#historian: anna duch

[richmond-rex]

Hi there! Just recently found your blog and I love it 🩷 you've probably answered this before but I was wondering if you had any insight on why Elizabeth of Yorks cornation was delayed almost two years. People who are anti Henry VII say it's becasue he didn't want to share power with Elizabeth or that he was jealous of her popularity etc. But from what I read there were good reasons for the delay. First Elizabeth became pregnant near instantly after getting married and couldn't go through the ceremony until after the birth and recovery period. Then the Simnel rebellion happened. After the battle of stokes she was crowned 5 months later which doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. Anyways just wondering if you had any further insights or details.

Hi, anon! First of all, I'm so very sorry for taking so long to reply to this ask. Thank you for letting me know you love this blog 🤍 I've discussed Elizabeth's delayed coronation before but I don't think I've ever organised my thoughts in a single post. I'm going to discuss the circumstances of the first two years of Henry's reign so we can look at them together. All in all, the delay in Elizabeth's coronation seems a logical outcome of the political circumstances of Henry VII's early years and not spite-motivated as Francis Bacon claimed in his work and what the scholarship based on Bacon usually repeats.

Regarding Henry's jealousy/insecurity, one of the theories is that Henry wanted to avoid a joint rule by avoiding a joint coronation. It's not that simple because such a coronation was simply not feasible at that time. For a joint coronation in October 1485, Henry and Elizabeth had to have been already married by that time, and that couldn't happen before he had re-legitimised her in parliament—for that to happen in turn, Henry had to sit in parliament as a crowned ruler. It was paramount to acquire the spiritual legitimacy only a coronation could give to boost his own authority. Edward IV had done the same (had crowned himself before sitting in his first parliament), and we can tell how much of a rushed affair Henry's coronation was by the simple fact that they used the same device for his predecessor's coronation: they literally simply crossed out Richard's name and wrote Henry's instead. A platform inside the church collapsed and several spectators were hurt during the occasion.

That's not to say Henry couldn't shake his shoulders at all those impediments and marry and crown Elizabeth immediately after Bosworth despite the legitimacy and dispensation issues hanging over them: although unorthodox, it could (theoretically) be done, but it's clear Henry had to tread carefully to establish his own legitimacy independent from the house of York if he wanted to be seen as an indisposable ruler in his own name. Whether it was the technical difficulties or Henry's wish to be seen as more than Elizabeth's husband—someone who could be booted off the throne in the case of her death—or both the technical difficulties and Henry's need for self-assertion, it seems unreasonable to expect a double coronation at that time and attribute this fact to Henry's malice and/or jealousy.

A coronation could have happened right after Henry and Elizabeth's marriage as it customarily happened. There are clear signs that indicate that this is what Henry had originally intended: in December 1485, he ordered horses for Elizabeth's coronation, and the plan was still in motion in January 1486 when he ordered 'tawnings of ermyns', 'canapye stavez', 'cherez of estate', 'skarlate rede clothe' as well as the 'furryng of dyvers of ye quenes robe' and diverse other items 'agenst the coronation of our soverayne lady ye queen'. It seems clear they weren't prepared for a coronation straight after their wedding (which seems to have been a rather more diminished affair comparatively)—Henry being short of cash and entagled in debts from his own previous coronation seems like a possibility, and even Edward IV, who married for love and had no reason to want to obfuscate his consort, took almost a whole year to be able to crown his own wife. What's unclear is why the coronation plans didn't advance through 1486.

Anna Duch has speculated Elizabeth's possible difficult pregnancy halted the plans for her coronation. A couple of queens were indeed crowned whilst pregnant: Anne Boleyn, who had a secret wedding and was in urgent need of legitimacy (so that her child could be seen as legitimate in turn), and Philippa of Hainault, who was married amidst the chaos of the power struggle between her in-laws and had held little visibility up to that point. It seems it was the news of Philippa's pregnancy that led to her coronation, and I don't see why the same wouldn't have happened to Elizabeth of York if what they claim to have been Henry's intention—to reduce Elizabeth to be simply the bearer of his heirs and hold no power whatsoever—was true.

