Part 2 (1/2)

Elizabeth handed the A to the little ”Princess of the Feast,” who bestowed it upon Thomas Fiennes, who had won first prize. The others went to Sir William Truswell and William Say, to the delight of the n.o.ble company.61 Darker deeds were brewing. Less than a month after the wedding festivities, on February 8, 1478, Clarence was condemned in Parliament. The Act of Attainder pa.s.sed against him stated that he had ”falsely and traitorously intended and purposed firmly the extreme destruction and disinheriting of the King and his issue.” It accused him of spreading ”the falsest and most unnatural-colored pretense that man might imagine.” He had ”falsely and untruly noised, published, and said that the King our sovereign lord was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and not begotten to reign upon us.”62 The King himself sat in judgment on his brother, but the Queen-in the deaths of whose father and brother Clarence had been complicit-was thought to have brought pressure to bear, as she had ”concluded that her offspring by the King would never come to the throne unless the Duke of Clarence were removed, and of this she easily persuaded the King.”63 This Parliament included an influential Wydeville presence-Earl Rivers was one of the four ”triers”-which was ”easily the most powerful faction.”64 Clarence's attainder deprived him of his life, t.i.tles, and estates, and the rights of himself and his heirs to the succession. On the face of it, he was condemned for crimes for which he had already been pardoned and forgiven; but it is possible, of course, that he had recently reiterated his calumnies.

Although the Wydevilles were seen as being responsible for Clarence's fall, Edward long had reason to believe that Clarence had designs on his throne; he had, after all, joined Warwick in rebellion and in spreading that tale of Edward's b.a.s.t.a.r.dy, something the King could neither have forgiven or forgotten, and recently Clarence had questioned the validity of Edward's marriage. Years later, when Elizabeth of York was Queen, the historian Polydore Vergil asked Edward IV's surviving councilors about the reasons for Clarence's execution, but they were not forthcoming. Possibly they were reluctant to repeat anything Clarence had said that cast doubt on Elizabeth's legitimacy. Clarence's recent scheme to marry the heiress of Burgundy had alone represented a major threat to the King, and he had publicly impugned Edward's justice. All in all, he was a deadly troublemaker, and had proved himself a threat to the realm's stability.

Because the d.u.c.h.ess Cecily had protested against her son being executed in public, Clarence was put to death privately on February 18, 1478, in the Tower of London. It was said that, allowed to choose how he would die, he opted to be drowned in a b.u.t.t of Malmsey (Madeira) wine.65 He left behind a three-year-old son, Edward, Earl of Warwick, who was barred by his father's attainder from ever inheriting the throne or any of Clarence's lands and t.i.tles, and also a five-year-old daughter, Margaret, who would wear a tiny wooden wine b.u.t.t on a bracelet all her life in commemoration of her father; it can be seen in her portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London. The wards.h.i.+p and custody of Warwick were granted to Elizabeth Wydeville's son, Dorset,66 and Edward IV arranged for the boy to go to Sheen to be brought up with Elizabeth and the other royal children.67 It is likely that Margaret of Clarence was sent there too.

Elizabeth cannot have had a good opinion of her uncle. To her, raised under the influence of the Wydevilles, he was no doubt the bete noire of the family; like her mother, she probably saw him as a threat. He bore half the blame for the executions of her grandfather, Earl Rivers, and her uncle, John Wydeville, in 1469, and had accused her mother of compa.s.sing his wife's death by sorcery. But the impact on a twelve-year-old of the judicial killing of her uncle by her father must have been considerable, and a brutal reminder of the dangers inherent in being of the blood royal in this turbulent period of history.

