Blood Sisters - Sarah Gristwood

The Wars of the Roses or the Cousins' War as it's becoming known is one of those fascinating yet potentially confusing periods of history. The struggles between the Houses of Lancaster & York for the English crown began with the usurpation of Richard II in 1399, erupted into civil war in the 1450s & didn't really end until the Tudor dynasty exiled or executed the last remaining Yorkist pretenders in the 16th century. It's handy to have a detailed family tree by your side when reading about this period, especially as the genealogical intricacies of the descendents of Edward III are crucial. The fact that there are several Elizabeths, Margarets, Edwards & Richards among the cast only add to the potential confusion.

Sarah Gristwood's new book examines the tumultuous 15th century from a different angle, through the lives of seven women who were intimately involved in the struggle.  Focusing on the women of the period is a fascinating way to look at the events from a different but no less political angle.  The sources for women's lives in this period are scanty but these women - the wives, mothers & daughters of kings, had more chance of entering the historical record than any other women of the time.

Margaret of Anjou (called Marguerite here to differentiate her from two other Margarets) arrived in England from France as a 15 year old girl to marry King Henry VI, an unworldly young man whose disastrous reign was the catalyst for the civil war. Marguerite found herself in the position of leader of her husband's cause when Henry fell into a catatonic state & left her in the position of safeguarding the throne for him & their son, Edward. Margaret Beaufort was a cousin of Henry's descended from the illegitimate union of John of Gaunt & Katherine Swynford. The Beauforts had been legitimized by Henry IV with the proviso that they had no claim to the throne. Margaret was married at 12 to Edmund Tudor from another illegitimate branch of the royal family. At 13, she was a widow with a son, Henry Tudor, who would one day claim the throne.

Cecily Neville was married to Richard, Duke of York, an ambitious man who would begin by offering himself as Protector of the kingdom during Henry's mental illness & end by claiming the crown himself before being killed in battle. Cecily was the mother of two kings, Edward IV & Richard III. Her daughter, Margaret, would marry the Duke of Burgundy & play a vital role in helping her brothers during their reversals of fortune as well as supporting the claims of several pretenders to the throne after the Battle of Bosworth & the victory of Henry Tudor in 1485.

Elizabeth Woodville was a widow with two young sons when she caught the eye of the handsome new king, Edward IV. She refused to become his mistress and, not used to refusal, Edward married her & made her queen. Her spectacular rise to power wasn't approved by everyone. The nobility were appalled at Edward's lack of propriety in an age when the king's marriage was a matter of diplomacy not romance. Elizabeth's large family were also a disadvantage. they all wanted rich marriages & estates & many noses were put out of joint by this sudden influx of  new blood. However, Elizabeth gave Edward a large family, including two sons & her eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, who would eventually marry Henry VII.

The most shadowy of the women in the book is Anne Neville. Daughter of the Kingmaker Earl of Warwick, Anne had less power & was more of a pawn than any of the others. Married first to Marguerite's son, Edward, Prince of Wales when her Yorkist father fell out with Edward IV, she was  widowed soon after when Edward was killed at the Battle of Tewkesbury. Her second marriage, to Richard, Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III), may have been a love match or may have been a marriage of convenience because Richard wanted to acquire her considerable inheritance. We know virtually nothing of Anne's feelings or thoughts. The chroniclers tell of her grief when her only son died but there's nothing to tell us how she felt about becoming queen or if she believed the rumours that Richard wanted her dead so that he could marry his niece, Elizabeth of York. We know nothing about her relationship with that niece, or her relationship with her mother-in-law Cecily Neville or sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Woodville or Margaret of Burgundy.

Gristwood uses the image of Fortune's Wheel several times & it's an apt description of the lives of all these women. They all knew great good fortune as well as horrible reverses. The personal connections between the women are so interesting. Anne Neville was daughter-in-law to both Marguerite of Anjou & Cecily Neville. Marguerite & Margaret Beaufort knew each other & exchanged presents. Cecily Neville left Margaret Beaufort a legacy in her will. Elizabeth Woodville & Margaret Beaufort conspired against Richard III after he took possession of the throne & planned the marriage of their children to unite the warring factions of Lancaster & York.

