Jacquetta’s second husband, Sir Richard Wydeville, was well known in the English court. Sir Richard’s father, also named Richard, had been ‘Esquire of the body’ to Henry V, a relationship that began when Henry was still Prince of Wales (Shakespeare’s ‘Prince Hal’). In 1408, Prince Henry granted £40 yearly for life to ‘Richard Wydevill, his esquire, and Joan his wife’, a grant confirmed in 1413 after Henry V became King, and again in 1422 during the first year of Henry VI.11
Henry V also appointed Richard Wydeville ‘for life’ to the ‘office of customer and collector of the customs and cokets in all ports of Ireland, and also of the office of searcher’, an appointment confirmed by Henry VI’s Great Council in 1426.12 Richard Wydeville, Esquire, frequently served as a ‘Commissioner to take muster’ of the troops sent to France and as ‘Commissioner of Oyer and Terminer’ to examine prisoners and hear court cases. During 1421, he was Seneschal of Normandy, administering justice and all other domestic matters in that important province. ‘Richard de Wideville, Esq.’ earned Bedford’s gratitude in 1425 when as Lieutenant of the Tower of London he refused entry to the troops of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was challenging Bedford’s authority.13 Under Henry VI, Richard served as Lieutenant of Calais, and subsequently as chamberlain to the Duke of Bedford, who was Captain of Calais. In 1446, the town of Drogheda in Ireland was ordered to pay Joan, wife of Richard Wydeville, £20 a year for life, including arrears since 20 May 2 Henry V.14
Richard de Wydeville, Esquire, Jacquetta’s father-in-law, was not a member of nobility, but his service to the crown and the extensive family estates made him an important man within the newly emerging landed gentry. In the fifteenth century the term ‘Esquire’ indicated a man of considerable property who ranked immediately below a knight. A marriage settlement between his daughter, Joan, and William Haute of Kent, Esquire, executed on 18 July 1429, carefully delineated the financial arrangements: William Haute made a marriage grant of land or rents valued at 100 marks yearly, plus a dowry of £40 annually. Richard Wydeville, Esquire, granted the husband 400 marks and agreed to pay all costs of the wedding at Calais. In addition, he declared that his daughter Joan would bring to the marriage a ‘Chamber as a gentlewoman ought for to have and after the estate of the foresaid Richard Wydevill’. The ‘chamber’ included the bride’s personal effects, jewellery, and frequently furniture for the wife’s living quarters.15
Richard Wydeville, Esquire, inherited the Grafton estates from his older brother, Thomas. The Wydeville family had held tenancies in the area since the twelfth century, and their increasing value through the generations had elevated the family to one of the most important in Northamptonshire. During the reign of Edward III, a Richard Wydeville had served as sheriff eight times and represented the region in seven different Parliaments. By 1435, when Thomas Wydeville acquired manorial rights from the Earl of Suffolk, the Wydeville holdings were quite substantial. Thomas continued the family tradition of serving frequently as justice of the peace, and as sheriff of Northamptonshire in 1429.16 Transactions recorded in the Close Rolls reflect his substantial land holdings and his frequent appearance as a witness in quitclaim cases.17
When Thomas died, his will enumerated many estates in the counties of Northampton, Bedford and Buckingham. It also revealed a compassionate concern for the welfare of the people who lived on his lands. No fewer than seven servants were bequeathed lifetime estates in their home and annuities comparable to that given to ‘John Beck my old servant’, who received ‘a place and six acres of land with the appurtenances in Grafton abovesaid’, plus a lifetime annuity of one mark per year.18 As landlord, Thomas Wydeville cared for the wellbeing of the people who populated his estates. He granted an annuity of 100 shillings, for instance, ‘to the father and the mother of master John Aylewurd now parson of the church of the said Stoke in case that the said parson die leaving his said father and his mother or one of them…’.19
In this generation, the spellings of the family surname vary from ‘Widevill’ to ‘Wideville’ to ‘Wydevill’. Earlier versions had included ‘de Wivill’, ‘de Wydevill’ and ‘Widvile’. The man whom Jacquetta married appears variously as ‘Richard Wydevile’, ‘Richard Wydevyle’ and ‘Richard Wydevill’, spellings that changed to ‘Wydeville’ in the next generation, when Caxton printed his son Anthony’s book, The Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres. That contemporary published spelling seems best to reflect historical accuracy in the generation of Elizabeth. Today’s common spelling of ‘Woodville’ was never used by the family.