Mancini states that Gloucester was ”overcome with grief” at his brother's execution, and vowed to avenge it. Yet, while he would in time exact a fearful vengeance on Elizabeth Wydeville, there is evidence to suggest that he colluded in, and condoned, Clarence's fate. Some of his retainers had sat in the Parliament that condemned the duke, and he himself appears to have supported Edward's proceedings.68 He profited too, more than anyone else. Even before his brother's death, he had requested Clarence's share of the Warwick inheritance, and his son, Edward of Middleham, had received Clarence's forfeited earldom of Salisbury, while he himself was appointed Great Chamberlain of England in place of Clarence and granted lands belonging to the latter. It is possible, though, that knowing that Clarence's fate was a foregone conclusion, and that half the Warwick inheritance was at stake, he gave the King his tacit support, then moved quickly afterward to preempt any designs the Wydevilles may have had on that inheritance. That he was affected by his brother's fall is suggested by a letter he sent much later to James FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, in which he recalled how he had to keep his ”inward” feelings hidden.69 Those inward feelings may very well have included hatred for the upstart Wydevilles, who had destroyed a prince of the blood. If Richard really felt such hatred and resentment for the Queen and her kin, it would make more sense of his actions in five years' time.

Mancini states that ”thenceforth Richard came very rarely to court. He kept himself within his own lands and set out to acquire the loyalty of his people through favors and justice. The good reputation of his private life”-in contrast to his brother Edward's-”and public activities powerfully attracted the esteem of strangers. By these arts, Richard acquired the favor of the people, and avoided the jealousy of the Queen, from whom he lived far separated.” Richard's main political focus was the North, where he had his power base, and his responsibilities there tended to isolate him from the court anyway. He did spend most of the last years of Edward's reign in the North, as Mancini states, and although he visited the court in London on state occasions, it is unlikely that Elizabeth and her siblings ever got to know this often absent uncle very well.

Mancini's testimony-which may have owed something to hindsight, although he used as sources people who would surely have known the truth-is often taken to mean that Richard deliberately avoided the Queen after Clarence's fall. But it is clear that avoiding her jealousy was the consequence of his good reputation, while Mancini merely observes that she lived a long ways away, implying that this was to his advantage. Maybe Richard did fear her influence, having seen what it could do, while her behavior later on might suggest that she had his measure and distrusted and feared him. However, working relations between Richard and her brother, Earl Rivers, remained amicable after 147870-although the catastrophic events of 1483 were to show that Richard saw Rivers too as a threat.

Edward IV ”inwardly repented, very often” of having Clarence executed,71 and reproached his n.o.bles for not suing for mercy.72 But ultimately he himself had to bear the responsibility for it; and the young Elizabeth had to come to terms with the knowledge that not even ties of blood were a guarantee against disaster.

It was a superst.i.tious age. Apart from the other reasons for Clarence's fall, Edward had apparently been swayed by a prophecy that G should follow E as King of England.73 If true, it seems not to have occurred to him that his other brother was Gloucester-or that executing one of his blood had set a dangerous precedent for slaughter within his own house.74 That month of February 1478, Elizabeth turned twelve, the age at which she was to go to France and be married. Her dowry was already settled, and it had been agreed that King Louis should meet the expenses of her conveyance into his realm. Soon afterward, Mary, d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, appealed to Edward IV for aid against Louis XI, but Edward ignored her pleas, for he would allow nothing to compromise Elizabeth's prospects of marriage with the Dauphin.

On August 11 the King sent Dr. Thomas Langton to France, to press Louis XI to conclude the espousal without further delay, and to ask him to endow Elizabeth with her jointure immediately, in advance of the wedding. Louis-by no means as committed to the match as Edward-stalled. In December his amba.s.sador told the King that he must not expect immediate payment of her jointure, insisting that his proposal was contrary to reason and French custom: Elizabeth could have her jointure only when the marriage took place, but the Dauphin, at eight, was too young to be wed at present, and it was usual for a jointure to be paid only after the consummation of a marriage. Edward's councilors expressed great indignation and urged him to break the treaty, but he refused, being determined to force Louis to keep to its terms. But the writing was on the wall: France was then relying on England not to intervene on Maximilian's behalf in Burgundy, and if Louis could treat his ally so dismissively when he needed him, clearly he was not committed to the marriage.

