Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses Read online

  BLOOD SISTERS

  ALSO BY SARAH GRISTWOOD

  NONFICTION

  Arbella: England’s Lost Queen

  Bird of Paradise

  Elizabeth and Leicester

  The Ring and the Crown (coauthor)

  FICTION

  The Girl in the Mirror

  BLOOD

  SISTERS

  The WOMEN BEHIND the

  WARS of the ROSES

  Sarah Gristwood

  BASIC BOOKS

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  New York

  Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Gristwood

  Published by Basic Books,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10107.

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  Designed by Cynthia Young

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Gristwood, Sarah.

  Blood sisters : the women behind the Wars of the Roses / Sarah Gristwood.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-465-06598-1 (e-book)

  1. Great Britain—History—Wars of the Roses, 1455–1485. 2. Great Britain—History—Henry VII, 1485–1509. 3. Plantagenet, House of. 4. Margaret, of Anjou, Queen, consort of Henry VI, King of England, 1430–1482. 5. York, Cecily, Duchess of, 1415-1495 6. Elizabeth, Queen, consort of Edward IV, King of England, 1437?–1492. 7. Anne, Queen, consort of Richard III, King of England, 1456–1485. 8. Margaret, of York, Duchess, consort of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 1446–1503. 9. Elizabeth, Queen, consort of Henry VII, King of England, 1465–1503. 10. Beaufort, Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby, 1443–1509. I. Title.

  DA250.G75 2013

  942.04092'52—dc23

  2012044813

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  CONTENTS

  A Note on Names

  Glossary of Select Names

  Simplified Family Tree

  Map of England

  Prologue: February 1503

  PART I

  1445–1460, LANCASTER

  1Fatal Marriage

  2“The Red Rose and the White”

  3“A Woman’s Fear”

  4“No Women’s Matters”

  5“Captain Margaret”

  6“Mightiness Meets Misery”

  PART II

  1460–1471

  7“To Love a King”

  8“Fortune’s Pageant”

  9“Domestic Broils”

  10“That Was a Queen”

  PART III

  1471–1483

  11“My Lovely Queen”

  12“Fortune’s Womb”

  13Mother of Griefs

  14“A Golden Sorrow”

  PART IV

  1483–1485

  15“Weeping Queens”

  16“Innocent Blood”

  17“Look to Your Wife”

  18“Anne My Wife”

  19“In Bosworth Field”

  Part V

  1485–1509

  20“True Succeeders”

  21“Golden Sovereignty”

  22“The Edge of Traitors”

  23“Civil Wounds”

  24Like a Queen Inter Me

  25“Our Noble Mother”

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  A Note on Sources

  Notes

  Selected Bibliography

  Illustration Credits

  Index

  A NOTE ON NAMES

  Of the seven women whose stories I explore, the fashion of the times means that two are called Elizabeth and three Margaret. I have therefore referred to the York princess who married the ruler of Burgundy as Margaret “of Burgundy,” while giving Margaret of Anjou the French appellation she herself continued sometimes to use after marriage—Marguerite. The family originally spelled as “Wydeville” has been given its more familiar appellation of “Woodville,” and other spellings and forms have sometimes been modernized. The quotations at the top of each chapter have been drawn from Shakespeare’s history plays.

  GLOSSARY OF SELECT NAMES

  Anne: The name borne by Anne Neville (1456–1485), daughter to the Earl of Warwick, wife first to Edward of Lancaster and then to Richard III. Her mother was another Anne, the heiress Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick (1426–1490). Anne was also the name given to the Duchess of Exeter (1439–1476), eldest daughter of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and sister to Edward IV and Richard III. Other noblewomen bearing the name include one of Cecily’s sisters, who became Duchess of Buckingham; one of Edward IV’s daughters; and Anne Mowbray, who was married in childhood to Edward’s youngest son.

  Beaufort: The family name of Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), mother to Henry VII, and of the Dukes of Somerset, one of whom was Margaret’s father. The Beaufort family also included Cardinal Beaufort, adviser to Henry VI.

  Butler, Eleanor (?–1468): Born Eleanor Talbot, the woman who was later said to have been secretly married to Edward IV.

  Catherine (or Katherine) of Aragon (1485–1536): Daughter of the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, she was brought to England to marry Arthur, son to Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. She subsequently became the first wife of Arthur’s brother Henry VIII.

  Cecily Neville (or Cicely, 1415–1495): Matriarch of the York dynasty; wife to Richard, Duke of York; and mother to Edward IV and Richard III. The name was also shared by Cecily’s granddaughter (Edward IV’s daughter, 1469–1507).

  Clarence, George, Duke of (1449–1478): Son to Cecily Neville and Richard, Duke of York. The second of their sons to survive into maturity, Clarence was famously executed on the orders of his brother Edward IV.

  Dorset, Marquis of (1455–1501): The title bestowed on Thomas Grey, the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville by her first husband, John Grey.

