The material foundations of queenship in late-medieval England, 1445-1503

This thesis examines the material foundations of queenship in late-medieval England, drawing on the cases of three queens consort from the second half of the fifteenth century — Margaret of Anjou, Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth of York. It is situated in a field of research that, in recent decades, has seen a proliferation of scholarly studies that have done much to uncover what we know about pre-modern queens in England. However, research into the financial and economic aspects of queenship has tended to lag behind. This study is timely because it draws on the rich scholarship currently available about fifteenth-century English queens and provides something new. It examines in detail and comparatively the economic resources available to and used by the queens; in so doing it seeks greater comprehension of how the queen consort was supported materially, and how these individual queens fit into the economic landscape of the period. Based primarily on empirical archival research, the thesis examines the compositional and utilitarian nature of the queens’ resources. It uses a variety of sources pertaining to these queens and the period they lived in, including a wide range of administrative and estate records, some of which have not previously been studied in detail. Of those sources that have been used previously by other scholars, this study interrogates them again from a different angle, posing new questions, and proposing conclusions specific to the focus of this research. Taking account of the gendered nature of these queens’ circumstances, and the contemporary notions of power within which they performed their duties, the study seeks to widen our understanding and appreciation of the material aspects of this office, thereby enabling us to acquire new insights into both the lives of these individual queens and the broader nature of medieval queenship in England.