There was grief in March 1479 when Elizabeth's two-year-old brother George died at Windsor Castle and was buried in St. George's Chapel. After his death, his nurse, Joan, Lady Dacre, became lady mistress to Princess Mary.75 The loss of her youngest son must have been hard for the Queen, who was pregnant again; on August 14, 1479, she gave birth to a healthy sixth daughter, Katherine, at Eltham Palace. It was here that the infant princess was christened. Joanna Colson was appointed her nurse.76 Arguments about Elizabeth's jointure grumbled on through the spring and summer of 1479. Edward's envoys warned the French that if there was any further prevarication, England would ally itself with Maximilian. In August the Burgundians won a victory over the French, and Maximilian and Mary declared that they would not betroth their heir, Philip, to anyone except Edward IV's daughter Elizabeth. In the face of this, late that year Louis instructed his envoys to offer 10,000 crowns [1,261,500] as a maintenance grant for Elizabeth, but Edward, who had been greedily antic.i.p.ating the 60,000 [30 million] agreed to at Picquigny, angrily turned down the offer because it was contrary to the terms of the treaty.

By now there were doubts in England as to Louis's sincerity. In January 1480 the Milanese amba.s.sador at the French court shrewdly observed that Edward was not deceived by the French king's procrastination, and concluded that Elizabeth's marriage to the Dauphin depended on Maximilian's ability to repel the French. He reported that the English envoys had been told ”to press in and out of season for the conclusion of the marriage. The King here stands in fear of the King of England, on the supposition that if he will not pay him any heed while the Flemings still flourish, England will not be able to get his desire when this king has accomplished his purpose”-the conquest of Burgundy-”and so diamond cuts diamond.”77 While Edward continued to put pressure on Louis, French envoys were instructed to divert him by discussing only superficial details, such as the timing and manner of Elizabeth's journey to France; if she did not come, they said, King Louis would pay 20,000 crowns [2,520,000] for her maintenance while she remained in England. But Edward insisted that he would accept only the 60,000 agreed as her jointure. In May 1480, John, Lord Howard (later Duke of Norfolk), and Dr. Langton were sent to France to remind Louis of the terms of the marriage contract, but they made little progress. In the wake of this, Edward began seriously considering an alliance with Burgundy against France.

Unknown to Edward IV, Louis, fearing that England would unite with the Habsburgs against him, had begun making overtures to the Scots, England's enemy, for the marriage of James III's daughter Margaret to the Dauphin. Early in 1480, Edward learned of this and threatened James with war, thwarting Louis's schemes. At times like these it may well have seemed to Elizabeth that her marriage would never take place.

In February 1480 she reached her fourteenth birthday. She was growing up to be ”very handsome.”78 According to Giovanni de' Gigli, prebendary of St. Paul's, writing in 1486, she was ”the ill.u.s.trious maid of York, the fairest of Edward's offspring, deficient nor in virtue nor descent, most beautiful in form, whose matchless face adorned with most enchanting sweetness s.h.i.+nes.”79 It was almost obligatory for queens to be praised for their looks, but that Elizabeth grew up to be beautiful is borne out by her surviving portraits and her tomb effigy-which reveal a strong resemblance to her mother, especially about the large eyes, a straight nose, and what must have been a rosebud mouth in youth; while the inscription on her tomb, placed there by her son, Henry VIII, describes her as ”very pretty.” If her tomb effigy is an accurate representation, she grew up to be a graceful woman of five feet six inches.

In the fifteenth century it was seen as highly desirable for queens to have blond hair, for the Virgin Mary was increasingly being idealistically portrayed thus in art.80 Elizabeth conformed to this ideal: she had a fair complexion and long ”golden” or ”fair yellow hair,”81 although it looks reddish-gold in her portraits, and may have been the same color as her daughter Mary's, a lock of which (taken from Mary's coffin) is preserved in Moyse's Hall Museum in Bury St. Edmunds.

