She Wolves (27 page)

Events moved quickly following the surrender of the Duke of York. Six days later on 22 June, a sermon was preached at Paul’s Cross calling Edward IV a bastard and claiming that he and Elizabeth had never actually been married.
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Gloucester claimed that Edward had been precontracted to Eleanor Butler before his marriage to Elizabeth and that his marriage had never been valid.
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This claim never seems to have been widely believed and Elizabeth is likely to have been incredulous at the suggestion. Most people in England seem to have seen it for the pretext it was, allowing Gloucester to remove his young nephew and claim the throne as Richard III. Soon after Richard III’s accession, Edward V and his brother Richard, Duke of York disappeared into the Tower and were never seen again. It was widely believed that Richard ordered their murders soon after his coronation and Elizabeth is also likely to have believed that he murdered her sons. It is very likely that he followed the precedent set by all other English usurping kings and murdered his predecessor.

Elizabeth must have been horrified at her predicament, having gone from being Queen of England to merely Dame Elizabeth Grey over the course of a few weeks. However she was not beaten but quickly began plotting against the new king. At a council meeting a few days before his accession, Richard III had accused Elizabeth of using sorcery against him together with Edward IV’s mistress, Jane Shore.
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This was not the first accusation of sorcery against Elizabeth and it would have further damaged her already poor reputation, something of which Richard III would have been very much aware. Whilst it seems unlikely that Elizabeth and Jane Shore were using witchcraft to injure Richard, she did begin plotting with Lady Margaret Beaufort soon after her son’s deposition. Lady Margaret Beaufort was a descendant of John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III. Her only child, Henry Tudor, was the leading Lancastrian claimant and had been in exile on the continent for a number of years. Elizabeth and Margaret shared a physician and he carried messages between the two women who both had good reason to despise Richard III.
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Margaret, with the consent of her son, promised that he would marry Elizabeth’s eldest daughter Elizabeth of York if Elizabeth Woodville would support Henry’s bid for the throne. Excited by the prospect of a throne for her daughter, Elizabeth agreed.

Elizabeth and her son, Dorset, were heavily involved in the rebellion which broke out in October 1483, aimed at deposing Richard III. The rebellion involved uprisings throughout England and an invasion by Henry Tudor from Brittany. Elizabeth must have been eager for news in her sanctuary and would have been distraught to learn of Richard’s decisive action to confront the rebels. Henry Tudor’s fleet was scattered by storms and returned, beaten, to Brittany. Elizabeth must have felt that her last hope of removing Richard from the throne had passed.

Elizabeth was more than ten years older than Richard and she must have considered it unlikely that she would live to see another king on the throne. At some point Elizabeth accepted that for her daughters’ future, as well as her own, she had to make terms with Richard III and leave sanctuary. After obtaining promises from Richard that he would do her and her daughters no harm, Elizabeth left sanctuary. Throughout her life, Elizabeth was very resourceful and it is likely that she accepted this situation as the best that she could hope for. At some point, she is known to have written to Dorset in France to recommend that he abandon Henry Tudor and return home to England.
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Elizabeth probably lived quietly, visiting court on state and family occasions. It seems likely that she knew and approved of Richard’s scheme to marry her daughter, Elizabeth of York. However, again, her hopes of a crown for her daughter were dashed and Elizabeth must have resigned herself to living out her life in obscurity.

Elizabeth Woodville’s fortunes changed again in August 1485. She was living in London when Henry Tudor launched a second invasion of England, having sworn before he left to marry Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth must have watched his progress with interest and, in spite of her reconciliation with Richard III, she must have been pleased to hear of his death in battle. Richard had been responsible for the deaths of three of her four sons, as well as her brother; even after making terms with him she cannot have been sorry to hear of his death. Soon after Henry VII’s accession, the Act invalidating Elizabeth’s marriage was repealed by parliament – a satisfying vindication for Elizabeth.