The relationship between Margaret Beaufort & her daughter-in-law Elizabeth of York has always been a cause of speculation. Margaret Beaufort was a forceful woman who had dedicated her whole life to putting her son, Henry, on the throne. After Bosworth, she was known as the King's Mother & signed documents with Margaret R which could have meant Margaret Richmond (one of her titles) or could have been her way of reminding everyone that Henry's claim came through her. There are indications that Henry & Elizabeth's marriage was companionable & happy but Elizabeth played no part in politics & has been overshadowed completely by her mother-in-law.

I've read many books about this period & I have many more books on the tbr shelves. I've been fascinated with the story of Richard III since I was a teenager & I've read biographies of all the main characters. I enjoyed Blood Sisters because Sarah Gristwood told me the familiar story in a fresh, new way. Gristwood tells the story well with admirable clarity considering the difficulties of differentiating between several people of the same name. Her interpretation of the familiar sources was always interesting & well-argued & she discovered connections between the women that I hadn't been aware of. If you're interested in the period or in women's history, I think you'd enjoy Blood Sisters as much as I did.

Margaret Beaufort : Mother of the Tudor dynasty - Elizabeth Norton

I’m a confirmed Yorkist so, while I know lots of scurrilous facts about Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, courtesy of the many books I’ve read about Richard III, I’ve never read a biography of her. So, I was pleased to come across this new biography by Elizabeth Norton. Margaret was an ambitious woman who put her considerable energies into helping her son to the throne of England. Margaret’s family, the Beauforts, were descended from the adulterous relationship between John of Gaunt, uncle of Richard II & Katherine Swynford. Although they eventually married, this in itself wasn’t enough to legitimise their children. Richard II did legitimate the children as a favour to his powerful uncle, never imagining that they would be close enough to the throne to cause a problem. However, when Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, usurped the throne in 1399, he stipulated in an Act of Parliament that his half-siblings had no rights to the throne.

The Beauforts were loyal to the Lancastrian royal family & were well-established in the nobility by the time of Margaret’s birth in 1443. Her father was the first Duke of Somerset & Margaret was a great heiress. She married four times, the first when she was only six years old. This marriage was dissolved when the young husband, John de la Pole’s, family was disgraced. Margaret was married again at the age of 12 to Edmund Tudor, a half-brother of Henry VI. The Tudors were the children of Catherine de Valois, widow of Henry V & Owen Tudor. Tudor was much lower in rank than the Queen & the marriage was a scandal. Catherine’s son, Henry VI, was fond of his half-siblings, & took them into his household, granting them titles & planning good marriages for them.

Edmund was made Earl of Richmond & Margaret was considered an excellent match for him. An indication of Margaret’s religious nature comes from a story told later by John Fisher, Margaret’s chaplain. She told him that she was inspired by a vision of St Nicholas in a dream to accept Edmund’s suit, although in reality she would have had little choice in the matter. Although it was customary for very young girls to be married, the marriages were not usually consummated until the girl was older, especially as Margaret was considered quite small for her age. Edmund Tudor was anxious for an heir & he did not wait. Margaret almost immediately became pregnant & six months into her pregnancy, her husband died of the plague. At the age of 13, she was a mother & a widow. Her son, Henry, became the focus of her life. Although she married twice more, she had no more children, & it was said at the time that this was due to the physical trauma she suffered giving birth at such a young age. This is a possible portrait of Margaret as a young woman (from flickr.com).

Margaret’s next husband, Henry Stafford, son of the Duke of Buckingham, was chosen by Margaret & her brother-in-law, Jasper Tudor. Margaret & the Tudors were firmly in the Lancastrian camp & with the rise of Richard, Duke of York, the Wars of the Roses were about to begin. I’m not going to go into the machinations of the Wars. Everyone is called Richard, Edward, Elizabeth, Henry or Margaret & it’s very confusing! I’ll concentrate on what Margaret was doing rather than who won which battle. Margaret’s marriage to Stafford seems to have been happy. Her son, Henry, was in the care of his uncle Jasper Tudor, & Margaret kept in contact with them both. As Henry VI slid into periods of madness & the Duke of York pressed his claim to the throne, Margaret & Stafford tried to stay clear of trouble.

