The White Queen's last days

The White Queen comes to an end on BBC One this Sunday and while it's fairly certain that we'll see Elizabeth watch one of her children get a crown, we don't know whether this version of the Woodville tale will end with the drama of her death.  Because, as in life, Elizabeth's passing was controversial.  What else did we expect from a woman who rocked English society for almost thirty years?

 

Time is running out for The White Queen as her story reaches her end in the BBC One adaption of Philippa Gregory's novels

Elizabeth died on June 8th 1492 at Bermondsey Abbey in south London where she had lived for the last five years of her life.  She certainly wasn't the first queen of England to retire into a religious establishment for the end of her days - it was almost a compulsory part of queenship, especially for dowagers.  The first to retreat into convent life was Adeliza of Louvain who went into Affligem Abbey after her second marriage but her influence, which had been limited during her reign as consort, was all but extinct by then.  The trend for still influential queens to go into religious retreat was really set by Eleanor of Aquitaine who retired to Fontevraud in 1202, after finally seeing her youngest son, John, secure his throne against her grandson, Arthur.  So a queen consort moving to Bermondsey was hardly a shocking move in ordinary circumstances.  But Elizabeth was anything but ordinary and the real reasons for her change of address were disputed then and still remain unclear.

 

Katherine Hepburn in her Oscar winning turn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter

 

Henry VII was two years into his reign by the time Elizabeth quit court for the quiet life.  In that time, his mother Margaret had finally achieved the rank and status she had seen Elizabeth enjoy for twenty years.  Margaret was known as The King's Mother while Elizabeth was Queen Dowager.  The marriage they had arranged between Henry and Elizabeth's daughter, Elizabeth, meant that one was mother of the king and the other the mother of the queen.  And for Margaret, that made them equal.  She considered herself of the same status as the commoner queen and her half royal daughter and, as she slowly accrued power after years in the wilderness, she made no secret of who she liked and who she didn't.  Some historians argue that Elizabeth went into retreat either because of Margaret or to get away form her.

 

 

Margaret Beaufort, played by Amanda Hale in The White Queen, waited a long time for the power and influence she wanted and she wasted no time in asserting her authority.

 

But it's the timing of her departure that is most interesting.  The year in which Elizabeth disappeared from the court she had once ruled also saw the first real revolt against the rule of Henry VII.  An army fighting for Lambert Simnel challenged the Tudor king's rule but was crushed and the rebellion swept away.  Simnel was about ten or eleven at the time and the adults around him claimed he was the son of George of Clarence, Edward IV's wayward brother who had been executed on the king's orders in 1478.  That boy was called Edward and held the title Earl of Warwick - he was the grandson of the Kingmaker.  Edward, Earl of Warwick had been placed in the Tower of London by the Tudors but the Simnel rebels claimed he had escaped and was heading their revolt.  There were some plans, originally, to pass him off as one of the Princes in the Tower, the sons of Elizabeth who hadn't been seen since 1483.  And that, along with the fact that the revolt was Yorkist, led to suspicions that the dowager queen had been involved or had helped in some way.

 

Did The White Queen get involved in the Lambert Simnel plot of 1487?

 

Henry reduced her revenue after the revolt and withdrew her rights to some of the land and riches owed to her as queen dowager of England.  She was left with a healthy income and took up residence in Bermondsey - but did she jump or was she pushed?  Some historians see her retirement to the abbey as a forced confinement, imposed by Henry VII because of her involvement with the plot and her continuing scheming.  She occasionally visited the court and was present when her daughter gave birth to her own little girl in 1489 and again when she delivered her second son in 1491.  But she was no longer part court life - according to the banishment argument, it kept trouble away from the Tudors and allowed the king to keep his mother in law under control.

