Read Online Tudor Queens of England by David Loades - Free Book Online Page B

defeated, and with neither son nor husband left to her, Margaret remained in captivity in London until 1475, her plight only marginally alleviated by the efforts of her former waiting woman, Elizabeth, now Queen. When Edward signed the peace of Pequingy with Louis in the latter year, one of the conditions was that that the French King should take this unwanted dowager off his hands and she was ransomed for 50,000 crowns. Margaret renounced all claims in England and returned to France in January 1476. Her father, by now an old man, appears to have ceded his interests in Provence to Louis to secure her redemption and the King behaved decently towards his cousin. He made her renounce any possible claims that may have lingered from the days when she was theoretically queen of a large part of France and then made her an allowance of 6,000 crowns a year – the same that she had received before Henry’s ill-fated readeption. By this time Margaret no longer had even the semblance of a court although a few die-hard Lancastrians still clung to her. Her entourage is alleged to have consisted of three ladies and seven gentlemen. Among these were some of the faithful women who had served her as Queen and when she came to make her will in August 1482, just a few days before her death, one of the witnesses was Margaret Vaux, who had been widowed at Tewkesbury, just a few days before her mistress. Even in her years of misfortune, Margaret still had the capacity to inspire devoted service.
    Despite the fact that we know quite a lot about her political activities and over 80 of her letters survive, there are aspects of Margaret’s personality that remain impenetrable. Her piety appears to have been conventional and the friendships that she formed mostly opportunist. Sex does not seem to have interested her. It took eight years of marriage to Henry before she conceived and after his collapse she seems to have lived a life of celibacy. The only scandal that ever touched her was a supposed liaison with the Duke of Suffolk in the 1440s and that was a mere slander aimed at Suffolk. She was quite unlike Catherine de Valois in that respect, being noted for her courage, cleverness and determination rather than for more typically feminine qualities. She was patroness of the Guild of Silkwomen, but did not, as far as we know, show any skill in that direction herself. She fi tted out ships at her own expense to trade into the Mediterranean but that was not a particularly feminine accomplishment either. For a few years 42

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    she wielded, by the sheer force of personality, real political power in a way she was not supposed to do as a mere consort, and she dominated the husband she was supposed to serve and revere. Edward IV is alleged to have said that ‘he feared her more as a fugitive, and in want of the absolute necessities of life, than he did all the princes of the House of Lancaster combined’. As a consequence her historical reputation suffered severely, in England at least, and although George Chatellain’s Burgundian chronicle praised her generously, in England she is best known through Shakespeare’s plays. The chronicles from which the dramatist took his information were Yorkist and Tudor propaganda, where she appears as a termagent, cruel and cunning. In truth she was neither of these things, but circumstances did make a dominatrix, and as a mother she fought tooth and nail for the rights of her son. With a different husband and in other circumstances she might have been remembered more kindly but, as it is, she appears as an heroic and rather tragic fi gure, quite distinct from the other consorts of the period.

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    The Queen as Lover: Elizabeth Woodville
    Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Grey (née Woodville) in 1464 created a highly unusual situation. Never before had a ruling king of England married one of his own subjects. The normal practice, both for rulers and potential rulers, had been