Home Again, with Pictures!

Me and My Hennin:

Don't Mess With Guys Carrying These:

The Woodville Family:


(Well, I thought that last Coca-Cola I drank tasted a little strange.)

I did thoroughly enjoy the Annual General Meeting. (As you can see from the picture of the Woodville family, who were housed across the street at a mini-golf course, we were in the heart of Tacky Tourism Country. That's only half of the Woodvilles, by the way--more were outside the picture.) We heard a very interesting theory that William Catesby, not Bishop Stillington, revealed the supposed precontract to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, enjoyed a presentation about Oxford University during the Wars of the Roses, were serenaded by several types of recorders, and had a visit from the Lincoln Company, a living history group that brought an impressive collection of reproduction armor and weapons for us to examine, including those in the picture above. As a writer who had to send one of my characters into battle, I found the last presentation particularly helpful for visualizing how he would have had to fight. In short, I was left with lots to think about, and I'm glad I went.

I got a couple of books read on the flights to and fro, and I'll be posting reviews in due course. Now, back to work!

My Wild Ricardian Weekend

I'm off this weekend to the Richard III Society American Branch's annual general meeting, held this year in Orlando, Florida. Since I diss the man so much on this blog, you might be surprised to hear that I'm a member, but it's a great organization for anyone interested in Richard III and the Wars of the Roses. The publications in particular are a treasure trove for anyone doing research into the period.

Anyway, the meeting includes a Saturday night banquet, for which members are encouraged to don medieval garb. My fourteenth-century-style gown is a little out of period, but if anyone calls me on it I'll tell them the Nasty Woodvilles stole all of my newer ones. (See? I'm getting into the spirit of things already.) My head at least will be in the right era, because I bought a nifty hennin last weekend, complete with veil. This led to a spirited exchange with my daughter, who told me that it looked like a dunce cap. (Teenagers. You've got to love them. Or at least they say you do.)

Speaking of Richard III, I was on my way to fetch said daughter from school the day before yesterday (I should have worn my hennin and really embarrassed her) when I spotted a mini-bus with the name "King Richard Transportation Service" on it. My first thought was that America had turned into a monarchy without anyone informing me, which would certainly explain a few things about the past eight years. My second thought was no, someone just liked King Richard, but which King Richard? I don't really associate any of the three with transportation, but let's face it, there's something a little sinister about Richard III transporting people, given his tendency to, er, lose them. Especially if they're children, which I assumed were the intended passengers here, since this was the time of day for taking them to and from school. In this I turned out to be wrong, however, for when I got home I Googled and discovered that the company is in the business of transporting the elderly. Which is even more odd, since none of the Richards lived to a ripe old age. So the mystery lives on: which King Richard gave his name to these buses?

While you're pondering this, I'm off to Florida, hennin and all. If I come back and start pontificating on how everything in England would have been perfect if it hadn't been for those upstart Woodvilles, you'll know someone slipped something into my drink down there.

Jacquetta Woodville

I'll be going away later this week (more about that later in the week), so here's a loooong post to start out:

Jacquetta Woodville was the daughter of Pierre of Luxembourg, Count of St. Pol (d. 1433), and Marguerite de Baux of Andria. Her uncle, Louis de Luxembourg, was bishop of Thérouanne and chancellor of France during the time that John, Duke of Bedford, was serving as Regent of France for the government of the youthful Henry VI. Another uncle, Jean de Luxembourg, is known for having held Joan of Arc in captivity before she was handed over to the English.

The Duke of Bedford, a younger brother of Henry V, was widowed from Anne of Burgundy in 1432. At Thérouanne on April 20, 1433, just five months after the death of his first wife, the forty-three-year-old John married the seventeen-year-old Jacquetta of Luxembourg. In honor of the occasion, Bedford presented the Church of Notre Dame in Thérouanne with a peal of bells. Not for the last time when Jacquetta was concerned, the match was a controversial one, the offended party being Philip, Duke of Burgundy, Bedford’s former brother-in-law. Not only had the Duke of Bedford (whose first marriage was childless) remarried in unseemly haste, he had married Jacquetta, one of his vassals, without Burgundy’s permission. Bedford was to remain estranged from Burgundy for the rest of Bedford’s short life.

Jacquetta first came to England in June 1433 in the company of her husband. George Smith notes that the citizens of Coventry presented her with fifty marks and a cup of silver and over-gilt. The Duke and Duchess of Bedford made a grand entry into London, a city where Jacquetta was to find favor in later life.

Bedford and Jacquetta returned to France in July 1434. Though Bedford was only in his forties, his health was failing, possibly from the stress of dealing with difficulties in both England and France. He died on September 14, 1435 at Rouen Castle. His marriage to young Jacquetta had been childless, though Bedford had sired two out-of-wedlock children earlier in life and Jacquetta’s second marriage would produce a dozen children who lived to adulthood.

By all accounts, Bedford had had great affection for his first wife, Anne of Burgundy. What he and the much younger Jacquetta felt about each other is unknown, but Bedford certainly tried to take good care of his young bride upon his death. He left Jacquetta a life interest in all of his lands in England, France, and Normandy, except for one estate that went to his bastard son, Richard. (Henry VI held the remainder interest.) Partly because of the requirements of English inheritance law, partly because of the claims of Bedford’s brother Humphrey, partly because of English losses in France and Normandy, Jacquetta received only some of what her husband had left to her.

On February 6, 1436, Jacquetta was granted dower in England, Jersey, Guernsey, and Calais. The grant was conditioned on Jacquetta’s not marrying without royal license—a condition that Jacquetta soon broke, and spectacularly so. She married one Richard Woodville, the son of her husband’s chamberlain. Richard had been knighted by Henry VI ten years earlier, having been in royal service in France since 1433. From Northampshire gentry, he was hardly Jacquetta’s social equal. The unsanctioned match infuriated Jacquetta’s Luxembourg relations, and Henry VI fined her 1,000 pounds. The couple paid the fine before March 23, 1437, apparently with funds gained from the grant of certain lands to Cardinal Beaufort.

Despite their controversial marriage, Jacquetta and her husband found favor in the court of Henry VI. When the king married Margaret of Anjou, Jacquetta and Richard Woodville were among those who escorted her to England. Jacquetta often received New Year’s presents from the queen, and in 1457 she and Woodville are named as being present with the queen at a Corpus Christi pageant. Jacquetta’s chief occupation during this time, however, was bearing children: twelve survived to adulthood, with Elizabeth, probably the eldest, being born around 1437 and Katherine, probably the youngest, being born around 1458.

In 1459, Richard Woodville, who had taken the side of Lancaster against the Duke of York, was captured at Sandwich and taken to Calais, where according to William Paston he was “rated” by the Earls of Salisbury, Warwick, and March for his low birth. According to Gregory’s Chronicle, Jacquetta was captured along with her husband; thus, she may have been a witness to this humiliating scene. If she was, she must have enjoyed the irony five years later when the Earl of March, who had become King Edward IV, made her and her low-born husband’s daughter Elizabeth his queen.

Jacquetta performed a service for the city of London in February 1461 when its aldermen, fearing devastation at the hands of Margaret of Anjou’s forces, sent a delegation to the queen, in the words of the Great Chronicle, to “entreat for grace for the City.” The delegation included “divers Clerks and Curates” and three women: the widowed Duchess of Buckingham, whose grandson would marry Jacquetta’s youngest daughter; Lady Scales, whose son-in-law was Jacquetta’s son Anthony; and Jacquetta herself. All had ties with Margaret of Anjou. The delegation returned with the news that no pillaging would take place but that the king and queen would punish evildoers, after which a second delegation, again including the three ladies, was sent to Barnet. Ultimately, it was Yorkist troops who entered the city, while Margaret withdrew to the north.

Edward IV became king soon after these events, on March 4, 1461. Jacquetta and her family, who had been supporters of the House of Lancaster, soon made their peace with the new reign. Jacquetta’s husband Richard Woodville eventually became one of the young king’s councilors. Sometime in 1464, however, a much stronger tie was forged: Jacquetta and Richard’s daughter Elizabeth married Edward IV.

The royal marriage is usually supposed to have taken place at Grafton on May 4, 1464, although there is some evidence that it could have taken place as late as September 1464, shortly before Edward IV announced it to his councilors. Whatever the date of the ceremony, Jacquetta is described by the chronicler Fabian in 1516 as having had a prominent role in the secret marriage. She is said to have been one of the witnesses to the marriage, after which Elizabeth over a four-day period “nightly to [Edward’s] bed was brought in so secret manner that almost none but her mother was of counsel.”

Following Edward IV’s announcement of his marriage, he arranged for a grand coronation for his bride, which took place on May 26, 1465. Jacquetta was prominent among the ladies who followed Elizabeth in the procession. At the banquet following the ceremony, she sat at the middle table on the left hand of the queen.

