Authors: Sarah Gristwood
The death of Elizabeth of York, so soon after that of the near-adult, heir Prince Arthur, put fresh question marks over a regime that had, after all, been in power for less than twenty years. Any persons tethered by loyalty to the old Yorkist dynasty of which Elizabeth had been, pretenders apart, the last embodiment might now consider themselves free. Too many of the men (and women) who had been involved in the rebellions against Henry had surnames like Neville, or else were under the young Duke of Buckingham’s sway. Margaret Beaufort’s one-time ward, son of Richard III’s nemesis, Buckingham had turned out to be another who gazed at the throne with covetous eyes. Henry VII was known to be ill, and his sole surviving son was at this moment only eleven years old. Had the king died now it would have been a matter of another minority – or another man’s opportunity.
In 1504 Henry’s officers were discussing a conversation that had earlier taken place between ‘many great personages’ about the succession and the future of the country. Some spoke of Buckingham as a possible next king, some of Suffolk; but none of them ‘spoke of my lord prince’. An agent of Suffolk’s at the court of the Holy Roman Empire had been assuring Maximilian that, should Henry VII die, young Prince Henry could in no way prevail against his own claim. This insecurity probably affected the way Henry VII comported himself once the warmth and influence, and the political authority, that he had gained from his wife were no longer his.
That summer of 1503 Reginald Bray died – Henry’s greatest officer, and one who had had his start under Margaret Beaufort. Rather than replace him by making any other individual as powerful Henry increasingly kept power in his own hands, raising new men in status but trusting no one completely. It may have given him less time for other things. A letter he wrote to his mother around this time makes excuse that he had ‘encumbered you now with this my long writing, but me thinks that I can do no less, considering that it is so seldom that I do write … ’. Henry was also becoming ever more obsessed with money – an accusation that could of course also be brought against his mother. Perhaps Elizabeth had been instrumental in his earlier comparative liberality.
The following summer Margaret’s husband Stanley died, which allowed her greater access to her own funds. She took the opportunity to confirm her vows of chastity:
In the presence of my Lord God Jesu Christ and his blessed Mother the glorious Virgin St Mary and of all of the whole company of Heaven & of you also my ghostly father I Margaret of Richmond with full purpose and good deliberation for the weal [welfare] of my sinful soul with all my heart promise from henceforth the chastity of my body. That is never to use my body having actual knowledge of man after the common usage in matrimony the which thing I had before purposed in my lord my husband’s days.
But despite her powerful religious interests she did not turn to a semi-retired and contemplative life as others had done. She had different duties.
She now felt it necessary to abandon her recently established power base of Collyweston for a variety of houses often borrowed from the bishops whose perks of office they were; Margaret was prepared to take advantage of everything the Church had to offer. She wanted to be nearer to her son and his court, even if there were some frictions between them: Henry was in the process of taking her beloved, and convenient, Woking away from her to convert it to royal use. The matter recalled Cecily and Fotheringhay – which, indeed, was one of the properties Margaret now used, cleared and cleaned for her convenience.
One thing Margaret did have was that other ever more absorbing field of independent interest: patronage, especially of Cambridge University. Her benevolence had originally been a little more widely spread: in the closing years of the fifteenth century Oxford too had hailed her as the princess ‘of rank most exalted and of character divine’ who would exceed all others in her patronage. However, the influence of John Fisher – as well, perhaps, as its proximity to her geographical areas of influence – had led her to the other establishment.
Margaret’s support for Queens’ College in Cambridge (which Marguerite, Anne and Elizabeth Woodville had supported before her) could be taken as part of her ongoing bid for the regal role. Her long-standing interest in Jesus College, too, was shared by the whole royal family. But what came next was all her own. She took the underfunded ‘God’s House’ in Cambridge and turned it into Christ’s College: not her only enduring legacy in that city, but the one that can be most clearly identified with her. The college statutes of 1506 show that she reserved for her own use a set of four rooms there, located between the chapel and the hall and with windows giving a direct view down into either. From this position she could partake of the college devotions in privacy, perhaps fancy herself part of this masculine seat of learning, and keep an eye on daily college business. Her heraldic devices – a portcullis and a ‘yale’ – are still prominently modelled on the oriel outside her former lodgings. The mythical Yale was a goatlike creature with the ability to twist its horns in different directions so as to keep one of them safe in a fight. It symbolised proud defence and was highly appropriate for the wary Tudors.