Eventually, after the Battle of Tewkesbury in 1471 when Henry VI’s only son, Edward, Prince of Wales, was killed, the Lancastrian cause seemed lost. Henry VI had been imprisoned in the Tower of London by the Yorkist King Edward IV & after his son’s death, he was quietly murdered. The only possible candidate left on the Lancastrian side was Margaret Beaufort & her son, Henry Tudor. Although their Beaufort claim was dubious, Henry VI had apparently considered making Edmund Tudor his heir before the birth of his own son & so there was a possibility that Henry Tudor could stake his claim. In the 1470s, this was unlikely. The Yorkists had won decisively & Henry & Jasper Tudor fled into exile in Brittany. Margaret accepted the status quo & she was more concerned with the death of her husband, possibly from wounds he suffered during the Battle of Barnet.

Margaret realised she needed a protector in the volatile political situation & less than a year after Stafford’s death, she married for a fourth time. Her husband was Thomas, Lord Stanley, a man with strong Yorkist connections. He was a bit of a slippery customer though & had managed to avoid actually committing himself in battle to either side throughout the Wars. Margaret & Lord Stanley were accepted, if not trusted, by Edward IV. Everything changed when Edward died suddenly in April 1483. His young son, Edward V was swiftly deposed by his uncle who became Richard III.

Suddenly, the opportunity the Tudors had been waiting for had arrived. Richard’s usurpation had not been a popular move & the rumours that he had murdered his nephews in the Tower led to a rebellion in late 1483 headed by the Duke of Buckingham, a connection by marriage of Margaret. This is when Margaret’s reputation as a political schemer & intriguer stems from.  She had been in communication with her son although she hadn’t seen him for over ten years. Although Buckingham’s rebellion failed, Margaret conspired with Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s Queen who had been stripped of her property & titles by Richard III. The two women decided that Henry should marry Elizabeth’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York. Although Richard had declared the Woodville marriage illegal which made the children illegitimate, most people still considered the children of Edward IV the rightful heirs. If Henry & Elizabeth married they would unite the claims of York & Lancaster. Margaret was central in the plot that saw Henry invade England in August 1485 & defeat Richard at Bosworth.

Margaret was content for Henry to claim the throne through her as no woman could have successfully claimed the throne at this period. She styled herself The King’s Mother & was treated as Queen Dowager in all but name. She began signing her letters Margaret R which could have stood for Margaret Richmond or could have been meant to be mistaken for Margaret Regina. Although mother & son had seen little of each other, Henry knew how much he owed Margaret & they seem to have been genuinely fond of each other. Henry married Elizabeth of York to consolidate his claim but Elizabeth seems to have been dominated by Margaret who was certainly a forceful personality. The photo above (from talesofcuriosity.com) is of Henry & Elizabeth's gorgeous tomb in Westminster Abbey, sculpted by Pietro Torregiano.

Margaret spent the years of Henry’s reign using her influence to further her pet projects. She was very interested in education & supported two colleges at Cambridge University – Christ’s College, which she founded, & Queen’s College, which had been supported by previous Queens of England. She was encouraged in all this by her chaplain, John Fisher, who later became Bishop of Rochester & was executed by Henry VIII. Fisher seems to have been genuinely fond of Margaret. He certainly admired her for her piety & her support of learning & preached her funeral sermon. Norton quotes extensively from this sermon & it certainly humanises Margaret. Very few of her letters survive &, as with most medieval women, it's difficult to really hear their own voices.

Margaret’s religious leanings became more pronounced as she grew older. The most familiar portrait of her shows her in a religious habit (this image is from plantagenetdynasty.blogspot.com). Margaret was in her sixties in 1509 when her son, Henry VII, died. She was devastated & survived him by only a few weeks. She lived long enough to see her grandson, Henry VIII, crowned & had some influence in setting up his first Council. Margaret had achieved her greatest ambition.

Elizabeth Norton’s book is well-researched & beautifully produced by Amberley Publishing. Amberley specialise in history & local studies & they publish many books on the Tudors. Elizabeth Norton has written books on four of Henry VIII’s Queens & is currently writing about one of Henry’s mistresses, Bessie Blount. I enjoyed reading about Margaret Beaufort. She was a strong woman who negotiated the political whirlpool of the 15th century with great skill & intelligence. Unusually she realised her ambitions & died peacefully, knowing that she had achieved her goals.