“My faithful lords and hardy soldiers who have endured so many dangers with me on land and sea, behold again how against our will we are tested in battle. For the Earl of Lincoln—a treacherous man, as you know—is taking up an unjust cause against me completely unprovoked.”
—Henry VII (1485-1509), when dealing with the Simnel rebellion.
Amin, N. “The Notable Triumph”. Henry VII and the Tudor Pretenders: Simnel, Warbeck and Warwick.
What does a 15th century manuscript sound like? Listen to LJS 61, a Register of writs from regnal year 13 of Richard II (1390) to regnal year 8 of Henry IV (1407). This book was made in London, with portions written ca. 1407 and 1427. The pages are parchment, the covers are late 15th-century calf over wooden boards.
Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.
Cotton. Vesp. F. xiii. f.. 49 containing the inscription: thys boke ys myn elysabeth the kyngs dawghtyr (this book is mine elizabeth the king's daughter) written by Elizabeth of York
Today's #YearOfHours #BookOfHours is Ms. Codex 1063, produced in England, probably London, perhaps for a member of a religious confraternity or community. The musical notation in the Office of the Dead is unusual, as is the absence of the prayers Obsecro te and O intemerata.
Thinking about Elizabeth Woodville as a gothic heroine is making me go insane. She entered the story by overturning existing social structures, provoking both ire and fascination. She married into a dynasty doomed to eat itself alive. She was repeatedly associated with the supernatural, both in terms of love and death. Her life was shaped entirely by uncanny repetitions - two marriages, two widowhoods, two depositions, two flights to sanctuary, two ultimate reclamations, all paralleling and ricocheting off each other. Her plight after 1483 exposed the true rot at the heart of the monarchy - the trappings of royalty pulled away to reveal nothing, a never-ending cycle of betrayal and war, the price of power being the (literal) blood of children. She lived past the end of her family name, she lived past the end of her myth. She ended her life in a deeply anomalous position, half-in and half-out of royal society. She was both a haunting tragedy and the ultimate survivor who was finally free.