It was already being whispered that if anything were to happen to Anne, then a marriage between Richard and Elizabeth would square the circle of inheritance nicely. To be sure, she was his niece, but was there anything a papal dispensation could not legitimize? Anne and Richardâs marriage had also needed a papal dispensation, which, modern research suggests, might not have arrived when they went through their wedding ceremony. That might provide grounds for an annulment, and Richard may have already been considering this as an option.
Rumors were rife that âthe king was bent, either on the anticipated death of the queen taking place, or else, by means of a divorce, for which he supposed he had quite sufficient grounds, on contracting a marriage with the said Elizabeth.â Vergil described it as a plan âthe most wicked to be spoken of, and the foulest to be committed that ever was heard of.â At that Epiphany party, no one surely spoke openly of the possibility of such a relation between Richard and his niece. But the rumors were there already, and the reasons for the union would have been clear. Such a marriage would be a severe blow to Henry Tudor. And Richard might have had other incentives, as Anne must miserably have realized. Elizabeth was a buxom eighteen-year-old. Later in her life, the Portuguese ambassador noticed her âlarge breastsâ; a Venetian one called her âvery handsome.â
This quiet competition from her friend and niece seems to have pushed Anne Neville over the brink.
Soon after the Christmas festivities, Crowland wrote, âthe queen fell extremely sick, and her illness was supposed to have increased still more and more, because the king entirely shunned her bed, declaring that it was by the advice of his physicians that he did so. Why enlarge?â the chronicler asks, maddeningly. But perhaps he trusted readers to understand thatâwhile Anneâs illness may simply have been infectiousâRichard may have had other reasons for leaving her alone.
The feelings of Elizabeth herselfâapart, that is, from the normal eighteen-year-oldâs pleasure in a partyâare even harder to discern. But a few weeks aheadâperhaps in mid-Februaryâthere would come an extraordinary clue. It was recorded by Buck, who in 1619, in his History of King Richard the Third, set down a prĂŠcis of a letter in which, he said, Elizabeth of York expressed her own passionate longing to marry her uncle. Elizabeth, said Buck, was toward the end of February writing to John Howard, Duke of Norfolk, an influential magnate and once her fatherâs friend: First she thanked him for his many courtesies and friendly offices, and then she prayed him as before to be a mediator for her in the cause of the marriage to the king, who, as she writes, was her only joy and maker in this world, and that she was his in heart and in thoughts, in body, and in all. And then she intimated that the better half of February was past, and that she feared the queen would never die. And all these be her own words, written with her own hand, and this is the sum of her letter, whereof I have seen the autograph or original draft under her own hand. Well! If real, Elizabeth of Yorkâs letter would not only be surprising but also damning in several different ways, including the callousness of the fear that Anne would never die and the possible sexual implications of the assurance that âshe was his . . . in body, and in all.â
There have long been doubts, however, over Buckâs rendition of the letter. Some suggest that Buck could simply (especially when blinded by his prejudices) have misinterpreted a letter that he did indeed see or that it was not written by Elizabethâor not written at this juncture and in relation to this match. Indeed, as shall be seen, there was another, far less controversial, marriage proposed for Elizabeth very soon after this time, and the words could be made to fit. At the most extreme, it has even been suggested that Buck invented the letter in its entirety. But it does not seem wholly impossible that Elizabeth of York should have wanted to marry Richard. The question of consanguinity could be left to a higher, papal, authority; there was enough uncertainty in the air for her to have been able to convince herself that he was not responsible for her brothersâ deaths. Power is an aphrodisiac, and this was the destiny for which she had been rearedânot to mention a chance to come back from the wilderness.
Possible further evidence that Elizabeth of York had an affection for Richard can be found in the inscription she wrote on a copy of Boethiusâs Consolations of Philosophy, most likely at this time: âLoyalte mellyeâ (Loyalty binds me). It was Richardâs favorite motto. She also wrote, on a copy of the French prose Tristan, âsans re[ mo] vyrâ (without changing) above her signature, âelyzabeth.â* She wrote on the page with the mark that showed it was Richardâs propertyâbut is that enough to show the unchanging loyalty she was expressing was loyalty to Richard? Not really.
And of course Polydore Vergil, the Tudor historian, sees it differently. In his telling, Elizabeth of York is an unhappy pawnâa martyr, evenâin Richardâs twisted game. âRichard had kept [Elizabeth] unharmed with a view to marriage,â Vergil writes. âTo such a marriage the girl had a singular aversion. Weighed down for this reason by her great grief she would repeatedly exclaim, saying, âI will not thus be married, but, unhappy creature that I am, will rather suffer all the torments which St. Catherine is said to have endured for the love of Christ than be united with a man who is the enemy of my family.ââ But Vergil would say that. He was writing a quarter of a century later, when Richard had become the antagonist in the creation story of the Tudor dynasty. And âthe enemy of my familyâ might have applied to Henryâa representative of the Lancastrian family that had so long opposed the house of Yorkâas easily as to Richard; Richard also kept Elizabethâs sisters âunharmed,â even those who were nearing maturity.
What is more, if Richard wished to keep Elizabeth of York away from Henry Tudor, all he had to do was marry her to somebody elseânot necessarily to himself. Whatever the truth about Richardâs plans, there were certainly rumors of the possible marriage, if not necessarily of Elizabethâs complicity. Henry across the Channel heard them and feared loss of Yorkist support if the two York factions could thus be reunited. Vergil wrote that the stories âpinched Henry by the very stomach,â so much so that he began to seek an alternative matchâa daughter of William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the loyally Yorkist supporter of Edward IV who had cared for Henry when he was a child. But the message he sent suggesting the match, says Vergil, never reached its destination, and soon he must have heard that a marriage between Richard and his niece was no longer a possibilityâunless, that is, the rumors of the marriageârumors so discreditable to Richardâwere being spread by Henry Tudorâs own party, which is another possibility impossible to discount.
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