Also present for the festivities was Jacquetta’s youngest brother, Jacques de Luxembourg, representing Philip, Duke of Burgundy. The current Wikipedia entry on Elizabeth Woodville claims, without giving a source, that Jacquetta’s relations appeared for the coronation “carrying shields painted with the figure of Melusine, a ‘water-witch’ (actually a medieval version of the old pagan goddess) described variously as a mermaid or possibly as a female figure depicted as a snake from the waist down, but with the face clearly that of the young Queen. This immediately caused whispers of witchcraft to circulate throughout the Abbey, as it was indeed the intention of the Luxembourgers to suggest an accusation of witchcraft thereby.” This story probably comes from historical fiction, not history. Such an incident is not mentioned in any contemporary source that I have seen, nor is it discussed by Elizabeth Woodville’s modern biographers or by historians hostile to the Woodvilles like Paul Murray Kendall, who could certainly be counted upon to make the most of such an episode. Jacquetta’s relations would hardly gain from implying that either Jacquetta or Elizabeth was involved with witchcraft, especially as her older relations had seen the consequences of such allegations firsthand when Joan of Arc was burned at the stake.

Elizabeth Woodville gave birth to her first royal child, Elizabeth, on February 11, 1466. Jacquetta was one of the baby’s godmothers, the other being the king’s mother, Cecily of York. Cecily had been none too happy about her son’s marriage; how the two new grandmothers got along on this occasion is sadly not recorded.

Following childbirth, it was customary for a medieval woman to seclude herself for a period, after which she would attend church for a ceremony of purification. A celebration often followed. At the banquet following Elizabeth Woodville’s "churching," a Bohemian observer noted that Jacquetta knelt before her daughter, being bidden at times to rise. This has been taken as proof of Elizabeth Woodville’s insufferable haughtiness—even her own mother had to kneel before her!—but there is no indication that Jacquetta found this demeaning or that this highly formal occasion was typical of the daily interaction between mother and daughter. For all we know—and we don’t—Jacquetta might have insisted that her daughter observe all the formalities of what was her first churching as queen.

Perhaps the most damaging incident associated with Jacquetta is one which occurred in 1468: the arrest of Thomas Cook for treason. The original story has been distorted to suggest that the treason charges against Cook were concocted to allow Jacquetta to lay her hands on an expensive tapestry that Cook had refused to sell her, but reality, as usual, is more complicated. According to the Great Chronicle, Jacquetta did indeed dislike Cook for his refusal to sell her the arras, but Cook’s arrest was only one of many in a time when Edward IV genuinely feared that Lancastrian plots were afoot, and he was implicated by one John Hawkins, a Lancastrian agent. Cook’s house was searched and agents of Jacquetta’s husband Richard Woodville (who had been created Earl Rivers and made the treasurer of England) seized Cook’s goods, including the infamous tapestry. Ultimately, Cook was convicted by a jury of misprision. As Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs note, Fabian never says in the Great Chronicle that Jacquetta actually acquired the coveted arras; rather, he implies that it was used to set off Cook’s fine for misprision. Fabian also does not state that Cook was innocent of the charges on which he was convicted, only that Jacquetta and her husband (and the king) were displeased by the verdict. Whatever the fate of the arras, Cook was not ruined by the episode, but was still a wealthy man when he died ten years later. He was back in Edward IV’s good graces at the time, having been pardoned for his Lancastrian activities in 1472 and appointed to a royal commission in 1475.

The year after the Cook incident, 1469, was without doubt the worst in Jacquetta’s life. Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, known as the “Kingmaker” for his role in helping Edward IV to the throne, had become disaffected from the crown for a number of reasons, including the rise of the Woodvilles, Edward IV’s growing independence from him, and differences over foreign policy. Meanwhile, the honeymoon Edward IV had enjoyed with his subjects was ending, thanks to taxation, growing lawlessness, and the diehard Lancastrians still within and without England. Warwick joined forces with Edward IV’s younger brother George, Duke of Clarence, and the two men issued a manifesto blaming the Woodvilles and other royal favorites for the country’s ills. Jacquetta, her husband, and her sons Anthony and John were among those accused of “deceitful, covetous rule.” In the upheaval that followed, Edward IV was briefly taken prisoner by Warwick. Jacquetta’s husband, Earl Rivers, and one of her sons, John, were seized by Warwick’s troops and murdered. (According to Michael Hicks, who cites a King’s Bench record, Jacquetta later brought proceedings against 34 men in connection with her husband’s murder, but he does not report the outcome.)

Jacquetta had risked her reputation and her livelihood to marry Richard Woodville over thirty years before. Her agony at his violent death, coupled with that of one of her sons, can only be imagined. Her son Anthony’s life was in danger as well. It was then that Thomas Wake, a follower of Warwick’s, accused her of witchcraft.

Wake brought to Warwick Castle a lead image “made like a man of arms . . . broken in the middle and made fast with a wire,“ and alleged that Jacquetta had fashioned it to use for witchcraft and sorcery. He claimed that John Daunger, a parish clerk in Northampton, could attest that Jacquetta had made two other images, one for the king and one for the queen.

As an accused witch, Jacquetta faced imprisonment at best, burning at the stake at worst. With this accusation coming on top of the deaths of her husband and son, she must have been devastated, but Jacquetta was not a woman who was easily cowed. According to Cora Scofield, who cites the London Journal, the Duchess of Bedford appealed to the mayor and aldermen of London, who remembered the service Jacquetta had done for the city by interceding with Margaret of Anjou in 1461. They agreed to intercede on Jacquetta’s behalf with the king’s council, which at the time was essentially Warwick’s council, as Edward IV was still a prisoner in the North.

By October 1469, Edward IV was once again at liberty, Warwick having found that his own popularity was not so great as to allow him to govern through an imprisoned king. As a result, the witchcraft charges against Jacquetta fell apart. Neither Thomas Wake nor John Daunger, summoned before men appointed by Edward IV who could be counted upon to be friendly toward the king’s mother-in-law, produced any images, and Daunger, who stated that “he heard no witchcraft of the lady of Bedford,” refused to say that there were any images of the king and queen. As a result, Jacquetta was cleared by the king’s great council of the charges on January 19, 1470. For good measure, she obtained letters of exemplification from the king in February 1470, taking the opportunity to have it recorded as well that she was a believer “on God according to the truth of Holy Church.”

Other than the accusations of her enemies, there is no reason to disbelieve Jacquetta. It should be noted that Jacquetta did own a copy of an “ancestral romance” entitled Mélusine, featuring a legendary figure who was associated both with the houses of Luxembourg and Lusignan, but as noted by Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs, the romance was a popular one at the time, and copies were found among the inventories of other high-born ladies.

Edward IV’s recovery of his throne was brief, and when he was forced to flee England in late September 1470 to avoid capture by Warwick, a heavily pregnant Elizabeth Woodville went into sanctuary, accompanied by her daughters and Jacquetta. With Henry VI restored to the throne, neither Warwick nor his followers attempted to revive the allegations of witchcraft against Jacquetta, although the government admittedly had more pressing concerns. Indeed, Warwick had been a member of the great council that recommended that letters of exemplification be made to Jacquetta.

His enemies vanquished at Barnet and Tewkesbury, Edward IV regained his throne in May 1471. With Warwick killed at Barnet, the king the proud father of a son born to his queen while in sanctuary, and Jacquetta’s son Anthony carrying on his father’s title, Jacquetta must have felt at peace, but she did not have long to enjoy it. She died on May 30, 1472. I have not found any mention of her will or her funeral, though the latter must surely have been conducted with all due ceremony.

In 1484, Richard III in Titulus Regius, the document spelling out to Parliament his claim to the throne, revived the old accusations of witchcraft against Jacquetta. He—or, more accurately, those presenting the petition, which certainly had to have had his wholehearted approval—stated that the marriage between Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville was invalid because, among other reasons, it was made “by sorcerie and wichecrafte, committed by the said Elizabeth and her moder, Jaquett Duchess of Bedford, as the common opinion of the people and the publique voice and fame is through all this land.” The drafters of the petition added that if the case required it, the allegations of witchcraft would be proved sufficiently “in tyme and place convenient.” No such proof was ever offered by Richard III or his government, and Elizabeth was hardly in a position to defy the king and attempt to clear her and her deceased mother’s names. Sadly, the unproven charges, elaborated upon in lurid detail by historical fiction writers and even by some nonfiction writers, continue to blacken both women’s reputations today.

Wedding Bell Research Blues: A September Anniversary for Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville?

It’s generally stated that Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville were secretly married on May 1, 1464. But is this their actual wedding date?

It’s been noted by several authors that as late as April 13, 1464, Elizabeth and William, Lord Hastings, Edward IV’s close friend and chamberlain, entered into an agreement whereby one of William’s as-yet-unborn daughters would marry Elizabeth’s eldest son, Thomas. William and Elizabeth were to share in the profits of Elizabeth’s Grey lands, which she had apparently enlisted William’s help in recovering. Because Elizabeth would have hardly needed to enter into such an agreement if she knew she was shortly to be the wife of Edward IV, it’s generally assumed that at this point, neither Elizabeth nor Hastings knew that a royal marriage for Elizabeth was in the works.

