerful retainers and died in battle. Henry took the crown by right of conquest as Henry VII.
Wife of the king
Henry acknowledged the necessity of marrying Elizabeth to secure the stability of his rule and weaken the claims of other surviving members of the House of York, but he insisted on being king due to a tenuous claim of inheritance from John of Gaunt, ruling in his own right, and not by his marriage to the heir of the House of York, and had no intention of sharing power.[3] Consequently, he chose to be crowned on 30 October 1485, before his marriage.
Henry had the Titulus Regius repealed, thereby re-legitimising the children of Edward IV and acknowledged Edward V as his predecessor, since he did not want the legitimacy of his wife or her claim as heiress of Edward IV called into question. After a Papal dispensation was procured, Henry and Elizabeth married on 18 January 1486. Their first son, Arthur, was born on 20 September 1486. Henry had Elizabeth crowned queen consort on 25 November 1487.
The marriage proved successful and both partners appear to have cared for each other.[4] As queen, Elizabeth did not exercise much political influence, due to her strong-minded mother-in-law Lady Margaret Beaufort, but she was reported to be gentle and kind, and generous to her relations, servants and benefactors. Elizabeth enjoyed music and dancing, as well as dicing. She kept greyhounds, and she may have enjoyed hunting and archery.[5]
On 14 November 1501, Elizabeth's eldest son, Arthur (aged 15), married Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, and the pair were sent to Ludlow Castle, traditional residence of the Prince of Wales. Five months later, Arthur died in April 1502. The news of Arthur's death caused Henry VII to break down in grief; Elizabeth comforted him, telling him that he was the only child of his mother (to whom she refers as My Lady), that God had left him with a son and two daughters and that they were both young enough to have more children.[7]
Following Arthur's death, Elizabeth became pregnant once more. On 2 February 1503, she gave birth to a girl named Katherine, but the child died a few days afterwards. Succumbing to a post-partum infection, Elizabeth died on 11 February, her 37th birthday. Her husband appeared to sincerely mourn her death: according to one account, he "privily departed to a solitary place and would no man should resort unto him". Despite his reputation for thrift, he gave her a splendid funeral: she lay in state in the Tower and was buried in Westminster Abbey, in the Lady Chapel Henry had built. He later entertained thoughts of remarriage in order to renew the alliance with Spain - Joan, Dowager Queen of Naples (niece of Ferdinand II of Aragon), Joanna, Queen of Castile (daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella), and Margaret, Dowager Duchess of Savoy (sister-in-law of Joanna of Castile) were all considered - but Henry died a widower in 1509. He was buried with Elizabeth; they can be found today, under their effigies in his chapel.
Legacy
In the children's nursery rhyme, "Sing a Song of Sixpence" Elizabeth is reportedly the queen in the parlour, while her husband is the king counting his money.
Issue
Elizabeth was a renowned beauty, inheriting her parents' fair hair and complexion. Elizabeth and Henry VII had seven children:[8]
- Arthur, Prince of Wales (20 September 1486 – 2 April 1502)
- Margaret, Queen consort of Scotland (28 November 1489 – 18 October 1541)
- Henry VIII of England (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547)
- Elizabeth Tudor (2 July 1492 – 14 September 1495)
- Mary, Queen consort of France (18 March 1496 – 25 June 1533)
- Edmund, Duke of Somerset (21 February 1499 – 19 June 1500)
- Katherine Tudor (2 February 1503 – 10 February 1503)
Ancestry
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Elizabeth of York in popular culture
Biography:
- Elizabeth of York by Arlene Naylor Okerlund. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
- Elizabeth of York: Tudor Queen by Nancy Lenz Harvey (out of print) [1].
- Elizabeth of York by Alison Weir. Jonathan Cape and Ballantine, 2013.
Television & Film:
- Elizabeth was portrayed by Norma West in the 1972 BBC mini-series The Shadow of the Tower.
- Elizabeth was portrayed by Kate Steavenson-Payne in the film adaption Richard III.
- Welsh actress Caroline Sheen made a cameo as Queen Elizabeth in the docu drama Henry VIII: The Mind of a Tyrant in the first episode covering the future monarch's early youth.
Fiction:
- Elizabeth is the subject of Hilda Brookman Stanier's novel Plantagenet Princess, pub. Robert Hale, 1981
- Elizabeth appears in three of Philippa Gregory's historical novels: briefly in The Constant Princess (2005), around the time of her son Arthur's marriage and death, but far more prominently in the account of her mother's life, The White Queen (2009), which features her from the time of her birth to the age of 18. She appears as a supporting character in The Red Queen, the sequel to The White Queen. In these novels, it is suggested that Elizabeth was indeed deeply in love with her uncle Richard and hoped to marry him rather than Henry Tudor. Gregory has since revealed that the fifth book in the Plantagenet series will be centered on Elizabeths life.
- Elizabeth also appears in "The Tudor Rose" by Margaret Campbell Barnes (1953, reissued 2009), in "The Dragon and the Rose" by Roberta Gellis (1977) and "The King's Daughter" by Sandra Worth, "Uneasy Lies the Head" ("To Hold the Crown : The Story of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York) by Jean Plaidy and "The King's Grace" by Anne Easter Smith.
- Elizabeth appears in Sharon Penman's first novel, The Sunne in Splendour, and is portrayed as having loved her uncle.
- Elizabeth appears in Anne Powers's novel "Queen's Ransom", in 3 out of 4 sections. This book tells the POV of each queen during the War of the Roses, so Elizabeth appears in her mother Elizabeth Woodville and her aunt Anne of Warwick's sections as well as her own.
Notes
- ^ Genealogical Tables in Morgan, (1988), p.709
- ^ Barrie Williams, "The Portuguese Connection and the Significance of the 'Holy Princess'", The Ricardian, Vol. 6, No. 90, March 1983.
- ^ Blackstone, W. (1765). Commentaries on the Laws of England. Oxford: Clarendon Press
- ^ Okerlund (2009), p. 99-118, 185/6, 203/4; Williams (1977), p. 143.
- ^ Nairne Routh, Charles Richard;, Holmes, Peter (1990). Who's who in Tudor England. Shepheard-Walwyn. ISBN 0-85683-093-3. http://books.google.com/?id=MltmAAAAMAAJ&q=Elizabeth+of+York+gentle+kind+generous&dq=Elizabeth+of+York+gentle+kind+generous. Retrieved 2009-07-25.
- ^ Maclagan, Michael; Louda, Jiří (1999). Line of Succession: Heraldry of the Royal Families of Europe. London: Little, Brown & Co. pp. 22. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/0-85605-469-1|0-85605-469-1]].
- ^ Agnes Strickland, Elizabeth Strickland: Lives of the Queens of England (1852)
- ^ thePeerage.com - Person Page 10142
Sources
- Morgan, Kenneth O., (1988), The Oxford History of Britain, Oxford University Press. (ISBN 0-19-285202-7)
- Williams, Neville, (1977), 'Henry VII', in Fraser, Antonia (ed), The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, Futura. (ISBN 0-8600-7449-8)
External links
Elizabeth of York
Cadet branch of the House of Plantagenet
Born: 11 February 1466 Died: 11 February 1503 |
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English royalty | ||
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Vacant
Title last held by
Anne Neville |
Queen consort of England Lady of Ireland 18 January 1486 – 11 February 1503 |
Vacant
Title next held by
Catherine of Aragon |