Prayers for Prince Arthur: Queen Elizabeth of York, March 1502

Over at the Mutual Enrichment blog of Father John Hunwicke, he posted a list of churches/shrines and benefices that Queen Elizabeth of York requested and made for the recovery of her son Prince Arthur of Wales in March, 1502. Arthur and his wife Catherine of Aragon had set up their household at Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches. They became ill of some unknown malady--perhaps the "sweating sickness" that Henry VIII would flee so often during his reign--and Arthur died on April 2, 1502,15-1/2 years old. Catherine of Aragon, the Princess of Wales, survived:

Here is an itinerary for a priest called Barton who was sent from the Court of Elizabeth of York in March 1502 to make offerings at shrines all over Middle England for the life of Prince Arthur her son, who, had he lived, would probably have been the first of a whole list of imperially-minded English Kings of that name. I give, in Old Money, the sums (some of them fractions of the Mark) he was to donate at each shrine (OL=Our Lady of):

OLWindsor, and S George at Windsor, and the Holy Cross there (2/6);
King Henry (2/6);
OLEton (1/8);
The Child of Grace at Reading (2/6);
OLCaversham (2/6);
OLCockthorpe (1/8);
Holy Blood of Hailes (1/8);
Prince Edward (5/-);
OLWorcester (5-);
Holy Rood at Northampton (5/-) and OLGrace there (2/6);
OLWalsingham (6/8);
OLSudbury (2/6);
OLWoolpit (1/8);
OLIpswich 3/4);

So Father Barton started in Windsor and ended in Ispwich, praying for Prince Arthur. Father Hunwicke notes two of the shrines Father Barton visited were (in bold italics above) for King Henry VI and his son Edward, Prince of Wales. So Father Hunwicke notes in another post:

On May 4, 1471, a battle decisive in English dynastic history: at Tewkesbury. It sticks in the memory because the conflict eventually burst into the Abbey Church, where the slaughter was only eventually ended when the Abbot took a Procession the the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar down to where the killing was happening.

Among those who died in those bloodied hours was the last heir of the the Lancastrian family, the seventeen year-old Prince Edward. He was buried, and still is, in that Abbey [now a Church of England place of prayer/worship]; the place of his burial is now marked by a Victorian brass tablet.

According to the Wikipedia article on Prince Edward, the plaque reads:

Hic jacet
Edwardus
princeps Wallie, crude
liter interfectus dum adhuc juvenis
anno dñi 1471 mense maie die quarto
eheu hominum furore Matris
tu sola lux es ⁊ gregis
ultima
spes

This can be translated into English as follows:[6]

"Here lies Edward, Prince of Wales, cruelly slain whilst but a youth. Anno Domini 1471, May fourth. Alas, the savagery of men. Thou art the sole light of thy Mother, and the last hope of thy race."

Of course, Prince Edward's mother was Queen Margaret of Anjou. Prince Edward is a character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part Three, the next history play we'll read aloud in our semi-quarterly Shakespeare reading group. The Folger Library describes him thus as depicted in the play:

Prince Edward, of the Lancastrian party, is the son of Henry VI and his Queen, Margaret. He is very much his mother’s son, haughty, stubborn, and quick to insult.

He pays little attention to his father, regarding him as a weakling, and rejecting his injunctions to restraint. Eager to fight for his rights, he is recklessly unwilling to bow to superior force, and even when captured by his enemies refuses to speak the slightest word that might imply a surrender, making his death at Yorkist hands even more certain than it ever was. He is slaughtered in front of his mother’s eyes. His ghost returns in Richard III.

James Northcote (1746-1831) painted the scene (Public Domain) from Shakespeare (Act Five, Scene 5) as Edward IV, George, the Duke of Clarence, and Richard, the Duke of Gloucester (the future Richard III), stab the young prince to death as his mother protests in horror. Other more contemporary sources indicate that Edward was slain in battle by Clarence. (Note that Northcote also depicted the murder of the Princes in the Tower from Richard III (Act Four, Scene 3.)

I know that Henry VII promoted the Cause of Henry VI, as noted here and here, but I did not know about any cult for Prince Edward of Wales. If you look at the comments for both of Father Hunwicke's posts, you'll notice some remarks by the Once I Was a Clever Boy blogger!

Of course, we know that Prince Arthur's death and Catherine of Aragon's subsequent marriage to his younger brother Henry, the future Henry VIII, are events tremendously important to the religious and dynastic history of England--to put it lightly!

 And, he posted another itinerary of prayers and alms for Prince Arthur!

I have read that Father Hunwicke is ill so please keep him in your prayers.

Image credit (Public Domain): Depicted person: Arthur Tudor (1486-1502), Prince of Wales was the first son of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York. This portrait is regarded as the only surviving contemporary portrait of the sitter.

May 19 in the Lives of Four Queens

On May 19, 1499, the 13-year old Princess Catherine of Aragon was married to the 12-year old Prince of Wales, Arthur Tudor by proxy.

On May 19, 1536, former Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded for adultery, treason, incest.

On May 19, 1568, Queen Elizabeth I of England ordered the house arrest of the former Queen of Scotland, her cousin Mary Stuart Valois Stuart Bothwell.

