The Upstart Woodvilles

Anthony Woodville, Earl of Rivers, and Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, were just two of the many family members Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s unpopular wife, brought with her two court. In addition to her parents, Elizabeth had five brothers, seven sisters, and two sons when she arrived at court. Despite many a jealous complaint, Edward helped her sisters to many profitable marriages and offered her brothers and sons significant offices and landholdings during his reign, many of these in direct affront to Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick or one of Edward’s own brothers.

Elizabeth Woodville’s brother, Anthony, the Second Earl of Rivers, was born in 1442 as the son of As a youth he was knighted and fought at Towton in 1461, and a year later joined the peerage upon the death of his wife’s father, Lord Scales. He would eventually become the head of the Woodville family. He fought in one of the most famous tournaments of his time against the Anthony, Comte de la Roche, the bastard of Burgundy on a mission as an ambassador to Burgundy. His political ambition, along with the help of his sister’s own advancement at court, led to his promotion to Lieutenant of Calais (making him a rival to Hastings’ position at Captain of Calais) and Captain of the King’s Armada among other offices. He became Earl of Rivers after his brother and father were beheaded by Ratcliffe at the Battle of Edgecot in 1469. Rivers was briefly engaged in 1478 to Margaret, the sister of King James III of Scotland, although it was mysteriously ended. Although he fled with Edward during Warwick’s temporary take-over, he returned in time to aid the Queen and his nephews and nieces during an attack on the Tower. After his valiant aid at Barnet, Tewkesbury, and the defense of London from the Lancastrians, he was honored with the guardianship of little prince Edward. It was Rivers and his nephew Grey who were accompanying Edward V from Ludlow with 2,000 men when Richard and Buckingham intercepted and had them arrested. Richard, who like many of his contemporaries at court hated the Woodvilles, and Anthony in particular, for their undue distinctions and family connections, finally had Rivers beheaded at Pontefract on June 25, 1483, based on arms that were found in his luggage to suggest a potential overthrow.

Coat of arms.

Although Rivers is often painted as an obnoxious, political hanger-on of the Queen’s by Clarence, Richard and his other buddies, like Lord Hastings, he was actually a very modest, honorable guy and also a cultured man with extensive literary interests. After the death of his wife, he went on a religious pilgrimage in 1475 to Italy, and was nominated “Defender and Director of the Siege Apostolic for the Pope in England.” He met William Caxton, who had set up a printing press in the Sanctuary at Westminster. Caxton’s first commission came from Earl Rivers in the form of an English translation of a Latin to French book, Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophers that appeared at court in 1477. While none of the original texts survive, we know that Rivers went on to work with Caxton on many more publications. The hated but harmless Rivers turned out to make a significant contribution to the history of English literature.

Rivers presenting Caxton's volume to the king.

Thomas Woodville, the First Marquis of Dorset was Elizabeth Woodville’s eldest son from her first marriage to Sir John Grey, who passed onto Thomas his title as Lord Ferrers of Groby in 1461. He was immediately promoted upon his sister’s marriage to the Earl of Huntington by Edward, who in return earned Thomas’ support at Tewkesbury and in carrying out the murder of Prince Edward, the son of Henry VI. In 1475, he married Lady Harrington and Bonville, assuming her titles as well, and within a few weeks of being made a knight of the Bath, he became Marquis of Dorset as well. It did not stop there. He was later honored as a knight of the Garter and made a member of the Privy Council. Dorset even received some “tidbits” of Clarence’s estates when he was executed by his brother (Kendall 149). No wonder the Yorkists felt annoyed and humiliated by his quick rise to power.

When Edward IV died, it was Dorset who was the Constable of the Tower when the princes were there killed. He was in the process of gaining war vessels for his family’s protection when Richard III took the throne. He promptly fled to Sanctuary and then to Yorkshire to fight, and Richard put out a reward for his arrest. He fought in Buckingham’s failed rebellion in 1484, and eventually made his way to Richmond’s side in France. From Paris, he wrote his mother the Queen Dowager a misleading note that he would soon return, only to flee farther onto the continent. He had lost Richmond’s trust, and he did not accompany the triumphant new king back to England, but joined him after Bosworth. His attainder was reversed, and though he was implicated in Simnel’s rebellion in 1486 and imprisoned briefly, he spent the rest of his life in good standing, embarking on various military missions. He died in 1501, and his son Thomas succeeded him.

References:

Jokinen, Anniina. “Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers.” Luminarium: Encyclopedia Project. 2009. Web. Accessed 2-25-10. .

Jokinen, Anniina. “Thomas Grey, 1^st Marquis of Dorset.” Luminarium: Encyclopedia Project. 2009. Web. Accessed 2-25-10. <http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/thomasgrey1.htm>.

Kendall, Paul Murray. Richard the Third. NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 1956. Print.

Wagner, John A. Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2001. Print.