Less well known, however, is the sequel to this agreement: a grant dated August 10, 1464, in which Edward IV gives William Hastings the wardship and marriage of Thomas Grey. As far as I know, only Michael Hicks in his book Edward V notes the existence of this grant, which can be found in the National Archives at DL 37/33, entry no. 28. (I have a transciption of it at hand.) As Hicks points out, if Elizabeth had married Edward IV in May, why would Edward IV subsequently grant her eldest son’s wardship and marriage to Hastings? Indeed, after Edward IV’s marriage was made public, a marriage for Thomas was arranged that was far more lucrative than the planned Hastings match the August grant appears to have been made to further. One could argue that Edward IV made the grant as part of a ruse to hide his marriage from even his closest friend, but it seems rather more likely that he at this point had not yet married Thomas Grey’s mother. Hicks notes another piece of evidence of a later marriage date: on August 30, 1464, Edward IV granted the lordship of Chester, traditionally reserved for the heir to the throne, to his younger brother Clarence. Would Edward had made such a grant had he been already married to a woman who could be hoped to give him an heir?

Neither of these grants prove that a May 1, 1464, wedding didn’t take place, and it could be argued that there had been a wedding on May 1 but that Edward IV as of August had not yet decided to come clean about it. Still, they do serve as a reminder that as with so many things about this period in history, the May 1 date (described by Ricardian writer Annette Carson as “beyond dispute”) is open to question; moreover, as David Baldwin notes in his biography of Elizabeth Woodville, the idea of the May wedding might have been “borrowed from romantic tradition,” or it might have arisen due to confusion with Elizabeth’s May coronation the following year.

Even if the May 1 date is a romantic fiction, it doesn’t make much difference in the grand scheme of things. Still, a wedding date after August 30, 1464, does give rise to two considerations. First, since Edward IV revealed the wedding to his council in September 1464 and presented his new bride to his council on September 29, 1464, a marriage date after August 30 means that the wedding was kept secret for less than a month, which undermines the argument that Edward had dishonorable intentions of never making his marriage public.

Second, those who have accepted the claim of Richard III that the marriage was procured by sorcery on the part of Elizabeth and/or her mother have gleefully pointed out that May 1 was the day after Walpurgisnacht, a Grand Sabbath of the witching year and thus an apt night for Elizabeth, Jacquetta, and their witchy ilk to cast spells upon the hapless Edward IV. One Ricardian, W. E. Hampton, in “Witchcraft and the Sons of York” (The Ricardian, March 1980) posits that Edward IV’s fatigue at Stony Stratford after the wedding, as described by the chronicler Fabian, can be attributed to “the orgiastic nature of the rites to which he may have been introduced” at a wild Walpurgisnacht in the forest of Grafton. While a September wedding could still have been procured by witchcraft, of course, the accusation loses a bit of its punch without Walpurgisnacht to lean upon. If the couple did marry after August 30, they could have at least done Richard the courtesy of waiting until All Hallows’ Eve.

Double the Annes, Double the Fun

Sourcebooks has been reissuing a number of historical novels, including two classics by Margaret Campbell Barnes about two of historical fiction's perennial favorites: Henry VIII's wives. Brief Gaudy Hour is about Anne Boleyn; My Lady of Cleves about Anne of Cleves. I was pleased to be sent review copies of the two reissued Barnes novels.

Having read an out-of-print version of My Lady of Cleves some time ago, I'll repeat what I said earlier about it:

My Lady of Cleves was published in 1946; it contains a dedication to “the women who lost the men they loved in the fight for freedom.” For a sixty-year-old historical novel, it’s held up remarkably well. Barnes's prose is uncluttered and easy to read, nothing purple or fusty about it.

Barnes’s characterization of Anne of Cleves is interesting and refreshing. Though there doesn’t seem to be much reason, historically, to take Henry VIII at his word in describing her as a “Flanders mare,” she’s often treated as such by novelists. Here, Anne is attractive, though not in the style that appeals to Henry, and she’s even given romantic yearnings for none other than Hans Holbein. How accurate this is I have no idea, but as the relationship isn’t depicted as having an effect on history or as giving rise to any offspring, I can live with it. Anne’s a capable woman who longs for children of her own and who satisfies her maternal instincts by mothering Henry’s brood. At the same time, she’s no saint; jealous of Hans Holbein’s mistress at one point, she takes the opportunity to sleep with Henry VIII, now on his fifth wife.

My Lady of Cleves is an appealing story of a woman who makes the best of a bad situation. As she has been relatively neglected by historical novelists, it's nice to see this novel in particular being reissued.


Brief Gaudy Hour, which I first read in the reissued version, tells the much more familiar story of Anne Boleyn. Originally published in 1949, it too doesn't show its age, but can hold its own--and then some--against any of the numerous historical novels about Anne Boleyn that have been published in the past few decades.

Barnes concentrates on the psychological aspect of Anne's story, which here spans the period from her service with Henry VIII's sister to her death on the scaffold. Anne's thwarted relationship with young Henry Percy is especially well done, as is her developing, then deteriorating relationship with the king. If you're one of the few people on earth who hasn't read a historical novel about Anne Boleyn, this one would be an excellent one to start with; if you've read many novels about the queen, this one is a worthy addition to your list.

Each reissued novel comes with a reading group guide prepared by Barnes's great-granddaughter. Let's hope some more of her books will be re-released!

A Trio of Book Reviews

A busy weekend lies ahead, and I'm still working on a long blog post about Jacquetta Woodville, Elizabeth Woodville's mother, so I'll leave you for the week with several reviews I did for the August Historical Novels Review. Two of the reviews, you'll see, were for nonfiction. I enjoyed all three of these books, but I heartily recommend the Mary Tudor biography.

Sister’s Choice
Judith Pella, Bethany House, 2008, $13.99 pb, 350pp, 9780764201349

It’s 1882, and Maggie Newcomb, just turned eighteen, is determined to win handsome Colby Stoddard for her husband—if, that is, she can keep him from being snared by beautiful Tamara Brennan, who’s visiting Maggie’s small Oregon town following a broken engagement. When Evan Parker, newly graduated from Harvard Law School, returns to his family in Maintown, Maggie sees the perfect opportunity. Not only can the awkward young lawyer defend Maggie’s friend Tommy against murder charges, he can join forces with Maggie to keep Colby and Tamara apart.

The second book in Pella’s Patchwork Circle series, which revolves around the members of a quilting circle and their daughters, Sister’s Choice is a charming and often gently humorous novel, with engaging characters, especially its heroine, who’s refreshingly blundering and down-to-earth. It also features that rarity in romantic novels—a bespectacled hero. I look forward to spending more time with these characters.

***

Lancaster Against York: The Wars of the Roses and the Foundation of Modern Britain
Trevor Royle, Palgrave, 2008, $29.95/C$32.95, hb, 368pp, 9781403966728

Lancaster Against York has a somewhat misleading subtitle: this is a study of the Wars of the Roses, certainly, but not an assessment of their influence on modern Britain. Subtitle aside, this is a well written and engrossing history of this turbulent time by an author without an axe to grind on behalf of either side.

There are a few irritating errors here—Richard III did not imprison the young Earl of Warwick in the Tower, for instance. Occasionally, too, Royle seems unaware of recent research, such as the discovery of a dispensation for the marriage of the Duke of Gloucester and Anne Neville. There are no annotations, which I found frustrating when I wanted to check a source, but there’s a useful bibliography and a helpful section listing the key players of the time.

On the positive side, Royle packs a great deal of information from a wide range of sources into a relatively short space, and his assessments are fair and balanced. For those wanting an introduction to the Wars of the Roses, as well as for those wanting to refresh their general knowledge, this will be a useful book.

***

The First Queen of England: The Myth of “Bloody Mary”
Linda Porter, St. Martin’s, 2008, $27.95, hb, 464pp, 9780312368371

If any historical figure is due for a reassessment, it’s surely Mary Tudor, characterized alternatively as a bloodthirsty fanatic and as a pathetic hag. In this lucid and intelligently written biography, Porter does an admirable job of showing us the woman behind the myth.

Porter gives us a full picture of Mary, reminding us that the queen who is often regarded as dour and sickly enjoyed fine clothes, gambling, and hunting. Her religious persecutions are not glossed over, but are placed in the context of their time and in that of Mary’s more positive actions regarding religion. Especially interesting is Porter’s examination of Mary’s fraught and highly ambivalent relationship with her younger sister.

It is not the “Bloody” Mary of popular history, or the lonely wife familiar from historical fiction, who emerges here, but the courageous woman who fought through many obstacles to get to the throne, then to stay there. Porter is to be commended for bringing this complex and much-maligned woman to life.

Sunday Stuff

As I work on a long post planned for later this month, I wanted to quickly mention a couple of things. First, Julie Rose was nice enough to interview me for her blog, Writers and Their Soundtracks. Take a look (and a listen)! And thanks, Julie!

Second, I've veered a little bit off the track of my usual reading with a biography, Martha Washington: An American Life. Having read a historical novel about Martha (my review of it will appear in the Historical Novels Review's November issue), I was curious to learn more about America's first First Lady. This biography is an excellent place to start: it's well researched and written in an accessible, readable style. (I rather wish I had read it before I tackled Barbara Hambly's novel Patriot Hearts a few years ago; I never could sort out all of Martha's relatives there.)

