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When, in the autumn of 1464, Edward IV<\/a> informed his councillors that he had made a secret marriage, his choice of bride \u2013 Elizabeth Woodville<\/a> \u2013 went against all the conventions of his day. Kings were supposed to marry in order to cement a foreign alliance \u2013 Elizabeth would be the first English queen since the Norman Conquest<\/a>. Kings were also supposed to marry fellow royalty \u2013 Elizabeth was the daughter of a mere knight.<\/p>\n The secrecy of the ceremony was another problem. In the years ahead, the first parliament of Edward IV\u2019s brother, Richard III<\/a>, would denounce this as an \u201cungracious pretensed marriage\u201d, having taken place \u201csecretly, without Edition of Banns, in a private chamber, a profane place\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Worse still, in an age when many people believed a king\u2019s bride should be a virgin, Elizabeth was a widow. If that wasn\u2019t bad enough, her first husband had been killed in the Wars of the Roses<\/a> fighting for the Lancastrians against Edward IV\u2019s Yorkists. And she was even five years older than Edward \u2013 though, as the king pointed out, with two young sons by her first marriage, she had at least proved her fertility.<\/p>\n More seriously, it was later alleged that Edward had no right to marry Elizabeth at all, having been earlier secretly precontracted to someone else. The charge was raised in 1483, after Edward\u2019s death, when Richard of Gloucester signalled his intention to take the throne as Richard III on the grounds that Edward\u2019s sons \u2013 Richard\u2019s nephews \u2013 were illegitimate. One Bishop Stillington was said to have declared that he had earlier married Edward to Eleanor Butler (n\u00e9e Talbot), daughter to the Earl of Shrewsbury.<\/p>\n The evidence for Stillington\u2019s accusation is, at best, circumstantial \u2013 Eleanor was dead by 1483, so no one could ask her, and the earlier marriage hadn\u2019t been an issue in 1464. But for it to be raised at all shows that the marriage was, indeed, hugely controversial.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t only Elizabeth\u2019s lowly background and colourful past that proved so shocking to England\u2019s court, it was also the fact that she and Edward may have married for love. For a king to choose his wife for love or lust \u2013 for \u201cblind affection\u201d, as the Italian historian Polydore Vergil would put it at the beginning of the 16th century \u2013 was so odd as to amount almost to an indecency. So much so that it would later be alleged that Elizabeth\u2019s mother, Jacquetta, had used witchcraft<\/a> to bring the two together.<\/p>\n But is it true that Edward and Elizabeth genuinely loved one another? Popular early versions of their first meeting certainly suggest so. Several describe a lustful king trying to force himself on a virtuous lady, who refuses to live with him \u201cunchastely\u201d. One tale even has Elizabeth defending herself with a dagger; another has Edward holding a knife to her throat. But all the tales end happily. The king was so struck by the lady\u2019s virtue that he married her, in secret.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And yet it\u2019s possible that cold political calculation had some influence in Edward\u2019s decision to marry Elizabeth. The king may have seen some propaganda value in an alliance with a woman with connections to the Lancastrian<\/a> side in the Wars of the Roses, and even in choosing an English bride. Edward\u2019s choice of Elizabeth may also have signalled his growing independence from the powerful magnate Warwick the Kingmaker (who had alternative marriage plans for Edward). And it wasn\u2019t as if Edward was marrying a peasant \u2013 though Elizabeth\u2019s father was a mere knight, her mother sprang from the royal line of Luxembourg.<\/p>\n For all that, there\u2019s no reason to doubt that this was a match made chiefly on the grounds of personal attraction. In fact, it was perhaps the first such in English royal history \u2013 but not the last. It could be argued that it was with Elizabeth Woodville that the notion of marriage for love as a viable option entered the chronicles of British royalty. Following her lead, all of Elizabeth\u2019s royal grandchildren \u2013 Henry VIII<\/a>, Margaret Tudor<\/a> and Mary Tudor<\/a> \u2013 displayed a belief in their right to personal happiness; a belief that marriage and love should not be wholly different matters; a belief which, in May 2018, we witnessed once more in the wedding of Meghan Markle to Prince Harry.