Elizabeth of York

“ The occupants of high places who are careful and prudent are rarely popular. His unpopularity was moreover helped on in various ways. Dynastic policy thrust upon him a wife of the busy unimpassioned temperament—a woman in whom deficient emotion and sympathy [Pg 25] and affection were not compensated by any high qualities; a woman who was restless, mischievous, vain, intriguing, and fond of influence. Elizabeth of York had all the bad qualities of her father and her son and had very few of their good ones. A King Henry in feminine disguise without his virtues was not likely to love or be loved. ”

“ If he had mentioned the right of Elizabeth of York, his extreme caution suggested that he would be held to possess the throne, not by his own claims, but by hers—an idea which equally offended his pride, and alarmed him for the security of the succession in his offspring. Should Elizabeth die without children, in that case the right would die with her ”

“ Elizabeth looked up with a little start, and a momentary brightening of the eyes, which faded, however, instantly.
"Oh, my aunts could never bear to leave here," she said. "They have so taken root in this place. Besides," she went on, constrained to greater frankness by the consciousness of that quality in Mrs. Bobby herself "what would be the use if we did go? We know so few people. It would be horrid to be in New York and not know any one or go anywhere." ”

“ When the news reached London that the king had been seized on the way to the capital, and was in Gloucester's custody, it produced a universal commotion. Queen Elizabeth was thrown at once into a state of great anxiety and alarm. The tidings reached her at midnight. She was in the palace at Westminster at the time. She rose immediately in the greatest terror, and began to make preparations for fleeing to sanctuary with the Duke of York, her second son. All her friends in the neighborhood were aroused and summoned to her aid. The palace soon became a scene of universal confusion. ”

“ She was destined to bear the auspicious name of Elizabeth, in memory of her grandmother, that heiress of the house of York whose marriage with the earl of Richmond, then Henry VII., had united the roses, and given lasting peace to a country so long rent by civil discord. The unfortunate Mary, now in her sixteenth year, was stripped of the title of princess of Wales, which she had borne from her childhood, that it might adorn a younger sister; one too whose birth her interest, her religion, and her filial affection for an injured mother, alike taught her to regard as base and infamous. ”

“ But, Elizabeth, you must be made of ice—you can't love me, or you wouldn't hold me to it."
Elizabeth was chiefly conscious of an overpowering sense of relief.
"I do love you," she said, soothingly, "but indeed it is better—much better to let things be as we arranged them. I can't go to New York in this dress"—she gave a little tremulous laugh, as she 86 glanced at her fluffy muslin skirts. "Only a man could suggest such a thing. And then my aunts!—they would be distracted. ”

“ The Duke of York, aged two, wears a red dress spotted with yellow, with sleeves precisely like those of Robert Gibbes; white lace-edged apron, stomacher, and cap; his hair is in curls. The Princess Elizabeth was aged about two; she is in blue. Her cap is of wrought and tucked lawn, and she wears either a pearl ear-ring or a pearl pendant at the corner of the cap just at the ear, and a string of pearls around her neck. She has a gentle, serious face, one with a premonitory tinge of sadness. ”

“ The archbishop of York advised Elizabeth to “cut off the Scottish queen’s head forthwith;” Cecil was decidedly in favor of this plan, for he believed that it was the only way to secure peace to the kingdom, that so long as Mary lived there would be plots, and that, however closely she was watched, she would find means to communicate162 with plotters. The rebellion in the north was the only revolt of any importance while Elizabeth was on the throne. ”

“ Queen Elizabeth, who still remained, with the Princess Elizabeth, her oldest daughter, and some of her other children, in the sanctuary at Westminster, was the centre of this movement. She communicated privately with the nobles who were disposed to espouse her cause. The nobles had secret meetings among themselves to form their plans. At these meetings they drank to the health of the king in the Tower, and of his brother, the little Duke of York, and pledged themselves to do every thing in their power to restore the king to his throne. ”

“ The only legitimate conclusion therefore to be drawn from his unwillingness to bring forward these letters at York, and make good, by their means the sole charge against the Queen which could justify his usurpation of her authority, is, that he was afraid to expose such fabrications to the eye of day, until he should have received Elizabeth’s assurance that she would treat them with becoming consideration, and assign to them an air of importance, even though forgery, with brazen audacity, was stamped upon their face. ”

