ELIZABETH WOODVILLE, the White Queen of England | Wife of Edward IV | Women of the Wars of the Roses

hi history lovers and welcome or welcome back to the channel where i bring you new videos every week on all aspects of the past today on history calling we're continuing my series on the women of the wars of the roses by looking at the early life and marriages of elizabeth woodville one of the few women to become queen of england twice known for being the wife of edward iv elizabeth's story has so much drama a writer would be hard pushed to dream it up the product of one of the most scandalous marriages of the era she became a teenage bride and mother then a young widow she then embarked on a second marriage which was even more unexpected and outrageous to contemporaries than her own parents had been and which may have come about with elizabeth either brandishing or being threatened with a dagger this was followed by a tumultuous queen ship involving a long wait for a male heir so much bad blood with her in-laws that they accused her mother of witchcraft and killed some of her nearest relatives and a stint in sanctuary at westminster abbey when edward was deposed and had to flee to mainland europe there's a lot to get through so let's jump in [Music] [Music] elizabeth woodville's entire life would be shaped by the conflict we have come to know as the wars of the roses this was a decades-long struggle between two branches of the plantagenet royal family the yorks and the lancasters for the english throne and the problems had their genesis in events which started long before elizabeth's birth in 1377 edward iii died and as his eldest son edward prince of wales known as the black prince was already dead the throne went to the prince's son who became richard ii richard had no surviving children and according to the rules of primogenitor his heir was edmund earl of march who was a descendant of edward iii's second surviving son lionel of antwerp duke of clarence however in 1399 richard ii was deposed by his first cousin henry bollingbrook who was the son of edward iii's third son john of gaunt duke of lancaster try to keep up bowling brook became henry iv and richard ii died soon afterwards by which i mean he was probably murdered henry iv's eldest son became henry v then his son became henry vi in 1422 at the age of just nine months the new little king had two paternal uncles one of whom was john duke of bedford in 1435 bedford married the teenage daughter of peter the first of luxembourg count of simple her name was jaketta this marriage was childless and it didn't last long for bedford died in september 1435 leaving the young jaketta of luxembourg as the dowager duchess of bedford and one of the premier ladies in england she also had a huge income from her deceased husband's estate she was therefore not supposed to remarry without royal permission however remarried she did and to a man of much lower rank than she sir richard woodville the exact deal of this scandalous marriage is unknown but it obviously predated the fine of one thousand pounds inflicted on the pair in march 1437. it was also in roughly this year that the first of their many children was born too a little girl named elizabeth woodville but where do the wars of the ruses that are going to cause so much trouble come into all this well for that we need to go back to edward iii sons remember at the time of elizabeth's birth henry vi was on the throne because his grandfather henry iv had seized it but as this branch of the plantagenets were descended from edward the third's third son joan of ganjuk of lancaster their claim to the throne was arguably weaker than the descendants of his second son lionel of antwerp duke of clarence lionel's descendant edmund earl of march was long dead and had had no children but he had passed his claim to the throne to his sister and mortimer she had married her distant cousin richard earl of cambridge who just to confuse things was also a descendant of edward iii this time through his fourth son edmund of langley duke of york together they were the parents of richard duke of york who would go on to marry his own distant cousin cecily neville and produce elizabeth woodville's future husband edward iv so we have the descendants of john of gaunt who are known as the lancastrians because he was the duke of lancaster and we have the descendants of lionel of antwerp and edmund of langley who are known as the yorks because edmund was duke of york the lancastrians hold the throne at the time of elizabeth's birth because henry iv had seized it but the yorks have a better blood claim on it because they are descended from an older son of edward iii the idea of roses comes from the fact that one of the badges sometimes used by the house of lancaster was a red rose while one of the badges sometimes used by the house of york was a white rose elizabeth for her part was born in the red she was very much a lancastrian and for over two decades there was no reason to think she'd ever be anything else we know next to nothing about elizabeth's childhood but her parents as i've mentioned had a large family and you can see here the siblings that we know of thanks to sir richard's military activities and jakarta's royal connections the couple also remained at the center of the political world jakarta was one of the women who escorted the young margaret of anjou whose aunt was jaketta's sister on her fairly slow progress to england in 1444 for instance prior to margaret's marriage to henry vi in april 1445 while richard was elevated to the rank of baron rivers in 1448. david baldwin whose book is linked below for you has suggested that at around the age of seven the young elizabeth might have followed convention by being sent aboard with another noble family the greys but there's no evidence to substantiate this one way or the other at some point in her teens though elizabeth did marry one of the sons of this family john