Brady never falls into the vice of judging Martha Washington by twenty-first-century standards; she doesn't condemn Martha for not holding modern views about slavery, for instance, and she doesn't turn her devotion to her husband and to her family into a saga of male oppression. Instead, she reminds us of Martha's fortitude amid heartbreaking losses (all of her children by her first marriage predeceased her), her husband George's evident respect and admiration for her, and the courage she displayed during the turbulent times of the American Revolution. At the same time, Brady shows us a side of Martha that's left out of American schoolbooks: her business acumen, grit, and charm.

This biography, in short, is well worth reading for those interested in American history and/or the role of women in history. Give it a go this election season.

First Amendment? Oh, That Silly Thing

Not that I had any intention of doing so in the first place, but here's an excellent reason from today's New York Times not to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket:

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical.”

If banning books is one of the first things Palin as a small-town mayor would try to accomplish, what do you think she would get up to if she ended up as President? Scary, very scary.

Joan of Navarre

Over the weekend (in between the excitement of using my big hole puncher), I finished Witch Queen by Maureen Peters. Witch Queen is about Joan of Navarre, who married the widowed Henry IV and thus became his queen and the stepmother to his children, including the future Henry V.

Witch Queen follows Joan from her childhood with her depraved father, nicknamed Charles the Bad, who forces young Joan to learn the ways of witchcraft. It follows Joan through her two marriages to the Duke of Brittany and to Henry IV, her imprisonment by Henry V on trumped-up charges of sorcery, and her release several years later. An epilogue follows Joan into her old age.

Those expecting a novel about witchcraft should look elsewhere, as Joan uses her powers only on one occasion, early in her life. Her main interest, which deepens as she ages, is in keeping her income secure, and it is her refusal to lend Henry V money that leads to the charges against her. Joan's increasing avarice, in fact, makes her a less attractive heroine as the novel goes on, though Peters manages to keep the reader from losing all sympathy for her.

There are some nice moments in this novel, such as the scene where Joan encounters an old admirer and finds, to her chagrin, that he no longer carries a torch for her. All in all, it's a quick and enjoyable read.

Having finished the novel, I was interested in learning more about the historical Joan of Navarre, who was indeed accused by Henry V of witchcraft in 1419. Henry V never proved the charges, and most historians, including Henry V's biographer Christopher Allmand, believe that they were a pretext for the cash-strapped Henry to seize Joan's revenues. (Tensions between England and Brittany, where Joan's son from her first marriage ruled, probably didn't help either.)

Peters portrays Joan's imprisonment as being a spartan one, but this was hardly the case. A.R. Myers in his article "The Captivity of a Royal Witch" notes that Joan was provided with a large household, rich clothing, and varied foods and wines. She received illustrious visitors, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, and her stepson the Duke of Gloucester. One visitor, Thomas, Lord Camoys, stayed for a whopping nine months during 1420-21. One wonders if Camoys, a widower who returned for a brief visit in February 1421 before his death in March that same year, was a special friend of Joan's. Myers also notes that Joan was appointed a Portuguese physician and was allowed to buy medicines.

Noting that Joan was never tried for witchcraft, Myers suggests a reasonable explanation: if Joan were tried and acquitted, she would have to be freed and given back her income; if she were found guilty, she would have to be punished, which the king may have been reluctant to do. Keeping Joan imprisoned without trial allowed the government to enjoy her income while keeping her in comfort at the same time.

Six weeks before his own death in 1422, Henry ordered that Joan be released and her dower restored. Her last years were comfortable and uneventful. She appears to have been on good terms with Henry VI, who gave her a fine tablet of gold in 1437 and saw to it that she received a state funeral when she died that same year, aged sixty-nine. She was buried beside Henry IV. It seems unlikely that Henry VI would have treated Joan with such respect had he believed the witchcraft charges against her to have substance.

Swinging Susan

Last night, very unusually, I was alone for the evening, since hubby and the kids were out of town. So how did I spend my evening as a bachelorette, you might wonder? Pick one:

a) Had a raucous night out with the girls.
b) Drank a bottle of wine and gave myself blond highlights.
c) Got a whole bunch of writing done.
d) Fiddled around with the DVD player connection, then got out my great big hole puncher and put some of my research materials into nice blue binders.

D. This is really pathetic, folks. Maybe someone needs to do an intervention.

This and That

First, as some of the readers of this blog may have frequented the Historical Fiction.org bulletin board, which has been down since Friday, I wanted to let you know that the moderators of that board (including me) have started a new site, Historical Fiction Online. It has all of the features that people enjoyed on the old site, and we'll be adding more. It's one of the friendliest sites on the web for discussing historical fiction and related topics, so stop on by and sign up!

Second, a couple of weeks ago, I was delighted to get a review copy of Sharon Penman's Devil's Brood in the mail. I finished reading it last week, and I recommend it heartily. Penman does a remarkable job of bringing Henry, Eleanor, and their sons, a flawed bunch if ever there was one, to sympathetic life.

Third, I'm eagerly waiting for August to get through so I can get Michelle Moran's new novel, due in mid-September, and Philippa Gregory's, also due in mid-September. Roll on, fall!

Manly Matters

As eagerly anticipated, no doubt, by female readers of this blog, here's an item from Edward IV's last Parliament, that of 1483, in which Parliament took a firm stand against firm--no, I'm not going there. Not at all.

And that it be ordained and enacted by the said authority that no one below the estate of lord shall wear . . . any gown or cloak unless it is of such length that, when he stands upright, it covers his genitals and buttocks, upon pain of forfeiting 20s. to your highness for each offence; and the same execution, process and judgment shall be had in this matter as is ordained for the foregoing. [The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. by C. Given Wilson et al., Scholarly Digital Editions]

As anyone who's sat on a beach and witnessed 300 pounds of man tucked into a piece of spandex best suited for 180 pounds of man will agree, this legislation clearly was valuable. Note, however, that lords were excepted. Whether Parliament decided that lordly assets were more pleasing to the eye than nonlordly ones, or whether it was concerned that the lords would rise up in anger against a threat to their ordained right to show off their nether regions, or whether the cloth lobby had a hand in the legislation, is a matter I'll have to leave to the scholars among us.

Which brings us to Richard III. (This blog always brings us to Richard III, doesn't it?) This being the man's death anniversary, I promised myself I'd write only nice things about him today, even in my novel in progress, where today I promise he's going to say strictly things like, "Nice weather we're having, Buckingham," and, "I do so regret that the Nasty Woodvilles killed my brother Clarence." However, there's an illustration in a manuscript presented to Edward IV by Jean de Waurin that shows a Knight of the Garter in a rather short surcoat, which from the rear view would appear not to leave too much to the imagination if the knight were to bend over. Sir Short Surcoat has been identified by some historians as being the future Richard III (the king on the throne being Edward IV and the kneeling figure being Waurin). The last time I saw this issue being discussed on a Internet forum, it degenerated into a rather unseemly debate about the posteriors of the various Knights of the Garter during the first part of Edward IV's reign, with Richard III's supporters arguing (if I recall correctly) that only William, Lord Hastings, would favor such a revealing garment. What cheek.

Checkers: The Root of All Evil

As my work-in-progress approaches the death of George, Duke of Clarence, I had a look last night at the Parliament rolls for the 1478 session at which he was condemned. There's actually very little about Clarence in them, perhaps because there was plenty of other business to occupy Parliament, such as this little gem:

the commons assembled in this present parliament pray, that where according to the laws of this land no person should play any unlawful games such as dice, quoits, football and similar games, but that every strong and able bodied person should practise archery because the defence of this land relies heavily on archers; contrary to which laws the said games and several newly invented games called closh, kayles, half-bowl, hand-in and hand-out, and checker-board are played daily in various parts of this land both by persons of good repute and those of lesser estate, not virtuously-disposed, who fear neither to offend God by not attending divine service on holy days, nor to break the laws of this land, to their own impoverishment, and by their wicked incitement and encouragement they induce others to play such games so that they are completely stripped of their possessions and impoverished, setting a pernicious example to many of your lieges, if such unprofitable games are allowed to continue for long, because by such means many different murders, robberies and other most heinous felonies are frequently committed and perpetrated in various parts of this land . . .[The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. by C. Given Wilson et al., Scholarly Digital Editions]

Does this sound like a fifteenth-century version of Reefer Madness, or what? This wasn't the first time, of course, that medieval English kings had outlawed games that supposedly distracted men from practicing archery; Edward III, for instance, had cracked down hard on football, obviously without long-lasting success.

Unfortunately, Edward IV may have had a closh-player lurking in his own household: his queen, Elizabeth Woodville. (Naturally, if there was trouble, the Woodvilles were going to be in the thick of it.) In 1472, a foreign observer caught the queen playing at marbles, and her ladies at a game of closheys (similar to ninepins). Ivory closheys, no less. Whether Elizabeth and her ladies were forced to find more respectable occupations after the 1478 edict, or whether the king looked the other way when the women got out the closheys, is, sadly, lost in the fog of history.