After the marriage of Elizabeth of York and Henry VII, Elizabeth Woodville appeared to settle down into life as queen dowager. As the mother of the queen and not the king, however, Elizabeth appears to have resented being given less prominence in Henry’s regime than his own mother, Margaret Beaufort and it has been suggested that she began to conspire against him. The early years of Henry’s reign were plagued by pretenders to his crown and one of the most dangerous was Lambert Simmnel. He was a boy who had been taught to impersonate first Richard, Duke of York and then Clarence’s son, the Earl of Warwick. He was a particularly convincing pretender and, according to Francis Bacon:

In this account, Elizabeth is portrayed as a conniving woman and there is no doubt that throughout her life Elizabeth was implicated in conspiracies and other underhand political dealings. As the facts of her life show, however, without the protection of a powerful foreign family she was forced to plot in order to ensure the security of herself and her family. There were rumours that Henry VII did not treat his wife, who had after all been the heiress of England, exactly as he should have. Elizabeth as a fond mother may well have been anxious to ensure her daughter’s position. Elizabeth Woodville herself had also suffered attacks on her position during Richard III’s reign and it is therefore not surprising that she was fearful of a loss of influence during the reign of his successor. Elizabeth Woodville never had enough political influence to enable her to change her situation openly and she was therefore forced into conspiracies throughout her widowhood.

As soon as the plot became known to Henry he seized Elizabeth’s property and sent her to the convent at Bermondsey, officially claiming it as punishment for her delivering her daughters into Richard III’s custody.
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The rebellion was soon destroyed by Henry but he does not seem to have forgiven Elizabeth and she lived quietly for the rest of her life, dying at Bermondsey on 8 June 1492 at the age of fifty-five.
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She was given a quiet funeral, attended by Dorset and some of her daughters, and was buried beside her second husband, Edward IV.

Elizabeth Woodville had one of the most eventful lives of any medieval queen, marked by great highs and lows. Certainly, much of this turmoil was caused by the era in which she lived and her contemporary, Margaret of Anjou, cannot be said to have been much happier. Elizabeth was attacked during her lifetime for her marriage; in this and the marriages that she arranged for her family she was seen as greedy and grasping. During the tumultuous events of 1483, Elizabeth appears as a wailing Cassandra, foreseeing all too clearly what would occur and unable to make herself believed. She was also criticised for her decision to make terms with Richard III and then for her plot against Henry VII. However, it is difficult to see how any of this was really Elizabeth’s fault and it appears almost as if Elizabeth’s contemporaries, in seeking to see her as the architect in her own ruin, were trying to distance themselves from their own parts in the acceptance of Richard III and deposition of Edward V. Elizabeth Woodville did not set out to marry Edward IV but it is hard to blame her for accepting such a glittering marriage when it was offered to her. She and Edward also appear to have been happy and mere ambition is unlikely to have driven Elizabeth’s actions. She was also envied and disparaged from the start of her queenship and it is therefore easy to see why she sought to raise her relatives to positions where they could keep her company. It is also clear that, for all the criticism of Elizabeth, there was a time during Edward IV’s reign when a Woodville marriage was desirable and it is hardly Elizabeth’s fault that, in a time of high infant mortality, so many of her siblings survived to adulthood. As an Englishwoman, Elizabeth was easy to attack. Her parents could not threaten an invasion or lobby the Pope in her support as the families of foreign-born queens could. Ultimately she was an easy target for bullying and neutralisation, as both Richard III and Henry VII discovered. That Elizabeth still sought to improve her position and that of her children in the face of this treatment is hardly unacceptable, even if she did sometimes employ underhand methods. No one could have predicted the life Elizabeth Woodville would lead at her birth. Edward IV’s marriage, as the first to an English commoner since the Norman conquest, set a precedent that would be followed enthusiastically by the couple’s grandson, Henry VIII.

Anne Boleyn is the most controversial woman ever to wear the crown of England. Like Elizabeth Woodville, she rose from humble origins to marry the king but her king was already married. By deciding to marry, Anne Boleyn and Henry VIII set in motion a divorce which dragged on for over six years and dramatically changed the course of English history. Anne Boleyn had a huge impact on religion in England and helped to shape the course England would take into the early modern period. In spite of this, however, she was never popular and Anne’s security was ultimately based on maintaining the king’s love. One of the most studied of her generation, Anne Boleyn’s life held moments of great triumph and calamity. She is also one of the most vilified, though Henry should bear most of the blame, as he held the power in their relationship. Anne ended up an unfortunate victim, just like Henry’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

Anne Boleyn was probably born in 1500 at Blickling Hall in Norfolk.
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Anne’s father was Sir Thomas Boleyn whose family had married well, over a number of generations. Thomas had continued his family’s policy of good marriages, marrying Elizabeth Howard, sister of the Duke of Norfolk. The Howards were one of the premier families in England and Anne would have been aware of the advantages of her connection to the family from an early age. Both of Anne’s parents also had strong connections with the court and her mother had been one of Catherine of Aragon’s ladies.
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In 1512 Sir Thomas Boleyn was sent as ambassador to Margaret of Austria in Brussels and the two got on well.
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It is likely that Margaret offered to take one of his daughters into her household during his stay in Brussels and Thomas, perhaps viewing his younger daughter as more promising than his elder Mary, sent Anne.

Margaret of Austria’s court was renowned throughout Europe as a centre of learning and Anne appears to have quickly absorbed its culture. Anne was famous throughout her life for her intelligence and she learnt French easily, as a language in which she was noted for being fluent. Anne probably enjoyed the status of being one of Margaret’s maids of honour but she did not stay there long. In August 1514, England switched its allegiance from the Empire to France and Thomas was obliged to write to Margaret for the release of his daughter.
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Anne’s French skills were probably required and at some point in late 1514 she travelled to Paris to join the household of Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister and the new Queen of France. Anne was probably sorry to leave Margaret of Austria but she flourished in France where her sister was also one of the queen’s ladies. Mary Tudor returned to England in April 1515 and was accompanied by Mary Boleyn, who had already disgraced herself by becoming the mistress of the French king. Anne, however, passed into the household of the new Queen of France, Claude.

Anne Boleyn’s life in France is not recorded in any sources but she was young and probably quickly became French in all but birth. It is likely that she took part in Claude’s coronation at St Denis in 1516 and other ceremonial events at the French court. Anne clearly received an excellent education in France and she is known to have been able to play the lute and sing and dance well. She would probably have been happy to remain in France. In 1515, however, Anne’s great-grandfather, the Earl of Ormonde, died. The earl had expressed a wish that he be succeeded by his grandson, Sir Thomas Boleyn, but, soon after his death, the earldom was seized by his cousin, Piers Butler. Thomas appealed for the title to the king and the dispute dragged on for several years. In 1522, Cardinal Wolsey brokered a solution, that Piers Butler would keep the title and his eldest son, James Butler, would marry Thomas’s only unmarried daughter, Anne Boleyn.

The solution suited the king and Anne was duly sent for, arriving at the English court in 1522. Anne quickly made a stir. According to George Wyatt, ‘in beauty she was to manie inferior, but for behaviour manners, attire and tonge she excelled them all. For she had bene brought up in France’.
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Anne Boleyn was never called a beauty and did not conform to contemporary ideals of beauty. She had a dark complexion with dark eyes and dark hair. It is also possible that she had a rudimentary sixth finger on one hand which she disguised with hanging sleeves, something which might have been taken as a sign of witchcraft.
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Her French upbringing had taught Anne grace and an ability to make the most of herself. She stood out as exotic amongst the Englishwomen of the court. In March 1522, she was one of the seven ladies chosen to take part in a masque before the court.
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The seven ladies stood in a wooden castle and were each given a virtue to represent, the king’s sister taking ‘Beauty’ and Anne, appropriately as it turned out, playing ‘Perseverance’. The seven ladies wore white satin and bonnets of gold and jewels and defended their castle with rose petals against a company of knights, led by the king. Anne must have greatly enjoyed herself and her place in the masque demonstrates just how highly she was held amongst the ladies of the court.