Blood Sisters Quotes

“Margaret’s support for Queens’ College in Cambridge (which Marguerite, Anne, and Elizabeth Woodville had supported before her) could be taken as part of her ongoing bid for the regal role. Her long-standing interest in Cambridge’s Jesus College, too, was a concern shared by the whole royal family. But what came next was all her own. She took the underfunded “God’s House” in Cambridge and turned it into Christ’s College: not her only enduring legacy in that city, but the one that can be most clearly identified with her. The college statutes of 1506 show that she reserved for her own use a set of four rooms there, located between the chapel and the hall and with windows giving a direct view down into either, a position from which she could partake of the college devotions in privacy, perhaps fancy herself part of this masculine seat of learning, and from which she could also keep an eye on the college business as it progressed day to day. Her heraldic devices are still prominently modeled on the oriel window outside her former lodgings. One is a portcullis, the other a “yale”—a mythical creature with the ability to twist its horns in different directions, to keep one of them safe in a fight, and a symbol of proud defense appropriate for the wary Tudors.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“It was that year Margaret Beaufort sent a letter to the Earl of Ormond thanking him for a gift of gloves sent from Flanders—“right good,” she said, but too big for her hand. “I think the ladies in that parts be great ladies all, and according to their great estates they have great personages”—a crack from the petite Margaret Beaufort about the solidly built Margaret of Burgundy.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“In her will, Cecily asks, as was usual, that any debts should be paid, rather touchingly “thanking our Lord at the time of making of this my testament [that] to the knowledge of my conscience I am not much in debt.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“One of Henry’s first actions was to see that his mother was declared a feme sole: a woman able to act independently of a husband, as queens were allowed to do, and able to own property. An Act of Parliament ordained that she “may from henceforth [for the] term of her life sue all manner of actions . . . plea and be impleaded for . . . in as good, large and beneficial manner, as any other sole person not wife nor covert of any husband.” She could take and receive “states, leases, releases, confirmations, presentations, bargains, sales, gifts, deeds, wills and writings.” It made Margaret an independent financial entity and potentially a real power in the land. This was unprecedented for an aristocratic woman (queens were often allowed this privilege, and it had occasionally been used in lower ranks, to allow a woman to operate a business).”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Henry sent her from Bosworth the Book of Hours that had been with Richard in his tent—an appropriate tribute, for someone of Margaret’s piety. But the book, already an old one when Richard began using it, had been transformed into something more personal by the addition, on blank pages, of prayers for Richard’s use and mentioning his name—one prayer, particularly. A prayer seeking comfort in sadness by emphasizing the goodness of God, but more specifically seeking protection against enemies. Deleting Richard’s name from what was now her book, she added the jingle on the endpapers: “For the honour of God and St Edmunde / Pray for Margaret Richmonde.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Richard III had been not only the last English king but the first since the Norman Conquest to die in the red heat of battle. The fighting had lasted just two hours, but Vergil says that a thousand men had been killed, nine-tenths of them, it is estimated, on Richard’s side. John Rous tells that Richard’s last words were “treason—treason.” Well they might be: it was a Stanley who placed the crown on Henry’s head after the battle, once it had been stripped from Richard.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Richard, knowing the battle was lost, resolved (as even the Tudor historian Vergil admitted) to die “fighting manfully in the thickest press of his enemies.” His own men brought him fresh horses, but he refused to flee, swearing again that that day he would make an end either of war or of life.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“In what seems almost a quixotic gesture now, Richard was surrendering the advantage of high ground and moving beyond the protection of his forces. But his decision almost won the day. Richard’s own horse thundered down the gentle slope with perhaps as many as a thousand knights riding behind. It would be the last time a king of England led a charge of armored cavalry.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“In Henry Tudor’s camp, meanwhile, a few grassy fields away, the mood was hardly more cheerful. Even on the morning of the battle, Henry’s nerves were kept on edge by the fickle Stanleys. When he sent word to Lord Stanley to get his troops ready, Stanley sent word back that Henry should look to his own men; his stepfather would do what he had to do, when he was ready. Henry could not but notice that the Stanley force was now drawn up exactly halfway between the two opposing armies.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“But when a Spaniard called Salazar, a mercenary commander, warned the king that those he trusted would betray him that day, he knew the man could be speaking the truth. He answered (or so it was later reported to the Spanish sovereigns), “God forbid that I yield one step. This day I will die as a king or win.” He chose to wear the royal diadem above his helmet, an encouraging sight for his soldiers, but one that would mark him out as a target for the enemy. As Polydore Vergil tells it, Richard pulled himself together and “drew his whole host out of their tents, and arrayeth his vanward, stretching it forth of a wonderful length, so full replenished both with footmen and horsemen that to the beholders far off it gave a terror for the multitude, and in the front were placed his archers.” After that long vanguard came the king himself, with a “choice” force of cavalry.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“The ill portents were mounting. Richard, Vergil continued, could not manage to “buckle himself to the conflict with such liveliness of courage and countenance as before.” It did not help that, so Crowland reported, he roused so early, his chaplains could not be found to celebrate a propitiatory mass, nor did the servants have his breakfast ready.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Polydore Vergil—and, before him, the Crowland chronicler—reported that the Yorkist king slept badly on the eve of battle. Crowland says that in the morning, Richard complained of “a multitude of demons” surrounding him and that although his face was always drawn, it “was then even more pale and deathly.” Vergil says he “thought in his sleep that he saw horrible images as it were of evil spirits haunting evidently about him . . . and that they would not let him rest.” Later, of course, his unease would be put down to guilt over his reputed crimes, but at the time Richard seems to have made no secret of his feelings. He himself described the dream to his men in the morning, to explain away his evident “heaviness.