In April 1480, Elizabeth's sisters Mary and Cecily were made Ladies of the Garter, and robes were provided for all three princesses for the annual festival.82 That year, Cecily, d.u.c.h.ess of York, now sixty-five, enrolled herself as a Benedictine oblate and retired to her castle at Berkhamsted to pursue a life of religious devotion. As an oblate, she wore sober secular robes and embraced the spirit of the Benedictine vows in her life in the world, dedicating herself to the service of G.o.d. Daily, she observed the canonical hours, prayed, and read the Scriptures, leaving only a little time for enjoying wine and recreation with her ladies. Elizabeth, at an impressionable age, was probably influenced by her grandmother's piety, and would herself grow up to be sincerely devout.

On November 10, 1480, Elizabeth Wydeville gave birth to her tenth and last child at Eltham Palace. It was another girl, who was called Bridget, an unusual choice of name that had no royal precedent but was perhaps chosen by Cecily, d.u.c.h.ess of York, who cherished a special devotion to St. Bridget of Sweden, foundress of the Bridgetine order, in which the d.u.c.h.ess took a particular interest.83 Again Cecily's influence can be detected, for Elizabeth herself would grow up with a deep reverence for St. Bridget, a fourteenth-century visionary who was celebrated for her piety and charity.

Choosing the name of a saint who left the royal court of Sweden to found a monastic order suggests that the King and Queen decided from the first that they would devote this daughter to G.o.d. It was not unusual for wealthy medieval parents to do that, as a gesture of thanksgiving, or to lay up treasure for themselves in Heaven. Their daughter would have no choice in the matter.

On the morning after the birth, St. Martin's Day, Elizabeth stood G.o.dmother to her new sister at her christening in the Great Chapel at Eltham. A hundred ”knights, esquires, and other honest persons” entered the chapel first, carrying unlit torches, then came Thomas FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers, bearing a basin and towel, Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, with an unlit taper, and John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, bearing the salt. There followed other peers, among them the young Duke of York, Lord Hastings; Thomas, Lord Stanley; and Richard Fiennes, Lord Dacre, the Queen's chamberlain. Then came the Queen's sister, Margaret Wydeville, Lady Maltravers, wearing ”a rich white cloth pinned over her left side” and carrying the chrisom. Margaret Beaufort, the other G.o.dmother-no doubt chosen because in 1472 she had married Lord Stanley, a close a.s.sociate of the Wydevilles-carried the Princess Bridget beneath a canopy borne by three knights and a baron. Elizabeth followed with Dorset and the d.u.c.h.ess of York. William Wayneflete, the octogenarian Bishop of Winchester, was the G.o.dfather, and Edward Story, Bishop of Chichester, officiated. ”My lady the King's mother and my Lady Elizabeth were G.o.dmothers at the font,” and a squire held the basins for them. At the moment of baptism, the knights and esquires lit their torches and the heralds donned their tabards. The baby was taken up to the altar to be confirmed, and then into an anteroom where the G.o.dparents presented their ”great gifts,” whereupon she was borne back in procession to the Queen's chamber to be blessed.84 Young York's wife, Anne Mowbray, was not present. Possibly she was unwell, for sometime between January 16 and November 19, 1481, she died at the palace of Placentia at Greenwich, aged only eight. She was given a lavish funeral and buried in the chapel of St. Erasmus in Westminster Abbey.