A Tudor Tidbit

Those of you who have seen the first season of “The Tudors” will recall William Compton as the handsome young courtier who has an affair with the even more handsome young composer Thomas Tallis. As nice as the two young men look together, this affair appears to be entirely the producers’ invention: Compton was much older than Tallis, who did not come to Henry VIII’s court until 1543, well after Compton’s death in 1528. (Compton died of sweating sickness; the series did get his illness right.)

In fact, if William Compton had an extramarital liaison, it appears to have been with a lady: Anne, daughter to the second Duke of Buckingham. Anne and her siblings are on my mind these days, for their father, the hero of my novel in progress (that’s right, the hero!), having been married since the age of nine, is finally getting around to fathering his children.

Both Anne and her older sister, Elizabeth, were married and serving as ladies in waiting to Catherine of Aragon in 1510, when, according to a foreign observer, William Compton began making advances to Anne. Gossip had it that he was acting on the behalf of Henry VIII himself, whose eye might have been roving, given that Catherine was pregnant with the couple’s short-lived son. Elizabeth informed her brother Edward, the third Duke of Buckingham, who caught the couple in Anne’s chamber. (Precisely what the couple was doing is unrecorded.) After bellowing, “Women of the Stafford family are no game for Comptons, no, nor for Tudors either,” Edward notified Anne’s husband, George, Lord Hastings, who hauled her off to a convent. Compton, meanwhile, went to his friend the king, who berated Buckingham. The furious duke left court, and Elizabeth, who by now may have wished she had kept her mouth shut, was herself sent from court.

All of this seems to have blown over pretty quickly, and it’s unclear just what was going on between Anne and William Compton at the time. As Barbara J. Harris points out in English Aristocratic Women: 1450-1550 (an excellent book, by the way), there clearly was some sort of relationship between the pair. Cardinal Wolsey, as legate, noted that Compton had taken the sacrament as proof that he had not committed adultery with Anne. Despite this, Compton left Anne land in his will dated 1523, which, as Harris notes, was highly unusual for a man to do for a woman who was not a close relation, and ordered that masses be said for her soul. Whatever explanation Anne gave to her husband for this relationship, it must have been a good one, for Hastings (the grandson of the William Hastings executed by the future Richard III) appears to have born a great deal of affection toward Anne. In a letter quoted by Harris, he wrote, “with all my whole heart, I recommend me unto you as he that is most glad to hear that you be merry and in good health,” and in his will he treated her most generously and named her as one of his executors. The couple, who were married in 1509, had a large family, and whatever happened in 1510, it did not harm Hastings’ career at court, since he was made an earl in 1529 and continued to serve Henry VIII until Hastings died in 1544.

P.S. When I changed computers and entered Vista land, I lost the ability to use my old website software, so I've been reworking my website using some new software. I took the opportunity to freshen up my home page--what do you think?

Elizabeth Woodville's Sisters

Of Elizabeth Woodville’s many siblings, the most shadowy, unsurprisingly, are her sisters. Nothing is known about their personalities and very little about their lives, save for genealogical details, which has not stopped the queen’s detractors from characterizing them en masse as greedy, scheming, and unprincipled. Here’s what is known about the queen’s siblings:

Jacquetta
Unlike those of her younger sisters, Jacquetta Woodville’s marriage owed nothing to her sister Elizabeth’s match with the king. Jacquetta had married John Strange, 8th Lord Strange of Knokyn, by March 27, 1450, when the manor of Midlyngton in Oxford was granted to the couple by John’s mother, Elizabeth (Calendar of Patent Rolls). Since Jacquetta’s parents had married around 1437, Jacquetta, who was apparently younger than Elizabeth Woodville and Anthony Woodville, was still a child at the time of her marriage, as was her husband, said to have been five or more at the time of his father’s death in 1449. John outlived Jacquetta, having remarried before his death on October 16, 1479. They had one daughter, Joan, said to be 16 or more at the time of her father’s death. Joan married George Stanley, son of the Thomas Stanley who is notorious for having helped Henry Tudor win the Battle of Bosworth. George is best known for being taken in custody by Richard III before the battle of Bosworth to ensure (unsuccessfully) the loyalty of Thomas Stanley. Joan and George’s son, Thomas, became the second Earl of Derby in 1504, having succeeded to the title of his grandfather Thomas Stanley.

Jacquetta Woodville and John Strange are commemorated in a memorial brass at St. John the Baptist Church in Hillingdon, a picture of which can be seen here.

Anne
Anne Woodville married William Bourchier, eldest son of the Earl of Essex, by August 1467, when they are recorded as receiving lands worth a hundred pounds a year. Anne is one of the rare cases where we get a glimpse of Elizabeth’s sisters at court: she served as one of the queen’s ladies in waiting and was paid forty pounds a year for her services. How long she was at court is uncertain, as the queen’s household records only cover the period from 1466-67.

William Bourchier, who must have been considerably older than Anne, predeceased his father, dying sometime between February 12, 1483, when he was placed on a commission of the peace, and April 4, 1483, when his father the earl died, close to eighty years of age. William and Anne’s son, Henry, born in 1472, became the second Earl of Essex at age eleven. Interestingly, some sources have young Henry taking part in Richard III’s coronation a few months later, bearing gilt spurs in the procession. (Incidentally, Henry Bourchier’s daughter, Anne, married William Parr, whose sister Katherine was Henry VIII’s sixth wife.)

In addition to Henry, Earl of Essex, Anne and William had two daughters, the first being Cecily, who married John Devereux, 8th Baron Ferrers of Chartley (b. 1463). She died in 1493. The other daughter, Isabel, seems to have never married. In her will, dated October 10, 1500, and proven May 14, 1501, she described herself only as “daughter to William Bourchier” and asked to be buried at Whittington College, London, the burial place of her sister. She left monetary bequests to her brother Henry and to her half brother, Richard Grey.

Following William’s death, Anne subsequently married George Grey, the second Earl of Kent. She died on July 30, 1489, survived by a son, Richard Grey, who succeeded George Grey as the third Earl of Kent when George died in 1503. Richard Grey was a wastrel who had dissipated his inheritance by the time he died in 1524.

A number of sources report that Anne was married a third time to Edward Wingfield, but this appears somewhat doubtful to me. Richard Grey, Earl of Kent, who was described as “25 or more” at his father’s death in 1503, may not have been quite this old at the time, but he certainly seems to have been an adult, who sat on a commission of gaol delivery in 1502 and who was given license to enter his lands in 1504. He was made a Knight of the Garter in 1505. With a son this old, it seems that Anne, who was not widowed from her first husband until 1483, would have had no time to squeeze in a marriage to Edward Wingfield, who in any case was alive and active after Anne’s death in 1489. The only scenario I can think of that would allow both marriages would have been for Anne to marry one man and then have the marriage annulled before marrying the other, but this seems rather unlikely since no source mentions such an occurrence. Perhaps Anne is being confused with her sister Katherine, who married Richard Wingfield, Edward Wingfield’s younger brother.

Mary
In September 1466, Mary wed young William Herbert at Windsor Castle. William Herbert, born around 1454 or 1455, was the eldest son of William Herbert, a Welsh baron and a strong ally of Edward IV who for a time had young Henry Tudor in his custody. The marriage indenture had been entered into on March 20, 1466. The elder Herbert was created Earl of Pembroke in 1468, but had little time to enjoy his title; he was murdered by the Earl of Warwick’s troops the following year, shortly before two of his Woodville in-laws, Mary’s father and her brother John, met the same fate. Mary’s husband thus became the second Earl of Pembroke, but he never enjoyed the prominence of his father. Like another Woodville in-law, the Duke of Buckingham, he had no role of importance in Edward IV’s reign. It has been suggested that he may have suffered from ill health. In 1479, he exchanged his earldom of Pembroke, which was bestowed upon the Prince of Wales for that of Huntingdon.

Mary, meanwhile, bore William one daughter, Elizabeth, who was described as “16 or more” in 1492, putting her birth date at about 1476. Her date of death is usually given as 1481. In his 1483 will, William (who died in 1490) asked to be buried at Tintern Abbey “where my deare and best beloved wife resteth buried.” In 1484, however, he married Katherine, Richard III’s out-of-wedlock daughter, whom he seems to have outlived. According to the Complete Peerage, he was buried at Tintern Abbey.

William and Mary’s daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles Somerset, the out-of-wedlock child of Henry, Duke of Somerset (d. 1464). As a Beaufort who had been in exile with Henry Tudor, Somerset naturally did well under Henry VII’s reign, being made the first Earl of Worcester.

Margaret
Margaret Woodville was the first of the queen’s sisters to marry after Elizabeth’s marriage to Edward IV was made public. Her marriage to Thomas Fitzalan (b. 1450), known later as Lord Maltravers, took place in October 1464, just weeks after Edward had surprised his council with news of his own marriage. Thomas’s father lived to be 71, dying in December 1487, so he did not succeed to his earldom until 1488. Both men were present at Richard III’s coronation, though they also turned up for Tudor events during the next reign.

