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Elizabeth Woodville

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Elizabeth Woodville or Wydville (c. 1437 – 7/8 June 1492) was the Queen consort of King Edward IV of England from 1464 until his death in 1483.

Early life and first marriage

Elizabeth was born circa 1437 at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, the daughter of Sir Richard Woodville (later made first Earl Rivers) and Jacquetta of Luxembourg. She was a maid of honour to Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI. In about 1452, she married Sir John Grey, 7th Baron Ferrers of Groby, who was killed at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461, fighting for the Lancastrian cause. (This was ironic, as Edward IV was the Yorkist claimant to the throne.) Elizabeth had two sons from the marriage, Thomas (later Marquess of Dorset) and Richard.

Elizabeth was called "the most beautiful woman in the Island of Britain" with "heavy-lidded eyes like those of a dragon" which bespeaks a different standard beauty than we have today. She was said to be able to cause men to go into heats by fluttering her eyelashes and many thought she had bewitched the king into marrying her.

Queen Consort

Edward IV had many mistresses, the most notorious being Jane Shore, but Elizabeth insisted on marriage, which took place secretly (with only the bride's mother and two ladies in attendance) on May 1, 1464, at her family home in Northamptonshire. At the time, Edward's adviser, Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick (aka Warwick the Kingmaker), was negotiating a marriage alliance with France. When the marriage to Elizabeth Woodville became common knowledge, it was the cause of considerable rancour on Warwick's part, and when Elizabeth's relatives, especially her brother, Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, began to be favoured over him, he changed sides. Elizabeth was crowned Queen on Ascension Day, 26 May 1465. There was an infamous incident at her coronation which was not attended by Edward IV (kings traditionally did not attend their consorts' coronations) in which her mother's Luxembourg kinsmen landed in a ship at Ship's Green and arrived at Westminster Abbey carrying shields painted with the Melusine, a "water-witch" (actually a medieval version of the old pagan godess) described variously as a mermaid or possibly as a female figure depicted as a snake from the waist down, but with the face clearly that of the young queen. This immediately caused whispers of witchcraft to circulate throughout the Abbey, as it was indeed the intention of the Luxembourgers to suggest an accusation of witchcraft thereby. Elizabeth's brother Anthony came to her rescue, driving the Luxembourg kinsmen forth from the Abbey all the way to Ship's Green where he would not allow them to embark and depart until he had answered this charge of witchcraft in single combat with every one of them and "bescratched" every melusine shield. This incident was remembered later by Richard III who ordered Parliament in 1483 to attaint the widowed queen for witchcraft.

Nor was Warwick the only one who resented the way the queen's relatives scooped up favours and lucrative opportunities; in 1480, for example, when Elizabeth's obscure brother-in-law Sir Anthony Grey died, he was interred in St Albans Cathedral with a brass marker to rival the one for that abbey's greatest archbishop.

That was nothing compared to the marriages the queen arranged for her family, the most outrageous being when her 20-year-old brother John Woodville married Lady Katherine Neville, daughter of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland by Joan Beaufort, widow of John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk and dowager Duchess of Norfolk. The wealthy Katherine had been widowed three times and was probably in her sixties.

The queen also married her sister, Catherine Woodville, to her 11-year-old ward Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. Another sister, Mary Woodville, married William Herbert, 2nd Earl of Pembroke.

As queen, Elizabeth Woodville was responsible for a change in fashion. The medieval hennen, a sort of headdress resembling two horns, was changed to a single horn or cone under her influence. Documents have also come to light bearing evidence that she was the editor of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur and there are notes extant from her directing the author to rewrite the manuscript deleting the double negatives. Hence she may be creditted with the grammatical shift away from multiple negation in English.

Queen Mother

Elizabeth and Edward's marriage had produced ten children, including two sons who were still living at the time of the king's sudden death in 1483. The elder, Edward, had been born in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey in 1470, during the period when Edward IV was out of power during the Wars of the Roses. Elizabeth now, briefly, became Queen Mother, but on June 25, 1483, her marriage was declared null and void by Parliament in the act Titulus Regius on the grounds that Edward had previously promised to marry Lady Eleanor Butler, which was considered a legally binding contract that rendered any other marriage contract invalid as bigamous. (It was said that Eleanor Butler had done the same thing Elizabeth Woodville did later: A widow who caught Edward's eye, she refused to give in to him until he promised to marry her.) This information came to the fore when a priest (believed to be Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells), testified that he had carried out the ceremony.

On the basis of his evidence, all Elizabeth's children by Edward, including King Edward V, were declared illegitimate, and her brother-in-law, Richard III, was given the crown. Edward and his brother Richard, Duke of York, were kept in the Tower of London, where they had already been lodged to await the coronation. The exact fate of the so-called Princes in the Tower is unknown but both were dead in this or the next reign.

