If Edward’s early animosity to Eton derived from its founding by Henry VI, the example of Elizabeth in saving Queens’ College may have caused him to reverse his decision. No other rationale explains his change of heart. By 1471, Edward and Elizabeth were visiting Eton College rather frequently. During the second week of July, they were attended by a retinue of thirty, only to return the next week in company of more than a hundred. During September, their visit included foreign ambassadors.33 Here, too, the records provide few facts about Elizabeth’s influence, but her contributions during the tenure of Provost Henry Bost indicate significant interest in the welfare of the College. The epitaph on Bost’s memorial specifically acknowledges the Queen’s contributions: ‘Illius auspiciis elemosina conjugis uncti Edward Quarti larga pluebat opem.’ (‘For his [Bost’s] benefit, the abundant generosity of the wife of the anointed Edward IV showered wealth.’)34
Indeed, patronage of Eton College became a family affair. Elizabeth’s brother Anthony became such a generous patron that a daily Mass was said at the altar of Our Lady every morning at 7.15. The bell tolled for sixty strokes ‘so that well disposed people may have knowledge to come to the said mass’, where the priest prayed for ‘our sovereign lord King Edward the IVth, our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, the prince their son, and the lords and ladies his brethren and sistern, the said Earl Rivers and all his brethern and sistern, his father, and his mother, the well-known Jaquinet of Luxemburg, and other relations’.35 In gratitude, Eton College kept a solemn anniversary for Lord Rivers and his family on 30 October, a tradition that began in 1475 and continued until the reign of Edward VI.36
Endowments to educational and religious causes characterised the charities of Elizabeth and the larger Wydeville family. On 5 March 1466, Queen Elizabeth founded a fraternity of sixty priests in London, to be called ‘the fraternity of the Holy Trinity and the Sixty Priests of London’.37 On 12 July 1466, the city of London gave Elizabeth permission to build a chapel or college on Tower Hill, a project that apparently never developed. In later years, she founded and funded a chapel of St Erasmus in Westminster Abbey.
Yet the Queen’s deep involvement in spiritual and educational matters did not deter her from paying attention to secular and temporal needs. Among the latter was the wellbeing of her family. Her brothers and sisters, in particular, needed to marry to assure family prosperity and success. The King and Queen turned to that worthy goal, as they found appropriate partners for Elizabeth’s Wydeville siblings.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Marriages Made in Court
If the union of Edward and Elizabeth dramatically broke with royal custom by choosing passion over politics, the marriages of Elizabeth’s brothers and sisters reverted to tradition. In the fifteenth century, marriage among the nobility generally placed financial and hierarchical status at the centre of the partnership. Marriage was a business aimed at finding an eligible spouse with money and title, and fathers frequently secured their children’s future by contracting marriages well before the groom and bride reached puberty. Love, as the medieval romances reveal, was reserved for adulterous liaisons, courtly affairs and dream visions – not for the serious business of a lifelong liaison.
Nothing caused such damage to Elizabeth’s reputation as the marriages of her brothers and sisters to members of established nobility. The Queen Consort has been charged with matching her siblings to spouses far beyond their own rank – of ‘overreaching’ beyond the Wydeville place in the social order. Such charges not only ignore Lord Rivers’s stature as Knight of the Garter and his long-term service on the King’s Council, but the significant weight of Jacquetta’s title and privileges as Duchess of Bedford. The criticism also fails to take into account the history and traditions of medieval marriage.
The fact that Anthony married Lady Elizabeth Scales well before his sister could influence Edward IV – perhaps as early as April 1461 – indicates that the Wydevilles could do well enough on their own. Lady Scales was daughter and heir of Thomas, Lord Scales, a prominent Lancastrian who had fought with Bedford and Talbot in France. When Lord Scales was killed in 1460, his daughter Elizabeth inherited his estates, and Anthony Wydeville subsequently gained his title in right of his wife. Anthony was summoned to Parliament as Lord Scales on 22 December 1462, years before his sister’s marriage.1 Elizabeth’s own marriage to Sir John Grey, Lord Ferrers, also indicates sufficient family status and rank to contract an advantageous liaison, especially when so few eligible husbands were available in the fifty or so families of English nobility.