Henry didn't rush to crown her at that point, although we don't know if Elizabeth's medical condition would have allowed her to go through a coronation. Not only Elizabeth's pregnancy might have prevented her from going through a coronation, but she also didn't follow the king in his northern progress despite arrangements for her appearance by his side at York where Henry's device of the red and white rose would come together for the first time. Maybe Elizabeth's mobility in the first trimester was hindered by morning sickness or the like, and soon Henry had other problems to worry about. As pointed out by Retha Warnicke, 'it is possible that Henry did not wish to expose his queen in a public ceremony that would draw great, sometimes unruly, crowds during a time of so many disturbances'.

By mid-1486 Henry had to deal with various rebellions in the north and even an assassination attempt at York. His northern progress, besides being conventional for a newly crowned king, was also motivated by Henry's need to show himself and impose his royal will onto his rebellious and disaffected subjects. A month before Henry set out north, contemporary correspondence circulated that 'the king purposyse northward hastyly after the Parlement, & it is sayd he purposses to doe execution quickly ther on such as hath offended agynst him'. The same letter, dated from February 1486, suggested that he intended to lead north a great company of men 'in harnesse' (in armour) together with some 200 lords and knights. Correspondence dated from December 1485 shows that Henry and his advisors feared a major outbreak of violence around that time, and back in October, Henry had written of his 'knowledge that certeyne our rebelles and traitours being of litell honour or substance conferred with our auncient ennemyes the Scottes… made insurreccion and assemblies in the north portions of our realme'.

By the time Henry approached York, he was reportedly surrounded by 'great noblesse, as above saide, and merveolous great nombre of so short a warnyng of esquires, gentlemen and yeomen in defensible array'. Lovell's rebellion was already underway, and frankly, it sounds like quite an unsafe atmosphere for Henry's pregnant queen to make an appearance. At the same time, Henry had to spend money on ordering materials and clothes for his public appearances in the cities he visited in his northern progress, and considering the royal treasury was still suffering from the expenses of the previous years I wonder if Elizabeth's coronation plans were also put on hold because of that royal progress in spring 1486. By the time Henry and his lords returned to London, Elizabeth's pregnancy was already advanced and his top priority seems to have been to get her to Winchester safely before her delivery.

After Arthur's birth and christening, Elizabeth's subsequent illness and churching, etc, the court could barely go back to a normal schedule as talks of Edward of Warwick's escape were circulating in London already by November 1486. Correspondence from January 1487 makes it clear that Henry had known of certain developments of the new rebellion since the beginning of that year. There were disturbances in Devon and Cornwall in early February and in Ireland in March. Henry had to call for a general council to discuss the security of his kingdom in February because of the boy pretender they already knew to be in Dublin at that time. By mid-March, Henry was already on the road to make arrangements for a foreign invasion, and it wouldn't be until after the Battle of Stoke in June that Henry would be able to devote his attention to his wife's coronation.

Henry's situation in 1486-1487 was, as described by Emma Cavell, 'ominously reminiscent of his own challenge to Richard III only two years earlier: a challenge in which the pretender had defeated the king'. All through this period we can identify the influence of unforeseen circumstances on Henry's actions and plans for his public appearances, especially where rebellion and challenges to his rule were concerned. It's clear too that Elizabeth's coronation was a grand affair, very likely bigger than Henry's own coronation, and an occasion where the yorkist symbols of the white rose and sun in splendour were displayed in great pomp for all to see. It sounds illogical to think Henry had been up to that point consumed with fear for Elizabeth's rights but after exactly what had been a yorkist rebellion and invasion, he would simply forget about his fear/jealousy and proceed with legitimising the yorkist inheritance in the public imagination.