Margaret not only ensured that Fisher could use her rooms when she was not in residence, but arranged for a country property to be used by the scholars whenever plague came to the city. Margaret is known to have visited Cambridge in 1505, 1506, 1507 and less certainly 1508. Nor did her work there cease with the foundation of Christ’s. As early as 1505 Fisher drew her attention to the lamentable state of the ancient hospital of St John the Evangelist; and though in the event it would be her executors who oversaw the difficult process of converting it into St John’s College, a place to be ‘as good and as of good value’ as Christ’s, here too her arms can still be seen resplendent above the porter’s lodge.
There is a story of how, looking out of her windows at Christ’s once, she saw the dean punishing a lazy scholar and cried out ‘
lente, lente
’ (gently, gently). But that softer side of her character is not often visible; life had not taught her to display it readily. After Elizabeth of York’s death, however, Margaret was certainly involved to some degree in the upbringing of Prince Henry. The excessive interest his father now took in the young prince meant he was never going to be sent off to Ludlow where his brother had died, but as heir to the throne he was still in need of a more adult and masculine establishment. Here, as everywhere, his grandmother’s hand can be seen, and the composition of his new household showed a considerable degree of cross-fertilisation with hers. His bede-roll – a portable prayer manual, meant to be pored over daily – suggests not only a genuine piety but a particular interest, which Margaret shared, in the crucifixion itself: the wounds and the holy name of Jesus. His love of chivalry might have originated in the York side of the family, but here too Margaret played a role: in 1504 two of the four young men added as ‘spears’ to the prince’s household came from hers, and she would send him a gift after he had distinguished himself ‘running at the ring’ in the tourney.
There is no evidence of her having fulfilled any such sympathetic function for Katherine of Aragon – however much the girl may have stood in need of it, caught as she was between her father’s and her father-in-law’s diplomacy. At the end of 1504 the death of her mother Isabella of Castile reduced Katherine’s diplomatic value, representing as she now did only a less valuable alliance with her father’s Aragon rather than with a united Spain. In June 1505 Prince Henry was instructed to repudiate his official marriage with her, leaving Katherine once again without clear prospects in a strange land.
Isabella’s own kingdom of Castile, her share of Spain, descended not to her husband Ferdinand but to her daughter Juana, Katherine’s elder sister. This created a battle for control between Juana’s husband Philip of Burgundy and her father Ferdinand, who had no intention of giving up so easily. There is evidence that Juana made valiant if ineffectual efforts to take control into her own hands and rule as her mother had done, but the real tussle was between the two men. Juana has been given the sobriquet ‘the Mad’,
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but though her behaviour could sometimes be erratic the slur was probably little more than a pretext used by the men of her family to set her aside.
In January 1506, the wintry weather gave England a first-hand view of Juana and her problems and blew an unexpected bonus on to Henry’s shores. Juana and Archduke Philip, on their way to Spain to claim her inheritance, were shipwrecked on the Dorset coast. On hearing the news at Richmond Henry immediately sent word to his mother at Croydon and set about preparing a dazzling welcome for guests who, despite their gracious reception, were also now in a sense hostages. The reluctance of her male connections to support the isolated Katherine was dramatised when she invited her brother-in-law Philip to join her in a dance, and got only a resounding snub. It was the precocious Princess Mary, not yet in her teens, who saved the situation by dancing with Katherine herself. (It was common practice for women to dance together.) Philip’s attitude to Juana was also made plain. He purposely kept her away from Henry’s court until he himself was firmly established as the star visitor, which left Katherine only a few hours to spend with the sister she was never likely to see again. Other factors apart, the last thing Philip would have wanted was for Katherine either to encourage Juana in independence or to get too much evidence of her sanity.
