Part 11 (1/2)

Thomas More, then a young London lawyer, was moved to write an elegy, ”A Rueful Lamentation on the Death of Queen Elizabeth”: Oh ye that put your trust and confidence In worldly joy and frail prosperity, That so live here as ye should never hence, Remember death and look here on me.

Example I think there may no better be.

Yourself wot well that in this realm was I, Your Queen but late, and lo, now here I lie.

Was I not born of old worthy lineage?

Was not my mother Queen, my father King?

Was I not a king's fere [companion] in marriage?

Had I not plenty of every pleasant thing?

Merciful G.o.d, this is a strange reckoning: Riches, honour, wealth, and ancestry Hath me forsaken, and lo, now here I lie.

If wors.h.i.+p [worth, honour, renown] might have kept me, I had not gone; If wit [intelligence] might have me saved, I needed not fear; If money might have holp, I lacked none; But oh, good G.o.d, what vaileth all this gear?

When Death is come, Thy mighty messenger, Obey we must; there is no remedy; Me hath he summoned, and lo, now here I lie.

Yet was I late promised otherwise, This year to life in wealth and delice.

Lo! Whereto cometh thy blandis.h.i.+ng promise Of false astrology and divinatrice, Of G.o.d's secrets, making thyself so wise?

How true is for this year thy prophecy?

The year yet lasteth, and lo, now here I lie.

O, brittle wealth, aye full of bitterness, Thy single pleasure doubled is with pain.

Account my sorrow first, and my distress In sundry wise, and reckon there again The joy that I have had, and I dare sayn, For all my honour, endured there have I More woe than wealth, and lo, now here I lie.

Where are our castles now, where are our towers?

Goodly Richmond, soon art thou gone from me; At Westminster, that costly work of yours, Mine own dear lord, now shall I never see.

Almighty G.o.d vouchsafe to grant that these For you and your children may well edify.

My palace builded is, and lo now here I lie.

Adieu, mine own spouse, my worthy lord!

The faithful love, that did us both combine In marriage a peaceable concord, Into your hands here I do clear resign, To be bestowed on your children and mine; Erst were ye father, now must ye supply The mother's part also, for here I lie.

Farewell my daughter, Lady Margaret, G.o.d wot full oft it grieved hath my mind That ye should go where we might seldom meet; Now I am gone, and have left you behind.

O mortal folk, but we be very blind: What we least fear full oft it is most nigh- From you depart I first, for lo, now here I lie.

Farewell, Madam, my lord's worthy mother; Comfort your son, and be of good cheer, Take all at worth, for it will be no other.

Farewell, my daughter Katherine, late the fere [companion]

Unto Prince Arthur, late my child so dear.

It booteth not for me to wail and cry; Pray for my soul, for lo, now here I lie.

Adieu, Lord Henry, loving son, adieu!

Our Lord increase your honour and estate.

Adieu, my daughter Mary, bright of hue, G.o.d make you virtuous, wise, and fortunate.

Adieu, sweetheart, my little daughter Kate!

Thou shalt, sweet babe, such is thy destiny, Thy mother never know, for lo, now here I lie.

Lady Cecily, Lady Anne, and Lady Katherine, Farewell, my well-beloved sisters three.

O Lady Bridget, other sister mine, Lo, here the end of worldly vanity!

Now are you well who earthly folly flee And heavenly things do praise and magnify.

Farewell, and pray for me, for lo, now here I lie.

Adieu my lords, adieu my ladies all, Adieu my faithful servants every one, Adieu my commons, whom I never shall See in this world: wherefore to Thee alone, Immortal G.o.d, verily Three in One, I me commend; Thy infinity mercy Show to Thy servant, for lo, now here I lie.5 More's poem, which was to be one of several epitaphs hung up on wooden boards near the Queen's burial place, reflects two popular contemporary themes: the fall of princes, and warnings from beyond the grave of mortality and the transience of life. Yet More's differs from late medieval elegies, in that he shows Elizabeth not just as a sinner but as a Renaissance pattern of virtue.6 The elegy must have been written in the week after the Queen's death, for More speaks of the infant Princess Katherine as if she was still living. Tragically, she ”lived not long after”7 and ”tarried but a small season after her mother” before being ”called unto a far better kingdom.” She died in the Tower on February 18, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. The site of her grave is unknown; probably, like her brother Edmund, she was interred in the Confessor's Chapel in an unmarked grave.8 Another epitaph, which may have been hung near Elizabeth's tomb, was also in verse form: Here lieth the fresh flower of Plantagenet, Here lieth the white rose in the red set ...