What we have evidence of—and what I think we should focus on—are Henry's own words regarding 'ye quenes coronacyon' that he was planning as early as December 1485, and the various items that he bought for the occasion. Why the coronation didn't go ahead until 1487 is a matter of speculation but what is certain is that Henry didn't wait for Elizabeth to become pregnant to 'reward' her with a coronation (and thus reduce her to a human oven), as has been so often claimed. What do you all think? 🌹x

[une-sanz-pluis]

From the effigy of Henry V, Westminster Abbey received a large mantle of purple velvet and a gown of the same fabric, ermine fur from another mantel, two minivers, a crown of silver and gilt with stones and pearls, a long silver and gilt sceptre, a smaller silver and gilt sceptre with ball and cross, a ring with a precious stone, and two armbands of silver and gilt with pearls and stones. In 1437, the abbey retained items from Katherine’s effigy after her funeral, including a gilt crown, a gilt sceptre, two rings, and what may be two armbands, all silver.

Anna M. Duch, "'Do This in Remembrance of Me: Offerings, dentity, and Bills in the Medieval English Royal Funeral", A Companion to Death, Burial, and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Brill 2021)

[shredsandpatches]

(1) You reblogged something the other day that my brain won't let go of. I fully admit to knowing next to nothing other than what you reblog and comment on about Richard and Anne (I follow you for content other than that) but this post struck a chord in me. It was discussing Anne's barrenness; the failure of her childlessness. And it's just ... how do we know she was the barren one in that relationship? Richard didn't have any children so why is the blame on her shoulders?

(2) Other than it's traditionally the woman's fault. Am I missing something?

No, you’re totally right--we don’t know exactly why Richard and Anne were infertile, or whose problem it was; there’s no way of knowing because it seems pretty likely that Anne was the only woman Richard ever had sex with. Usually you’ll even see historians point that out, just in passing, that there’s no evidence that Richard was fertile, and in fact, some more recent scholars argue that Richard was much more concerned with how their lack of children reflected on him as both a man and a king. 

Katherine Lewis has argued that Richard’s emphasis on his devotion to Edward the Confessor, who was believed to have had a chaste marriage (although historians of his reign don’t think he actually did), was meant to imply that he and Anne had done likewise. Kristen Geaman’s work has proved pretty conclusively that Richard and Anne didn’t have a chaste marriage, an idea that was always pretty improbable (they were both very conscious of their lineage and knew that they would need an heir to the throne), by bringing to light a letter Anne wrote to her brother, Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia, around 1384, which may suggest that she had a miscarriage around that time, and certainly demonstrates that she was optimistic that she would have a successful pregnancy in the future. So they were definitely trying -- Geaman also analyzes an apothecary bill from 1393–94, the last year of Anne’s life, and concludes that, based on the medicines she purchased, she was probably still trying to conceive at the time of her apparently sudden death. If she did have a miscarriage (or more than one, but that must remain speculative*) it’s possible that the problem was on her end physically, and that she could conceive but not carry to term -- this may be supported by the fact that most of her (full and half) siblings had only one child or none at all, while Richard’s Holland half-siblings had lots of kids -- but that still doesn’t make it her fault, and clearly Richard didn’t hold it against her.   

