Elizabeth of York

1466 – 1503 · Generation XXI · Queen consort · House of Plantagenet

Elizabeth of York (1466–1503) was the daughter, sister, niece, wife and mother of English kings, and her marriage to Henry VII joined the rival houses of York and Lancaster. She was born at the Palace of Westminster on 11 February 1466, the eldest child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. As a princess she was a diplomatic asset. At three she was engaged for a short time to George Neville, and in 1475 she was promised to the French dauphin, an engagement Louis XI abandoned in 1482.

Her father’s sudden death on 9 April 1483 overturned her world. Her uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took charge of her brother Edward V, and her mother fled with the other children into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. That June her parents’ marriage was declared invalid and their children illegitimate. Richard was crowned on 6 July, and her two brothers disappeared from view in the Tower of London. In December 1483, in the cathedral at Rennes, the exiled Henry Tudor swore to marry her. The following March, after ten months in sanctuary, she and her sisters came out on Richard’s public oath that they would not be harmed. Rumour soon had it that the king meant to marry his niece himself, a story he was obliged to deny, and she was sent north to Sheriff Hutton.

Henry Tudor defeated Richard at Bosworth on 22 August 1485 and took the crown by right of conquest. He meant to be seen as king in his own right and not through his wife, but he had the act that had bastardised her repealed, and on 18 January 1486 Archbishop Bourchier married them. Their first son, Arthur, was born that September. Elizabeth was crowned in Westminster Abbey on 25 November 1487.

As queen she had little part in politics, where her formidable mother-in-law Margaret Beaufort carried more weight. The records show a pious and generous woman who gave so freely that she ran into debt, who liked books, music, dancing and gambling, kept greyhounds, and in 1502 had a hand in the design for the new palace at Greenwich. What began as a match of state seems to have become a marriage of real affection. Four of her children survived infancy: Arthur, Margaret, Henry and Mary. When Arthur died in April 1502, a few months after marrying Catherine of Aragon, a contemporary account has the queen comforting her husband, telling him that they could still have more children, and then breaking down herself once she was alone.

She was soon pregnant again. On 2 February 1503, in the Tower of London, she gave birth to a daughter, Katherine, who did not live. Elizabeth died there on 11 February, her thirty-seventh birthday, probably of an infection following the birth. Her funeral was magnificent. Her effigy, dressed in royal robes, lay on the hearse as it passed through the City, with eight ladies on white horses riding behind. A miniature in the Vaux Passional, a manuscript now in the National Library of Wales, may record the family’s grief: the king in mourning robes, two girls in black headdresses, and a boy weeping beside an empty bed.

Henry considered several foreign brides afterwards but died a widower in 1509. He and Elizabeth lie together in a vault beneath the Lady Chapel he built at Westminster Abbey, under gilt-bronze effigies by the Italian sculptor Pietro Torrigiano. Her surviving son reigned as Henry VIII, and through her daughter Margaret’s marriage to James IV of Scotland she became an ancestor of the Stuart kings.

Place in the family

Elizabeth of York was the mother of King Henry VIII.
Elizabeth of York was the elder of 2 children of King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville recorded in this archive.
The archive records 117 of her descendants, across 19 generations.

Images

Henry VII and Elizabeth of York kneeling with their children beneath St George and the dragon, painted about 1505–1509. (Unknown artist, public domain)
Presentation miniature from the Vaux Passional, about 1503, thought to show Henry VII and his children in mourning for the queen. (Unknown illuminator (National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 482D), public domain)

One of 26 people of House of Plantagenet (1126–1485) in this archive. The longest-reigning English house, counting its Angevin beginning and the rival Lancaster and York branches that fought the Wars of the Roses.

Line of descent: King William I The Conqueror → King Henry I → Matilda the Empress → King Henry II → King John → King Henry III → King Edward I Longshanks → King Edward II → King Edward III → Edmund of Langley → Richard of Conisburgh → Richard of York → King Edward IV → Elizabeth of York.

Parents

King Edward IV (1442 – 1483)
Elizabeth Woodville (1437 – 1492)

Siblings

King Edward V (1470 – 1483)

Partners

Married King Henry VII (1457 – 1509) in 1486 — 3 children together

Children

Arthur Tudor (1486 – 1502)
Margaret Tudor (1489 – 1541)
King Henry VIII (1491 – 1547)

Life

1466 — Born
1486 — Married Henry VII Tudor
1503 — Died

Sources

Elizabeth of York · Wikipedia
Henry VII and Elizabeth of York · Westminster Abbey
The Vaux Passional · National Library of Wales
Henry VII (r. 1485–1509) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)