Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/208

 was done under the Bishop of Imola's dispensation (, xii. 294, 297, 313).

It may be judged from the list of these papal instruments — which speaks of Henry's title having been acknowledged in parliament nemine contradicente — how anxious Henry was to have the point clearly recognised in the first place, and that it should by no means appear that he owed his seat to his wife. This consideration perhaps influenced him to some extent when he determined to leave her behind him in a progress which he made northwards as far as York in the spring of 1486, and it is supposed to have been at least one cause of his delaying her coronation as queen till November of the following year. It is clear, however, that there were other causes besides this, some of indisputable weight; and there are reasons for doubting somewhat the character commonly ascribed to Henry of a cold and unloving husband.

Elizabeth was brought to bed of her first child, Arthur [q..v.], in September 1486 at Winchester. She founded a chapel in Winchester Cathedral in honour of her safe delivery, but her recovery was retarded for some time by an ague. In a few weeks she was well enough to remove to Greenwich, where she and the king kept a considerable court at the feast of Allhallows (1 Nov.) In March 1487 the king again left her and made a progress without her through Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, and thence to Coventry, where he arrived on St. George's eve (22 April), and kept the feast next day. Here the Archbishop of Canterbury and a number of the bishops were assembled, and in pontifralibus declared the pope's bull in confirmation of his right to the crown, cursing, moreover, with book, bell, and candle, all those who opposed it. Presently news came that the Earl of Lincoln had landed in Ireland, and that a rebel host might be expected immediately in England. Henry sent for his Queen to come to him at Kenilworth, where tidings reached him of the landing of the enemy in Lancashire. The rebels were defeated at the battle of Stoke on 16 June, and the kingdom being now in a more settled state Henry in September despatched letters from Warwick summoning the nobility to attend the coronation of the queen on 25 Nov. following. He and Elizabeth left Warwick for London on 27 Oct., and celebrated the feast of All Saints at St. Albans. Next day (2 Nov.) he reached Barnet, and on the following morning he was met at Haringay Park by the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen of London on horseback, with some picked men of every company, who conducted them with due honour into the city to St. Pauls, where a 'Te Deum' was sung for his victory. The queen, who must have been sent on before, viewed the procession from a house in St. Mary's Spital without Bishopsgate, where she and the king*s mother and some other great persons took up a position unobserved; and after the procession had passed, they went to Greenwich to rest that night.

In preparation for her coronation the queen left Greenwich by water on Friday, 23 Nov., accompanied by the king's mother, and attended by the city authorities in barges richly decorated, of which one in particular, named the 'Bachelor's Barge,' attracted attention by a red dragon spouting fire into the Thames. She landed at the Tower, and was there received by the king, who then created eleven knights of the Bath in honour of the approaching ceremony. Next day after dinner she departed in great state from her chamber, 'her fair yellow hair hanging down plain behind her back,' and her sister Cecily bearing her train; and entering her litter was conveyed in it through the city to Westminster, meeting, of course, with numerous pageants on the way. For a detailed account of these things, and of the coronation itself and the banquet following, the reader is referred to Leland's 'Collectanea,' iv. 217-33.

On 26 Dec. following she received from the king a grant of the lordships and manors of Waltham Magna, Badewe, Mashbury, Dunmow, Lighe, and Farnham in the county of Essex belonging to the duchy of Lancaster, with the offices of feodary and bailiff in the same. This grant, which was to take effect from 20 Feb. preceding, is not a little noteworthy, because the very same manors and offices had been already granted, on 4 March 1486, to her mother, the widowed queen of Edward IV, but had been taken from her in February 1487 on the outbreak of Lambert Simnel's rebellion ( Materials for a History of Henry VII, i. 121, ii. 221). Warrants had also been issued in the spring to the officers of the exchequer to pay over to the use of the queen consort all the issues of the lands lately belonging to the queen dowager (ib. ii. 142, 148). The fact that the latter had fallen out of favour does not seem to have dimmed the court festivities that year at Greenwich, and both the king and queen went crowned at the Twelfth-day solemnities (, Collectanea, iv. 234-6). On the Sunday after St. George's day, 1488, she rode in procession at Windsor with her mother-in-law, the Countess of Richmond, in a rich car covered with cloth of gold drawn by six horses, her sister Anne following, dressed in robes of the order, and twenty-one ladies in crimson velvet mounted on white palfreys. In