The son of Richard Wydeville, Esquire, was knighted by Henry VI on Palm Sunday, 19 May 1426, at the same ceremony that knighted Richard, Duke of York, father of Edward IV.20 The five-year-old King Henry VI had himself just been knighted by Bedford, who undoubtedly determined the individuals worthy of receiving similar honours. Sir Richard Wydeville, son, was retained by King Henry VI in 1433 to fight in France, for which he furnished 100 men at arms and 300 archers, an indenture repeated in 1434. He was captured in France in 1435 while fighting with the Earl of Arundel, sufficiently prominent to be mentioned in contemporary chronicles.21 By 1435, Sir Richard was serving as a knight bachelor in Bedford’s court, and in 1436 he joined the Earl of Suffolk’s retinue in France. On 25 January 1437, he was granted the office of constable of the castle of Rochester, with its wages, fee and profits.22
Strikingly handsome and athletic, the young knight contrasted markedly with Jacquetta’s older first husband, the Duke of Bedford. Sir Richard’s more humble origins would, nevertheless, have deterred marriage in the class-conscious circles of European nobility, one reason Jacquetta may not have sought the King’s approval. Her uncle, the Bishop of Thérouanne, was greatly distressed by the marriage, since the daughter of a count and the sister of Lewis, current Earl of St Pol, could have negotiated a better match. Violating all traditions and expectations, Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, courageously married Sir Richard Wydeville, Knight of England, for love, a precedent her son-in-law Edward IV would follow in the next generation. Prudence may also have compelled the hasty marriage. The exact birth date of their first child, Elizabeth, is unrecorded, and even the year of 1437 may be suspect. An impending birth may explain why Jacquetta ignored the King’s Patent of 6 February 1436, and was forced to seek his pardon on 23 March 1437.
The popular Wydeville couple did not remain out of favour long. Soon after the pardon, Sir Richard was appointed Rider of the Forest of Saucy, an area near Grafton where the couple returned to live.23 Frequent commissions authorised him to investigate customs cases24 and collect the King’s taxes.25 By 1439, he was back in France with the Earl of Somerset, as part of the effort to relieve Meaux. Meanwhile, his popularity in England grew through his skills as a jouster. At Shrift-tide 1439, he and the Duke of Norfolk dominated the carnival celebrations before Lent as featured jousters of a two-day tournament at the Tower of London.26
By 1440, Sir Richard was wealthy enough to purchase the Grafton estate from the Countess of Suffolk, and become a landowner rather than a fee-holder.27 The couple’s renown continued to grow. Both dowager queens had died in 1437, making Jacquetta the highest-ranking woman in England. With her dowry as the Duchess of Bedford, she was also one of the richest. If Sir Richard could not match his wife’s title and wealth, he earned his way with service to the King and his fame as a jouster. In November 1440, he defended the honour of England in a tournament at Smithfield in response to the challenge of Pedro de Vasquez, a Spanish knight who served the Duke of Burgundy as chamberlain.
By the fifteenth century, chivalric tournaments were no longer the slashing, bloody battles of earlier years, but exhibitions of splendour and sport similar to today’s Olympic games. Carefully-staged pomp and ceremony dominated the festivities, which celebrated both tradition and nationality. King Henry chose the kingdom’s foremost man in arms and valour to defend English honour, then ordered his treasurer and exchequer to allow
…all sums of money… to erect lists and
barriers of timber at ‘Westsmythfelde’ in the suburbs of London by 25 November instant, and to cover the ground within the lists with sand for the purpose, so that there be no let or obstacle there by stones or otherwise, and further… to construct a place there for the king suitable to his royal estate. 28
The hometown audience enthusiastically cheered its hero knight, fighting in the tradition of the medieval romance:
…The morn after the day of Saint Katharine was a challenge in arms made and proved to before the King within lists in Smithfield, between Sir Richard Wydeville, Knight of England, and a knight of Spain; which knight for his lady love should fight in certain points of armes, that is to say with axe, sword, and dagger. 29
The three-year-old Elizabeth may not have been aware of her father’s fame at this point, but she would surely have sensed the excitement and bustle at Grafton as her father prepared for the tournament. Sir Richard Wydeville fighting for his lady love, Jacquetta, not only represented the romantic ideal of chivalric tradition, but reflected the reality of his ever-increasing family. During their marriage, Jacquetta gave birth to fifteen children, thirteen of whom survived to adulthood. Sir Richard and Jacquetta divided their time between the bucolic and nurturing environment at Grafton, the more exciting life of the court, and the battlefields of France.
