Elizabeth Stafford: An Unwanted Wife
On November 30, 1558 Elizabeth Stafford Howard died. She was one of the highest-ranking noblewomen in Tudor England, but when it came to her personal life, she was completely powerless.
Elizabeth was born in 1497, the eldest daughter of Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. As a young teenager, she was betrothed to the ward of her father, Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, and it seems to have been a rare love match.
The couple was waiting until they were old enough to be married, and had planned a wedding for Christmas of 1512. In the meantime, Elizabeth went to court to serve as a maid of honor for Katharine of Aragon, and perhaps that’s where Thomas Howard, the future Duke of Norfolk, spotted her.
At the time, Thomas was about thirty-five years old, and Elizabeth was about fifteen. Shortly after the death of his first wife Anne of York in November 1511, Thomas approached Elizabeth’s father and asked for her hand in marriage.
Elizabeth’s father demurred and offered one of his other daughters instead, but Thomas wanted Elizabeth, and wouldn’t be dissuaded.
Practicality won out over young love. In those days, it was almost unheard of to refuse a match with someone of superior rank. Elizabeth’s betrothal to Ralph Neville was severed and she was married to Thomas. Her younger sister Katherine married Ralph instead, and they had around eighteen children.
Elizabeth later said that Thomas had married her “for love” and so perhaps he was good to her in those early years. For the next fifteen years or so, the couple had a stable and fruitful marriage. Elizabeth and Thomas had five children, and said she’d always been a dutiful wife to him. By Tudor standards, it was a good marriage, if not the match Elizabeth had once dreamed of.
It seemed that everything began to change for Elizabeth when Henry VIII fell in love with Anne Boleyn, her husband’s niece. About the same time Henry became serious about making Anne his wife, Elizabeth’s own husband took a mistress. This wasn’t unusual – most noble husbands had mistresses, but it usually was done quietly.
Thomas, however, took a mistress from among his wife’s own household staff, and instead of setting her up in a discrete love nest, he kept her in his family home.
The mistress was Bess Holland, the daughter of Thomas’s steward. She may have been the children’s governess, but the offended Elizabeth always referred to Bess as a low-born “churl” and a diaper scrubber.
Thomas insisted the servants treat Bess with the same honor and respect as the Duchess. Elizabeth found this intolerable, especially once Thomas got Bess appointed as one Anne Boleyn’s ladies.
Thomas decided he wanted an annulment of their marriage so he could marry Bess, but like Katharine of Aragon, Elizabeth refused to agree to it on general principle. She saw a parallel between what was happening with Anne Boleyn and what was happening with her own marriage. In both cases, a lower-born woman was trying to supplant the rightful wife and social superior. It wasn’t only a violation of the sanctity of marriage — it was a violation of the order of the world ordained by God.
In Elizabeth’s opinion, Anne Boleyn was ultimately at fault for putting ideas into Thomas’s head about men being able to annul their lawful marriages, and she wasn’t shy about voicing her opinion of all of this nonsense.
Elizabeth was expelled from court in 1531 because of her open hostility to Anne Boleyn and avowed loyalty to Queen Katharine. She would not return for twenty years.
She had been feeding information to Katharine’s allies about what she overheard from the king and her husband, but now she couldn’t do that. From her country estate, she still worked to support the queen in any way she could. It was said she smuggled letters from Italy to Katharine, hidden inside oranges.
Elizabeth was furious when Anne Boleyn arranged for Elizabeth’s daughter, Mary Howard, to wed King Henry’s illegitimate son. If Elizabeth hadn’t been so dead-set against Anne, she might have approved of the match, because Henry Fitzroy was one of the richest nobles in England, and was a duke twice over. The two young people had a lot in common, including a love of writing poetry, and Mary’s brother was Fitzroy’s best friend. It was a good match — and even better, King Henry wasn’t asking for a huge dowry.
No matter how much Elizabeth opposed it, she found herself helpless to stop the marriage since her husband approved.
When Anne Boleyn was crowned queen, Elizabeth was supposed to carry the train of her robe. This wasn’t a personal invitation — each noblewoman had a task in a coronation according to her rank.
Elizabeth flatly refused to participate, which was a rather bold decision on her part, defying both her husband and her king’s wishes. The garments that had been made for her had to be altered so her daughter Mary could take her place.
According to Elizabeth, Thomas began a campaign of cruelty against his wife, trying to force her to agree to an annulment. She wrote to Thomas Cromwell, pleading for help, insisting she had been a good wife and did not deserve this treatment. “He can lay nothing to my charge but for I would not be contented to suffer the bawd.”
She claimed that while she was in bed recovering from childbirth, her husband had dragged her around the house by her hair and sliced her with a dagger. He allowed Bess Holland and her servants to tie Elizabeth up so tightly that blood seeped from under her nails, and they beat her until she spat blood. When she still refused to agree to the annulment, he took away all of Elizabeth’s sumptuous clothing and jewels and kept her a virtual prisoner one of his country estates.
