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By Root 1330 0

retired to her chamber to await the birth of her first child. Edward was hoping that it would be a son, to ensure the continuance of his dynasty and the succession, and his wife’s physician, Dr Domenico Serigo, had assured him that it would be a boy. Men, even doctors, were by custom forbidden to enter the Queen’s apartments during her confinement, but Dr Serigo was determined to be the first to tell the King that he had a son and so hopefully gain a reward. He haunted the corridors leading to the Queen’s rooms and eventually, on 11 February 1466, managed to gain entry to the antechamber to the room where Elizabeth was in labour. When he heard the cry of a newborn baby he called out to ask ‘what the Queen had’, at which one of her ladies called back, ‘Whatsoever the Queen’s Grace hath here within, sure it is that a fool standeth there without!’ The baby was a girl, and the doctor made a hasty departure without seeing the King.

Edward rewarded his wife with a jewelled ornament costing £125 to mark the birth of ‘our most dear daughter’, who was christened Elizabeth by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Warwick was chosen as godfather, and the baby’s grandmothers, the Duchesses of York and Bedford, were her godmothers.

Queen Elizabeth was afterwards churched at a dignified service in Westminster Abbey, to which she was escorted by two dukes and attended by her mother and sixty ladies of high rank. Afterwards she hosted a sumptuous banquet in the palace. Leo, Lord of Rozmital, the Queen of Bohemia’s brother, was a guest, and dined at the King’s table with Warwick, who represented his sovereign, custom decreeing that it was not proper for the King to attend his wife’s churching. There were so many guests that the feast was laid out in four great chambers. Warwick escorted Rozmital through each of these, pausing to see his reaction to such magnificence. His guest’s attendants, including the diarist Gabriel Tetzel, were allowed to stand in the corner of the Queen’s room and watch her eat.

This was the most luxurious of the chambers, hung with colourful tapestries. Elizabeth sat alone at the high table in a golden chair throughout the banquet, which lasted three hours, during which time neither she nor her guests spoke a single word and her ladies-in-waiting, all of noble birth, were obliged to remain on their knees before her. Even her mother had to kneel when she wished to address the Queen. After the banquet there was dancing, as Elizabeth looked on. The courtly reverence paid to her, observed Tetzel, ‘was such as I have never seen anywhere’. The day ended with a performance of the King’s choristers, who sang beautifully: the Yorkist court was renowned for its music.

To foreign visitors, Warwick appeared as powerful as ever. They were amazed at his wealth and influence, and even more at his lavish and now legendary hospitality. Acting as host to the Lord of Rozmital and his suite, he served them a banquet with sixty courses.

On 15 April, the Earl, on Edward’s orders, was in Calais to meet Charolais and discuss the proposed Burgundian alliance. Warwick did not trouble to hide his hostility to the plan and made it clear that he was determined to conclude an alliance with France come what may. The meeting was hardly a success.

Soon afterwards Warwick and Louis met at Calais and signed a two-year truce, under which Louis again promised not to support Margaret of Anjou, and Edward undertook not to help Burgundy or Brittany against the French. Louis also agreed to find a French husband for Margaret of York and provide her with a dowry. Edward had allowed the truce as a sop to Warwick, but had no intention of keeping to its terms and, indeed, broke them shortly afterwards by sending a safe-conduct to Francis II of Brittany’s envoys, enabling them to come to England. Edward was determined to assert his own authority in this matter: the English might resent Burgundy, but they loathed the French, having never forgiven or forgotten the humiliations they had suffered at their hands at the end of the Hundred Years War.

In October 1466,