Royal Mistress (73 page)

Thus Sir Thomas was determined to put down what he recalled being told about the dead king, although some of the details were fuzzy now. Ah, well, if he made up a few myths to create a monster in the process, so much more entertaining the book. Surely no one would believe his statement that Richard had remained in his mother’s womb for two years and been born with a mouthful of teeth and headful of long hair? Although, gullible readers did abound, Sir Thomas chuckled to himself. Besides, he had made up his mind not to publish it. He would simply amuse himself, his family, and the king, and so other than adding this intriguing tidbit, he doubted he would even finish it. The former royal mistress had, however, provided him with material to enhance a scanty passage halfway through the manuscript. He could not believe his good fortune when he encountered her that day.

He had already described the involvement of Mistress Elizabeth Shore, known in her heyday as Jane Shore, in the business of Hastings’s execution and her penance, but until now, he had had no knowledge of this woman’s life other than that she had earned the nickname the Rose of London, presumably for her beauty.

But then a silkwoman, and friend of his daughter, named Janneke had told him the story of the rise and fall of King Edward’s mistress, and his sense of justice forced him to include it in his book.

This woman was born in London, worshipfully friended, honestly brought up, and very well married . . . Proper she was and fair; nothing in her body that you would have changed but if you would have wished her somewhat higher.
^I

Sir Thomas smiled to himself when he recalled having to bend
down to hear what the old woman was saying. Aye, she was diminutive, he thought. He continued writing.

Yet delighted not men so much in her beauty as in her pleasant behaviour. For a proper wit had she, and could both read well and write, merry of company, ready and quick of answer, neither mute nor full of babble, sometimes taunting without displeasure and not without disport. The king would say that he had three concubines . . . one the merriest, another the wiliest, the third the holiest harlot in his realm . . . But the merriest was this Shore’s wife, in whom the king therefore took pleasure. For many he had, but her he loved, whose favour to say truth . . . she never abused to any man’s hurt.

Where the king took displeasure, she would mitigate and appease his mind; where men were out of favour, she would bring them in his grace. For many that had highly offended she obtained pardon; of great forfeitures she got men remission; and, finally, in many weighty suits she stood many men in great stead, either for none or very small rewards, and those rather gay than rich either for that she was content with the deed itself well done, or for that she delighted to be sued until and to show what she was able to do with the king, or for (to know) that wanton women and wealthy be not alway covetous.
^II

As a child, Janneke had known Jane and related to Sir Thomas that after many happy years married to one Lawyer Lyneham, her husband had died. During Henry VII’s reign his fortunes declined, and it was whispered he had left many debts, and Jane had been forced to write begging letters to old friends. Sadly, she was often seen near the palace at Westminster, hoping for alms from kindly
passersby or in the hope of encountering someone who would recognize her and give her aid.

It was, therefore, with great curiosity that morning that Sir Thomas had approached the old woman loitering near the palace gate, her clothes worn through, and her white hair straggling from a simple tied-up kerchief. Was this the once-beautiful concubine of King Edward? The words that came to mind as he observed her were
old, thin, withered,
and
dried up.
Nothing left but skin and bone. And yet, he thought, even so, one could recognize that she had been fair. She had smiled at him, and a light suddenly shone from her green-gray eyes. “Sir Thomas More?” she had said, her voice younger than her looks. “I am Mistress Lyneham. I give you God’s greeting, sir. ’Tis a fine day for a walk for rich and poor alike.” Thomas had bowed and acknowledged the fine day.

“Would you be so kind as to give this letter to my lord Dorset?” she pleaded. “His father, the first marquess, was in my debt and I thought perhaps—” She broke off, her smile fading. Sir Thomas guessed it was not the first missive she had tried to slip to the young marquess, but he took it and promised to see it delivered. Then he drew a rose noble from his purse and pressed it into her hand. “God be with you, Jane Shore,” he said, and seeing the anxiety in her face, he assured her, “your identity is safe with me.”

“God bless you, sir. You have an old lady’s gratitude,” Jane replied, her smile revealing her former loveliness. Then, unable to contain her glee, she continued without hesitating,

“Jane Shore met Thomas More,

Both beloved of kings.

She rose and fell;

But he cannot foretell

For him what fate’s in store.”

The royal mistress and the royal councilor had shared a laugh on the steps of Westminster Hall before Sir Thomas had walked away.

How sad, he thought as he laid down his pen, that, now well into her sixties, the quick-witted, beautiful, generous Jane was reduced to begging. He determined right then that her story would live on in his manuscript, and he prayed that one day history would look upon her kindly.

I
. actual text

II
. actual text

Sir Thomas More’s poignant description of his meeting with Jane Shore is the most detailed information we have of this remarkable woman, who captivated three of England’s most powerful men before she settled into marriage and motherhood with the upstanding Thomas Lyneham (or Lynom, as the name is sometimes written). The story of their meeting in Ludgate gaol when Jane was a prisoner is factual, and we know Jane had a daughter, Julyan, because John Lambert’s will of 1486 is extant, and he bequeathed the child forty shillings. Julyan Lyneham disappears from the records after that, so perhaps she died long before her mother.

We also do not know for certain what happened to Thomas. There were two Thomas Lynehams that Jane’s latest biographer, Nicolas Barker, discovered in his research. One died around 1516, having returned to Middleham after Henry VII came to the throne, and the other went on to have a brilliant career in the reigns of Henry VII and Henry VIII and was still active in 1531. The latter would have been well in his eighties and rich enough to take care of Jane, if he was our man. I think he was the former, and perhaps still being loyal to the White Rose he retired to that part of the country still staunchly Ricardian. Perhaps he and Jane fell on hard times there, and upon his death, she returned to her beloved London to seek aid from her old acquaintances. But these are my conjectures.

The description in my epilogue is taken directly from More’s
Historie of King Richard III,
which he probably wrote around 1518 but which was only published after his death (1535). Sir Thomas
spent some of his early life in the household of John Morton, bishop of Ely and later Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VII, one of Richard’s bitterest enemies. It is presumed by historians that Morton is the source of some of Sir Thomas’s information on the events of that fateful June day when Hastings lost his head and Jane was arrested. No other contemporary source mentions the story, so famous in Shakespeare, about Richard accusing the queen and Jane Shore of withering his arm with sorcery. This book formed the basis of Shakespeare’s inaccurate portrayal of Richard, and much of our present-day layman’s understanding of Richard’s short, two-year reign comes from that well-known play, unfortunately.

All texts taken from contemporary documents are marked with an asterisk.

As always, I like to own up to inventions in my novels, and the relationship between Jane and her father is one of them. We do know that John Lambert was involved in a violent argument that caused him to lose his alderman status when Jane was a young girl, and I took this piece of information to create his volatile character. The theme of the novel is the nature of love and how many different ways a woman can love men. Jane’s lack of a loving father figure was the impetus behind her search for true love. However, we have proof from the will that Jane was in good standing with her father at the end of his life:
“To Elizabeth Lyneham, my daughter, a bed of arras with the vilour
[velvet]
tester and cortaynes, and a stayned cloth of Mary Magdalene,
” and thus I effected a reconciliation scene to fit history. I wondered if he purposely chose the latter bequest as a reminder to Jane of her former reputation!

As well, John must have been pleased with the match with the king’s solicitor and thought so highly of his new son-in-law that he named Thomas executor of the will and left him a small sum, as well as a velvet gown to
“Isabel Thomson, Master Lyneham’s servant,”
which is where I found that snippet of information, and so could add her to the household after the marriage of Jane to Thomas.

I am very grateful to Mr. Barker, the author of an article in
Etoniana
(the scholarly magazine published by Eton College) in June 1972. It is in the lore of Eton that Jane persuaded Edward to finish building the school, and there are three portraits of her (none, however, contemporary) in the Eton archives that I was unable to see, as the archivist was on holiday during my visit. Barker shed new light on Jane Shore’s life that was unavailable to one of my favorite authors from the 1960s, Jean Plaidy, whose novel
The Goldsmith’s Wife
first introduced me to a rounded portrait of Mistress Shore. We know now that she was born Elizabeth Lambert, not the only child of mercer Thomas Wainstead as previously thought, and that William Shore was a mercer, not a goldsmith. We do not, however, have a date for her birth, and no matter where I look, it is different, so I picked 1453 to make her old enough to be mentioned by More as almost seventy when he met her.

Why Elizabeth Lambert became known as Jane is anyone’s guess, and I invented Aunt Elizabeth as a possible explanation. From a brass rubbing, we know that Amy and John Lambert had six children, two of them girls. John’s will mentions only three of his sons: John; William, parson of St. Leonard’s; and Robert, who inherited his father’s Plumstead property in Kent. As the second daughter is not mentioned in the will, I assumed she died before the will was written in 1487. We have no name for her, and with the author’s permission, I chose Isabel from Vanora Bennett’s novel
Figures in Silk,
in which Jane’s sister is the protagonist. However, my account of Bella is as fictional as Vanora’s had to be without a scrap of extant historical evidence of her life!

How I wish I could have included so many tidbits I learned about the London guilds or merchant companies, also called mysteries. The Mercers’ Company was the richest of the many guilds, and as well as wool, they imported and sold all kinds of rare and luxurious textiles such as silks, lace, velvets, cloth of gold and silver, wall hangings, and bed linens. The merchant guilds of London, of
which the Loriners’ Company (who made bits and strirrups) was the oldest at two hundred years in 1475, ran the city and because of their wealth had a certain degree of independence from both the Crown and the royal court. After seven years of apprenticeship, a man could set up a business on his own and became a freeman of the city, which meant he did not have to pay tolls at markets and fairs anywhere in England, he could not be pressed into the army, and he could vote in parliamentary and ward elections. He might also become a guild member, although not all merchants did. Jane became a freewoman of London as soon as she married William Shore.

My guides through the records that still exist at the Mercers’ Company Hall on Ironmonger Lane in the city, around the corner from Cheapside (modern spelling), were Jane Ruddell and Donna Marshall, who sat me at a desk between them for the best part of the day and plied me with documents and huge ledgers as well as their years of knowledge of the intricate guild system. Guild members of the mercers had a list of rules a mile long that would incur a fine if broken, such as: for being late for a funeral service; for attending fairs outside London; for “conniving” with others; for defective weights and measures; for striking someone, drawing a knife, carrying a dagger, quarreling, fighting or attacking; for not riding in processions; for playing dice; and, my favorite, for bad language. Each company changed their livery every third year, and woe betide if you wore the wrong color in the wrong year, or there was yet another fine.

That Jane Shore, known by her fellow citizens as the Rose of London, became the concubine of Edward IV, William Hastings, and Thomas Grey is fact. I have stayed true to the chronology of those liaisons, even though my imagined Jane should have dumped Tom long before she did! But because of the timing of Richard’s proclamation and Jane’s second imprisonment (this based on the extant letter from Richard to Chancellor Russell about Thomas
Lyneham), I had to keep Dorset in the picture until Buckingham’s pathetic rebellion. Richard’s postscript about Buckingham and other extant documents were too perfect to paraphrase, even if the language is a little flowery for our contemporary ears.

Those who have read my other books will know that I have never believed Richard III was responsible for the deaths of the princes in the Tower. I am, however, of the school that believes they were indeed done away with, and I have repeated my Buckingham theory in this book. From mid-April to July 1483 are four of the most confusing and puzzling months in English history. Other than conversations among my main characters, I have meticulously researched and reported every detail of that time as it pertains to historical fact. The timing of the revelation of the precontract—a witnessed pledge between two people that they will marry and which was considered binding—between Edward and another beautiful widow, Eleanor Butler, has had historians bickering for centuries over whether it was real or a ploy by an ambitious Richard to take the crown. These precontracts (or plight-troths) were sometimes used to persuade a reluctant female to succumb to a lover’s ardor before a more formal marriage ceremony. I believe this plight-troth existed and that it was very typical of Edward’s behavior. After all, he then went on to marry Elizabeth in secret and kept it from the council and the country for six months! Eleanor Butler was a sad figure of history and a victim of Edward’s lust. Her father was dead, her noble husband was dead, and she had no man to speak for her who might remind the king that he was pledged to her. She went into a nunnery when Edward tired of her, presumably when his eye lit upon the incomparable Elizabeth, and she died there in 1468, relieving Edward of his guilt, no doubt. We have no idea whether Elizabeth Woodville was aware of this precontract, but I think not.