Geaman’s dissertation devotes a lot of time to arguing that Anne probably wasn’t seen as the one to blame for the lack of an heir, and that Richard’s contemporary critics, during the reign and certainly after his deposition, would probably have placed the blame squarely on him for his immaturity and unmanliness** -- although there are other scholars who see the generally lukewarm treatment of Anne in the chronicles as a sign of her “ambivalent legacy” (a term used by Michael Hanrahan in his reading of Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale as being focused on Richard and Anne’s lack of an heir; there’s also a good article by Anna Duch where she addresses why Thomas Walsingham, specifically, might have resented Anne, although it reflects much better on Anne than it does Walsingham). She follows Lewis in arguing that Richard was probably unnerved enough by this that after Anne’s death he wanted to imply that he and Anne had had a celibate marriage and thus prove his manly self-control, but concedes that any efforts made in this direction were not successful among his contemporaries (although they certainly worked on historians centuries later). I really love her work on Anne as queen and historical figure -- she is pretty much the go-to person for scholarship on Anne as a person rather than as a symbolic cultural figure -- but I’m not sure I’m convinced by the “Richard pretended to have a chaste marriage” argument for that basic reason; the primary audience for it would have been people who had been close to the couple, who had an unconventionally companionate marriage for the time period, built an island resort palace with unprecedented levels of privacy, and were actively trying to conceive to the degree that they sought medical intervention. (And it’s worth pointing out that @nuingiliath has suggested to me that perhaps Richard might also have wanted to protect Anne’s legacy by presenting her as a holy virgin rather than a barren queen, if Lewis’ and Geaman’s speculations are true.)

All that said: you do have a lot more attention paid to infertility by scholars/historians who are talking about Anne, and I think a lot of this is based on a) as you said, the unexamined assumption that infertility is the woman’s fault physically, and b) the assumption that infertility is the woman’s problem and that it’s the queen’s only job (except warrior queens like Isabella of France of Margaret of Anjou). Christopher Fletcher’s book on Richard and medieval masculinity goes so far to call Richard and Anne’s marriage a disaster, despite its incredible success on the personal level, because of their infertility. But queenship studies in the last couple of decades have made great strides in examining the role of queens beyond providing heirs -- which, of course, was part of the queen’s job, but not the entirety of it -- whereas fertility isn’t really represented as an issue for men most of the time, and I definitely hope that’s changing.  

*It’s what I do in my fictional writing, but I wouldn’t be able to support it in something scholarly. They’re different interpretive practices, obviously.

**You still sometimes get this today, like in Lisa Hilton’s book where she argues that Richard wasn’t mature enough to consummate his marriage to Anne, or John Bowers’ work where he argues -- based entirely on readings of Chaucer, like Chaucer would have known what was going on in the king’s marriage -- that Richard and Anne had a celibate marriage because Richard was using piety to hide his horrible deviant gayness. These people can fuck right off. You also sometimes get authors who argue that they had a celibate marriage on Anne’s initiative and in imitation of some important Bohemian royal saints, although nearly all of the saints in question had celibate marriages after having children, which is why Anne was able to exist in the first place! She would certainly have known this, and would not have had a chance to give up marital relations because she died childless while still of reproductive age. Anyway scholars who suggest that a celibate marriage was Anne’s idea seem to think it gives her more agency, like a sexually active married woman who wanted children can’t have agency. 🙄

[une-sanz-pluis]

In total, Westminster Abbey received 222 cloths of gold from mourners during the exequies of Henry V in November 1422. The two largest offerings came from the absent eleven-month old Henry VI: 13 cloths of gold at Dirige and 24 cloths at the requiem mass. Queen Katherine, widow of Henry V, offered nine cloths of gold at the Dirige and 16 cloths at requiem. Next came the dowager Queen Joan of Navarre, the widow of Henry IV, who offered 11 cloths at Dirige and 13 at the requiem but then purchased back her entire offering for £33 6s 8d to the abbey. Lord Bourchier purchased back his three cloths of gold as well (one from Dirige, two from requiem), while the Count of March bartered his offered 13 cloths of gold for a single gown of “cloth of gold of Damascus.” The money went into Westminster Abbey’s coffers, while the unredeemed clothes of gold remained useful for liturgical purposes or for re-sale. In comparison, Westminster Abbey received 91 cloths of gold for dowager Queen Katherine when she died in 1437. The two largest offerings came from the King, Henry VI, with five for Dirige and seven for the requiem, and from dowager Queen Joan, four for Dirige and six for requiem. Despite the fact that it appears Henry VI celebrated the anniversary of his maternal grandmother, Isabeau of Bavaria, dowager queen of France, at the same time, Cretton is very clear about what was offered for whom. Henry VI was the only one to offer cloths of gold for Isabeau, and just two at that. Twenty- six banners were offered for Katherine, and four for Isabeau.