What a coincidence that three such momentous events occurred on the same date in the month of May!

Arthur and Catherine would not meet in England until November 4, 1501 and were married in person on November 14 in Old St. Paul's Cathedral. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales set off for Ludlow Castle to preside over the Council of Wales and the Marches, residing at the Castle Lodge. They both became ill and Arthur died on April 2, 1502, while Catherine recovered.

Then Henry VII decided to keep her (and her dowry) in England, so from 1502 to 1509 protracted marriage negotiations took place between Henry and Ferdinand of Aragon, her father (her mother Isabella of Castile died in 1504). Henry VII's wife and queen, the former Elizabeth, Princess of York died in 1503 and he thought of marrying Catherine himself. It was finally decided that she would marry Henry, the Duke of York, and Henry VII applied for a dispensation from the Pope, Julius II, with Catherine testifying that she and Arthur had never consummated their marriage, so there were no issues of affinity. Nevertheless, she was held almost as a prisoner in Durham House, London, the impoverished guest of the Bishop of Durham. When Henry VII died, Henry VIII married her on June 11, 1509 and she was crowned and anointed with him later that month on the 24th. She remained Queen until May 23, 1533 when Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, declared her marriage to Henry VIII null and void. She had been in exile from the Court since 1531 and would die in her final place of residence, Kimbolton Castle, on January 7, 1536 (after being moved six times in four years!) Henry VIII titled her the Dowager Princess of Wales; she accepted no title but Queen and true wife of the king. Although her last letter to Henry VIII is contested, authorities agree that this text expresses Catherine's attitude toward her husband and their daughter Mary and her rightful status as his wife and queen:

My most dear lord, king and husband,

The hour of my death now drawing on, the tender love I owe you forceth me, my case being such, to commend myself to you, and to put you in remembrance with a few words of the health and safeguard of your soul which you ought to prefer before all worldly matters, and before the care and pampering of your body, for the which you have cast me into many calamities and yourself into many troubles. For my part, I pardon you everything, and I wish to devoutly pray God that He will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend unto you our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her, as I have heretofore desired. I entreat you also, on behalf of my maids, to give them marriage portions, which is not much, they being but three. For all my other servants I solicit the wages due them, and a year more, lest they be unprovided for. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Katharine the Quene

Another former wife and queen of Henry VIII at the time of her death (as Thomas Cranmer and Henry VIII agreed), Anne Boleyn of course was the woman who had replaced Catherine of Aragon. She and Henry had been married on November 14, 1532 (secretly) and that marriage declared valid by Cranmer several days after he'd declared Henry's marriage to Catherine null and void, on May 28, 1533. She was crowned on June 1, 1533--and was pregnant at the time with the hoped-for male heir, it was believed--in a sumptuous ceremony and celebration. She delivered a girl, however, on September 7, 1533 (named Elizabeth) and after two miscarriages, had failed to provide Henry VIII with the son for whom he had turned the world upside down (separating the Catholic Christians of England from the universal Catholic Church and the papacy, executing good men and true, making his daughter Mary a bastard, and changing the worship and devotions of Catholics in England, among other actions).

Catherine of Aragon having died on January 7, 1536, Anne and Henry had felt more secure, although there's a lot of debate about their reactions, public and private, to the news. Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower of London on May 2, 1536; Cranmer declared her marriage to Henry VIII null and void on May 14; she was tried and found guilty of adultery, treason, and incest (with her brother George) on May 15 and beheaded with a sword within the Tower precincts on May 19. Her last words:

Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that, whereof I am accused and condemned to die, but I pray God save the king and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler nor a more merciful prince was there never: and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle of my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me. O Lord have mercy on me, to God I commend my soul.

With her head on the block, she repeated these words several times: "To Jesus Christ I commend my soul; Lord Jesu receive my soul." One stroke of the sword and she was beheaded and then buried in St. Peter ad Vincula (where two of the good men and true mentioned above, Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More had been buried a year before).

Mary, Queen of Scots, who had claimed her right to the throne of England as the queen consort of France before returning home to Scotland, had been forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son (James VI) on July 24, 1567 while being held in Loch Leven Castle. She escaped from that castle on May 2, 1568 and after defeat at the Battle of Langside on May 13, fled to England on May 16. Mary was soon under house arrest on May 19, held first at Carlisle Castle and then at Bolton Castle. Inquiry into her role in the death of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley in 1567, led to no conviction or finding of guilt, but she was imprisoned for the rest of her life, held in some comfort and at tremendous, unremunerated cost by her hosts, the Shrewsburys at their various estates, and then moved to Fotheringay Castle under close confinement on September 26, 1586 for trial (complicity with the Babington plot) and subsequent execution on February 7, 1587. Her last words, like Anne Boleyn's, were also repeated several times:  "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum" (Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit" Luke 23:46) and unlike Anne Boleyn, she was not decollated with one stroke of a fine French sword--the first blow hit the back of her head.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Catherine of Aragon (Juan de Flandres)

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Anne Boleyn in the Tower (Edouard Cibot)

Image Credit (Public Domain) for Mary, Queen of Scots in Captivity (Nicholas Hilliard)