Philip was taken also to visit Margaret Beaufort at Croydon. Here the archduke’s minstrels performed for the king’s mother, and Prince Henry received a grandmotherly present of a new horse with fine gold and velvet trappings, the better to show off in front of a Burgundian guest who was a leading exponent of martial chivalry.
King Henry’s main topic of negotiation with his guest was a treaty of mutual defence between England and Burgundy – something which made an Aragonese alliance with Katherine even less necessary. One subtext was Henry’s determination to regain custody of Suffolk, who was still enjoying Burgundian hospitality. He won – for all that Philip initially demurred, apparently invoking the memory of Margaret of Burgundy to whom he said he still owed a loyalty. And King Henry, when he met her, appeared to have been considerably more impressed with Juana than Juana’s own husband, lending her, when the time came to resume her journey, Elizabeth of York’s ‘rich litters and chairs’.
Suffolk was brought back to imprisonment in England: he would eventually be executed, but by Henry VIII rather than his father. Indeed, a number of compromised figures were treated with a leniency that may owe something to their female connections. In other directions, however, the king was proving himself a harsher ruler than in earlier days. He now had two new and dauntingly aggressive money collectors, Empson and Dudley, who used every tactic of law and intimidation to extract revenue and caused, so Bacon heard from an earlier chronicle, ‘much sorrow’ from the autumn of 1506. Perhaps this was what John Fisher meant when he wrote that Margaret Beaufort detested avarice and covetousness in anyone, but most especially in any that belonged to her. Her own love of money was tempered by possibly a softer heart, and surely a stronger morality.
But if there were any differences of opinion between Margaret and her son, they would now regularly be subsumed into concerns over the king’s health. Early in 1507 he fell ill with an infection of the throat or chest – perhaps an abscess or tuberculosis. Lady Margaret moved in to Richmond to be by his side, just as she had done in 1503; and, just as she had done then, she buried her worries in the practicalities, ordering not only a supply of medicinal materials but also mourning garb which in the event proved unnecessary.
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That May the tournaments with their elaborate springtime pageantry were all about the young Prince Henry and the ravishing sovereign of the joust, his budding sister Princess Mary. After Elizabeth’s death Mary had probably spent some of her time in Margaret Beaufort’s care, whether at court or at Eltham – where even the swans in the moat now wore enamelled badges bearing the Beaufort portcullis. By the summer the king was sufficiently recovered to be set on a new courtship. Philip of Burgundy had died unexpectedly in the autumn of 1506, leaving Juana, the queen of Castile, a widow. From Henry’s viewpoint she was almost as desirable a prospect as Elizabeth of York had been – beautiful, and carrying with her a kingdom. The Spanish ambassador wrote that the English ‘seem little to mind … her insanity, especially since I have assured them that her derangement of mind would not prevent her from bearing children’.
Ferdinand, of course, was never going to be prepared to give England such a controlling hand in Spanish affairs, and within two years Juana had entered into the incarceration, nominally because of her mental health, that would last almost half a century. But in the meantime Juana’s sister Katherine got involved, at Henry’s request, in the negotiations and delivered to her father-in-law a ‘letter of credence’ which declared her her father’s ambassador. Katherine, of course, had every reason to desire her sister’s presence at Henry’s side – it might not only help her free herself from limbo but relieve her endless money worries. The disputes about her dowry had dragged on, and she sent frantic pleas to her father that she was spending not on frivolities but on necessities.
It would soon become clear that Henry VII was in no state to contemplate anything so arduous as another marriage. In the chill early spring of 1508 his illness returned and Margaret Beaufort was back at Richmond with her orders and her sweet wine. Once again Henry recovered – strong enough by the summer to resume normal activities – but it was clear what the future would be. The Spanish envoy Fuensalida wrote that the young Prince Henry was still kept ‘in complete subjection to his father and his grandmother and never opened his mouth in public except to answer a question from one of them’. But whether or not this was a true picture, he would soon be called upon to carry forward the Tudor dynasty.