In June 1480, Margaret of Burgundy had visited England with a view to enlisting Edward IV's support against France and arranging a marriage between Maximilian's son Philip and Anne of York. Aware of her intentions, Louis sent envoys to England with Edward's pension and the offer of an extra 15,000 crowns [1,892,210] a year for Elizabeth's maintenance until her marriage. That placed Edward in an ideal situation for bargaining with Burgundy, and that August he signed a treaty with Maximilian, by the terms of which five-year-old Anne was betrothed to Philip of Habsburg and it was agreed that the marriage would take place when she was twelve.85 Before entering into this alliance, Edward had told Margaret of Burgundy that Louis was prepared to concede to all his demands in regard to Elizabeth's marriage to the Dauphin. But now Louis, facing the prospect of Edward joining forces with Maximilian against him, began to strengthen his defenses for war. He also stopped paying the pension guaranteed to Edward by the Treaty of Picquigny. Plans for a peace conference broke down, and Maximilian continued to press for English aid against France. The Anglo-French alliance now looked decidedly precarious.

In 1481, Edward IV reached an agreement with Francis of Brittany that Prince Edward should marry the duke's only child, four-year-old Anne, the heiress of Brittany, when she reached the age of twelve. Fourteen-year-old Princess Mary was betrothed to the future King Frederick I of Denmark, and James III of Scots began pressing Edward IV to send Princess Cecily to Scotland to be betrothed to his son.86 Among the husbands proposed for Katherine of York were the Infante Juan, Prince of the Asturias and heir to the Spanish throne,87 and James Butler, Earl of Ormond. Through the unions of his daughters, Edward envisioned English influence extending through France, Scotland, Denmark, Burgundy, the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and beyond. It seemed that soon Elizabeth and her siblings would all be living in far-off kingdoms, rarely or never to see one another again.

But the Scots now began infringing the peace with England, putting the marriage treaty at risk. Hearing that his ally, King Louis, was once more weighing Elizabeth's betrothal to the Dauphin in the balance, James III led a raid over the border into England. Edward raised a great army in retaliation, but Maximilian was urging him to come to his aid in Burgundy against Louis. Edward prevaricated, while the ailing Louis waited to see what he would do.

Still wanting to maintain his lucrative friends.h.i.+p with France, Edward a.s.sured Louis in March 1481 that troops he had sent to Burgundy were not to be used against the French, and that he would continue to uphold the Treaty of Picquigny, on condition that Louis resumed payment of his pension and sent an emba.s.sy to arrange Elizabeth's marriage to the Dauphin. If Louis agreed to this, Edward promised not to send his new army against France, but to Scotland, as he had originally intended. Louis was quick to acquiesce, and in August sent an envoy with Edward's pension.

At last Edward decided to move against the Scots. In the autumn of 1481, at Nottingham-much to King Louis's relief-he again confirmed the Anglo-French treaty, but on condition that Elizabeth's marriage to the Dauphin would not be delayed further. Immediately, Louis abandoned all thoughts of a Scottish marriage for his son.

Tragedy intervened to prevent the fruition of another of Edward's alliances when, on May 23, 1482, the Thursday before Whitsunday, Elizabeth's sister Mary died at Placentia at Greenwich, aged just fifteen. The following Monday her body was carried to the nearby church of the Observant Friars, founded by her father, where James Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, sang a dirge over it. Elizabeth and her younger sisters were not present, nor did they or their parents attend a second service the following morning, at which many high-ranking ladies were present, including Joan, Lady Dacre, Princess Mary's lady mistress. Dinner was served at the palace afterward, then the mourners returned to the church to attend the coffin as it was laid on a chariot adorned with Mary's arms and drawn by horses trapped with sables to Windsor and burial in St. George's Chapel. There, Mary was laid to rest beside ”my lord her brother” (George), the Prince of Wales present as chief mourner.88 The loss of her sister must have affected Elizabeth deeply, for they were only seventeen months apart in age, and had been brought up together from infancy.

The year 1482 saw the arrival at court of a number of foreign amba.s.sadors, come to discuss the marriages of the King's daughters. After June, when Henry Tudor was granted the lands of his maternal grandmother on condition he return from exile ”to be in the grace and favor of the King's Highness,”89 there was some discussion about his marrying one of the princesses, as before, but it would not have been Elizabeth, as she was already betrothed. However, Henry did not venture into England. He may have suspected another trap; unsurprisingly, his life as a fugitive had left him deeply suspicious of others' motives. Yet it does seem that Edward IV at last genuinely intended to receive him into favor, and Margaret Beaufort, who was now held in high esteem at court thanks to two judicious marriages, a.s.sured him of the King's good faith.