The scarcity of eligible partners was a problem that contributed to the dismay of those left behind when Elizabeth’s siblings rapidly diminished the available pool. And when they married into families descended from royal ancestors, the nobility – Warwick, in particular – took umbrage. Because the Wydevilles lacked the ‘blood royal’ of England (though not of Luxembourg), that issue later became the focus of the Earl’s attacks against the Queen’s family. What initially infuriated Warwick, however, was the threat to his own power. Several of the Wydeville marriages united Lancastrian and Yorkist families across a political divide still palpable after three years of Edward’s governance, decisions made by the King without consulting Warwick. Others who were pre-empted in the marriage market sneered that the King was a besotted fool who gave his wife whatever she asked – ignoring the fact that Edward regularly disregarded Elizabeth’s wishes when she objected to his concubines. The fact that the Queen was blamed for the marriages, when they clearly required the King’s participation and approval, remains a curiosity of perspective.
The truth is that the King was beating Warwick at his own game. No dynastic family had built fortune and power through marriage as successfully as the Nevilles, a point emphatically made in J.R. Lander’s seminal scholarship investigating marriage and politics of the fifteenth century.2 Between 1412 and 1436, the Nevilles had contracted marriages for thirteen children under the age of sixteen. At nine, Eleanor, a daughter of Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, was married to a twelve-year-old husband, who left her a widow after two years, whereupon she immediately married the twenty-one-year-old Earl of Northumberland. Cecily Neville, Edward IV’s formidable mother, was married at the age of nine to Richard, Duke of York, aged thirteen, a privilege for which her father paid 3,000 marks.
Most egregiously, William, a Neville son by Westmoreland’s second marriage, married Joan Fauconberg, heiress to the barony of Fauconberg. The only problem was that Joan had been an idiot since birth, an impediment made irrelevant by her extensive estates.3 Such marriages were imperative because the children of Westmoreland’s first marriage inherited his title and wealth, while those of his second marriage had to earn their way through well-endowed spouses.
Richard Neville, the eldest son of Westmoreland’s second marriage to Joan Beaufort (daughter of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster), secured his future by marrying Alice Montacute, daughter and heir of the Earl of Salisbury, thus inheriting both titles and estates by right of his wife. To assure that his son, also named Richard, would not have to wait until his father’s death to obtain a title, the Earl of Salisbury contracted the six-yearold boy to the nine-year-old Anne de Beauchamp, heir of the Duke of Warwick. Richard Neville, junior, thereby became Earl Warwick by right of his wife. In fact, four of the six Nevilles who sat in Parliament’s House of Lords had inherited their titles through their wives. Such cunning did not, however, prevent Salisbury and Warwick from berating the captured Lord Rivers in Calais for being ‘made by marriage’ to the Duchess of Bedford. Hypocrisy hardly pertains in politics, war and marriage, especially since Warwick’s envy was surely stoked by Jacquetta’s superior rank.
Whether Edward IV deliberately plotted to displace the Nevilles and lessen the power of Warwick is irrelevant. That was the result. And the older man could not tolerate the pre-empting of his authority. It was, after all, the wealth, power and experience of the thirty-three-year-old Warwick that had placed the nineteen-year-
old Edward IV on the throne. Now that the King was twenty-two and flaunting his royal prerogatives, the older man’s ego was bruised beyond repair.
The marriages began just weeks before Edward IV married Elizabeth, with the indenture between Hastings and Elizabeth to join her eldest son, Thomas Grey, with Hastings’s yet unborn daughter. That marriage never occurred because two years later Sir Thomas Grey, then eleven, married Anne Holland, daughter of the Duchess of Exeter (eldest sister of Edward IV). Elizabeth paid the Duchess of Exeter 4,000 marks to dissolve a previous contract of Marriage between Anne Holland and George Neville, nephew to Warwick.