“ He tells me that the Duchess is a divil against him and do now come like Queen Elizabeth and sits with the Duke of York’s council and sees what they do, and she crosses out this man’s wages and prices as she sees fit for saving money, but yet he tells me she reserves £5000 a year for her own spending and my Lady Peterborough by and by tells me that the Duchess do lay up, mightily, jewels. ”

“ If the marriage of Edward the Fourth with the widow Grey was bigamy, and consequently null, what became of the title of Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry the Seventh? What became of it? Why a bastard branch of Lancaster, matched with a bastard of York, were obtruded on the nation as the right heirs of the crown! and, as far as two negatives can make an affirmative, they were so.
(12) What should we think of a modern historian, who should sink all mention of the convention parliament, and only tell us that one Dr. ”

“ They settled in Chicago, you know. He only came to New York awhile ago, and thought he'd look up his folks in this place. But there, Elizabeth, sit down, and perhaps Mr. Halleck will give us another tune."
Elizabeth silently took the chair the young man placed for her, while her aunt still talked on volubly. The girl was bewildered by what she heard. She could not imagine this handsome young singer, with his air of picturesque Bohemia, as an acquisition to the parties of Bassett Mills; nor did he seem at home in her aunt's parlor. ”

“ In 1461, Edward of York became King, and the reward of Alice's faithlessness was the marriage of the young Duke, her son, with the lady Elizabeth, the King's sister, while she herself retained her Castle. There the heartless duchess and her son received under their custody the ex-Queen Margaret of Anjou, who had been the friend and patroness of her youth, but who now remained for five years her prisoner, until in 1476 her ransom was paid, and she returned to France. ”

“ Passing through Northamptonshire, she stopped to visit her royal castle of Fotheringay, then, or soon after, committed by her to the keeping of sir William Fitzwilliam several times lord-deputy of Ireland. The castle was at this time entire and magnificent, and must have been viewed by Elizabeth with sentiments of family pride. It was erected by her remote progenitor Edmund of Langley, son of king Edward III. and founder of the house of York. ”

“ In the case before us, it could not be easy to ascend beyond the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the period, emphatically, when the really ancient gentry of the kingdom were either pushed from their pedestals, or obliged to admit new men to share with them the honour and influence which belong to the possession of broad lands and powerful family alliances. In the forty-fifth year of Elizabeth, February 10, 1603, within a few weeks of the close of her reign, a grant was made by the Crown to Lancelot Turner, of the Manor of Towthorpe, in the county of York. ”

“ In 1613 the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels coalesced under the dangerous wardenship of Henslowe. In 1615 the Duke of York’s, now Prince Charles’s, men joined the combination. And finally in 1616 the Prince’s men were left alone to make up the tale of four London companies, and the Lady Elizabeth’s and the Queen’s Revels disappeared into the provinces. The list of men summoned before the Privy Council in March 1615 to account for playing in Lent contains the names of the leaders of the four companies, the King’s, the Queen’s, the Palsgrave’s, and the Prince’s. ”

“ The Princess is very much troubled about it; the queen is politic and says little of it. There is no question to be made but that they are married. They say my lord Chancellor shall be made a duke.” [135]
135. “James II. and his Wives,” Allan Fea; “Life of Henrietta Maria,” J. A. Taylor.
The Duke of York was godson of his aunt Elizabeth, it must be noted here. ”

“ It looked like a pink silk dancing petticoat under a gray chiffon skirt. Did you ever eat at a table under a great big tree looking out on the water? You know you eat different. You eat slow, and you think of the things you love, the things you have read about, and of what you would like to be. The toast seems crisper, and the coffee tastes better, and you forget the rotten crowd and old New York and the hot, dry streets and the Childs restaurants and the dance halls and the whole bum world. Then our evenings are so happy! We row around the lake and afterwards come home and water the flowers. ”