When the accusations of abuse became public, Thomas denied physically mistreating his wife. He said Elizabeth’s scar was from a surgical procedure, and there was no man alive who would treat a woman in childbed like that. (He did not, however, deny the allegations about his mistress beating Elizabeth.) He stated he wouldn’t have anything to do with Elizabeth unless she wrote to him and the king admitting she had lied.
Her family was horrified, but not because of what Thomas had supposedly done to his wife. They were shocked and furious that Elizabeth would make a public scandal of a private family matter. Her brother condemned her for her “wild language” and “willfulness” and would not have her in his home, lest her words reflect badly on him.
Cromwell was besieged by letters from both sides. He tried to smooth over the situation, but he wasn’t inclined to intervene beyond urging the couple to work it out. By the laws and customs of the era, Thomas had done nothing wrong even if all the allegations were true. It was fully his prerogative to keep his wife locked up and to take away her finery and jewels. Legally speaking, everything she owned, save the jointure in their marriage contract, belonged to him.
Cromwell tried to get one of her adult children to take in Elizabeth to diffuse the situation, but they refused. In Mary’s case, it was because she’d been widowed and her father-in-law, King Henry, was refusing to give her the inheritance she was entitled to, making Mary financially dependent on her father. She was unlikely to defy him and go to her mother’s side in the conflict.
Elizabeth wrote: “I may say I was born in an unhappy hour to be matched with such an ungracious husband, and so ungracious a son and daughter.”
Thomas promised to return Elizabeth’s property if she agreed to an annulment. Elizabeth, in return, attempted several times to get her husband to reconcile, her condition being that he rid their main estate house of the presence of his mistress and the “harlots” who served her.
Elizabeth was struggling on the £200 allowance Thomas gave her. “I am a gentlewoman born and hath been brought up daintily, and [cannot] live so barely as I do.” Elizabeth demanded Thomas pay her jointure, a pension she was supposed to receive from his estate in the event of his death, since their marriage was effectively over.
Thomas pointed out the fact he was still alive, and she was entitled to nothing, but he’d give Elizabeth whatever she wanted if she’d just agree to the annulment. Until then, she could sit and stew in her country house prison while he and Bess Holland lived in the main family estate. And so it went.
Elizabeth and her husband remained at a hostile stalemate until he was arrested for treason in 1547. Elizabeth and Bess Holland testified against Thomas at his trial, but because Elizabeth had been estranged from Thomas for so long, she had very little of value to contribute.
After his conviction, Elizabeth’s clothing and jewels were returned to her, but most of her finery had to be sold to pay of the large debts she’d run up in the meantime.
Bess Holland also had her jewels returned and was granted a manor house because of her cooperation with Thomas’s prosecution.
Mary Howard seems to have liked Bess – she paid her a pension of £20 per year once her own finances had been ironed out.
Bess was now about 40 years old, and a woman with a tarnished reputation. She seems to have had no male protection, and so she chose to do as many women in her situation did: find a husband. Her money would make up for her bad reputation to some. She married and settled her new husband in her manor house.
But this story was not to have a happy ending. Bess became pregnant soon after she wed, and this was an era in which 40 was considered to be a very dangerous age to be attempting a first pregnancy.
Something went wrong during the birth, and a caesarean was performed. In that era, there was no way to survive a caesarean and it would not have been attempted unless Bess had breathed her last (performing one on a still-living woman was considered murder.) It was a desperate attempt to save the child.
The child survived, because Bess’s widower tried to claim a right to stay in the manor house because of the baby.
The king died before Thomas’s death sentence could be carried out, and he was released from the Tower when Queen Mary came to the throne. He found Elizabeth already at court, because Mary gathered her “old friends” and allies of her mother around her. Elizabeth proudly carried the train of Mary’s gown at her coronation.
Despite the fact Bess Holland was gone, Thomas and Elizabeth never reconciled. One year later, Thomas died, leaving Elizabeth – still his legal wife – no bequests in his will. She would get only the jointure in her marriage contract.
He was buried beneath a monument that has Elizabeth’s effigy carved on it beside his, but she did not intend to rest there.
Elizabeth lived long enough to help christen her great-grandson. She passed away the next year and was buried in the Howard family chapel of St. Mary’s, Lambeth.
However, when her grandson refurbished the family tombs at Framlingham, he may have had her body moved to lie beside Thomas. When the tomb was opened in the Victorian era, they found three adult occupants. One was Thomas’s first wife Anne of York, and it’s believed the other two were Thomas and Elizabeth.
As Elizabeth had written to Cromwell, “Here is a poor reward I have in my latter days for my well doing!”