Anna M. Duch, "'Do This in Remembrance of Me: Offerings, dentity, and Bills in the Medieval English Royal Funeral", A Companion to Death, Burial, and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Brill 2021)

[une-sanz-pluis]

If we believe that Henry bled on the streets outside St Paul’s and Blackfriars, then we may also believe he was denied divine services in those churches; it was forbidden to contaminate a church by shedding blood, whether by violence or due to an incontinent body. If Henry’s corpse was leaking, then he may have been denied entry. Alternatively, if he had not bled, this may have been part of Edward IV’s disregard for him; it was a distinctly royal or elite feature to have the body in the church, rather than waiting outside. Although sources state that Henry had a procession with torches from the Tower to St Paul’s with stops in between, these sources equally lack any mention of offices or masses for Henry in London. He was taken to churches to be seen, but there is no mention of anything happening at those churches. Hall reported that there were no Offices of the Dead, no masses, no tapers, no riders, and no mourners. Others concurred, saying that there were only soldiers guarding the body, as if the dead Henry was being marched to execution. The Exchequer tells a slightly different story. The Carmelites, Augustinians, Dominicans, Dominicans, and Franciscans each received £1 and “other charities”, while the Brothers of the Holy Cross received £2 for masses to be said for Henry in London. The Dominicans also received £2 12s 3d for masses and obsequies at Chertsey, for a total of £8 12s 3d. There were certainly masses said for Henry in the City of London and at Chertsey on the day of his burial, but not necessarily during the procession in the days before. Unlike Richard of Bordeaux, there are no assurances by chroniclers that Henry of Windsor had masses offered for him while he was processed through London, nor any report of St Paul’s receiving money for masses. The procession, funeral, and burial of Henry was a speedy affair. The corruption of Henry’s corpse in public and the lack of any remedial action violated the spirit of De Exequiis Regalibus in its provisions for proper embalming and for giving a king a fitting funeral and burial. The exequies for Henry were thought to be pitiful.

Anna M. Duch, "'King By Fact, Not by Law': Legitimacy and exequies in medieval England", Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy (Routledge 2020)

[une-sanz-pluis]

Refusing to adhere to the rules of the royal funeral had consequences, often immediately. The embalming stipulations in De Exequiis Regalibus were clearly disregarded by Edward IV when arranging for the exequies of Henry VI, oft referred to as Henry of Windsor. The 1910 tomb opening offers the physical evidence for this, but there is also narrative and financial evidence that corroborates the accusation of poor handling. The interval between Henry’s death and burial in May 1471 was only three days, as he died at the Tower of London. Henry was paraded with an open visage, so that he could be identified. According to Warkworth’s Chronicle, Henry’s body, while coffined, left blood on the ground, once at St Paul’s and once at Blackfriars. “Cruentation” was the medieval urban legend in which a victim always bled in the presence of his murderer. Henry theoretically bled in the presence of the pro-Yorkist courtiers and the royal house. Bleeding after death was also considered a sign of a martyr, and Henry quickly acquired a saintly following.65 The report of blood might be dismissed as pro-Lancastrian propaganda, but given the condition of Henry’s remains in 1910 and the stipulations of medieval preservation, the “bleeding” may have been the result of a poor embalming. The costs of Henry’s embalming were also low, as most of the money designated for his funeral was for the guarding of the corpse. Only £15 3s 6½d, given to Hugh Brice, was set aside for clergy, cloth, spices (the item that implied embalming), torches for the escort to St Paul’s and to Chertsey, and other items, such as the unmentioned embalmer himself. There was an additional payment of £9 10s 11d to Richard Martyn for twenty-eight yards of Holland linen and other items related to Henry’s exit from the Tower, including the soldiers’ salary for escort. Henry IV had spent far more than this amount caring for Richard’s body in 1400 compared to what Edward IV spent in 1471 for Henry’s body. In 1377, £21 had been spent solely upon the embalming of Edward III. The poor condition of Henry’s bones partially reflect the initial lack of a lead coffin—a measure recommended by the prescriptive texts the Liber Regie Capelle and the Household Articles. His exposure to the populace of London, the financial accounts, and the presence of tissue and hair clinging to the skull indicate that Henry was embalmed, though poorly. The body did not withstand the centuries, or even the days before burial.