<\/p>\n Of all the charges levelled at Elizabeth down the centuries, the one that she unreasonably enriched her whole extensive family has arguably proved the most damaging.<\/p>\n The way the Woodvilles<\/a> and their connections hoovered up positions and advantageous marriages was certainly remarkable. (One of Elizabeth\u2019s brothers, aged around 20, was married to the Duchess of Norfolk, in her sixties.) A Milanese envoy reported that the Woodvilles \u201chad the entire government of this realm\u201d. But Elizabeth was only doing what any contemporary would have done, and it is debatable how much of the Woodville advancement was really implemented on the queen\u2019s initiative. In an age when kin was key, Edward himself may have used these marriages and gifts of offices to strengthen his own power base.<\/p>\n And on a broader point, what can we say of Elizabeth\u2019s role as queen consort? Clearly not everyone in the English court was enamoured of Edward\u2019s choice of wife, but the king himself certainly thought highly of his queen\u2019s abilities. So much so that, when he crossed the English Channel to lead an invasion of France in 1475, he left his small son, Edward, as \u2018Keeper of the Realm\u2019, and that son in Elizabeth\u2019s charge. The will he made then names her the first of 10 executors: \u201cOur said dearest wife in whom we have most singularly put our trust.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet despite being loaded with such great responsibilities, Elizabeth was not a political animal. There is no evidence of her having exercised overt political influence \u2013 and, having witnessed the influential role that Margaret of Anjou<\/a> played during her husband, Henry VI<\/a>\u2019s fraught reign, many of Elizabeth\u2019s contemporaries would have regarded this as a good thing.<\/p>\n Away from the political arena, Elizabeth seems to have had a lot going for her as a queen. She was beautiful, a patroness of arts and industry, and a gracious presence at ceremonies. For example, in 1472, she entertained the visiting Flemish courtier Lord Gruuthuse to a great banquet with dancing in her own chamber, and was noted as having ordered the resplendent cloth of gold hangings for his bed.<\/p>\n Above all she was fruitful, presenting Edward with 10 children, most of whom survived the perils of infancy. In other words, for as long as her husband was alive, Elizabeth seemed the model of what a late-medieval queen was supposed to be.<\/p>\n When in April 1483 Edward IV suddenly died, he left the throne to his 12-year-old son, another Edward, who was being raised in Ludlow, Shropshire under the tutelage of Elizabeth\u2019s talented brother Anthony Woodville. Elizabeth\u2019s first instinct may have been conciliatory \u2013 one contemporary chronicler described how she \u201cmost beneficently tried to extinguish every spark of murmuring and disturbance\u201d as the crown was passed to her son. But this wasn\u2019t enough to allay the fears of some people \u2013 notably Richard of Gloucester \u2013 that the boy would grow up wholly under Woodville influence. When Richard intercepted Edward and Anthony Woodville on the journey to London, Elizabeth immediately fled with her other children and her belongings into the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In June, Richard wrote to York for men to assist him \u201cagainst the queen, her bloody adherents and affinity\u201d who he claimed were trying to murder him. But he had not yet declared any intention of seizing the throne for himself; and it was on this basis that Elizabeth was persuaded \u2013 or coerced \u2013 into allowing her younger son, Richard, to be taken away from her to join his brother in the Tower of London<\/a>.<\/p>\n Immediately afterwards, the elder Richard\u2019s adherents started spreading stories that the marriage of Edward and Elizabeth was invalidated by the former king\u2019s precontract to Eleanor Butler. Their sons were thus declared illegitimate, and as the summer wore on the boys disappeared from view, their fate one of the most debated mysteries of British history.<\/p>\n Listen: In the opening episode of our exclusive eight-part podcast series on the Princes in the Tower, we explore how the mystery of their disappearance has captivated people for centuries \u2013 and still provokes fierce debate\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\nDid she marry for love \u2013 and, if so, why was that so shocking?<\/h3>\n
Did she exploit her power to enrich her cronies?<\/h3>\n
Could Elizabeth have saved her sons from Richard III?<\/h3>\n