The career of Sir Richard kept pace with his growing family’s needs. In February 1441, he was commissioned to collect a subsidy in Northampton, and in July he joined the retinue in France of the Duke of York, who was attempting to relieve Pontoise. The year 1444 brought special distinction, when he and Jacquetta were sent to France to escort Margaret of Anjou to England for her marriage to Henry VI. Jacquetta had grown up in Margaret’s world and at the age of twenty-nine could provide a comforting and guiding presence to the fifteen-year-old betrothed moving to a strange and different court. The escort was also a family affair, since Jacquetta’s sister Isabel was married to Margaret’s uncle, Charles of Anjou, Count of Maine.
Sir Richard was appointed Justice of the Peace in Northamptonshire in 1445 and represented the King on business in Calais twice in 1446. That year the King ruled that the Wydeville sons would inherit property in case of their parents’ death:
Grant in survivorship to Antony, Richard, John and John, sons of Richard Wydevyll, knight, and Jacquetta, his wife, duchess of Bedford, of the remainder of all the rents in the counties of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Buckingham granted to Richard and Jacquetta by letter patent dated 18 June, 18 Henry VI, and 13 November, 19 Henry VI. and confirmed to the same by letters patent dated 8 February, 19 Henry VI; and of the remainder of a rent of £20 yearly by the hands of the sheriff of Bedford and Buckingham, by John Hanham, late escheator in those counties, from the issues of the same falling to Richard and Jacquetta in allowance of her dower after the death of John, duke of Bedford, out of the £60 yearly granted to the Duke in tail male.30
Service, valour and integrity led to Sir Richard’s creation as Baron and ‘Lord de Ryvers’ on 9 May 1448. Additional grants of manors in the counties of Bedford and Buckingham supported his increased expenses. By 1450, Lord Rivers served as Constable of England.31
In June 1450, Lord Rivers was among the leaders who fought Jack Cade and his Kentish rebels.32 On 4 August 1450, he was created Knight of the Garter, the highest order of the land, and soon became a member of the Privy Council, the King’s most private and privileged advisors. Throughout this decade, Lord Rivers served as Seneschal of Aquitaine33 and Lieutenant of Calais, while making frequent forays into Gascony ‘to resist the malice of the King’s enemies there’.34 During the first battle of St Albans, he was in Calais, 35 where he spent most of the early 1450s serving on endless commissions to hear appeals and to investigate piracy, service rewarded by a grant for life to the castle of Rochester on 22 November 1457.36
Lord Rivers and the Duchess of Bedford participated in the usual court events when they found themselves in England. In 1457, the names of ‘the lord Ryvers and my lady his Wyff’ joined the Buckinghams and the Shrewsburys at a Corpus Christi celebration sponsored by Queen Margaret.37 Throughout the years, Jacquetta and Queen Margaret exchanged gifts on New Year’s Day. Surviving records of the Queen’s household cite a ‘year’s gifts’ from Margaret to Jacquetta in 1447–838 and jewels in 1451–239. On four different occasions in 1445–6, 1446–7, 1448–9 and 1451–2, Margaret tipped servants of Jacquetta (who apparently delivered gifts to the Queen).40
In January 1458, Lord Rivers was one of the barons summoned to the Great Council at Westminster to discuss the rebellion being led by Richard, Duke of York. Rivers’s personal battles with Warwick were about to intensify. Their first encounter had occurred in 1455 when Rivers was recalled from Calais after Warwick’s appointment as captain there. Rivers, Lieutenant of Calais since 1452, refused to vacate his post until Parliament agreed to pay wages long owed to the garrison. In siding with the soldiers and demanding that the accounts be settled before he departed, Rivers delayed Warwick’s assumption of control from 4 August 1455 until 20 April 1456.41 While Rivers’s firm stance endeared him to the troops, it also hardened the garrison’s opposition to Warwick. The Earl, whose tolerance for defiance was limited, began to harbour a personal animosity toward Lord Rivers, a grudge more insidious than their Lancastrian–York rivalry.
