Read Online The House of Tudor by Alison Plowden - Free Book Online
Authors: Alison Plowden
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covered cup of gold as his fee. And then, says the chronicler, ‘the Queen departed with God’s blessing and to the rejoicing of many a true Englishman’s heart’.
Apart from her mother-in-law, Elizabeth of York had been supported by her sister Cecily, her aunt Elizabeth (mother of the de la Poles) and her cousin Margaret (sister of the imprisoned Warwick), but her own mother had been allowed no part in the proceedings. Elizabeth Woodville, in fact, was in disgrace. An incorrigible intriguante, she had somehow become mixed up in the plotting of the Lambert Simnel affair - or at any rate so the King believed - and as early as the previous February he had taken the precaution of transferring all her landed property to his wife and had installed the Queen Dowager as a boarder in the convent at Bermondsey, where she would have little opportunity of getting into mischief.
Christmas that year was again spent at Greenwich and was kept ‘full honourably’, the King going to Mass on Christmas Eve in a gown of purple velvet furred with sables, impressively escorted by his nobility. There was merrymaking as well as churchgoing, several plays were performed and on New Year’s Day there was ‘a goodly disguising’. Finally, on Twelfth Day, there was a state banquet with the King and Queen wearing their crowns, my lady the King’s mother with a rich coronet on her head, and everybody who was anybody present in full panoply.
St. George’s Day was observed at Windsor with more displays of goldsmiths’ work, of silk and velvet gowns, of cloth of gold and elaborate horse trappings.
Here this day St. George, patron of this place.
Honored with the gartere cheefe of chevalrye;
Chaplenes synging procession, keeping the same.
With archbushopes and bushopes beseene nobly;
Much people presente to see the King Henrye:
Wherefore now, St. George, all we pray to thee
To keepe our soveraine in his dignetye.
It is noticeable how quickly the political significance of the Tudors’ Welshness had receded. St. George, the English champion, had taken over from such heroes of Celtic mythology as Cadwaladr of the beautiful spear, and by the end of the 1480s Henry Tudor, prince of the Welsh royal line, had become submerged in Henry Tudor the English King.
Henry VII’s Court moved through the calendar of feasts and saints’ days in a ritual dance of pageantry. It was all part of the great illusion - the illusion of stability and security skilfully concealing the extreme fragility of the structure which lay beneath it. From what we know of Henry’s private character, he seems to have been a man of simple tastes who would probably have preferred to spend his free time quietly with his family. But this was a luxury he could not yet afford. He must continue to dress up in expensive, uncomfortable clothes and wear his crown in public, taking every opportunity of promoting an image of kingly splendour, of impressing the outside world with a sense of the power and confidence of the new dynasty, while behind the scenes he worked unremittingly at the task of turning illusion into reality.
It was just as well that he did, for at the beginning of the 1490s history began to repeat itself and Henry, as Francis Bacon put it, ‘began again to be haunted with spirits’. Once again the apparition took the form of a good-looking youth, Perkin (or Peter) Warbeck (or Osbeck), a native of the city of Tournai in Flanders. Once again the first manifestation occurred in Ireland, and once again the origins of the affair are obscure. According to Perkin himself, in a confession made six years later, he landed in Cork with his master, a Breton silk merchant, in the autumn of 1491 and was immediately mobbed by the inhabitants, who insisted that this well-dressed young man (Perkin was advertising his master’s wares on his person) was the same Earl of Warwick ‘that was before time at Dublin’ and would not accept his embarrassed denials.
Polydore Vergil,
Apart from her mother-in-law, Elizabeth of York had been supported by her sister Cecily, her aunt Elizabeth (mother of the de la Poles) and her cousin Margaret (sister of the imprisoned Warwick), but her own mother had been allowed no part in the proceedings. Elizabeth Woodville, in fact, was in disgrace. An incorrigible intriguante, she had somehow become mixed up in the plotting of the Lambert Simnel affair - or at any rate so the King believed - and as early as the previous February he had taken the precaution of transferring all her landed property to his wife and had installed the Queen Dowager as a boarder in the convent at Bermondsey, where she would have little opportunity of getting into mischief.
Christmas that year was again spent at Greenwich and was kept ‘full honourably’, the King going to Mass on Christmas Eve in a gown of purple velvet furred with sables, impressively escorted by his nobility. There was merrymaking as well as churchgoing, several plays were performed and on New Year’s Day there was ‘a goodly disguising’. Finally, on Twelfth Day, there was a state banquet with the King and Queen wearing their crowns, my lady the King’s mother with a rich coronet on her head, and everybody who was anybody present in full panoply.
St. George’s Day was observed at Windsor with more displays of goldsmiths’ work, of silk and velvet gowns, of cloth of gold and elaborate horse trappings.
Here this day St. George, patron of this place.
Honored with the gartere cheefe of chevalrye;
Chaplenes synging procession, keeping the same.
With archbushopes and bushopes beseene nobly;
Much people presente to see the King Henrye:
Wherefore now, St. George, all we pray to thee
To keepe our soveraine in his dignetye.
It is noticeable how quickly the political significance of the Tudors’ Welshness had receded. St. George, the English champion, had taken over from such heroes of Celtic mythology as Cadwaladr of the beautiful spear, and by the end of the 1480s Henry Tudor, prince of the Welsh royal line, had become submerged in Henry Tudor the English King.
Henry VII’s Court moved through the calendar of feasts and saints’ days in a ritual dance of pageantry. It was all part of the great illusion - the illusion of stability and security skilfully concealing the extreme fragility of the structure which lay beneath it. From what we know of Henry’s private character, he seems to have been a man of simple tastes who would probably have preferred to spend his free time quietly with his family. But this was a luxury he could not yet afford. He must continue to dress up in expensive, uncomfortable clothes and wear his crown in public, taking every opportunity of promoting an image of kingly splendour, of impressing the outside world with a sense of the power and confidence of the new dynasty, while behind the scenes he worked unremittingly at the task of turning illusion into reality.
It was just as well that he did, for at the beginning of the 1490s history began to repeat itself and Henry, as Francis Bacon put it, ‘began again to be haunted with spirits’. Once again the apparition took the form of a good-looking youth, Perkin (or Peter) Warbeck (or Osbeck), a native of the city of Tournai in Flanders. Once again the first manifestation occurred in Ireland, and once again the origins of the affair are obscure. According to Perkin himself, in a confession made six years later, he landed in Cork with his master, a Breton silk merchant, in the autumn of 1491 and was immediately mobbed by the inhabitants, who insisted that this well-dressed young man (Perkin was advertising his master’s wares on his person) was the same Earl of Warwick ‘that was before time at Dublin’ and would not accept his embarrassed denials.
Polydore Vergil,
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