Elizabeth Woodville: Beauty Queen

The lovely Elizabeth Woodville was the daughter of Richard Woodville, Earl of Rivers, epitome of chivalrous knight, and Jacquetta de Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford. Elizabeth’s secret marriage to Edward IV was not the only scandal she was involved in; her birth was shrouded in secrecy due to Jacquetta’s marriage to her first husband’s favorite, and when discovered Richard was thrown in prison only to be saved by Henry based on Jacquetta’s position as a sort of honorary Queen Mother at court. From a young age Elizabeth was a prominent lady of Queen Margaret’s maids of honor, and she attracted many suitors. She married John Gray, a very wealthy heir and military commander under Queen Margaret, and she became one of the lady’s of the Queen’s bedchamber and a mother of two sons, Thomas and Richard. But when John died in 1460, things looked bleak: her two sons would be deprived of their inheritance and Elizabeth was grief-stricken for two long years.

Marriage to Edward IV.

And then she met Edward. The story goes that Elizabeth heard he was in the neighborhood near her castle at Grafton, so she waited for him beneath a tree now known in Northamptonshire as “the queen’s oak,” with her two sons. When he arrived she begged him to restore their lands and he was love-struck. Of course, Edward, the playboy that he was, did not actually want to marry Elizabeth and she did not want to settle for anything less. Playing hard to get, however, only increased Edward’s fervor and he eventually offered her his hand and they were married May 1, 1464, to the great annoyance of his mother, the Duchess of York. She gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth, five months later at Westminster palace, helping to ease the tension between the child’s grandmothers (Edward’s mother was probably doubly annoyed when the daughter was christened to flatter his wife and not his mother). She was immediately unpopular at court, being the first royal marriage to an Englishwoman in more than two centuries and bringing with her a whole flock of relatives eager for promotions. It was her secret marriage to Edward and coronation a year later that finally pushed Warwick overboard. Edward not only ruined his plans for a marriage alliance with Bona, the princess of France, but he was also personally insulted when Edward did not go after his own eldest daughter, Isabel. Isabel was instead given to George, Duke of Clarence, and Warwick made war.

During the coming insurrection, Edward was captured by Warwick, who tried to convince Edward that his wife’s power over him was actually the result of her mother’s use of witchcraft, which would not be the first time the men of this history have used that line. Edward somehow found his way out of this scrape and returned to a welcoming London, stowing his wife and babes away in the Tower for their own safety while he fled the danger of Warwick’s return from abroad. Of course, this is where the old king, Henry VI, was also being held. Who could blame Elizabeth from making her way up the Thames to Sanctuary at Westminster instead? It was here that she had her first son, Edward V. After briefly and joyfully meeting with her husband, she returned to the Tower while Edward fought the battles at Barnet and Tewkesbury, calling on her brother Anthony to save her during an attack.

Elizabeth's three daughters, including Elizabeth of York.

The Queen not only had her hand in the promotion of her family and friends, whom received many rewards and attentions from Edward, but also did a little match making. In 1477, she walked her almost five-year-old son Richard, Duke of York, down the aisle to meet his three-year-old bride, Anne Mowbray.

The skull of Anne Mowbray.

But the Queen also knew how to exact revenge. She certainly did not try to dissuade Edward from punishing Clarence, under whose name her brother and father had been murdered in 1469, for treason. Shortly after his death, she was celebrating an extravagant festival of the Garter along with Elizabeth’s recent engagement with the dauphin of France, although it was broken by Louis XI shortly after, infuriating the Queen and her husband. Elizabeth also had to put up with the fact that Edward enjoyed his mistresses, especially the clever, lively Jane Shore. Just before Edward’s death, he attempted to resolve the conflict between Lords Stanley and Hastings and the Woodvilles, to little avail. Elizabeth was given very little attention in Edward’s will, which probably has to do with why Shakespeare’s widowed Queen is so worried about her position. And to make matters worse, the one ally she thought she might be able to count on, Edward’s steadfastly loyal but frequently absent brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, proved just the opposite.

Although Richard had sent Elizabeth some very gentle, thoughtful letters of condolences, he then preceded to kidnap her heir and arrest her brother Anthony, Earl of Rivers, and son, Lord Richard Gray. In a somewhat bizarre moment of carelessness, Elizabeth agreed to let Richard, Duke of York, join his brother Edward, probably contented some with the fact that coronation ceremony preparations for Edward V continued as usual. The princes were never seen again. Shortly thereafter, Earl Rivers and Richard Gray were also beheaded by Ratcliffe.

One can image the queasy stomach Elizabeth might have had watching the coronation ceremony of Richard III with her daughters. According to Sir Thomas More, Elizabeth fell apart when she heard the news of her sons’ deaths while in the care of lieutenant Sir Robert Brackenbury. When the new Queen Anne fell ill after her son Edward’s sudden death, her physician, Dr. Lewis, who was then the physician of another important mother, Margaret Beaufort, recommended the alliance of her eldest daughter, Elizabeth, with his other patient’s son, Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. Elizabeth was overjoyed, although she considered backing out after the failure of Buckingham’s Rebellion. Her patience paid off and in 1586 after the Battle of Bosworth she witnessed the marriage of Henry VII to her daughter and was once again raised from her despair. She received land and wealth to help compensate for her cheated position as Queen Dowager due to the fact that the Duchess of York had seized most of Edward’s properties. She died more or less impoverished in 1492 and was quietly buried in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.

References:

Jokinen, Anniina. “Wars of the Roses: Elizabeth Woodville.” Luminarium: Encyclopedia Project. 2009. Web. Accessed 2-25-10. <http://www.luminarium.org/encyclopedia/woodville.htm>.

Wagner, John A. Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Roses. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 2001. Print.