Lord and Lady Maltravers assisted at the christening of Edward IV and Elizabeth’s youngest daughter, Bridget, in 1480. They were the parents of several children. Their son William, born around 1476, succeeded to his father’s earldom after Thomas’s death in 1524. Their daughter Joan married George Neville, 3rd Lord Abergavenny. Another daughter, Margaret, married John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, who died rebelling against Henry VII at Stoke Field. This daughter was still alive in 1524, when her father bequeathed her a ring.

Margaret Woodville died before March 6, 1491, and was buried at Arundel. Her husband lived until October 25, 1524, having never remarried. He specified that he be buried at Arundel, “where my Lady my wife doth lie.”

Joan
Joan Woodville (also known, peculiarly, as Eleanor) married Anthony Grey, son of Edmund, Lord Grey of Ruthin. Edmund had turned traitor to the Lancastrian cause at Northampton and was created Earl of Kent on May 30, 1465. Anthony Grey, who was knighted on the eve of Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation, married Joan around this time. Anthony Grey died childless in 1480, predeceasing his father, who died in 1490. Anthony’s younger brother, George, who had married the widowed Mary Woodville, Joan’s sister, became the second Earl of Kent.

Joan was dead by 1492, when a postmortem inquisition on her brother Richard was taken.

Katherine
The best known of Elizabeth Woodville’s sisters is Katherine, who with her marriage to Henry, Duke of Buckingham became the highest ranking of the girls—except, of course, for her sister the queen. Katherine was probably the youngest of the girls; her brother Richard’s postmortem inquisition places her birthdate at about 1458. She had married her husband by the time of Elizabeth’s coronation in 1465, for she is named in a description of the event as the younger Duchess of Buckingham. She and her nine-year-old husband were carried at the coronation by squires. No other duke or duchess is referred to as being carried in this manner, so it’s reasonable to assume that this was due to the youth of the Buckinghams. Following her marriage, Katherine was raised in the queen’s household, where her husband and his brother also resided.

After the execution of her first husband in 1483, Katherine married Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII, shortly before November 7, 1485. She married her third husband, Richard Wingfield, without royal license in early 1496 and died just over a year later on May 18, 1497.

More can be found about Katherine here. It should be noted once again, however, that despite primary sources that indicate that Katherine was a child at the time of her marriage to Buckingham, certain of Richard III’s supporters continue to insist that she was much older than Buckingham at the time and that the experience of being married to an adult woman (and one of lesser birth) hopelessly warped the poor boy. The prize for Katherine-bashing in nonfiction has to go to Ricardian Geoffrey Richardson, who in The Hollow Crowns writes, “A substantial difference in the ages of the bridal pair and the bitter reluctance of the groom were matters of little or no consequence. . . . The principal consequence of this ill-matched mating, which would affect the course of English history, was that Buckingham acquired an abiding hatred of the Woodvilles, verging at times on gross mental instability, perhaps madness would not be too strong a word.” Most recently, Annette Carson in Richard III: The Maligned King, while not going so far as to credit Katherine with driving Buckingham insane, adds a few misstatements of her own, writing “Edward IV had neatly pre-empted any such alliance [i.e., with the Earl of Warwick’s daughters] by purchasing Buckingham’s wardship in order for the boy to be bestowed on the Woodville clan, at the age of about eleven, as husband for the queen’s twenty-year-old sister Catherine. Young Harry’s mortification must have festered for years.” Like Richardson, Carson (who manages to get Harry’s age wrong as well as Katherine’s) cites no source for her misstatement. It should also be noted that Edward IV purchased Harry’s very valuable wardship well before he married Elizabeth Woodville; the boy had previously been in the care of the king’s sister Anne, the Duchess of Exeter. (Poor Harry is also depicted by Carson as being “kept at court tied to the queen’s skirts while she enjoyed the income from his estates.” Aside from the fact that there was not anything at all unusual or untoward in a guardian benefitting from a wealthy ward’s estates during the fifteenth century, Harry was allowed to enter his estates at age 17, years before he reached his majority.)

Instead of to these writers, the last word on Katherine should go to her third husband, a distinguished diplomat who outlived her by many years and who remarried after little more than a year of marriage to her, but whose will orders masses for the zoul of his "singular good Lady Dame Katherine.”

The Mysterious Martha
Finally, another girl is often added to the list of Woodville sisters: Martha, married to Sir John Bromley. As Brad Verity has pointed out, however, Martha is not mentioned as being a Woodville until a 1623 visitation pedigree. She is not named in a note, written in the 1580’s, that lists the offspring of Richard, Earl Rivers, and Jacquetta and their spouses, nor do she or her heirs appear in Richard Woodville’s 1492 inquisition postmortem or in a 1485 document designating inheritance rights to Edward Woodville’s annuity. It seems, then, that Martha Bromley was not a Woodville, or at least not one of the queen's sisters.

Self-Help, Medieval Style

I haven’t forgotten Lady D’s Bedside Table post, but my bedside table (actually, my chairside table) is a wee bit dull at the moment. And it’s too hot to write a serious post. So here goes. I was in the bookstore the other day (how often do I say that, by the way?) when I noticed on the shelf a self-help book called How to Make People Like You in 90 Seconds or Less. Naturally, that made me think, “Wouldn’t it be nice if they had such books in medieval England?” So hence, here’s a list of real self-help books, with their ideal readers:

Family Healing: Strategies for Hope and Understanding: Henry II
When I Say No, I Feel Guilty: Edward II
Mr. Right Is Out There: The Gay Man's Guide to Finding and Maintaining Love: Piers Gaveston
Be a Real Estate Millionaire: Secret Strategies to Lifetime Wealth Today: Hugh le Despenser the younger
Your Perfect Right: A Guide to Assertive Living: Roger Mortimer
The Dance of Intimacy: A Woman’s Guide to Courageous Acts of Change in Key Relationships: Isabella
When Parents Disagree and What You Can Do About It: Edward III
The Mystery Method: How to Get Beautiful Women Into Bed: Edward IV
How to Get Married . . . Again: Elizabeth Woodville (yes, you precontract believers can say it: Edward IV might find this one useful as well)
The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be: Richard III
Dare to Win: Henry Tudor
Saving Your Second Marriage Before It Starts: Nine Questions to Ask Before (and After) You Remarry: Henry VIII
And while we’re on the topic, I got a great chuckle out of this link when searching for titles for this post:
Got any titles to add?

Reading Round-Up

Last week I finished The Flaunting, Extravagant Queen by Jean Plaidy, a novel about Marie Antoinette. Unlike The Queen's Confession (written under the name of Victoria Holt), The Flaunting, Extravagant Queen is told in the third person. It and the Holt novel cover much of the same ground, so I wouldn't recommend reading both close together. That being said, I thought Flaunting was one of Plaidy's better novels. She takes a balanced view of her subject, and the final pages of the book, dealing with the last days of the queen, are quite moving. Plaidy's workmanlike prose does its job well here, since it allows the horrors of the time to speak for themselves without any editorializing on the part of the author.

Since finishing up the Plaidy, I've been reading Mary Renault's The Persian Boy, a tale of Alexander the Great told by his eunuch lover. I've never read Renault before, and this is a time period I normally don't delve into, so I'm pleased to say that I'm really enjoying this novel. She has an excellent reputation as a historical novelist, and I can see why. I'll probably be reading more of Renault in months to come.

On a less happy note, I gave into my irresistible impulse and bought Annette Carson's Richard the Third: The Maligned King, a nonfiction book. On skimming it, I can report that it's pretty much what I expected, which is not a Good Thing. First on the plate, of course, is the usual Woodville-bashing. Not only does Carson suggest that Elizabeth Woodville and/or Anthony Woodville poisoned Edward IV, she then goes on to insinuate that the Woodvilles might have had something to do with the 1483 deaths of the elderly Earl of Essex and George Neville, John Neville's son. (Carson is evidently unaware that at the time of the latter's death in May 1483, he was living at Middleham Castle in the care of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, which begs the question of why if the Woodvilles were able to jaunt over to Middleham to murder George Neville, they didn't also murder Gloucester's son, who was also living at Middleham at the time.)

Just on skimming, I spotted a number of irritating factual errors. Carson states, erroneously, that Katherine Woodville was 20 when she married the 11-year-old Buckingham (she was about 7, and he was 9 at the time of the marriage, which took place before Elizabeth Woodville's coronation). She also has Buckingham receiving the "solitary ceremonial honour of Knight of the Bath," though he was made a Knight of the Garter in 1474. Later, we're told that we owe the right "to be judged fairly by our peers" and "to enjoy bail" to Richard III's Parliament (p.232). Richard III's parliament did indeed enact bail and jury reforms, but Richard III hardly invented the concept of bail or jury trial. We're told that following her marriage to Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville managed "three dukedoms" for her relations, although only one of her sisters married a duke and none of her male relations was raised to that status.

