(copyrighted in 2001)
Question: Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history. Example:
King of Spades - King David
King of Clubs - Alexander the Great
King of Hearts - Charlemagne and
King of Diamonds - Julius Caesar.
What Queen in history was the role model for all four queens in a deck of cards? And what was her important role in the history of needlework?
Answer: Elizabeth of York (1466-1503) Queen of England, wife of Henry VII (1457-1509).
In Elizabeth’s Privy Purse expense account book the first written evidence of the word sampler appears in 1502. "to Thomas Fissch, for an elne of lynnyn cloth for a samplar for the Quene, 8d." (Costing 8 pennies . . . an English elne or ell measuring about 44 inches.)
But who was Elizabeth of York?
She was the daughter of England’s King Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Her marriage to Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) on 18 January 1486 at age 21, united the Royal Houses of York and Lancaster. She bore Henry 8 children but only four lived beyond infancy. She died on her 38th birthday giving birth to a daughter in 1503.
Described as being beautiful, gentle kind, generous to her relations, her servants and benefactors. She was fond of dancing, of music, dicing, hunting and kept gray hounds. She was obviously educated beyond the time for a woman as she signed her own account books. However, it is written she never covered her expenses.
Elizabeth was mother to:
1) Authur, Prince of Wales who married Catherine of Aragon,
2) Henry VIII, also married Catherine of Aragon as his first wife,
3) Princess Margaret and (1589-1541) and
4) Princess Mary (1496-1533).
Through her son Henry VIII, she was:
Grandmother to Queen Mary I (1516-1558),
King Edward VI (1537-1553) and
Elizabeth I (1533-1603).
Great-grandmother to:
Lady Jane Grey (1537-1554) through her daughter Mary Tudor (1496-1533).
Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) through her oldest daughter Margaret
Tudor (1589-1541).