gray who was at some point knighted to become sir john gray we can't be sure exactly when this wedding occurred but based on later estimates given for the age of their eldest son it was somewhere between 1450 and 1454 though michael hicks writing in the oxford dictionary of national biography puts it as late as 1456 when elizabeth was about 19. there was a story perpetuated by henry viii minister thomas murr in the following century that elizabeth was a litty in waiting for margaret and monjou but this is likely a case of mistaken identity as well as her first son who was called thomas sir john and elizabeth libby gray as she now was also had another boy called richard later in the 1450s and the family most likely lived at astley in warwickshire sadly their family life was cut short by the encroaching wars of the roses which had been rumbling on in the background for several years as we've seen henry the sixth had married margaret and von g in 1445 but it wasn't until 1453 that their only child edward prince of wales was born and by that time the king had had a complete mental breakdown and was in a catatonic state he eventually recovered but he remained a weak monarch and opposing factions headed by queen margaret who was anxious to protect her son's rights to the crown and the duke of york who was effectively the heir to the throne after little prince edward struggled to control england with york twice named its protector in october 1460 york managed to get parliament to pass an act of accord which said that he would inherit the throne after king henry's death instead of prince edward queen margaret was having none of this and gained scottish support to fight back against york the two sides engaged in a series of fights including the battle of wakefield on the 30th of december 1460 at which the duke of york and his second son were killed his place at the head of the house of york was taken by his eldest surviving son edward earl of march just a few weeks later another battle called the second battle of saint albans occurred on the 17th of february 1461. this is the point at which elizabeth's fate began to entwine irrevocably with the yorks for her husband sir john gray fought at that battle on the side of the lancastrians and was killed the lancastrians did win the day however the pendulum of fortune was swinging so fast between the two sides that despite this loss the yorks were able to secure the throne barely a fortnight later and the earl of march was declared edward iv after yet another battle this time at titan on the 29th of march which the yorks won king henry queen margaret and the prince of wales had to flee into scotland for a much more detailed look at the wars of the roses during the 1440s and 1450s see my videos on cecily neville duchess of york and margaret and von zhu which i'll leave linked in the description box for you elizabeth was now a young widow with two small children to care for and she returned to her parents home at grafton her father and one of her brothers had been captured at titan fighting for the lancastrians but fortunately they were released and pardoned edward iv then spent some time touring the north of england confirming his authority there and cora scofield writing back in 1923 speculated that the new king may have first set eyes on elizabeth at around this time if he visited grafton this is impossible to verify though the next major event in elizabeth's life which we know about was a dispute with her mother-in-law over her diary and jointure adari was the money given to a man when he married a woman by her family while a joint sure was the money set aside from that man's estate to provide an income for his wife if he died elizabeth's diary of 200 marks had according to her father been fully paid up but he had no receipt to prove this furthermore her father-in-law sir edward gray had died in 1457 and her mother-in-law known as lily ferrars had since remarried to sir john borschier in the early 1460s lady ferraris claimed that 125 marks of elizabeth starry was still due and that the three manors placed in trust by her deceased husband to provide a jointer for elizabeth should go to her and her new husband instead the trustees who had been appointed to manage this trust did come down on elizabeth woodville's side by a majority of two to one but she remained concerned that her mother-in-law was going to find a way to swindle her eldest son thomas out of more of his inheritance so she turned to william lord hastings who was king edwards chamberlain of the household for assistance this assistance came at a steep price for on the 13th of april 1464 elizabeth signed off on an agreement with hastings which involved promising thomas or his brother richard of thomas died young in marriage to an as yet unborn daughter or niece of hastings and agreeing to give half of the rents of the recovered grey lands to hastings while thomas was under 12. there were also clauses requiring the payment of 250 marks to hastings if for any reason the proposed marriage didn't happen elizabeth wouldn't have to abide by this agreement though because she very soon pulled a rug out from under hastings by becoming the queen of england before i get into how this turn of events came about if you're enjoying this content please consider giving the video a thumbs up and subscribing to the channel if you switch on the little notification bell after you hit the subscribe button youtube will also let you know each time i upload you can also follow me on instagram which is linked in the description box hi and when elizabeth and edward iv came to be married is a matter of sub-speculation we have several sources which relate the teal but there are significant differences between them the general consensus though is that they met at grafton where elizabeth was still living with her parents in some instances such as the account by italian writer anthony cornizzano written by 1468 she produced a