Elizabeth now lost the title of Queen Mother and was referred to as Dame Elizabeth Grey. She and her other children were in sanctuary again, fearing for their safety. This may have been to protect themselves against jealous courtiers who wanted their own back on the entire Woodville clan.

Elizabeth and Richard III

On 1 March 1484 Elizabeth and her daughters came out of sanctuary and returned to court. Rumours even spread that the now-widowed King Richard was going to marry his niece Elizabeth of York. Richard issued a denial, but according to the Crowland Chronicle he was pressured to do so by the Woodvilles' enemies who feared, among other things, that they would have to return the lands they had confiscated from the Woodvilles.

Elizabeth's behaviour has been a source of frustration to historians. They reason that she would never have recognised Richard as King unless she knew for sure that both her sons were dead and that she would have to resort to other means to keep her family in power. There was also the fact that Richard had had her brother Earl Rivers executed.

The War of the Roses is notorious for the number of times that leading figures changed sides whenever it suited them (examples include the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence), and it is possible that Elizabeth was no exception. But would she have been heartless or thoughtless enough to side with a man who had quite likely killed her own sons and could thus arrange the deaths of herself and her daughters?

There are several possible explanations for this:

  1. The Princes had died of natural causes for which Richard could not be held responsible (but then why did he not make this public, especially since rumours about their fate were already circulating?)
  2. The Princes had been killed by a third party, and Richard had convinced Elizabeth that he was not involved. (In his biography of Richard III, Paul Murray Kendall suggests that the Duke of Buckingham may have been responsible. Margaret Beaufort or her third husband, Lord Stanley, are other possiblities.)
  3. It is also known that by this time Elizabeth had been plotting with agents of Henry Tudor, another claimant to the throne, and it is possible that she was getting closer to Richard in case Henry's attempt failed.
  4. Elizabeth may have planned to coerce Richard into marrying her daughter, thereby regaining her power, wealth, and prestige.
  5. Elizabeth viewed people in light of what they could do for her. She may simply have been more concerned with herself than with the fate of her sons.

In the end, Richard was defeated and killed at the Battle of Bosworth. Henry Tudor became King Henry VII and married Elizabeth of York. Elizabeth Woodville's marriage to Edward IV was declared to have been valid, and thus their children were once again legitimised (because Henry wanted his wife to be the Yorkist heir to the throne, to cement his hold on it). Elizabeth was accorded the title of Queen Dowager.

Later life

In February of 1487 Henry VII accused Elizabeth of being involved in the Lambert Simnel rebellion. Apparently at the behest of his mother, Margaret Beaufort, Henry banished his mother-in-law to Bermondsey Abbey and confiscated all her properties.

At the abbey, Elizabeth was treated with all the respect due to a Queen Mother and lived a regal life, but received no pension and was banned from returning to court. She was not permitted to attend her daughter's coronation or the births of any of her subsequent grandchildren. The Queen rarely visited her, although Elizabeth's younger daughter, Cecilia Welles, who had secretly married Viscount Welles, came to see her as often as she could

Henry VII remained suspicious of her mother-in-law, but briefly contemplated marrying her off to King James III of Scotland, when Queen Marguerite, James' wife, died in 1488. Elizabeth (who was 51, about fifteen years older than King James) apparently welcomed the alliance and made preparations to depart to Scotland. Unfortunately, James was killed in battle later that year, leaving the Queen Mother desperate and depressed.

Convinced that she would die in exile, Elizabeth became progressively ill and even welcomed death. On the morning of June 7, 1492, she took ill and sent for all of her daughters, with the exception of the Queen who was awaiting the birth of her fourth child. Cecilia (Viscountess Welles), Anne (the future Countess of Surrey), Catherine (the future Countess of Devon) and Bridget (the future Abbess of Dartford Priory) were at their mother's side when she died in the early afternoon of June 8, 1492 at Bermondsey. Her son-in-law, Henry VII, arranged as simple a funeral as possible for her, and did not even order mourning clothes for the requiem singers. This act angered many ardent Yorkists, who considered themselves slighted by the ordinary and very simple burial of Edward IV's Queen on June 12, 1492. Elizabeth was laid to rest in the same chantry as her husband King Edward IV in St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.

Despite her unhappy later years, Elizabeth Woodville did have the satisfaction of knowing that her daughter was securely on the throne and would become the progenitress of a dynasty that would rule England for the next hundred years. She lived to see the birth of two grandsons, Princes Arthur and Henry, the latter of whom would later become Henry VIII. Through her grand-daughter, Margaret of Scotland, Elizabeth became an ancestress of the Stuart, Hanover, and the Windsor dynasties, whose descendants still rule England, Scotland and Wales today.

Children of Elizabeth Woodville

By Sir John Grey

By King Edward IV

Preceded by Queen Consort of England
1 May, 1464 - 9 April, 1483 		Succeeded by
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