It was Elizabeth, at just sixteen years old, who was soon to discover just how perfidious princes could be. James III had now apologized for his ill-advised border raid, but his disaffected brother, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, whom he had imprisoned, escaped to the English court and dripped poison into King Edward's ear. As a result, in June, Edward broke off Cecily's betrothal to Prince James of Scots, and affianced her to the treacherous Albany, of whose designs on the Scots throne he was well aware.90 ”King Alexander” now advanced north on Scotland with Gloucester at the head of the English army. They took James III captive, but Albany soon came to terms with his brother, and Gloucester made peace, with the Scots ceding Berwick to England. Cecily found herself once more betrothed to James's son, but that was not the end of it: when an attempt was made on the King of Scots' life, Albany again sought the support of King Edward and secured Cecily as his future bride. In October, Edward finally called off her betrothal to James III.91 This was just a prequel to what would follow. Possibly Louis never had any real intention of allowing Elizabeth's marriage to his heir to go forward,92 but in March 1482, Mary of Burgundy died after a fall from her horse, and her Flemish subjects, who did not like Maximilian, made overtures to Louis XI, who seized his advantage. On December 23, 1482, an alliance-the Treaty of Arras-was concluded between Louis and the Flemings, providing for the marriage of the Dauphin to three-year-old Margaret of Burgundy, Maximilian's daughter. Edward IV's pension was terminated, while Louis got to keep all of Burgundy but Flanders, which was ceded to Maximilian; and thus French ambitions were satisfied.

The treaty left Edward IV's foreign policy in shreds. Not only had his lucrative pension been abruptly cut off, but his daughter was to suffer the humiliation of being publicly jilted. ”It was very well known that the girl was a great deal too old for Monseigneur the Dauphin,” observed Commines, as if that was the reason for Louis snubbing her.

Unsuspecting, the King presided over a splendid court that Christmas, the last time he would ever do so. ”King Edward kept the feast of the Nativity at his palace at Westminster, frequently appearing clad in a great variety of most costly garments.” His ”most elegant figure overshadowed everyone else” as he ”stood before the onlookers like some new and extraordinary spectacle. In those days you would have seen a royal court worthy of a most mighty kingdom, filled with riches and men from almost every nation, and, surpa.s.sing all else, those beautiful and most delightful children, the issue of his marriage with Queen Elizabeth,” among them his daughters, five ”most beauteous maidens.”93 Twelve-year-old Prince Edward had come up from Ludlow to join his siblings, and appeared in a dazzling outfit of white cloth of gold, while Elizabeth and her mother had received fifteen yards of green tissue (taffeta silk) cloth of gold.94 This was the last recorded occasion on which Elizabeth and her brothers and sisters were all together.

On the face of it, they had bright futures awaiting them, but the well-informed Croyland chronicler observed that ”although, in earlier years, solemn emba.s.sies and pledges of faith in the words of princes had been dispatched, with letters of agreement drawn up in due form concerning the marriage of each of the daughters, it was not now thought that any of the marriages would materialize, for everything was susceptible to change, given the unstable relations between England and France, Scotland, Burgundy, and Spain.” The news of Louis's perfidy reached England in January, and Edward IV's fury knew no bounds. ”Worried and aggrieved,” and ”boldly considering any means of gaining revenge,” he summoned Parliament, ”revealed the whole series of gross deceits,”95 and demanded that England make war on France. On January 20, in the Lords, Thomas Rotherham, Archbishop of York, denounced Louis XI for his deceitfulness, while Croyland accused him of encouraging the Scots to break Cecily's betrothal too.