dagger during a confrontation with edward in order to hold off his advances and succeeded in getting him to marry her in others such as the version written by another italian dominic mancini in 1483 after a recent visit to england edward held elizabeth at dagger point and was so impressed by her continued refusal to sleep with him that he wed her cornizano's account it must be said is riddled with known errors but it wasn't published until centuries after his death and there is virtually no way mancini had seen it the fact that both mention the dagger detail therefore suggests that it was a commonly known part of the story within the king and queen's lifetimes though that doesn't mean that it was true the english author gregory's chronicle which might date to the 1460s gave a very limited account and claimed that the marriage occurred on the 1st of may 1464. this date was also given by an anonymous chronicler a fragment of whose work was published in 1719 though it incorrectly gave the year of the marriage as 1463. this fragmentary chronicle also placed the wedding at grafton saying that edward was there on a visit and having failed to seduce elizabeth married her instead having been won over by her quote constance and stable mind neither this nor gregory's chronicle mention any dagger in 1484 when it became convenient to argue that the marriage was invalid and so edward's brother richard iii was the true king instead of edward's sons parliament passed an act which said that the union had been made privily and secretly without bans and without the knowledge and ascent of the lords of this land nor was it in accordance with the laws of the church in the opening decades of the following century yet more explanations of how this unequal marriage had come about appeared the chronicler robert fabian said in the new chronicles of england and france which were originally published in 1516 three years after his death that the pair were married secretly at grafton on the 1st of may 1464 in the presence of elizabeth's mother the priest who performed the ceremony two other gentlemen and quote a young man to help the priest sing the marriage was consummated and edward continued to visit elizabeth at grafton for some months afterwards though no one but her mother knew of it polidor virgil who drafted his book anglica historia in 1512-1513 provided few details saying only that it was a love match henry viii's future minister thomas murr who was also writing in the 1510s said that elizabeth came to see edward in order to present him with a petition we could easily imagine that this was something to do with her joint problems with her mother-in-law and that he fell in love with her and decided to marry her over the objections of his own mother cecily duchess of york and his advisors like cornizzano though murr's work is filled with known errors and his story that the court knew about the marriage beforehand is contradicted by every other reputable source the idea he presents that the two met because elizabeth sought edward's help is one which appears elsewhere though with one popular version being that in order to get the king's attention she stood under an oak tree with her two sons knowing that edward would soon pass by and then put her case to him in person how much or how little truth is in any of these stories is hard to tell but obviously they can't all be correct that it was a secret wedding seems beyond dispute and no one but murr says otherwise but the date of the first of may may have been chosen by letter writers for its traditional association with romance in reality a later wedding seems more credible as it is unlikely that elizabeth would have entered into the agreement with lord hastings on the 13th of april if she suspected she was about to become queen and it is equally unlikely that she met got engaged to and married edward in the 18 days between this agreement and the 1st of may furthermore given that the union wasn't announced until late september the idea that the king who was constantly attended by servants was able to sneak off to visit his secret wife for five months without news of the marriage getting out is pretty laughable again a more likely scenario is that they wed late in the summer when the union was finally made public it went down like a stone with edwards counselors his cousin richard neville earl of warwick known to history as the king maker for his role in getting edward to the throne had been in the middle of negotiating a politically advantageous marriage for the king with bonna of savoy when edward suddenly announced that he was already married to a widowed lancastrian english woman several years older than him who came with no great family connections at least on her father's side and no royal diary but he did have two children five brothers and seven sisters all of whom now needed suitable marriages befitting their new status elizabeth may have been beautiful and a proven child bearer whose lancastrian credentials might have helped to heal the breach between the two warring sides of the plantagenet family but these factors weren't enough to make her an ideal royal bride by any stretch of the imagination there was nothing to be done though though rumors were later spread by manchini and murr that edward's mother cecily duchess of york went berserk and threatened to announce that edward was illegitimate a subject which i have a whole video on by the way and foreign ambassadors thought the wedding might be annulled edward stood by it and it had to be accepted the new queen was presented at court on the 29th of september given a household suitable to her new estate and crimed on the 26th of may 1465. she was likely already pregnant by then for she gave birth to her first child by edward on the 11th of february 1466 a little girl who's known to history as elizabeth of york elizabeth woodville's huge family soon began marrying into the english aristocracy her sister margaret