#then years later (after the 1483 crisis) she considered

[richmond-rex]

The first mention of [the St Erasmus chapel at Westminster] comes in a grant issued by Edward IV to the abbey on 13 January 1479 of portions of two manors in Worcestershire [...] The king granted the manors to Elizabeth Woodville on 10 February 1474. Five years later, at the request of the queen, Edward granted the manors to Westminster Abbey in order to fund the chantry she had established there ‘in a chapel of St Erasmus newly built by the queen, annexed to the chapel of St Mary of the monastery, for the good estate of the king and queen and for their souls after death’, and for those of their children. Income from the estates would support two monks to celebrate mass there daily, with the charter setting out the queen’s liturgical instructions. A previously unnoticed, fragmentary draft of the charter also survives, compiled at some unspecified date before 13 January 1479. It provides a slightly different witness to Elizabeth’s intentions. While the final version specifies placebos and diriges to be sung by the monks on the anniversaries of the eventual deaths of the king and queen around ‘le herse’, the draft more specifically states they are to take place ‘around the tomb of our consort if she is buried there’. This suggests that at this date it might still have been Elizabeth’s intention to be buried at Westminster. This is curious, because Edward himself had made clear as early as 1475 that he wished to be buried at Windsor. He was by then already spending lavishly on its reconstruction to accommodate this. In due course Elizabeth’s body did follow Edward’s to Windsor, but as so often, the final location of a royal burial was a matter of prolonged deliberation (and often contention).

— Matthew Payne & John Goodall, Elizabeth Woodville and the Chapel of St Erasmus at Westminster Abbey