Anna M. Duch, "'King By Fact, Not by Law': Legitimacy and exequies in medieval England", Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy (Routledge 2020)

[richmond-rex]

Hello! This is pure speculation but - giving Elizabeth being sick after Arthur's birth, her being ill again (around 1497 I think?) when Margaret Beaufort mentions that in a letter (and this time it had nothing to do with a pregnancy, as far as I know), the fear for her life at Edmund's birth etc., do you think she might have had a more fragile constitution than what was previously assumed?

I ask that because some (most) historians really portray her as super healthy and having these easy pregnancies without actually diving a little deeper. To me, at least - and again it's only my opinion based on speculation - she does not seem to have had such easy pregnancies as assumed, or such a robust health as usually supposed.

I could very much be wrong, but I was really curious to know your opinion on the matter. I hope you have a great day! 😊💜

Hi! Recently Anna Duch has highlighted Elizabeth of York's difficult pregnancies. There's the time she was ill right after Arthur's birth in 1486 (and possibly before his birth too, as she didn't accompany the king on his northern progress even though symbols representing both king and queen had been programmed in advance), Prince Edmund's pregnancy in 1499 when the Spanish ambassador said her life was despaired of, her pregnancy in 1502 that saw some medical expenses following each other very closely, Princess Katherine's birth in 1503, and that illness alluded by Margaret Beaufort after Princess Mary's birth in 1496 (not 1497). We know that because her letter to Elizabeth's Lord Chamberlain is dated 25 April 1496 (Mary was born on 18 March 1496):

As for news here I am sure ye shall have more surety than I can send you. Blessed be God, the King, the Queen, and all our sweet children be in good health. The Queen hath been a little crased [i.e., ill], but now she is well, God be thanked. Her sickness is [?not] so good as I would but I trust hastily it shall, with God’s grace, whom I pray give you good speed in your great matters, and bring you well and soon home.

Margaret signs her letter at the Palace of Sheen (later Richmond), which makes me think she was accompanying the queen during her confinement before and after the birth. So what we have here is Margaret retelling the queen's sickness a month after her last labour, and knowing Elizabeth became sick after Arthur's birth as well, this illness might have had to do with childbirth too. But Elizabeth might have had poor health in general. We can't trace all of the medical expenses Henry VII paid for his wife, for example, to her pregnancies. Although Elizabeth's health is not often discussed, there's an old novel where apparently Elizabeth of York does nothing but complain and get sick, so I don't know if it was always the case.

There's also the fact that Henry VII didn't have sturdy health, either. In 1487 (so when Henry VII was still relatively young), Giovanni de Giglis, the papal collector in England, wrote to Pope Innocent VIII saying that 'on account of ill health the King requests a dispensation authorizing him to eat meat on fast days. Supposes that the Pope has already granted these demands'. Back in 1486, the pope had already granted an 'indult for [Henry VII and Elizabeth of York] and each of them and six persons, and for Margaret, countess of Richmond, the said king's mother, and other six persons, not to be bound to fast in Lent, and during that season to eat eggs, cheese, butter and other milk-meats, whenever they shall think fit'.

It's hard to decide whether Henry VII really had poor health from the very beginning of his reign or if it was just diplomatic parlance to get a dispensation releasing him (and his wife and mother) from fasting. It does seem like he got a dispensation to eat 'milk-meats' in 1486 and then asked another for 'meat' in general the following year. It might just be a translation inconsistency though, and maybe the two documents allude to the same thing (milk-meats), or it might be that the papal collector wasn't aware that Henry had already gotten a dispensation. It seems odd though, considering Giglis mentioned that he had asked the pope for Henry's dispensation several times.