bagged the heir to the earldom of arendell in october 1464 and a few months later her brother john who was barely in his twenties followed the family tradition of scandalous marriages by wedding the wealthy catherine neville dowager duchess of norfolk and to the king maker and a woman in her sixties elizabeth's other siblings made similarly grand marriages and her son thomas the one who had supposedly been destined for a daughter or niece of lord hastings was instead married to the king's niece the great heiress and holland whose mother the duchess of exeter was edward the fourth sister elizabeth's father was made treasurer and promoted to the rank of earl in 1466. life seemed to be going swimmingly for the woodvilles as was usual during the wars of the roses though such a period of relative calm wasn't to last the family's rapid ascent to power and their snatching up of some of the best marriages around inevitably made them unpopular with the pre-existing nobles and there was also the issue of elizabeth's lack of a royal sun for she produced two further daughters mary in 1467 and cecily in 1469 so that by the end of the decade there was still no yorkist prince of wheels the king and queen had other problems that year however specifically with edward's brother george duke of clarence and cousin the earl of warwick the wars of the roses had never gone away though the york scored a major victory in 1465 when they captured henry vi and had him locked up in the tower of london but his wife and son remained at large meanwhile the once close bond between warwick and king edward was crumbling as they disagreed over foreign policy and edward refused to allow his brother george to marry warwick's daughter isabel neville perhaps hoping instead to use george for the kind of diplomatic alliance that he himself had been expected to make before he married elizabeth george and warwick weren't prepared to settle for this and in july 1469 they defied edward by taking isabel to france where george married her when they returned to england they went into open revolt joining forces with a group of northern rebels led by a man calling himself robin of reedsteel though his real name is unknown they clashed with edwards forces at the battle of edgecote on the 26th of july and the king lost he was taken prisoner and locked up in warwick castle this would have been bad enough for elizabeth who was in norwich at the time with her daughters but warwick and george went after her birth family too her father earl rivers and her brother sir john woodville despite having not been at edgecoat were captured at chepstow taken to kenilworth castle near coventry and executed there on the 12th of august without trial her mother jaketta was accused of using witchcraft to bring about the marriage between elizabeth and edward and for a while the situation looked very grim indeed but warwick and clarence had overplayed their hand far from being able to rule by using edward as a puppet king the country started to sink into chaos without him at the helm because as david baldwin has said the dislocation of the government and the resulting uncertainty gave several noble families the opportunity to use their private armies of retainers to settle old scores with their neighbors the only way to solve the problems was to release edward which warwick julie did in the autumn with the king free once again cicada was cleared of any wrongdoing in january 1470 and edward administered some punishments to warwick clarence and their supporters mainly by revoking some of their titles and the privileges which went with them but there was an attempt for a few months at least to heal the breach in the extended royal family we don't have any evidence of elizabeth's attitude towards this approach but given that warwick and clarence's machinations had caused the deaths of her father and brother and almost brought down her mother i think it's safe to assume that she didn't support a renewed alliance with them clearly they weren't too invested in making nice with edward either for in march 1470 they were complicit in another field uprising against him after which they hightailed it to france there they were received by the exiled margaret of anjou to whom warwick bent the knee on the 22nd of july and pledged fealty he agreed to marry his younger daughter and neville to margaret's son edward prince of wales and to help recover the throne for henry vi who was still imprisoned in england the stage was now set for an epic showdown between king edward his brother clarence and warwick and it would completely up end and even threaten queen elizabeth's life in september 1470 while edward and his other brother richard duke of gloucester were in the north of england putting down the rebellion of warwick's brother-in-law henry fitzhugh of ravensworth the earl himself landed back in england as did george they were joined by other supporters of the lancastrian cause including henry vi's half-brother jasper tudor earl of pembroke and they soon took london released henry from captivity and put him back on the throne an event known as the re-adaption edward had been deposed and he was forced to flee to mainland europe at the start of october elizabeth meanwhile was heavily pregnant and staying in london with their children initially she had gone to the tar and begun to prepare it for a siege but when she realized how hopeless her position was and that she was in effect no longer the queen she fled into sanctuary at westminster abbey with her daughters and mother they lodged in a building within the abbey's grounds which was demolished in the 18th century but which was next to saint margaret's church yard and you consistent margaret's church here by the way right next to the abbey fortunately for her warwick and clarence issued a decree on the 6th of october that the rules of sanctuary were to be respected within london and beyond and elizabeth and her children were therefore