  Edmund, Earl of Rutland (1443–1460): Second son to Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, killed young in battle.

  Edward: This name was borne most importantly by Edward IV (1442–1483), eldest son to Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville, and by his own eldest son (1470–1483?), the elder of the “Princes in the Tower,” who would have reigned as Edward V. The name Edward was also bestowed, however, on the eldest sons both of Henry VI (“Edward of Lancaster,” 1453–1471) and of Richard III (“Edward of Middleham,” 1476?–1484). Both were, in their time, also Prince of Wales. The name Edward may have been considered particularly suitable for kings or prospective kings, perhaps because the last undisputed king of England had been the mighty Edward III. Henry VIII, in the next century, would also call his son Edward.

  Elizabeth: The name borne by Elizabeth Woodville (1437–1492), queen to Edward IV, and by their daughter Elizabeth of York (1466– 1503), who would marry Henry VII. It was also the name borne by Edward IV’s sister (1444–1503), who became Duchess of Suffolk.

  George: See Clarence.

  Gloucester, Richard, Duke of: The title borne in early adu
lthood by the future Richard III.

  Henry: The name borne by successive Lancastrian and later Tudor kings: Henry V (1387–1422), Henry VI (1421–1471), Henry VII (“Henry Tudor,” 1457–1509), and Henry VIII (1491–1547).

  Isabel Neville (1451–1476): Daughter to the Earl of Warwick and elder sister to Anne Neville; wife to George, Duke of Clarence.

  Jacquetta Woodville (1415?–1472): Born Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville, wife to Sir Richard Woodville, subsequently created Earl Rivers. She had previously, by her first marriage, been Duchess of Bedford.

  Katherine: The name borne by one of Edward IV’s daughters, sometimes used for Catherine of Aragon and also given to Katherine Gordon, wife to the pretender Perkin Warbeck.

  Lancaster: The name of one of the two great rival houses, the other being York. Sometimes identified by the symbol of the red rose.

  Margaret: Besides Margaret Beaufort, the name was borne by Margaret (or Marguerite) of Anjou (1430–1482), queen to Henry VI and mother to Edward of Lancaster. Margaret (Margaret “of Burgundy” or “of York,” 1446–1503) was also the name of the youngest daughter of Cecily Neville and Richard, Duke of York, sister to Edward IV and Richard III, who was married to Charles, Duke of Burgundy. Yet another Margaret was Margaret Tudor (1489–1541), eldest daughter of Elizabeth of York and Henry VII, who was married to the king of Scots.

  Mary: The younger daughter of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York was Mary Tudor (1495/6–1533), who would be married to the king of France. The name also belonged to Mary of York (1467–1482), one of Elizabeth of York’s sisters, as well as to Mary of Burgundy.

  Neville: Name of the great northern family to which Cecily and Anne both belonged, Anne’s father, Warwick, being the son of Cecily’s brother Salisbury. The Neville family was a particularly extensive one, not all of whose members would necessarily be on the same side.

  Paston: Name of the Norfolk gentry family whose letters, down the generations, provide an invaluable background to this period.

  Richard: Name borne by Richard, Duke of York (1411–1460); by his youngest son, Richard III (1452–1485); and by the younger of the two “Princes in the Tower” (1473–1483?).

  Somerset, Dukes of: John Beaufort, Earl (later first Duke) of Somerset (1404–1444), was Margaret Beaufort’s father. He was succeeded by his brother Edmund Beaufort, second Duke of Somerset (1405– 1455), who in turn was succeeded by his son Henry, the third duke (1436–1464). When Henry was executed, his younger brother, another Edmund (1439–1471), assumed the title of fourth duke, although it was never formally granted to him.

  Stafford, Sir Henry (1425?–1471): Second husband of Margaret Beaufort, a son to the Duke of Buckingham.

  Stanley, Thomas, Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby (1435?–1504): Third husband of Margaret Beaufort and a powerful magnate.

  Suffolk, William de la Pole, Duke of (1396–1450): Favorite minister of Henry VI and Marguerite of Anjou. He was married to Alice Chaucer (1404–1475), a granddaughter of the poet Chaucer. William was succeeded by his son John (1442–1491), who, despite the family’s Lancastrian affiliations, was married to Elizabeth, sister to Edward IV and Richard III, daughter of Richard, Duke of York, and Cecily Neville.

  Tudor: Family name of Henry VII; his father, Edmund (1428–1456); and his uncle Jasper (1431–1495). The Welsh Tudors were a comparatively obscure family until Edmund’s father, Owen (1400–1461), became the second husband of Henry V’s widow.

  Warwick, Richard Neville, Earl of (1428–1471): Known as the “Kingmaker” for the prominent role he played in placing the house of York on what had previously been a Lancastrian throne. He was the father of Isabel and Anne Neville, both of whom he married to York brothers.