The next confrontation between Warwick and Rivers also originated in matters of state. From his new position as Captain of Calais, Warwick began enriching his personal treasury through piracy. Among his conquests was a salt fleet headed for Lübeck, attacked in gross violation of an existing treaty.42 King Henry VI appointed ‘Richard Wydeville of Ryvers’ as first among the commissioners
…to summon at Rochester and examine on 9 August next [1458] persons having knowledge of a conflict on the sea between Richard, Earl of Warwick, and his retinue and certain of Lubec under the King’s friendship, and to certify the King and Council of their examination before 13 August next.43
The inquiry held at Rivers’ s castle of Rochester irrevocably tainted him in Warwick’s eyes. For a man of Warwick’s ego to be hauled before a tribunal chaired by a mere baron added personal insult to political injury. Warwick’s hatred would reveal itself a year later in the ad hominem attacks on Rivers and his son Lord Scales after their capture at Sandwich. The Earl’s anger festered for a decade, until he killed as many Wydeville men as he could capture. The women he attacked by trying to destroy their reputations.
As the armies of Lancaster and York moved toward open conflict, Lord Rivers’s name appeared prominently in commissions to oppose the rebels:
Commission of array to Richard Wydevyle of Ryvers, knight, and the sheriff of Kent in Kent, to resist Richard, Duke of York; Edward, Earl of March; Richard, Earl of Warwick; and Richard, Earl of Salisbury; and their accomplices, leagued in rebellion against the King and crown… and appointment of the same to arrest all ships and other vessels late of the said Earl of Warwick and all the tackling thereof and to keep the same for the King’s use.44
In the midst of such turmoil, the Wydeville children grew up nurtured at Grafton and taught to pattern their lives after their parents. In 1457, ‘Anthony Rivers’ joined the Duke of Somerset and other knights in jousting before King Henry VI and Queen Margaret at the Tower during Thursday of Whitsun week. On the following Sunday, the show was repeated at Greenwich.45
Little about Elizabeth’s youth is known, and even her service as attendant to Queen Margaret remains unclear. The ‘Isabelle Domine Grey’ named as one of Margaret’s ladies-in-waiting in 1452–3 and ‘Domine Elizabeth Grey’ in the 1452–3 list of jewels given by Margaret to her ladies-in-waiting probably refers to the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth, already betrothed to Sir John Grey. But that name could also identify Sir John’s mother, Elizabeth, or yet another Elizabeth, ‘late the wife of Ralph Grey’, mentioned in June 1445 as a daily attendant to the Queen.46 Both Thomas More and Edward Hall, whose proximity to eyewitness accounts lends credibility, state that Queen Eliz
abeth was in service to Queen Margaret, a logical appointment given medieval courtly practices and the friendship of Margaret and Jacquetta.
The date of Elizabeth’s first marriage to John Grey, son and heir to Edward Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby, is unknown. Neither does the uncertain birth date of Elizabeth’s first son provide further clues. The Complete Peerage entry for Thomas, Marquis of Dorset cites 1451 as his birth date (which would make Elizabeth a mother at the age of fourteen), but the entry for Lord Ferrers of Groby states merely that he ‘was aged 37 and more in 1492’, indicating that Elizabeth was aged eighteen at his birth. A second son, Richard, was born in 1456.
Neither is the age of her husband known, but his age of ‘25 and more at his father’s death’ in 1457 leads to an assigned birth date of 1432.47 The Greys traced their lineage to the time of William the Conqueror. John’s father, Sir Edward Grey, was a younger son of Lord Grey of Ruthin and had married Lady Elizabeth Ferrers, heir of Lord Ferrers, whose family had held extensive estates at Groby for eight generations. As newlyweds, Sir John Grey and Lady Elizabeth, née Wydeville, may have lived first at the Grey’s manor house at Astley in Warwickshire48, but after the death of Sir Edward in 1457, they likely moved to Groby manor, the ‘Old Hall’ of which is still standing.
Elizabeth Page 5