Considering Elizabeth of York was also included in that dispensation, is it possible Elizabeth had ill health too? I don't know! It does seem like the type of papal privileges royals used to get on the regular (like indulgences for sins etc). All I know is that Elizabeth's health certainly doesn't seem to have been sturdy enough to support calm and healthy pregnancies, or at least it appeared so half the times she was pregnant (4/7).

I hope you have a great day too! 🌹x

[richmond-rex]

Anna M. Duch, “Chasing St Louis: the English monarchy’s pursuit of sainthood”, The Routledge History of Monarchy (2019)

[richmond-rex]

After detailing Henry’s penitential activities, [Bishop John] Fisher illustrated the physical suffering of Henry VII on his deathbed, to ‘stir us to have compassion and pity upon this most noble king.’ Sharp pains afflicted the king for over twenty-seven hours, and his soul was tormented by fear of God’s judgment. He, being a good Christian, bore these agonies, but still called his son, Prince Henry to him in order to give his last advice. The death of Henry VII is perhaps the clearest example of that carefully constructed motif: all kings receive a good death. He was a virtuous Christian, he used his kingly traits in order to right his own wrongs and show concern for his kingdom, and he imparted advice to his successor.

Anna M. Duch, The Royal Funerary and Burial Ceremonies of Medieval English Kings 

[richmond-rex]

I remember reading Amy Licence saying childbirth was relatively rarer in late medieval / early sixteenth century England than what we usually think (In Bed with the Tudors). The exact quote is: 

Most Tudor mothers did not die during childbirth. Surprisingly, the odds of survival were fairly good, providing there were no complications. Roger Schofield estimates the likelihood of maternal mortality at 1 per cent per pregnancy and between 6 and 7 per cent across a woman’s childbearing years, giving them a similar chance of dying of non-birth-related causes. Another case study, of sixteenth-century Aldgate, suggests the figure was more like 2.35 per cent, as crowded and insanitary as urban areas undoubtedly were.

I never gave much thought to it because 1. Licence is not really known for her accuracy; 2. I had not had the chance to check the works she cited. But reading Anna Duch it really struck me that Elizabeth of York was really, in truth, statistically more unlucky than many women during her time, and even compared to her position:

The royal prescriptive texts do not differentiate between the funeral of a king and that of a queen. As such, Elizabeth’s exequies were consciously gendered; no prince could die from childbirth. While other consorts had awe-inspiring obsequies and commemoration to reflect her social level, no other had a funeral which directly remarked upon her gender. No other queen consort had died in childbirth till Elizabeth of York.

No other queen consort had died in childbith till Elizabeth of York. I feel like in many works her death is so trivialised — some authors even imply she was too old at 36 to be having babies (even though her own mother had last given birth at 43) — that we don’t properly grasp how unexpected and shocking it was. 

[richmond-rex]

It is established here that the mourning colour for royalty was blue. This particular custom was certainly in use before the issue of the Household Articles in 1494. Edward IV wore blue at his father’s re-interment at Fotheringhay in 1476. In 1492, after the death of her mother Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York took to wearing blue; Margaret of Anjou did the same when her mother died in 1453.

