The New Murrey and Blue blog

“There was I, waiting at the church …….”

Oct 15, 2014

Arthur “Tudor”, Battle of Bosworth, Battle of StokeStoke, Bermondsey Abbey, Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth Woodville, Henry VII, Joanna, Joao II, Manuel, Portugal, Portuguese archives, Rennes Cathedral, Richard III, Vesta Victoria

“There was I, waiting at the church,
Waiting at the church, waiting at the church;
When I found he’d left me in the lurch.
Lor, how it did upset me!
All at once, he sent me round a note
Here’s the very note, this is what he wrote:
“Can’t get away to marry you today,
My wife, won’t let me!”
{Vesta Victoria}

Have a look at this schedule of events. Elizabeth of York wasn’t exactly “left in the lurch”, in fact Obadiah Binks’ note is one that her father should have sent her mother:

25 December 1483:        Henry “Tudor” promises to marry Elizabeth of York or one of her sisters
22 August 1485:        Battle of Bosworth
30 October 1485:        Henry VII’s coronation
7 November 1485:         Richard III’s Titulus Regius is repealed, legitimising Elizabeth
14 January 1486:            Marriage to Elizabeth of York
20 September 1486:      Birth of Arthur “Tudor”, their first child
November 1486:             Elizabeth Woodville is arrested and confined to Bermondsey Abbey
16 June 1487:                   Battle of Stoke
25 November 1487:      Elizabeth’s coronation as Queen Consort

Henry VII, as he had become, certainly wasn’t in a hurry either to marry or to crown his bride, was he? Note the conditional promise – that he would try one of her sisters if she were already married (and we now know from the Portuguese records that Manoel of Beja was her likely husband whilst Buck recorded her joy at this prospect) – which scarcely marks him down as the romantic sort. Sending his mother-in-law to an Abbey (a male one at that) would have delighted a whole generation of comedians.

Now it seems likely that he sought to continue, in the immediate aftermath of Bosworth, the negotiations to substitute himself as a husband for Joao II’s sister Juana.

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31 responses to ““There was I, waiting at the church …….””

hoodedman1

October 15, 2014 at 10:11 am

Arthur ‘Tudor’ born a little early, was he, ahem? Could Henry have been making sure his bride was going to produce some heirs before the ring went on the finger?

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1. halfwit36
  
  May 6, 2015 at 1:29 pm
  
  You, and Philippa Gregory, seem to have an over-optimistic view of how long it takes to plan a wedding, even an ordinary, common-folks, wedding.
  
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Matt W.

October 15, 2014 at 10:14 am

Of course the Tudorists never mention or care to comment on her mother being sent away scarcely a month after the birth of her first grandchild. No, to them, EW was simply retiring from public life. To a male monestary. I suppose she had enough by that point. No wish to be there for her daughter. She was so “worn out” from all the events.

Right. Cairo dwellers never want anything to get in the way of their glorified view of Tudor. The sad reality is that all of this should have been the set up for a HF novel yet it really happened.

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Jasmine

October 15, 2014 at 10:28 am

I think we should be careful speculating over the date of Arthur’s birth. After all, we have rebutted the same argument about the birth of Edward IV and the dates when Richard of York and Cicely ‘got together’. There is a lot of evidence about the variation of gestation periods and especially for the case of EoY as it was her first and first children do have a habit of arriving early.

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super blue

October 15, 2014 at 10:59 am

We have quoted the generally accepted date. The main points here are the 27-month delay from Bosworth to Elizabeth’s coronation and “Tudor”‘s attempts to find an alternative bride first.

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nerdalicious (@nerdaliciousss)

October 15, 2014 at 11:36 am

Elizabeth Woodville was arrested?

You’ve left out the second and third papal dispensation from your timeline. The first dispensation was issued in secret in 1484. The second dispensation they were waiting on arrived on the 16th of January 1486 – they were married two days later on the 18th. The third dispensation for a fourth degree of affinity arrived on the 2nd of March 1486. Elizabeth of York was living with her future mother-in-law between Bosworth and the wedding.

Buck’s letter was damaged by fire. The reconstructed letter says that the King was ‘joy and maker’ not that she was joyous at the prospect of a wedding.

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1. timetravellingbunny
  
  May 5, 2015 at 10:52 pm
  
  Yes, from the fragmentary nature of the reconstructed letter – written by memory in the first place – and Buck’s misinterpretation of it/difficulty in putting it in context without knowing about the Portuguese negotiations, it’s difficult to guess what she was saying about the intended marriage itself and how she felt about it.
  