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Henry and his force landed on August 7 at Milford Haven in Wales—far away from Richard in the Midlands, but the country of his birth and ancestry, where he might hope to attract most support. Falling to his knees, Henry kissed the soil of a country he had not seen for fourteen years. He is said to have recited the psalm “Judge me, O Lord, and defend my cause.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Marguerite’s political life had long been over, but she had been one of the most forceful women in a century not short of them. Shakespeare has her at the beginning of Richard III returned from exile like a vengeful ghost to curse Elizabeth Woodville: Long mayst thou live to wail thy children’s death And see another, as I see thee now, Decked in thy rights, as thou art stalled in mine. Long die thy happy days before thy death, And after many lengthened hours of grief, Die neither mother, wife, nor England’s queen.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“I swear, ’tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perked up in a glist’ring grief, And wear a golden sorrow. THE LIFE OF HENRY THE EIGHTH, 2.3”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“She is accustomed to arise at seven o’clock and has ready her chaplain to say with her matins of the day, and matins of Our Lady; and when she is full ready she has a low mass in her chamber.” After all those early devotions, she would eat—she “takes something to recreate nature,” as the account puts it—before returning to chapel for three more services before the dinner that was the main meal of the day. After dinner, at last, there came a time for other business and for recreation. “After dinner she gives audience to all such as has any matter to show to her by the space of one hour; and then she sleeps one quarter of an hour, and after she has slept she continues in prayer to the first peal of evensong; then she drinks wine or ale at her pleasure.” She heard several more Evensongs before supper, and it was only after the repast that Cecily “disposes herself to be familiar with her gentlewomen, to the following of honest mirth; and one hour before her going to bed, she takes a cup of wine, and after that goes to her private closet, and takes her leave of God for all night.” By eight o’clock she was in bed. The account gives a rare and fascinating picture of how a medieval lady might actually divide up her day—but it also, of course, shows a level of religious observance that would have been excessive for an ordinary laywoman even in that day.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“The instructions his father sent for the rearing of the little prince sound a lovely domestic note. He was to rise “at a convenient hour according to his age,” hear Matins in his chamber and mass in the chapel, and then after breakfast “to be occupied in such virtuous learning as his age shall suffer to receive.” Every care was to be taken as to his companions and his conversation at dinner, “so that the communication at all times in his presence be of virtue, honour, cunning, wisdom, and deed of worship, and of nothing that shall stir him to vice.” No “swearer, brawler, backbiter, common hazarder or adulterer” was even to be admitted to the household. After two more hours of lessons, he might “be shewed such convenient disports and exercises as belong to his estate to have experience in,” then after Evensong those about him were “to enforce themselves to make him merry towards his bed.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“*Henry IV’s dowager queen, Joan of Navarre, in 1419 had been briefly imprisoned on the accusation of it. Eleanor Cobham, Humfrey of Gloucester’s wife (and thus once Jacquetta’s sister-in-law, in the days when she had been Duchess of Bedford), was charged in 1441 by her husband’s enemies and sentenced to imprisonment for life, as well as humiliating public penance.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“A well-to-do girl’s training usually centered on the religious and on the practical: reading, in case she had to take over business responsibilities; some knowledge of arithmetic; and an understanding of household and estate management that might even extend to a little property law. The technical skill of writing was rarer; even Margaret’s own later signature was rough and unformed. And though a girl might be expected to read the psalms in Latin from an early age, to write Latin, by contrast, was so unusual that even the learned Margaret Beaufort, says her confessor, John Fisher, had later to regret she had not been taught.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“Ferdinand of Aragon was shocked to hear that his wife, Isabella, had not only had herself proclaimed hereditary monarch of Castile, but also paraded through Segovia with a drawn sword carried before her. “I have never,” he protested, “heard of a queen who usurped this masculine attribute.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“It had been the middle of August when the king, after complaining one evening of feeling unusually sleepy, had awoken the next morning with a lolling head, unable to move or to communicate with anybody. Over the days and then weeks ahead, as his physicians and indeed priests tried the full panoply of fifteenth-century remedies—bleedings, purgings, and cautery on the one hand, exorcism on the other—he seemed not entirely to lose consciousness, but to be utterly incapable. Modern medicine has tentatively diagnosed his condition as catatonic schizophrenia, or alternatively a depressive stupor—triggered, perhaps, by the news from France or just possibly by the thought of Marguerite’s pregnancy, which may have come as an unpleasant shock to the notoriously ascetic king.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“But Marguerite had been reared in an idea of queenship that went beyond simple luxury and Christian charity. Not only were there the examples set by her mother and grandmother, but her father, René, was also one of the century’s leading exponents of the chivalric tradition. He was more besotted even than the majority of his contemporaries with that great fantasy of the age, the Arthurian stories, and his example surely influenced his daughter. (Indeed, when Thomas Malory wrote his English version of the tales, the Morte d’Arthur, completed in 1470, his portrayal of Queen Guenivere may have been influenced by Marguerite to some degree.)”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses

“The Yorkists had arguably a better claim than the Lancastrians (depending on how you felt about a woman’s ability to transmit rights to the throne), since while the Lancastrian progenitor, John of Gaunt, had only been Edward’s third son, the Yorkists were descended in the female line from his second son, Lionel, as well as in the male line from his fourth son, Edmund. From the beginning, then, the dispute between the Lancastrians and Yorkists hinged as much upon the women in both families—mothers, daughters, sisters, and wives—as it did upon the men who vied for the throne.”
― Sarah Gristwood, Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses