There were several newspaper headlines last week along the
lines of ‘White Queen died of plague, claims letter found in National Archives’.
Their authors are drawing on an article in this month’s issue of Social History of Medicine by Euan
Roger, who is a historian at The National Archives.[1] The
newspaper articles online seem to have caused some confusion and scepticism on
social media. So, having read Roger’s fascinating article, here’s what I think
it might mean for understanding Elizabeth’s death and much-debated funeral.
The focus of Roger’s research was an early-sixteenth century
codex from St George’s College, Windsor, containing regulations about
quarantine for plague (really interesting stuff – but you’ll have to read the
article if you want to know more!). In the course of this, he investigated
Henry VIII’s exceptional anxiety about the plague. He picked up on an
intriguing letter written by the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Badoer, in July
1511. The ambassador observed ‘the Queen-Widow, mother of the late King Edward,
had died of plague, and the King was troubled’.[2]
No one who might answer the description of ‘queen-widow’ had
died in 1511, or even remotely near that date. Hitherto, scholars who came
across the curious reference seem not to have been interested in trying to
unravel its mystery, until now. Euan Roger persuasively concluded that the
ambassador’s remark was meant as an explanation for Henry VIII’s particular fear
of the plague – the king knew (or, at least, believed) that a close relative
had died of it. (Do check out the sources and logic for this in his article).
Elizabeth Woodville was not the only mother of a king Edward
to have died within living memory. The most recent was Edward IV’s mother,
Cecily duchess of York, whom some on Twitter have suggested might have been the
subject of the ambassador’s remark. Cecily was indeed the woman most commonly
referred to as the ‘mother of King Edward’. She died when Henry VIII was four,
so he is unlikely to have remembered her in person. However, she must have been
part of his sense of his family because she bequeathed him three Arras
tapestries and many of her lands had passed into his possession as duke of York
(which was his title before his elder brother’s death). At first sight Cecily
seems a possible candidate, except that she was never a queen.
Cecily’s status was contentious. Her husband, Richard duke
of York, had claimed that his right to the throne was superior to Henry VI’s. During
the reigns of her sons Edward IV and Richard III, Cecily called herself ‘king’s
mother and wife of the rightful heir to the thrones of England and France and
lord of Ireland’. In Henry VII’s reign, however, it appears that she tactfully
dropped much of this claim. She usually described her husband only as ‘the
right noble prince Richard duke of York’. In so far as Henry VII had any blood
right to the throne, it came from his relationship to Henry VI. Consequently, suggesting
that Henry VI’s claim was false would not have played well with the Tudor family.
So, it would make no sense for anyone at Henry VIII’s court to call Cecily ‘queen-widow’.
Moreover, what we know of Cecily’s death does not suggest
that she was a plague victim. She was living in rural Berkhamsted which was a
much less likely site for plague to strike than the congested capital. She was
already 80 years old and the long preparation for her death reveals that it was
not a hurried affair. On 1st April 1495 she began making her last
testament. She did not finish it until 31st May, the very day of her
death. On that day she sealed and signed the document. After her death, a papal
indulgence was tied around her neck with a silk ribbon and her body was
transported 60 miles for burial at Fotheringhay College.[3] This
would have caused a serious contagion risk if she had died of plague.
The only other relevant mother of a king Edward was
Elizabeth Woodville, mother of Edward V and wife of Edward IV. She had very
definitely been a queen-widow. We might have expected the ambassador to call
her the king (Henry VIII)’s grandmother, rather than the mother of his uncle.
Nonetheless, the description was entirely accurate for Elizabeth Woodville.
Elizabeth had died three years before Cecily. She was only in her early fifties
and lived at Bermondsey Abbey, near the Thames in Southwark. This was a much
more vulnerable location for the plague. Crucially, as Roger argues, her
exceptionally low-key funeral has long been a matter of speculation. If her hasty burial was a consequence of fears
about plague infection, this would offer a new perspective on the event.
Elizabeth Woodville had composed her last testament on 10
April 1492, exactly nine years and one day after her husband, Edward IV’s, sudden
death, ‘seeing the world so transitory and no creature certain when they shall
depart from hence’ (TNA PROB 11/9). It seems from this line that she had no
specific reason to expect that two months later she would be dead. In this
testament, she requested that she be buried with Edward IV at Windsor, ‘without
pomp entering or costly expenses done thereabout’.
A description of Elizabeth Woodville’s funeral has been
preserved in a sixteenth-century herald’s book that is now in the British
Library.[4]
The author drew attention to the use of ‘old torches and torch ends’, tapers
‘of no great weight’, and a ‘low hearse, such as they use for the common
people’. He also noted that several of the traditional solemn services were
omitted and that the poor men holding torches had not been provided with black
mourning wear. It is impossible to be sure whether the author’s emphasis on the
minimal ceremony was meant as a criticism of her executors, a lament on her
poverty or praise for her austere piety. However, his opening explanation
suggests that it was the last. He had recorded that the queen wished to be
taken by river to be buried at Windsor ‘in all goodly haste, without any
worldly pomp’. Euan Roger’s investigation suggests that some elements of this
simplicity were actually a result of anxious, rather than ‘goodly’, haste.
One of the most surprising aspects of the funeral is the
fact that the body did not lie on the hearse throughout the ceremonies but was
buried immediately on arrival at the castle ‘privily about 11 of the clock in
the night’. Only one priest and one clerk had greeted the tiny party
accompanying the body ‘privily through the little park’. This would entirely
fit with a desire to avoid contagion from the plague. Intriguingly, however,
there is no hint that the author of the description was himself aware of the
cause of death which may suggest that, if she did die of plague, it was not
entirely public knowledge at the time.
It is also worth noting that we do not seem to have any
records of plague in London in 1492. Nonetheless, plague was endemic by this
period to the extent that many sources seem not have considered it worth noting
every small outbreak. Records for Oxford University indicate that the students
would be evacuated each time plague struck, but sometimes only a couple of
students were affected. Such evacuations occurred in both 1491 and 1493.[5] It
is not improbable that a small outbreak occurred in London between these years.
Last week’s newspaper reports implied that the letter at the
heart of the revelations had only just been discovered. The truth is actually
more impressive – records that have been publicly available for decades can
still yield surprising new information when examined by a historian who is
asking new questions in the context of the appropriate background knowledge. An
investigation into why a sixteenth-century king was so concerned about plague
has indicated that Elizabeth Woodville’s family believed that she had died of that
disease in 1492.
J L Laynesmith
[1]
Euan C Roger , “‘To Be Shut Up’: New Evidence for the Development of Quarantine
Regulations in Early-Tudor England”, Social
History of Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkz031
Published: 11 April 2019
[2] Item
come la Raina Vedova, fò madre dil Re Edoardo, erra morta da peste, et il Re
era fastidiato. See
https://www.british-history.ac.uk/cal-state-papers/venice/vol2/pp46-49
[3]
Her will stated a preference for burial at Fotheringhay but acknowledged that
this would be an expensive undertaking and allowed that the king might
recommend she be buried elsewhere. Her relationship with her local church in
Berkhamsted was close – in her will she left gifts to three incumbents as well
as to the church itself – so it would have been the sensible alternative if she
had actually died of plague. J. L. Laynesmith, Cecily duchess of York (Bloomsbury, 2017).
[4]
Transcribed and discussed in Anne F. Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs with R. A.
Griffiths, The Royal Funerals of the
House of York at Windsor (Richard III Society, 2005).
[5]
Charles Creighton, A History of Epidemics
in Britain (CUP, 1891), I:283.
Image from Wikmedia Commons,