Warwick was apoplectic. Anne Holland was the only child of the Duke of Exeter, the next Lancastrian claimant to the throne after Edward, Prince of Wales, only child of Henry VI. Marriage to Anne placed her husband close to the Lancastrian throne, a relationship that appealed to Warwick, whose lust after power and the crown was ever growing. Instead, a Neville had been displaced by Elizabeth’s son. Worse, Warwick had been outwitted by a woman. Humiliating. Intolerable.
Marriage between Sir Thomas Grey and Anne Holland equally benefited Edward IV, of course, who was still childless. Further, the King welcomed the Lancastrian connection, which strengthened his position in the still unsettled nation. Given those political advantages, it is difficult to explain why Elizabeth, alone, has been blamed for arranging the marriage in an unseemly grasping after status, power and money.
As other marriages followed, those pre-empted in the marriage market began to resent the Queen’s family. In October 1464, six months after the Queen’s marriage, her eldest sister Margaret married Thomas, Lord Maltravers, heir of the Earl of Arundel and nephew to Warwick. In January 1465, her brother Sir John Wydeville, probably twenty years old, married Catherine Neville, Duchess of Norfolk, aged somewhere between sixty-five and sixty-six – a union that really set gossipy tongues wagging. William of Worcester, a decidedly pro-Neville chronicler, slandered the Duchess by adding twenty years to her age when he sarcastically called her a ‘juvencula’ around the age of eighty and snidely sneered that the union was a ‘maritagiam diabolicum’. The Duchess herself didn’t seem to mind. She had made her fortune with her first marriage to the Duke of Norfolk, who left her a rich widow at the age of thirty-five. Her dowager rights to the Norfolk estates had given her the freedom to remarry twice already, flouting all conventions with her third marriage to Thomas Strangeways, a mere ‘Esquire’! Her son, John Mowbray, 3rd Duke of Norfolk, had died in 1461 without ever receiving his estates, and his mother’s tenacity in holding onto property displeased all the Mowbray heirs. Now, with a new, young fourth husband so closely connected to the King, they might never regain their inheritance. No wonder they resented her new husband.
For Edward IV and Elizabeth, intangible benefits accompanied the Duchess of Norfolk’s wealth and rank. The bride was the elder sister of the King’s mother, Cecily. Thus, the marriage not only made Sir John Wydeville an uncle to the King, but brother-in-law to the Duchess of York, who had so vehemently opposed Edward IV’s marriage. Neither were Earl Salisbury, brother of the bride, and Earl Warwick, her nephew, amused. Too rich to be bothered by scandal, the Duchess of Norfolk must have regarded her fourth liaison to the handsome, charming Sir John Wydeville as quite the marriage of convenience.
Did Edward chortle at his mother’s discomfort, a subtle revenge for objecting to his own marriage? Did the King and Queen indulge in delighted pillow talk as they conceived the idea of this strange Wydeville-Neville conjugality? If so, their euphoria was short-lived. This marriage ended just four years later when Warwick took his revenge by murdering the groom.
In 1466, the Queen’s sister Katherine Wydeville married Henry, Duke of Buckingham, first cousin and ward to Edward IV. Both were around the age of twelve, but the marriage must have been contracted prior to the Queen’s coronation, since the contemporary record identifies Katherine as ‘the Duchess of Buk the younger’. Both she and her young husband participated in the coronation carried on the shoulders of squires, and the marriage gave Katherine sufficient prominence to be seated at the coronation feast with her mother, the Duchess of Bedford, and three of the King’s aunts.
Commonplace speculation credits this marriage with causing the alienation between Buckingham and the Wydevilles that developed later in Edward’s reign, an alienation that supposedly began with Buckingham’s resentment at being forced to marry beneath his rank. Katherine’s rank as sister of the Queen and daughter of the Duchess of Bedford was not trivial, however, and the King, whose wardship of the Duke gave him both legal and traditional authority for contracting the marriage, obviously believed it appropriate. Further evidence points to Katherine’s personal charm and attractiveness throughout her life. Years later, after Buckingham’s execution in 1483 and sometime before November 7 1485, Katherine married Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII, at a time when Wydeville fortunes were at their absolute nadir. Clearly, Jasper Tudor, son of a Queen and uncle to a King, did not find his wife’s supposed lack of status to be a deterrent. And after Jasper Tudor’s death, Katherine married a third time to Sir Richard Wingfield.