As is often the case, Carson follows Mancini and Croyland when it's convenient for her argument and derides them when it's not. For instance, Mancini's claim that Buckingham scorned his wife's humble origins is taken at face value, despite the fact that Mancini in 1483 was not particularly well placed to know what was in young Buckingham's mind in the 1460's, but Mancini's eyewitness report that he saw men crying about the mention of the Princes is dismissed as the exaggeration of an overemotional Italian.

Language is often tortured to bring about the meaning that Carson wants. Just as Richard III's vague reference to the fact that he has experienced the deaths of "nigh kinsmen and great friends" is used to support Carson's claim that the Woodvilles poisoned Edward IV and that Elizabeth procured the execution of the Earl of Desmond, Croyland's imprecise statement that "In the meantime and while these things were happening, the two sons of King Edward remained in the Tower of London" is taken as a "clear indication" that the boys were still alive in the Tower in September 1483. In fact, the reference comes after two paragraphs that describe events from Richard's coronation in July onward, so it's hardly safe to say that the "in the meantime" language can be read to refer only to events in September.

Some of the writing here is plain sloppy. Carson states on p. 242 that Richard "made no move to find a safe husband for Elizabeth of York." On p. 259, however, she notes that Richard was negotiating a Portugese marriage for Elizabeth.

These comments are based just on a skim of the book, but so far I can recommend it only to those who require in their reading material that Richard III do no wrong.

And Now, Why Elizabeth Woodville Really Left Sanctuary

First, thanks to all who responded so encouragingly to my last blog post. It's nice to know that there are so many people of goodwill and graciousness out there. Thanks too, from my son, Thad.

But now, it's time to get down to business. As promised a few posts ago, here's the real reason Elizabeth Woodville left sanctuary. (Feel free to blame Susan A., Gabriele, and Lucie for this.)

Dramatis Personae:

Elizabeth, Queen to Edward IV

Her daughters:

Bess, age 17

Cecily, almost 15

Anne, age 9

Katharine, age 4

Bridget, age 3

Richard III

(As dawn breaks in Westminster Abbey in March 1484, two girls are fighting over a washbasin.)

Cecily: I got here first!

Bess: No, missy. I got here first.

Cecily: That's not true! My hand was on it before yours. Look! (Grabs basin and spills it) Damn it! Look what you made me do!

Elizabeth: How dare you use such language!

Cecily: (Tossing her head) I'm a bastard and I can use any language I want. So there.

Katherine: What's a bastard?

Elizabeth: Now see what you started? She'll be after me for the rest of the day.

Bridget: (Learning a new word). Bastard! Bastard!

Bess: (Brushing her hair) Well, well. Another exciting day in sanctuary to look forward to. What have we got planned for today, Mother? Prayers? Reading your Book of Hours? A little embroidery?

Cecily: Maybe all of those things! I'm so excited.

Anne: (Too young to have learned the fine art of sarcasm) You two are stupid.

Bess: Oh, another shire heard from! How lovely.

Cecily: But wait, it's Wednesday!

Bess: Brother Mark's day!

Elizabeth: You girls are not going to tease that young man.

Cecily: But Mama, we can't help it if it's Wednesday.

Bess: We don't make the rules. The abbot does. (A knock is heard outside). Come in!

(Brother Mark, a young and quite handsome monk still in his teens, enters the room, carrying fresh bread and ale. He is promptly surrounded by Cecily and Elizabeth.)

Mark: Good morning, ladies. I've brought your breakfast.

Cecily and Bess: (Trilling) Good morning, Brother Mark.

Bess: Oh, my. What beautiful buns you have.

Cecily: Well-shaped and—firm.

Bess: Lovely.

Mark: (Trying to ignore the girls' bosoms poking into his arms) They are indeed quite delicious.

Elizabeth: (Desperately) Anne, take that bread from him. Now. Thank you, Brother Mark.

Mark: Thank you, your grace. (Flees)

Cecily: Well, I think we got a rise out of him today, didn't we?

Elizabeth: You girls are wicked. Absolutely wicked. If your father were alive—

Bess: If our father was alive, we wouldn't be in this hole, now would we? We'd be having a grand time. I hate being a bastard.

Cecily: I hate it worse than you do.

Bess: It's worse for me because I'm older.

Cecily: It's worse for me because I'm prettier.

Anne: It's worse for me because I have to listen to the two of you whinge all day.

Elizabeth: Enough, all three of you! Actually, we are going to have a visitor today. (Grimly) A very special visitor.

Anne: Who?

Elizabeth: (Biting out the words) Your uncle.

Bess: You mean uncle Richard the king?

Elizabeth: Well, as much I would have liked it to be Henry Tudor, yes. Your uncle Richard.

Cecily: Why didn't you say so earlier? We have to change!

(The stage darkens. When the lights come on again, Elizabeth and Cecily are wearing pretty and quite tight gowns. A knock is heard at the door.)

Elizabeth: Come in. (Aside) Not that I could stop you anyway, you murdering knave. (Sweetly, to Richard) Why, how lovely to see you here.

Richard: Good day, ladies.

All: Good day, your grace.

Richard: (Nodding at the girls) Your daughters are looking well, madam.

Cecily: (Mournfully) We try our best. We haven't had a new gown in—how long has it been, Bess?

Bess: Months.

Cecily: See how tight Bess's is around the bosom?

Richard: Er, yes. What an er—pity.

Anne: What's wrong with your eyes, Bess?

Bess: What do you mean, my eyes?

Anne: You're batting them.

Bess: You're seeing things. So, your grace. How is your lovely wife the Queen?

Richard: Doing quite well.

Bess: It must be lonely for her at Westminster, away from the Yorkshire she loves so much.

Richard: Well, she does have her ladies, of course.

Bess: Still, I bet she would enjoy having someone young and cheerful around her. Someone really young and really cheerful.

Cecily: A couple of people, as a matter of fact.

Anne: Now she's batting her eyes.

Bess: It must be the dust in here. It's very dusty in here, uncle. It's just dreadful for our complexions. Don't you think? (Leans closer to the king)

Richard: Yes, I suppose it is. (Stepping out of earshot of the girls) Madam, have you considered our proposition?

Elizabeth: (Pretending to forget) Now, what was that?

Richard: That you agree to leave here in exchange for certain promises on our part, including a pension of four hundred marks.

Elizabeth: Well, I don't know, your grace. We have become so close-knit since we have started sharing these quarters. It would almost be a shame to leave, especially if the girls had to come to court.

Richard: (Glancing toward the girls) Some of them seem rather eager for a change of scene.

Elizabeth: Oh, you know how girls are. They're just naturally high-spirited. (Aside) Say seven hundred, you whoreson, and we're out of here.

Bess: Uncle Richard!

Elizabeth: Don't interrupt.

Bess: I'm sorry, Mother. I was just hoping that before Uncle Richard left, he could tell us about his military campaigns. I do so enjoy hearing about that type of thing.

Cecily: Me too!

Richard: What charming daughters you have. (Aside) Not at all like their mother.

Bess: It's so nice to have a king with military experience. (Shudders) Imagine how dreadful it would have been under Uncle Buckingham.

Cecily: (Shudders) Or under that awful Henry Tudor.

Bess and Cecily: (Shuddering in perfect harmony) Ooh!

Richard: (To the queen) Of course, there are six of you. I say. Why don't we make it seven hundred marks?

Elizabeth: That sounds reasonable. My dears, start packing. We are to leave here.

Bess: Leave? I'll be ready in ten minutes.

Cecily: I'll be ready in five.

Anne: (Whispering) Mother, what about your deal with Henry—

Elizabeth: Shut up and pack, girl.

Creep of the Month

Normally, I keep my personal life off this blog, but as the mother of a 17-year-old autistic child, I was about as disgusted as I ever have been to hear these remarks coming from a nationally syndicated, popular radio talk show host, the aptly named Michael Savage:

Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot."

Autism -- everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, "Don't behave like a fool." The worst thing he said -- "Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry." That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That's why we have the politicians we have.

Well, at least he didn't say that autistic children were possessed by demons. Perhaps that's the next broadcast.

My 17-year-old son (who does have a father around, one of the best fathers I know) is almost totally nonverbal. His autism, as far as testing can determine, is mixed in with mental retardation, which I suppose Savage also probably regards as a racket. Barring a medical miracle, he will never be able to hold a job without assistance or to live independently, will never be able to drive a car, will never be able to raise his own children. Does Savage truly think that any parent in his right mind would want such a future for his child just for the sake of a few hundred dollars per month in Supplemental Security Income?

To pull this back slightly toward historical fiction, there has been an interesting discussion on a site I frequent as to whether people in our time should feel superior to our forebears because of our advanced medical knowledge. Judging from Savage's ignorant remarks about a debilitating mental illness, and the wide audience he commands--millions of Americans, which probably translates into a handsome salary for Savage--I would say we shouldn't feel superior at all. Not by a long shot.

Excellence in Blogging, Handsome Bozzer, and a Spiffy New Computer

First up, this blog has been given an Excellence in Blogging award by Sarah over at Reading the Past, Historical Tapestry, Catherine Delors, and World of Royalty. Thanks, all!