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super blue

October 15, 2014 at 1:16 pm

So what about Henry’s search for an alternative bride in autumn 1485?
The word “arrest” is used more in her case nowadays than it was but she was taken to live with monks and little about it sounds voluntary.

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nerdalicious (@nerdaliciousss)

October 15, 2014 at 3:41 pm

What’s the source for this autumn search for a bride?

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1. nerdalicious (@nerdaliciousss)
  
  October 17, 2014 at 10:28 am
  
  There was a rumour about Anne of Brittany and Katherine Herbert, the first might be likely, the second seems rather doubtful. I don’t think there was much danger of the dispensation not being issued however, technically it was merely being re-issued.
  
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  1. super blue
    
    October 17, 2014 at 3:00 pm
    
    Again, see Ashdown-Hill’s notes from chapter 2.
    
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sighthound6

October 16, 2014 at 4:28 pm

I wonder if Henry just set up an alternative option in case his dispensation didn’t arrive? After all, it effectively legitimised Elizabeth (along with the repeal of Richard’s Act) so it was pretty key. Pretty standard bureaucratic practice to have a preferred option, but also a contingency plan in case the wheels come off.

OK, I know Popes were pretty accommodating, but given the circumstances there might have been a doubt it would come through.

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1. super blue
  
  October 16, 2014 at 4:32 pm
  
  The answer is actually hinted at on p.30 of Ashdown-Hill’s “The Last Days …..” (2013 paperback). Doubtless he will have more evidence soon as it always happens after publication – rather like Lady Eleanor’s sister having two servants executed in 1469.
  
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  1. nerdalicious (@nerdaliciousss)
    
    October 17, 2014 at 10:35 am
    
    I don’t think that John was alluding to Henry marrying Joana himself, but that he was continuing negotiations to marry one of Edward’s daughters to Manuel. He also says there is evidence Anne of York was put forward as a candidate as well as Cecily, and notes that “King John II of Portugal,‘in his letter sent from Santarém (transcribed by Lopes) makes it clear that even at the time of Edward Woodville’s first stop in Lisbon, Henry was already married to Elizabeth and reigning over England”.
    
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  2. super blue
    
    October 17, 2014 at 2:59 pm
    
    Chapter 2, note 27, p.173, particularly the first and second sentences.
    
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nerdalicious (@nerdaliciousss)

October 18, 2014 at 10:07 am

He is speculating, and says so, merely for the fact that Henry didn’t marry Elizabeth immediately. Edward Woodville had stopped in Portugal on his way home from Spain where he had been fighting the Moors, and again, he visited with King John after Henry had married Elizabeth. If Henry had sent someone to Portugal to negotiate on his own behalf then we don’t know about it.
It is very doubtful, however, and as John points out in his book, a 33 year-old woman with no proof of fertility was hardly an appealing match. We don’t even have any idea if Richard would have followed through with marrying Joana, many attempted marriage alliances led to nothing.

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1. super blue
  
  October 18, 2014 at 10:39 am
  
  Well, it was the only negotiation that happened from the point at which Richard knew he was going to be widowed. There were younger princesses on the continent but few with the religious commitment he admired, to the point at which he sent the Portuguese-born Brampton (ne Brandao) to counduct the negotiations – even to be proxy, perhaps?
  After all, this is a serious historian with a track record of success at knocking large holes in the creed of the Cairo-dwellers.
  
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2. timetravellingbunny
  
  May 5, 2015 at 10:58 pm
  
  Why wouldn’t Richard go through with it? Joanna had apparently accepted the proposal, the Portuguese wanted the alliance. What’s an appealing match depends on what one is looking for. It seems to me that Richard was primarily looking for a queen, rather than a baby-machine or even a wife (considering Joanna’s general resistance to marriage). She was a strong woman with political experience (having ruled as regent), and a reputation of great piety. And her Lancastrian ancestry was, of course, a huge bonus.
  
  Naturally, she’d have to give birth to an heir, but 33 years even back then wasn’t too old to give birth to an heir and maybe a spare too. If he were looking for a teenage bride, there was Isabelle of Castille. But for proven fertility, he’d have to search for a widow of childbearing age with more than one child… I don’t know if there were such foreign princesses available at the time.
  
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  1. super blue
    
    May 6, 2015 at 11:31 am
    
    Richard was doubtless keen to proceed with the Juana marriage. Henry VII seems to have had second thoughts about his plans.
    