“ When all is quiet but the distant barking of the dogs, they sit in front of the evening fire and watch the stars come out in the sky that seems a great inverted cup of blue above them. The camel drivers, dragomen, and guards sprawl in easy attitudes and chant mournful, weird songs that have come to them from the Persian mystics of olden time. These people from New York or London do not realize that they are not seeing the real desert nor the people of the desert. ”

“ The Banner writers interested her only as amateurs in her own town, real flesh-and-blood women, whom she knew or at least had seen remotely on the streets. One of them had gone to New York to win wealth and fame, and those left behind pronounced her name with bated breath, and told one another anecdotes of her youth. It was understood in the Stewart home that some day, years hence, the name of Olive Stewart might adorn a Banner page, but it had not occurred to any one but Olive that she would make her début there at the ingenuous age of fifteen. ”

“ When Elizabeth was about four years old her mother died; five years later Dr. Cartwright married again, and thenceforth Elizabeth and her sisters lived almost entirely in the houses of their father's relatives. Elizabeth was sent with an elder sister to the Manor school at York, a typical boarding-school, where, according to another pupil, Mrs. Fletcher of Edinburgh, ‘nothing useful could be learnt’ (Autobiogr. p. 17) . Whatever the defects of her education, Elizabeth Cartwright was fond of reading and of history. ”

“ The Duke of York and his Duchess—not long married—and the Earl of Cambridge, journeyed to Cardiff for their sister’s wedding. The Duchess of York, though both an heiress and a beauty, left no mark on her time. She was by profession at least a Lollard; and since Lollardism was not now walking in silver slippers, this says something for her. But in all other respects she appears to have been one of those beautiful, mindless women whom clever men frequently marry. Perhaps no woman with a decided character of her own would have ventured on such a husband as Edward Duke of York. ”

“ Alban's, and there defeated him, after which the poor captive King was released and brought to his Queen in Lord Clifford's tent. But Edward, the quondam Earl of March, now Duke of York, had come up and joined Warwick, who, together, entered London and were welcomed by the citizens, who favoured the house of York. Margaret, fearing to meet their united forces, returned northward, her strongholds and most devoted friends being in the northern counties, especially on the Scottish borders, whither she was followed by Duke Edward. ”

“ But Edward, York's eldest son, was a better captain than he, and far fiercer and more cruel. He made the war much more savage than it had been before; and after beating the queen's friends at Mortimer's Cross, he hurried on to London, where the people—who had always been very fond of his father, and hated Queen Margaret—greeted him gladly. He was handsome and stately looking; and though he was really cruel when offended, had easy, good-natured manners, and everyone in London was delighted to receive him and own him as king. ”

“ Her claims on the Dunster estates had drawn York into litigation under Henry IV (Archæological Journal, xxxvii. 164) . She survived her third husband, by whom she had no issue; but her remarriage with Sir Walter (or Robert) Fitzwalter, which has passed from Dugdale into so many accounts, is a confusion with her first marriage. She died in 1431, and was buried in Westminster Abbey (Complete Peerage, iii. 370, v. 322; Wylie, ii. 48) . York was succeeded in the title and his great estates by his nephew, Richard, duke of York (1412–1460) [q. v.] ”

“ Eanswith at Folkestone, till Lent had begun, and the first fresh tidings that they met were that Edward had landed in Yorkshire, but his fleet had been dispersed by storms, and the people did not rise to join him, so that he was fain to proclaim that he only came to assert his right to his father’s inheritance of the Dukedom of York.
At the Minoresses’ Convent they found that a messenger had arrived, bidding Anne go to meet her father at his castle in Bedfordshire. He was coming over with the Queen whenever she could obtain a convoy from King Louis of France. ”

“ During the anti-Spanish alliance between England and France, Edward VI. was sponsor to a child of Henri II., who received the Tudor name of Elisabeth, but could not become the wife of Philip II., without turning into Isabel; indeed, the Italian Elisabetta Farnese—a determined personage—was the only lady who seems to have avoided this transformation.
Poetry did not improve our Queen Elizabeth by making her into Eliza, a form which, however, became so prevalent in England during the early part of the present century, that Eliza and Elizabeth are sometimes to be found in the same family. ”