 

 

Banished from court or a willing retiree?  Elizabeth Woodvill spent her last years in an abbey, far from the home in Northamptonshire she had known and loved and away from the court she had ruled for almost twenty years

 

But would a woman whose daughter was queen consort of England conspire against the king who gave her a crown?  As with some many things to do with Elizabeth, it's impossible to say.  Lambert Simnel was a weak imposter, young and quite clearly false and used by adults. Henry VII allowed him to work in the royal kitchens and he lived until 1525.  But he was unlikely to be the last and if someone was prepared to claim to be an heir to the throne who was quite clearly in the custody of the king, what was to stop anyone pretending to be one of the boys with an even stronger grip on the throne - Elizabeth's sons, the princes in the tower?  And while a queen consort as a daughter gave Elizabeth a link to the royal household, a son who could be king would restore much of her former power and destroy all of the influence held by Margaret Beaufort. 

 

 

Henry Tudor liked a bit of plotting himself so he was wise to the tricks and motives of other would be conspirators

 

But then there are many other reasons why Henry Tudor might want to move mummy in law out of the way - and not just to keep Margaret happy. Henry was a great accountant and he really needed as much money as he could lay his hands on.  The royal coffers were low after years of war and by reducing Elizabeth's cash and taking back some of her dower lands, he made himself a lot richer.  He also sent a message to anyone else who might be thinking of plucking a would be Edward V or Richard, Duke of York out of the pretenders' cupboard.  The only person who might really know if someone was the son of Edward IV was their mother and she was hidden away and not easy to petition. 

 

 

The Princes in the Tower - their fate was still unknown in 1487 but the Tudors were already rewriting history to pin the blame on Richard III

 

Those who believe that Elizabeth somehow got Richard, her youngest son, out of sanctuary and into safety see a good reason for the queen to be involved in plots to replace Henry as king.  If Elizabeth thought that her second son was still alive then she had everything to play - and plot - for.  Henry VII himself was at pains to point out that he ruled England through conquest and made sure he married Elizabeth of York after his own coronation in case anyone thought he claimed power because of his wife's role as eldest surviving heir of Edward IV.  Three years after Elizabeth entered Bermondsey a man claiming to be her youngest son claimed the English throne from the safety of Burgundy, linked to the Woodvilles.  She died before his revolt came to anything but Henry VII would hear a lot more from Perkin Warbeck.

 

 

Henry was prepared to fight throughout his reign as King of England

 

But it's easy to forget that for all her ambition, determination and thirst for power, Elizabeth had had a terrible few years in the run up to her departure for Bermondsey.  In the five years before she moved to the abbey she had lost three of her four sons, one of her daughters, her husband and her beloved brother.  Two of them had been beheaded, one had died unexpectedly, two had disappeared and were presumed murdered and one had died of illness.  She had lost her crown, her court, her wealth and she could see that her influence was ebbing away by the second.  It would be enough to send anyone into a quiet phase.

 

 

Elizabeth had lost four children, a husband and one of her greatest confidantes in the five years before her retirement

 

And while her daughter may have been queen of England, she was definitely the junior partner in the relationship - or at least that's how it looked in public.  In 1487, Elizabeth of York was the mother of a son but there had been no tribute to her king of a father when it came to naming the child.  He was Arthur, the beginning of a new dynasty that would rule instead of, not because of, Edward IV.  And when Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter in 1489 she was called Margaret after the king's mother, not Elizabeth.  Her third child was named Henry - Elizabeth could see that this ruling house was to have very little to do with her or her children.

 

 

Elizabeth of York waited until baby number four to use one of her parents' names for a child and Elizabeth Woodville didn't live to see that.  Baby Elizabeth Tudor was born a month after the death of Queen Consort Elizabeth.  She was the only Tudor baby named after a maternal grandparent.

 

Elizabeth died in 1492 and was buried next to her husband, Edward IV, in St George's Chapel at Windsor.  Her funeral was very quiet and there were complaints at the time that it was hardly fitting for a queen of England.  Her only child to wear a crown, Elizabeth of York, didn't attend as she was about to have another baby - a little girl she named Elizabeth.  Her mourners were her three youngest girls - Anne, Catherine and Bridget.  But while some felt the commoner queen deserved a more regal farewell, the dowager consort's will specified that her funeral should be simple - perhaps surprising for a woman known for her ambition in life.  Her great rival, Margaret Beaufort, was buried at the abbey of kings at Westminster but Elizabeth still rests at that seat of ancient kingship, Windsor.