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halfwit36

May 6, 2015 at 1:48 pm

I think we may be reading too much into the dispensation. The sweating sickness was raging. Henry, operating on the belt-and-braces principle, wanted a backup in case Elizabeth died, w/o the trouble of a second dispensation.
Also we may be reading too much into the Buck letter. The main thing it reveals is that Richard and Elizabeth had a difference of opinion, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked John Howard to plead for her. Maybe she didn’t want to marry out of the realm, or didn’t want to marry at all just yet. After all, she had 9 months in Sanctuary to make up for.
Were the Portugese marriages a package deal – if one side fell through, would both marriages be cancelled? I don’t know. Anybody out there better informed?

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1. timetravellingbunny
  
  May 6, 2015 at 10:58 pm
  
  I don’t know if it was a package deal, but apparently Elizabeth of York wasn’t mentioned by name in the documents about Portuguese negotiations, it was just “daughter of Edward IV”, so there was wiggle room if Elizabeth wasn’t available or didn’t want the marriage to the Duke of Beja. Although Cecily was already getting married to Ralph Scrope, 9-year old Anne was betrothed to 12-year old Thomas Howard, and the other two girls were 6 and 5 respectively – not that this would have precluded a betrothal.
  
  Speculation time… The surviving portions of Buck’s account of the letter (and something already could have been lost in memory/misinterpretation there!) are:
  
  “…st she thanked him for his many Curtesies and friendly
  …as before…
  in the cause of…
  and then she prayed him to be a mediator for her to the K…
  ge who (as she wrote) was her onely joy and maker in…
  Worlde, and that she was his…harte, in thoughts, in…and in all, and then she intimated that the better halfe of Ffe…was paste, and that she feared the Queene would neu.…”
  
  In any case, the bit about “the better half of February” having past doesn’t sound like she was asking not be married yet, it sounds the opposite. The bit about the queen has been later interpreted as “she feared the queen would never die”; I doubt the actual wording of the letter was that crass, but maybe what she was saying something like, the queen may in fact not die, then the deal would be off or could take a lot of time to materialize (if the double marriage was indeed a package deal), and she may not get to marry the Portuguese duke, or would have to wait for a long time… so she was perhaps asking for an alternative betrothal, to an English nobleman perhaps, like her sisters got? In medieval terms, 19 year old may have been seen as high time to get married. But I can see the main reason really being that she may have preferred to stay in England, close to her family, even if a marriage into the Portuguese royal family would have been excellent in terms of status.
  
  BTW, since it was mentioned above that Henry VII could have married Anne of Brittany, it’s interesting that Elizabeth had almost ended up married to Charles VIII (Anne’s first husband).
  
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  1. halfwit36
    
    May 7, 2015 at 3:03 am
    
    Yes, there may have been another man in the picture, an Englishman whose name has not come down to us. Someone of lower status, so that Richard would have considered it disparaging. Do I possibly scent the plot of still another novel here?
    
    It is also possible that the remark about the “better half of February” may be in the spirit of “The queen is still clinging to life. No one expected her to live this long, poor lady.” Just expressed awkwardly.
    
    Re Henry and Anne of Brittany: I doubt that was ever a serious prospect. Henry was 20 years older than she was. Probably a ploy or excuse for Duke Francis to fend off unwanted suitors for the toddler’s hand, but one that could be discarded if a better prospect came along.
    
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  2. timetravellingbunny
    
    May 7, 2015 at 3:23 am
    
    I wasn’t implying that there was necessarily already some specific other suitor, or a romance novel plot, ha. (Though I can see some historical fiction writer taking up the idea.) Anyway, Cecily was the second sister, and she was married to Ralph Scrope, a younger brother of the then Baron of Marsham – so that obviously wasn’t deemed too disparaging for her. Would it really be that different for the eldest sister?
    
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halfwit36

May 7, 2015 at 3:58 pm

But suppose the mystery man was not a nobleman at all – just, say, the Master of the Wardrobe or the Horse? Hmm- the plot thickens!
But I like my original idea better. Girls just wanna have fun!