safe where they were it was in this self-imposed prison on or around the 1st of november different sources give slightly different dates that she gave birth to her long-awaited son by edward who she named after his father and who has gone down in history as one of the princes in the tar usually it would have been a cause of great celebration but under the circumstances any joy she felt must have been muted indeed fortunately for elizabeth it didn't take long for the tide to turn in her favor her brother-in-law george had long harbored hopes of taking the throne from edward and had anticipated having the assistance of his father-in-law slash cousin lord warwick to do so now that warwick's other daughter anne was the lancastrian princess of wales however and margaret of anjou was soon to return to england and liable to relieve clarence of much of his wealth and lands he apparently realized that his own chances of ever getting the throne had become vanishingly small indeed and decided that the best thing to do was to go back to edward edward meanwhile had managed to put together a small force with the help of their brother-in-law charles duke of burgundy who was married to their sister margaret of york and he arrived back in england on the 14th of march 1471. picking up supporters as he went he met and was reconciled with george on the third of april and with warwick stuck in coventry and queen margaret and her son still not arrived from france they marched to london once there on the 11th of april edward retook the city re-imprisoned henry vi and rescued his wife and children from sanctuary elizabeth was queen once again the game was up for warwick however he fought and lost the battle of barnet against edward and his men on the 14th of april and was killed time had run out for the lancastrian royal family too margaret of anjou and her son arrived back in england on the very day that barnett was fought and after catching up with them at chucksbury the yorks battled and beat them there on the 4th of may the 17 year old prince of wales was killed and his mother was captured back in london queen elizabeth her children and her mother-in-law were holed up in the tower where edward had left them and facing their own reckoning while her husband was away dealing with one threat to their position another emerged in the capital as thomas neville who was an illegitimate cousin of the earl of warwick's landed in england from france and besieged the capital claiming that he only wanted to release king henry and meant the city no harm an anonymous yorkist writer explained what happened next in a tract written soon after the events under the direction of the london mayor and aldermen the city citizens held out for king edward's return to whom they wrote begging urgent assistance telling him that the queen then being in the tower of london my lord prince and my ladies his daughters was likely to stand in the greatest jeopardy that ever they stood unable to get his main army mobilized fast enough to get to london as quickly as he wanted edward sent a smaller advance car to assist and in the meantime elizabeth's brother the second earl rivers fought off the attackers from his base in the tar the victory was completed when edward's man arrived and the king himself returned to the city on the 21st of may thomas neville was ultimately caught and executed in september the same night king edward returned to london king henry mysteriously died in the tar supposedly though probably not actually on this very spot see my video linked below on whether he was murdered for more details with him gone and margaret of anjou in custody elizabeth woodville was at last the only queen of england it's on this note that i'm going to end the video for this week but make sure you come back for the next installment where we'll look at the rule elizabeth may have played in the grisly fate that befell her troublesome brother-in-law george her reaction to the death of her husband how the mystery of what happened to her sons the princes in the tower unfolded from her point of view and how she conspired with lady margaret beaufort to overthrow a king make her daughter a queen and end the plantagenet dynasty before i go a big thank you to my patrons for their support of this channel if you would like to become a patron and get access to some history calling perks check out the link to patreon in the description box below if you can't wait to hear more about the wars of the roses try one of these videos next and let me know in the comments what you make of elizabeth and edward's scandalous marriage until next time then keep learning

Channel: History Calling

Views: 132,546

Keywords: the white queen of England, who was the white queen, the women who fought the wars of the roses, the woman who lost the wars of the roses, what was the cousins' war, unpopular royal marriages, meet the white queen, the royal house of York, wife of edward iv, what were the wars of the roses, the women of the wars of the roses, understanding the wars of the roses, the queen who lost the wars of the roses, Queen of England, elizabeth wydville, history calling

Id: 3JcONIQQV_o

Length: 29min 23sec (1763 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 05 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/informallory]

I love Elizabeth woodville and her mother Jacquetta. Such interesting women, will definitely give this video a listen tomorrow, thanks for sharing!

[u/_coterie]

Hi all! Just thought I'd share this video I "watched" (more like listened to while studying French) earlier today. I think even before becoming Queen, Elizabeth Woodville's life is pretty interesting with parents being of differing social status, being a young widow with 2 sons and secretly marrying Edward in a love match. I like this channel because it's both informative but also very aural so I don't have to watch to absorb information. Should probably look more into podcasts.