G.o.d grant her now Heaven to increase And our own King Harry long life and peace.9 Elizabeth was given a lavish funeral costing 2,832.7s.3d. [1,381,000],10 far in excess of the 600 spent on Prince Arthur's funeral, or on that of Edward IV even.11 Her grieving widower spared no expense. Such open-handedness on the part of a miserly king might well have reflected Henry's feelings for his dead wife, but it was also a very public statement of her prime dynastic importance in the annals of English royalty.

On February 22, Ma.s.s was said early in the morning in St. Peter ad Vincula. At noon ”the coffin was put in a carriage covered with black velvet, with a cross of white cloth of gold, very well fringed.” Then, with the two hundred poor men going before, followed by royal officers and clergy, it was borne in procession through London on a chariot ”drawn with six horses trapped with black velvet.” All the City churches were shrouded in black for the occasion.12 On the coffin lay ”an image or personage like a queen, clothed in the very robes of estate of the Queen, having her very rich crown on her head, her hair about her shoulders, her scepter in her right hand, and her fingers well garnished with gold rings and precious stones.”13 As at Elizabeth's coronation, the virginal loose hair proclaimed her chast.i.ty. The effigy cost 2 [970], and its clothing 5.2s.6d. [2,500].14 From the thirteenth to the eighteenth century it was customary for funeral effigies of royal persons to be displayed at state funerals. Westminster Abbey possesses several such effigies, besides what is left of Elizabeth of York's; the earliest recorded, which does not survive, was that of Edward I; Henry V's effigy is also lost, as possibly are others. The oldest extant is that of Edward III (1377), and there are two others that predate Elizabeth's: those of Anne of Bohemia, queen of Richard II (1394), and Katherine of Valois, queen of Henry V (1437); and of course there are several later examples.

In the seventeenth century the poet John Dryden recorded that these effigies lay in open presses, where ”you may see them all a-row.” In the eighteenth century, around the time that the practice of making funeral effigies died out, John Dart recorded that they were ”sadly mangled, some with their faces broke, others broken in sunder, and most of them stripped of their robes”-by Oliver Cromwell's men, he supposed. They were a sorry sight-a ”ragged regiment.” But the face of Elizabeth of York, he noted, was still perfect. Later still, it was described as having ”a pleasant and slightly roguish, or boylike, air.”15 The upper part of her painted effigy of soft Baltic wood, with a jointed left arm (the right is missing) beautifully carved from pear wood, and some beautiful gold satin from the original bodice, survives today in the Norman Undercroft Museum in Westminster Abbey. The rest of the effigy is either lost or in too poor a condition to display, much of the body having disintegrated after being saturated with water when Westminster Abbey was bombed in the Second World War. That also left the head and bust blackened and damaged, the wood split, the nose missing and the remains of the bodice stiff with filth-it was described, prior to cleaning in 1961, as an ”unpleasant-looking fabric of dirty gray with a s.h.i.+mmer of yellow.”16 The effigy was made by two Dutchmen, Laurence Wechon, ”the carver,” and Hans van Hoof, and was five feet eleven inches tall, with a wooden head and bust, jointed wooden arms, and fir poles for legs. The body-from the bust to the feet-was formed of hoops, stuffed with hay, and covered in leather, which was secured with nails. Beneath the Queen's own robes of estate, it was clad in clothes specially made for it: a crimson satin square-necked ”garment” seamed and bordered with blue and black velvet, having a wider neckline than on bodices in the Queen's portraits (as appears from the outline on the wooden bust), and dark cloth stockings to the knees; the latter were still in place in 1890, but have since disappeared. The wig was hired and does not survive. The ears have holes, thought to have been for earrings,17 but earrings were not commonly worn at this period, so perhaps they were for attaching the wig.