To blame Buckingham’s alienation on a festering resentment of his marriage to the Queen’s sister is to oversimplify the complex nature of court politics, as well as the Duke’s own character. In later years, Buckingham did join the court faction led by Hastings, and he initially collaborated with Richard of Gloucester after Edward’s death. By October 1483, however, he joined forces with the Wydevilles to lead a rebellion against Richard III. Lacking evidence about the marriage between Katherine and Buckingham, and knowledge of the psychological complexity of Buckingham himself, it is disingenuous to blame his political disaffections and affiliations on his wife.
Other Wydeville marriages followed rapidly, but not unusually so by the standards of medieval England. In September 1466, Mary Wydeville married William Herbert, second Earl of Pembroke and heir to Lord Herbert, one of Edward’s strongest supporters. The new Lord Herbert was rewarded with the title of Lord Dunster. Mary’s sister Anne married Lord Bourchier, heir to the Earl of Essex, sometime before August 1467. Jacquetta married John, Lord Strange of Knockyn, and Joan (sometimes called Eleanor) married Anthony, Lord Grey of Ruthin, cousin to the Greys of Groby. Nothing is known about Martha, who married Sir John Bromley of Bartomley and Hextall, and subsequently disappeared from history.
Of the Queen’s brothers, Richard apparently never married, Lionel entered the Church, and Edward’s marital state is unknown. All died without issue. Two brothers, Lewis and John, died in childhood.
Malicious gossip denigrating the Wydeville marriages distorts the reality, given contemporary practice and the Neville precedents. Warwick, however, was angry and he began to target the Queen and her family with revenge-inspired gossip and accusations. He tipped his hand when he founded a chantry in the parish church of SS Peter and Paul in Olney and failed to include the Queen in the divine service offered daily. The licence for the chantry stipulates that prayers be offered for ‘the good estate of the King and for his soul after death’.4 The phrasing is extraordinary in its omission: similar licences typically – virtually invariably – call for prayers ‘for the good estate of the King and his Consort Elizabeth, Queen of England’.5 The exclusion of the Queen from daily prayers foretells, with a chilling premonition, the future actions of Earl Warwick.
Meanwhile, the Wydevilles and their spouses settled down to serve their King and their country.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Queen’s Churching
Elizabeth knew well that her principal responsibility as Queen Consort was to produce the children who would assure a long line of Yorkist kings. That first happy event occurred on 11 February 1466, with the birth of an heir to Edward’s throne. The occasion was one of national import, with all estates – clergy, nobles and commoners – understanding that continued prosperity and peace required orderly governance and the lawful transfer of power from one generation to the next. T
he entire nation followed the progress of the Queen Consort’s pregnancy with great interest.
Near the time of birth, Elizabeth took to her private chambers. The walls and ceiling had been covered with rich tapestries to add warmth. Carpets on the floor and a canopy over the bed protected her against breezes and damp chills. The windows were covered with hangings so that she might lie in darkness or light according to her preference. When the birthing pains began, the Queen first went to a nearby chapel to receive communion, then returned to her lying-in chamber attended only by women, including her midwife. All supplies for the birth had been laid in, and any additional provisions were passed through the carefully guarded door to the women within the chamber.
All men – including husband, priest, and her physician Domenico de Serigo – were excluded from the birthing chamber, not to assure the mother privacy, but to protect men from the unclean act of giving birth. Childbirth resulted, after all, from the sin committed by Adam and Eve, and both mother and newborn child were considered fallen until purified by religious rites.
Fabyan’s Chronicle, in its only entry for the fifth year of Edward’s reign, records the anticipation and gossip that surrounded this birth of the first York heir:
This year, that is to say the 11th day of the month of February, was Elizabeth princess, and first child of King Edward, born at Westminster, whose christening was done in the Abbey with most solemnity; and the more because the king was assured of his physicians that the Queen was conceived with a prince; and especially of one named Master Dominic, by whose counsel great provision was ordained for christening of the said prince.
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