Although she could not have been hurt personally, Elizabeth was old enough to feel humiliated and offended by the French king's rejection of her, but that was as nothing compared to the ”evils” that ”shortly afterward miserably befell the King and his ill.u.s.trious progeny.”96 In the meantime-as was later a.s.serted by the Elizabethan chronicler, Raphael Holinshed-Edward IV may seriously have begun considering a marriage between his jilted daughter and the exiled Henry Tudor. It was an effective means of removing Tudor from the dangerous arena of European politics and securing his loyalty. Apparently the King had talks on the matter with Margaret Beaufort; Lord Stanley; John Morton, Bishop of Ely; and John Alc.o.c.k, Bishop of Worcester, with a view to bringing the marriage to fruition. Time, however, was not on Edward's side.

3.

”This Act of Usurpation”

On April 9, 1483, when she was just seventeen, Elizabeth was plunged into ”a tempestuous world.”1 After a short illness, her father King Edward died at Westminster, aged just forty-one. He was ”neither worn out with old age, nor seized with any known kind of malady,” but he ”took to his bed”2 and succ.u.mbed to ”an unknown disease.”3 Mancini says he had caught a chill at the end of March while out in a small boat fis.h.i.+ng at Windsor. ”Being a tall and very fat man, he let the damp cold chill his guts and caught a sickness from which he never recovered.” Possibly it was pneumonia or typhoid, but Edward then suffered an apoplexy, which Commines believed ”was caused by Louis XI rejecting the Princess Royal Elizabeth as a wife for his little Dauphin Charles.” It could also have resulted from Edward being overweight and having high blood pressure. After the stroke he ”perceived his natural strength so sore enfeebled that he despaired all recovery.”4 Edward was succeeded by his twelve-year-old son, now Edward V, who was proclaimed king on April 11. Mancini writes dismissively that the King ”also left behind daughters, but they do not concern us”-a typical medieval view. In his will of 1475, Edward had decreed ”that our daughter Elizabeth have 10,000 marks [1.5 million] toward her marriage, so that [she] be governed and ruled by our dearest wife the Queen” and the young King. If Elizabeth did ”marry without such advice and a.s.sent, so as [she] be thereby disparaged (which G.o.d forbid), then she so marrying herself have no payment of her 10,000 marks.”5 The loss of her father and chief protector was, for Elizabeth, the beginning of two of the most traumatic years of her life.

According to ”The Song of Lady Bessy,” on his deathbed Edward commended his daughter Elizabeth-who is incorrectly described as ”a little child”-to the governance, guidance, and keeping of Thomas, Lord Stanley. A prominent member of the King's Council, Steward of the Household, husband of Margaret Beaufort, and the owner of vast estates in Ches.h.i.+re and north Wales, Stanley was then forty-eight. He was one of the King's trusted officers, despite his having earlier switched allegiance from York to Lancaster and back again. He has aptly been described as a ”wily fox” who could ”seemingly extricate himself from the most precarious situations,”6 and he was at the forefront of political affairs and intrigues through five reigns. In January 1486, Stanley was to depose that he had known Elizabeth for fifteen years,7 from about 1470, when she was five. It is not inconceivable therefore that Edward asked him to look to her welfare and act as her mentor, but there is no corroborating evidence to show that Stanley ever had her person in his keeping.

A bidding prayer was read in churches at the beginning of the new reign, enjoining all to pray for ”our dread King Edward V, the lady Queen Elizabeth his mother [and] all the royal offspring.”8 The Wydevilles were then in a strong position. They controlled the young King, the court, the council, the Tower of London, the fleet, the royal treasure, and the late King's other children. Mancini wrote of the hatred in which Rivers, Dorset, and Sir Richard Grey were held ”on account of their morals, but mostly because of a certain inherent jealousy. They were certainly detested by the n.o.bles because they, who were ign.o.ble and newly made men, were advanced beyond those who far excelled them in breeding and wisdom.” They still ”had to endure the imputation of causing the death of the Duke of Clarence.”