Anna Duch, The Royal Funerary and Burial Ceremonies of Medieval English Kings, 1216-1509 (2016)

The contemporary scribe merely commented that Queen Elizabeth had taken to her chambers and “I suppose she went in blue [the royal color of mourning] in likewise as Queen Margaret, the wife of King Henry the VI, went in when her mother the Queen of Sicily died. (Arlene Okerlund, Elizabeth of York: Queenship and Power)

[richmond-rex]

Several scholars have complained about the delay in crowning Elizabeth of York. Jaqueline Johnson states that it may have been to prevent Elizabeth from being recognized as the true heir to the throne, and that the Tudors wanted her function as queen to primarily be a producer of children. The latter was the de facto result, but perhaps not intended. Given that Arthur was premature (born less than 40 weeks after the wedding), it may be suggested that Elizabeth’s first pregnancy was not an easy one, as she did not accompany Henry VII on his progress to York in spring 1486 [...] Hyperemesis gravidarum is linked to premature births, which would explain Arthur’s early arrival, but this is speculative. The uprising of the Stafford brothers and Francis Lovell and an outbreak of plague in the spring of 1486 also made travel less than ideal.

Elizabeth was sick after Arthur’s birth in September 1486, having ague (possibly a post-partum infection she fought off). In May 1487, after a months-long surge of popularity, child-pretender Lambert Simnel was crowned in Christchurch Dublin as Edward VI, formerly Edward earl of Warwick, son of George, Edward IV’s second eldest brother. The real Edward was in Henry VII’s custody, but that did not change the fact that an insurgency had coalesced around a ten-year-old boy and swept across England to Ireland and back again. The precarious political situation, combined with health concerns, delayed the coronation. Perhaps Elizabeth did not have easy pregnancies as her mother did – perhaps babies interfered with ceremonies, rather than ceremonies interfering with babies.

— Anna Duch, From Birth till Death: Royal Ceremony in the Life of Elizabeth of York, Queen of England 

[richmond-rex]

Elizabeth of York has been claimed to not have any political role after she was married off. What is considered to be political activity should be re-evaluated. Elizabeth of York’s entire life was punctuated by ceremonies that were political in nature to build up political capital. This restored and then maintained the prestige of the royal house, despite the upheaval of the 1480s.

Anna Duch, From Birth till Death: Royal Ceremony in the Life of Elizabeth of York, Queen of England (2016)

[richmond-rex]

For the black cloth in [Elizabeth of York]’s funeral, £1483 15s 10d were spent. The cost of cloth was more than the amount of money spent on Prince Arthur’s entire funeral the year before, and it was almost the same amount that was spent on her father’s exequies in 1483, which were valued at £1496 17s 2d. This is particularly pointed, as the Liber Regie Capelle dictates that a queen should have all the same pomp and ceremony as a king when it came to the funeral; again, the royal prescriptive texts were gender neutral. The funeral conducted for Elizabeth, managed by her husband and her mother-in-law, completely eclipsed all that came before it. Her funeral in total cost about £2,832 7s 3d.

Anna Duch, From Birth till Death: Royal Ceremony in the Life of Elizabeth of York, Queen of England (2016)

[richmond-rex]

Jones and Underwood question whether Elizabeth of York resented Margaret’s activity. This remains ambiguous, but historians should reframe these actions by researching more thoroughly Elizabeth of York herself. The last two efforts at a biography for Elizabeth have come up short, in part due to not examining Latin sources and enjoying too much the motifs of the meddling mother-in-law and the politically detached damsel in distress. Elizabeth of York, in comparison to the raucous queens that came before her, is quiet. But comparatively quiet is not the same as mute; it simply means that historians must put in more effort to hear her in the context of the world she lived in.

Anna Duch, From Birth till Death: Royal Ceremony in the Life of Elizabeth of York, Queen of England

[richmond-rex]

As such, one can assume that Henry VIII had no interest in moving Henry VI from Windsor after 1512. The cult of Henry VI continued to flourish through the sixteenth century, and the cause was still being examined in Rome when the English Reformation occurred. The time for a medieval English royal saint had passed, as England then had a church with the monarch as the Supreme Head. What need was there for a saintly relative? By 1611, Henry VI’s tomb at Windsor, though not built as a saint’s shrine, was dismantled, and his resting place lost for over 300 years.

—  Anna M. Duch, “Chasing St Louis: the English monarchy’s pursuit of sainthood”, The Routledge History of Monarchy (2019)