I've been lazy about visiting blogs lately, and many of my favorites have been given awards already. I'd like to add Jules' Lady Despenser's Scribery to the list of Excellent Blogs. It's all about Hugh le Despenser the younger and his times--a subject still near and dear to me, though most of my recent posts have dealt with the fifteenth century. Also, Brian Wainwright's The Yorkist Age has been a great addition to the blogsphere. Fuzzy History, a very new blog, is off to a promising start. Another relative newcomer, Steven Till, has a nice variety of medieval-related posts. I know I'll think of other blogs as soon as I post this, but this is a start, at least.

I've been lax in contributing these days, but a group blog to which I belong, Yesterday Revisited, has welcomed a couple of new members lately, and one, Mirella Patzer, has posted already. Check out her post about Nannerl Mozart, with some lovely illustrations as well.

Monday, a very reluctant Boswell went to the groomer to get his haircut. Is he a handsome guy, or what?



(That chair and pile of stuff you see by Boswell is, sadly, my office.)

As if having the best-looking dog in North Carolina isn't enough, I got a shiny new computer yesterday! I bought a Dell, complete with Vista. Vista hasn't done anything weird yet, to my relief, but I also bought Microsoft Office 2007, which may have been a mistake because the new version of Excel is extremely annoying. When I try to paste data into a cell, it somehow erases the data in the adjoining cell, for reasons I've yet to figure out. I finally gave up and started importing old spreadsheets into Access, which at least let me paste something into a cell without having a hissy fit. On the other hand, I rather like the new version of Microsoft Word--since I started using it yesterday, my characters have been engaging in much more sprightly dialogue. Or maybe it's just the new flat screen that makes it look better to me.

Booking Through Thursday: Doomsday

A scary scenario from today's Booking Through Thursday:

What would you do if, all of a sudden, your favorite source of books was unavailable?

Whether it’s a local book shop, your town library, or an internet shop … what would you do if, suddenly, they were out of business? Devastatingly, and with no warning? Where would you go for books instead? What would you do? If it was a local business you would try to help out the owners? Would you just calmly start buying from some other store? Visit the library in the next town instead? Would it be devastating? Or just a blip in your reading habit?

I know we're all supposed to be mad at Amazon these days, but it's still my main source of books. My local bookstore's good for popular and/or new books, but it's Amazon that I use to slake my thirst for research books and out-of-print books. So it would be quite a jolt for me if Amazon disappeared. I can't remember how I got along before it, actually.

In the absence of Amazon, I'd probably manage OK on Abebooks and eBay, where I also buy a lot of books. But it just wouldn't be the same.

I don't think I'm going to sleep well tonight!

Why Did Elizabeth Woodville Leave Sanctuary?

On March 1, 1484, Richard III swore an extraordinary oath. In front of “lords spiritual and temporal” and the mayor and aldermen of London, he promised that if Elizabeth Woodville and her daughters came out of sanctuary at Westminster, he would see that they were in surety of their lives, that they would not be imprisoned in the Tower of London or elsewhere, that the girls would be married to “gentlemen born” and given marriage portions, and that Elizabeth would be given an annuity of seven hundred marks a year. Elizabeth would be attended by John Nesfield, one of Richard’s squires.

Elizabeth accepted the offer, much to the shock of some historians. Paul Murray Kendall, for instance, writing from the comfort of his study in mid-twentieth-century America, thunders, “That she came to terms with the man who had bastardized and deposed the Princes, driven her son the Marquess into exile, and executed her other son Grey and her brother Rivers is difficult enough to understand; but that she came to terms knowing also that he had murdered the Princes well-nigh passes belief, or is at least incomprehensible.”

But is it?

There were several options open for Elizabeth in March 1484. The first, and safest, would have been for her and her daughters to each take the veil. But that would foreclose any other alternatives if the political situation in England later changed, and it would have likely been anathema to Elizabeth’s older daughters, who had grown up expecting to make grand matches, not to immure themselves in convents. Probably, too, it would have been an admission of total defeat for Elizabeth.

The second option was to remain in sanctuary. This was an option, however, that was growing more unpalatable each day. Westminster was heavily guarded, a situation that must have been extremely irritating to the monks there, who may have also been tiring of providing sustenance for Elizabeth and her brood. Undoubtedly the abbot and his flock were eager to get back to normal and to get their relations with the crown back on a good footing. Add to that the fact that six females, two of them adolescents, were cooped up together in a small space, with little to keep them occupied, and the situation must have been a bleak one indeed. With the king a healthy man in his early thirties, and the rebellion of 1483 having failed, the women could be facing a stay of decades in sanctuary.

Nor was sanctuary a guarantee of security. Elizabeth knew well that sanctuary could be broken: her husband had done just that with the Duke of Exeter and with the Lancastrians who sought shelter after the battle of Tewkesbury in the abbey there. Had Richard chosen to violate sanctuary, Elizabeth and her daughters could have found themselves prisoners of the crown.

The third option was to accept Richard’s offer of a pension and good marriages for the girls, with guarantees, sworn under oath in front of numerous witnesses, that Richard would not harm the women or imprison them. This option, the one that Elizabeth ultimately chose, was not without risk. Whatever the fate of the Princes in the Tower, it was beyond question that Richard had executed Elizabeth’s son Richard Grey and her brother Anthony Woodville, and oaths could be broken. But the chances of the girls coming to harm were slim. Elizabeth knew that Margaret Beaufort, who was deeply involved in the 1483 rebellion, had been treated leniently, and she must have also realized that Richard was simply not in a position where he could risk the consequences of harming or being suspected of harming five innocent girls of royal blood, an act far beyond the pale of what was tolerated in his society. Even a popular king would have had the utmost difficulty in getting away with such an act, and Richard was not a popular king, save in the North. Moreover, the girls, unlike their brothers, did not pose much of a threat to Richard. Though nothing in England barred a woman from taking the throne, the idea of a female ruler had little appeal at the time. Only if they were married to the wrong men would the girls be a genuine threat—and through his compact with Elizabeth Woodville, Richard ensured that they would be married to men of his own choosing.

Richard, in fact, had every incentive to keep his part of the bargain. Having achieved the crown, he seems to have genuinely wished to rule well, and at a time when he was trying to reconcile his subjects to his reign, his conduct toward his nieces and the former queen was a display of generosity that could only improve his reputation. In the persons of Edward IV’s daughters, he also gained an opportunity to bind followers to him through marriage—a boon for a man who had only one legitimate child and two bastards of his own to offer. A king’s daughter, even a supposedly bastard daughter, was no mean catch, and Richard suddenly had five such royal offspring at his disposal. He arranged for the marriage of one daughter, Cecily, to Ralph Scrope and entered into negotiations with Portugal for the marriage of Elizabeth of York to Manuel, Duke of Beja. Had Richard survived Bosworth Field, it is likely that he would have married the younger daughters to his advantage as well.

Elizabeth’s arrangement with Richard has been cited as proof that she did not believe that he had killed her sons by Edward IV and/or as evidence that she was callously indifferent to her children’s fate. No normal mother, the argument goes, could have made such a bargain with her sons’ killer. This argument, however, fails to take account of the starkness of the choice facing Elizabeth. Barring a successful rebellion against Richard III, the chances of which must have seemed slender in March 1484 after the debacle of the previous year, she and her young daughters could spend the rest of their lives in some sort of confinement, or they could take their chances with the freedom offered to them. One wonders how many of Elizabeth’s critics would, put in her place, choose the former instead of the latter.

Others in medieval England, fighting for their political lives, had made choices not dissimilar to Elizabeth’s. Edward II had reconciled with the killers of his beloved favorite, Piers Gaveston. In the more recent past, Edward IV reconciled with Richard, Earl of Warwick, after Warwick had imprisoned him and killed two of his in-laws. Warwick in turn reconciled with his bitter enemy, Margaret of Anjou, and entrusted his adolescent daughter into her care by marrying her to Margaret’s son. Margaret, for her part, forgave a man who had cast slurs on her son’s legitimacy. Like her predecessors, Elizabeth did not have the luxury of nursing her grief and outrage. She had to look to the future, not to the past.

More Randomness

I've been pretty busy on the research front in the last few days, so this will be another random blog post. ('Fess up. You really like them.)

First, I was much amused to see, in the section of our local paper that's devoted to anniversaries and weddings, that a couple celebrating their 50th anniversary had a ceremony in which they "renewed their vowels."

Second, I've been going absolutely bonkers trying to figure out when Harry, Duke of Buckingham's mother (Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Stafford, cousin to Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond) died. Various Internet genealogical sites give a date of 1474, but none give a source, and many of the same sites get his father's death date wrong, so they're a bit suspect. The Patent Rolls and the Close Rolls, usually quite helpful, don't give a clue, nor do the searchable National Archives. You'd think that a duke's mother would be less obscure, but not in Harry's case.

Third, I'm enjoying my Harleian MSS. Richard III has a reputation as being straitlaced, but some of his clerks were evidently less so. Here's a ribald little ditty (translated by the editors from the Latin) that one of them scribbled on some parchment:

One cock satisfies three or five hens
But no woman is sated with three or five men.