  Woodville (or Wydeville): The birth family of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s queen. Notable among her numerous siblings was her eldest brother, Anthony (1440?–1483), who became Earl Rivers on his father’s death.

  York: As in Richard, Duke of. The second of the two great warring families, often identified by the symbol of a white rose.

  SIMPLIFIED

  FAMILY TREE

  England in the fifteenth century

  PROLOGUE

  February 1503

  She had died on her thirty-seventh birthday, and the figure thirty-seven would be reiterated throughout the ceremony: thirty-seven virgins dressed in white linen, wreathed in the Tudor colors of green and white, stationed along the great market street of Cheapside holding burning tapers, thirty-seven palls of rich cloth to be draped across the effigy. The king’s orders specified that two hundred poor people in the procession from the Tower of London through the City to Westminster Abbey should each carry a “weighty torch,” the flames flickering wanly in the February day.

  It was a public display of grief to match that almost five hundred years later when another wildly popular royal bride was carried to her grave (another who died in her thirty-seventh year—another people’s princess). Elizabeth of York had been one of London’s own. Her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, had been the first English-born queen consort for more than three centuries, and if she had been in other ways a figure of scandal, in the person of her less controversial daughter that heritage had come into its own. Elizabeth of York was a domestic queen, whose expenses reveal a woman of careful practicality: she paid out money for presents given her of apples and of woodcocks and bought silk ribbons for her girdles, while thriftily she had repairs made to a velvet gown. She had been a family queen, who rewarded her son’s schoolmaster, bought household hardware for her newly married daughter, and tried to keep an eye out for her sisters and their families. The trappings of the hearse showed she was a queen who’d died in childbed, a fate feared by almost every woman in the fifteenth century.

  She had been, too, a significant queen: the white rose of York who married red Lancaster in the person of Henry Tudor, ending the battles over the crown. Double Tudor roses, whose red petals firmly encircled the white, were carved all over the chapel where she would finally be laid to rest. Indeed, the very presence of foreign worthies at her funeral (for not even grief could get in the way of diplomacy) showed that by 1503, it was accepted the Tudors were here to stay.

  The Spanish ambassador had reported that the queen was “beloved because she was powerless,” and many thought she had been sidelined by her husband, Henry. But the anonymous manuscript that provides a detailed record of her funeral tells a different tale. It describes how on her death, Henry “took with him certain of his secretest, and privately departed to a solitary place to pass his sorrows and would no man should resort to him.” Henry left behind orders for bells to be rung, and church services said, throughout the land. The loss of his queen was “as heavy and dolorous to the King’s Highness as hath been seen or heard of.” It was the end of the partnership that had given birth to the Tudor dynasty.

  Elizabeth had been at the Tower when she “travailed of child suddenly” and was there delivered on Candelmas Day of a baby daughter who may have come prematurely. The records of her own Privy Purse expenses show boatmen, guides, horses sent suddenly to summon a doctor from the country, linen purchased to swaddle a new baby who would outlive her mother by only days. On February 11, Elizabeth—“the most gracious and virtuous princess the Queen”—died, unexpectedly, a grievous loss not only to her husband but also to her country.

  Her corpse was carried to the Tower’s own church, to lay there for eleven days. Mourning garments were hastily ordered for her ladies, and while these were being prepared they put on their “most sad and simplest” clothes. Elizabeth’s body would, immediately after death, have been disemboweled; prepared with spices, balm, and rose water; and tightly wrapped in waxed cloth, before the body was placed in a wooden chest, covered in black and white velvet with a cross of white damask. On the Sunday night, the body was ready for removal to the chapel. The queen’s sister Lady Katherine Courtenay acted as chief mourner at the requiem mass, a ritual repeated daily as long as the body lay
in the Tower.

  It was Wednesday, February 22, when the coffin was placed on a bier covered in black velvet and drawn by six horses, themselves decked in black. The cushions must have helped secure the coffin in place, and helped the gentlemen ushers who knelt, braced against the horses’ motion, at either end of the moving construction. Above the coffin was an effigy of the queen, clothed in “the very Robes of Estate,” with her hair about her shoulders and her scepter in her right hand. The funeral effigy symbolized the dual nature of Elizabeth’s royal personage: the immortal office and the mortal body.

  The banners at the corners of the bier were painted on a white background, to show this was the funeral of a woman who died in childbed, while behind the bier came the ladies of honor, each mounted on a palfrey, the chariots bearing other senior ladies, a throng of servants, and citizens of London. In front of the bier went the choirs and the English and foreign male dignitaries. Companies of foreign merchants—French, Spanish, Venetian—bearing their country’s arms stood among the craft guilds and fellowships of London, whose members held literally thousands of torches along the way. Bells rang, choirs sang, and incense scented the cold air from each parish church as the body passed by, from the Tower to Temple Bar, to Charing Cross and then on to Westminster, the same route that had been taken for Elizabeth’s coronation.