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1. timetravellingbunny
  
  May 7, 2015 at 4:07 pm
  
  I doubt that… It sounds like one of those bad, anachronistic medieval fiction novels that George R. R. Martin was criticizing when he said princesses and noblewomen did not run off with stableboys IRL. (At their most rebellious, they’d run off with low ranked knights. 🙂 ) And it doesn’t seem like Elizabeth was the type to run off with anyone. If it was Cecily, maybe…
  
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  1. halfwit36
    
    May 7, 2015 at 11:23 pm
    
    Regarding Cecily, did Henry VII really break up her marriage to Ralph Scrope so she could be married to his half-uncle? (Henry seemed to have more fractional relatives than normal.) At the same time, he let the planned marriage between Anne and Thomas Howard II stand, even though Thomas I was in prison and attainted, which could have been easily annulled, since they were underage. Maybe the Viscountess was correct in depicting the Scrope marriage as just a betrothal.
    
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  2. timetravellingbunny
    
    May 7, 2015 at 11:49 pm
    
    They were only betrothed and they married in 1495. By that time, Thomas I had been not only released but had gotten into Henry’s good graces and quelled a rebellion in Yorkshire for him.
    
    Henry may have also thought that a marriage to a mere younger brother of a baron was too below his sister-in-law, royal princess.
    
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halfwit36

May 8, 2015 at 10:33 pm

I was thinking that the Howard marriage was planned by Richard, who certainly wanted to reward Surrey (as he was then), and Henry let it stand. Had he already made up his mind in 1486 to pardon Th. I eventually? I doubt it. In 1495 Anne was 19 or 20 and Thomas II in his mid-20s. Henry could no doubt have married them off to Tudor loyalists if he had wished, but he apparently honored the betrothal. Maybe it was a love-match, which medieval kings in general and Henry Tudor in particular, took a dim view of. We just don’t know.

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1. timetravellingbunny
  
  May 9, 2015 at 7:37 pm
  
  Henry didn’t have to hurry to marry Anne off in 1486, since she was 10 and wouldn’t be old to consummate any marriage for a few more years. And he had no reason to alienate the Howards, a prominent and influential family, when Thomas I was eager to get in his good graces. By 1489, when Anne was still 13, Thomas I had already been restored to the Earldom of Surray and sent to quell the rebellion in Yorkshire, which he did successfully and was made Henry’s lieutenant in the North . So, long before the marriage of Anne to Thomas II took place, the Howards were already among the Tudor loyalists. The marriage going through as planned may even have been one of the anticipated rewards for Thomas I’s good service (and he was to rise to even higher positions in Henry VII’s court).
  
  The Scropes were just barons, considerably lower in the ranks of nobility, and Ralph was just a younger brother at that point, so I can see Henry considering that marriage too beneath his sister-in-law, especially after she was officially made legitimate again.
  
  But my point was that Cecily’s first marriage to Ralph Scrope is likely to have been a love match, because I can’t think of another reason why it would have taken place. The explanation that the girls being officially illegitimate made them that much less desirable marriage material doesn’t stand in the light of the fact that her younger sister Anne was betrothed to a future heir to Duke of Norfolk, one of Richard III’s main supporters. Or that a Elizabeth was intended to marry a Portuguese royal duke as a part of a double marriage/alliance. (And since the wording was apparently just “daughter of Edward IV”, Cecily could have even been a back-up option for Duke of Beja if necessary.) There’s no indication that the Scropes were particularly influential or important during Richard’s reign, either, so I don’t see why he would need to reward them with Cecily, instead of saving her for some more important family of his supporters, or for another foreign alliance.
  
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  1. halfwit36
    
    May 9, 2015 at 11:14 pm
    
    Point taken. Do you consider that the Howard match was arranged by Richard, or Henry, or by the parties themselves? Some ambiguity here.
    
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  2. timetravellingbunny
    
    May 11, 2015 at 12:22 am
    
    Initially it was certainly arranged by Richard, since it was in 1484, when Anne was 8 or 9 and Thomas II was 11. Richard had promised Elizabeth Woodville, when she came out of the sanctuary, that he was going to find her daughter good marriages to husbands of noble birth, so this would have been both keeping his promise and rewarding the Howards. But how it went after Richard’s death, I don’t know – were they still considered betrothed, was it only renewed later…? Maybe someone else knows more details. Thomas II was apparently made a page in Henry’s court. Did he and Anne really come to like each other, or was it just a matter of prestige for the Howards? I don’t know.
    
    Thomas II was certainly an ambitious man who wanted prestigious marriages – as a widower with no surviving children in search of a new life, he insisted on marrying the teenage Elizabeth Stafford, the eldest daughter of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham (another girl of royal blood!), even though she was in love with her father’s young ward Ralph Neville and was about to marry him. The marriage between Thomas II and Elizabeth proved to be disastrous, and one of the bones of contention was that Thomas had a mistress, but that’s another story.
    
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