Almost certainly, the face, which so closely resembles Elizabeth's portraits, is a death mask, like the head of Henry VII's funeral effigy, which survives with it. Signs of the stroke that killed Edward III are evident in the face of his funeral effigy, so it is likely that the tradition of using death masks for such effigies dated from 1377 at the latest. The sunken aspect of the features of the effigy reflect the Queen as she looked in death. The accounts for Elizabeth's effigy record payments to ”two porters, for fetching of the coffin from the Princes' Wardrobe,” to one John Scot ”for watching in the Tower a night,” and to two more porters for bringing the effigy to the Tower, presumably so the face could be modeled from Elizabeth's dead features.

At each corner of the funeral chariot ”sat a gentlewoman usher kneeling on [beside] the coffin, which was in this manner conveyed from the Tower to Westminster. On the forehorses rode two chariot men; and on the four others, four henchmen in black gowns. On the horses were lozenges with the Queen's escutcheon; by every horse walked a person in a mourning hood. At each corner of the chariot was a banner of Our Lady of the a.s.sumption, of the Salutation, and of the Nativity,” and these banners ”were all white in token that she died in childbed.” An early sixteenth-century drawing of the funeral procession made for Thomas Wriothesley, Garter King of Arms,18 shows the wheeled chariot bearing a large coffin with hooded mourners at each corner carrying their banners. On the hea.r.s.e lies the effigy with loose hair and a crown and scepter.

The funeral route from the Tower to Westminster was the same as that followed at Elizabeth's coronation fifteen years earlier; now, as then, n.o.bles, royal officers, citizens, and clergy united together to pay their respects, and hundreds of painted escutcheons bearing the arms of the King and Queen were made, to be carried or displayed in the funeral procession. Following the chariot were ”eight palfreys saddled with black velvet, bearing eight ladies of honor, who rode singly after the corpse in their slops and mantles, every horse led by a man afoot without a hood but in a demiblack gown, followed by many lords. The Lord Mayor and citizens, all in mourning, brought up the rear, and at every door in the City a person stood bearing a torch.” Among the ladies were the Queen's four sisters, all wearing mourning attire with sweeping trains, even the nun Bridget. The princ.i.p.al mourner was Katherine, Countess of Devon, supported by Mary Say, Countess of Ess.e.x, Lady Elizabeth Stafford, and Elizabeth, Lady Herbert.

As the cortege pa.s.sed each church along the route, ”a solemn peal with all the bells was rung,” and each curate came forward to cense the corpse, ”and thus was this gracious princess with the King's Chapel and others singing all the way before her conveyed unto Charing Cross.” ”At Fenchurch and Cheapside were set thirty-seven virgins all in white linen, having chaplets of white and green on their heads, and bearing lighted tapers”-each girl representing one year of the Queen's life, with their chaplets the colors of the Tudor royal livery. They were dressed as virgins because a woman who had died in childbed was honored as a virgin. ”In Chepe the Lady Mayoress ordained also thirty-seven other virgins, in their hairs [i.e., with their hair loose], holding likewise pretty tapers, in the honor of Our Lady, and that the good Queen was in her thirty-seventh year [sic].”

The somber pomp of the occasion impressed onlookers. ”From Mark Lane to Temple Bar alone were five thousand torches” carried by bearers wearing white woolen gowns and hoods, ”besides lights burning before all the parish churches, while processions of religious persons singing anthems and bearing crosses met the royal corpse from every fraternity [guild] in the City. And as for surplus of strangers, who had no torches, as Easterlings [Baltic traders], Frenchmen, Portugals, Venetians, Genoese, and Lukeners [natives of Lucca], even they rode in black. All the surplus of citizens of London that rode out in black stood along Fenchurch to the end of Cheap[side].” The London craft guilds had paid for the black mourning clothes worn by their members, and also for white robes worn by those who stood with lighted torches beneath the Eleanor Cross at Charing as the coffin pa.s.sed.

At Temple Bar the cortege was met by a procession of n.o.blemen headed by Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby, who had played such an important role in Elizabeth's life and was himself to die the following year. At Charing Cross the abbots of Westminster and Bermondsey, wearing black copes, met and censed the corpse, then preceded it to St. Margaret's churchyard at Westminster, where it was received by eight bishops,19 the abbots of Reading, St. Albans, Winchcombe, and Stratford, and the priors of All Hallows Barking by the Tower and Christ Church, Canterbury. Here the peers ”took their mantles” in readiness for the obsequies in the abbey.