Elizabeth Woodville: The White Queen’s Real Story, From Grafton to Bermondsey

I have a soft spot for Elizabeth Woodville, as I think she got a bit of a bad rap. She gets blamed for an awful lot. Greedy relatives, a ruined king, even witchcraft, depending on who you read. And most of what people “know” about her comes from television, not from the people who saw her.

There’s a lot more to her than the TV version. She rescued a Cambridge college that her husband’s enemy had founded. She got a king to swear, in front of the mayor of London, that he wouldn’t harm her girls. And she died with practically nothing to her name,

She was Edward IV’s queen from their secret wedding in 1464 until he died in 1483. She was the mother of both the Princes in the Tower and Elizabeth of York, so Henry VIII was her grandson. She died at Bermondsey Abbey in 1492.

Was Elizabeth Woodville a Commoner?

Not really. Her father, Sir Richard Woodville, was a Northamptonshire knight. That part is true. But her mother was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the widow of the Duke of Bedford, who was Henry V’s brother. 

Jacquetta came from one of Europe’s grandest families, and she married her husband’s handsome young chamberlain without the king’s permission. They were fined for it.

So Elizabeth, born around 1437 at Grafton in Northamptonshire, was half minor gentry and half European nobility. What made her “unsuitable” in 1464 wasn’t her blood, but that she was an English widow with two sons, no foreign alliance and no fortune, and kings were meant to marry for all three.

Did She Really Meet Edward IV Under an Oak Tree?

There may be some truth to it, but it wasn’t quite the romantic scene the TV series The White Queen would have you believe.

Her first husband, Sir John Grey, died fighting for the Lancastrian side at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461. His family lands were caught in the fallout, and Elizabeth needed help securing them for her two boys. The idea that she pleaded her case in person with the king fits what we know of her situation.

The oak tree is local tradition. For centuries, people near Grafton pointed out the “Queen’s Oak” where she was supposed to have waited by the road with her sons. It’s a lovely picture, but there is no evidence.

Why Was Her Marriage to Edward IV Such a Scandal?

Because nobody knew about the marriage for five months, and the most powerful man in England was busy arranging a different wedding.

The marriage is traditionally dated to May 1, 1464, at Grafton, with only Elizabeth’s mother and a couple of ladies there. There’s no document to prove the date. We do know, however, that Edward kept it quiet until a council meeting at Reading Abbey in late September 1464, when he finally introduced Elizabeth as his queen.

Meanwhile, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the Kingmaker, had been negotiating with France to marry Edward to Bona of Savoy, sister-in-law of Louis XI. He found out about the secret wedding at the same time as everyone else. I’d love to have seen his face.

Then came the Woodville weddings. Elizabeth had a dozen brothers and sisters, and over the next few years many of them married into England’s richest families. 

The one that really raised eyebrows was her brother John, about 20, marrying Katherine Neville, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk. She’d been widowed three times and was in her sixties. One chronicler called it a “diabolical marriage.” Ouch.

Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey on May 26, 1465. By 1469, Warwick was in open revolt, and Elizabeth’s father and her brother John were executed after the Battle of Edgecote. Her mother was even accused of witchcraft, a charge that later stuck to Elizabeth herself.

What Did Elizabeth Woodville Do for Queens’ College, Cambridge?

Queens’ College is still standing on the banks of the Cam, and it owes her more than most visitors realize.

Queens’ College was founded in 1448 by Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI. When Edward IV took the throne, a college named after a Lancastrian queen was in a sticky spot. In about March 1465, before she was even crowned, Elizabeth stepped in and became its patroness “as true foundress by right of succession.” In 1475, she gave the college its first statutes.

The college still counts her as its second foundress. It’s why the apostrophe in Queens’ sits after the s. Two queens, one Lancastrian and one Yorkist, on opposite sides of a civil war, and both get the credit.

I love that. It shows a queen who protected something her husband’s enemy had built, at a time when nobody would have blamed her for letting it fade away.

What Happened When She Took Sanctuary at Westminster Abbey?

Twice Elizabeth took sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, 13 years apart, and the two stays could hardly have ended more differently.

The first time was in 1470. Warwick had switched sides and put Henry VI back on the throne, and Edward had fled abroad. On October 1, 1470, a heavily pregnant Elizabeth slipped out of the Tower of London at night with her daughters and her mother and claimed sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. She’s thought to have lodged in the abbot’s house.

Her son, the future Edward V, was born in sanctuary on November 2, 1470. Nobody wrote down the birth itself. What survives are the bills. Lady Scrope was paid £10 to attend the queen during her confinement, and a London butcher called William Gowld kept the household fed, which can’t have been cheap.

Edward came back for them the following spring. He took London on April 11, 1471, and went straight to Westminster to find his wife and children. Barnet came three days later and Tewkesbury in May, but by then Elizabeth was out of the abbey and a queen again.

The second time came in the spring of 1483, a few weeks after Edward IV died suddenly at 40. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, took charge of her 12-year-old son, the new king, and arrested her brother, Anthony, and her son, Richard Grey. 

Elizabeth ran for the abbey with her younger son and her daughters. She moved in so fast that her servants broke down part of the abbey walls to get her furniture and chests through. There was no happy exit this time.

Why Did She Hand Over Her Younger Son in 1483?

It’s a hard one, and without being there, it’s hard to know why she did what she did, but if I had to hazard a guess, I’d say she was cornered and given promises.

On June 16, 1483, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Bourchier, arrived at the abbey with a delegation as Gloucester’s soldiers surrounded Westminster. They argued that the young king was lonely and needed his brother for the coronation. Elizabeth let nine-year-old Richard, Duke of York, go.

Within days, Gloucester claimed Edward IV’s marriage was never valid because of an earlier promise to another woman. On June 26, he took the throne as Richard III. The two boys were seen less and less in the Tower, and by the end of the year most people believed they were dead. What happened to the princes is still argued over today.

It’s easy to judge her. I don’t. She was a woman in a church, surrounded by soldiers, being told by the most senior churchman in England that her son would be safe.

Why Did Elizabeth Woodville Make Peace With Richard III?

People have been furious with her over this for 500 years. She made a deal with the man who’d taken her sons.

The terms are on record. On March 1, 1484, Richard III stood before the lords, bishops, mayor, and aldermen of London and swore that if Elizabeth’s daughters left sanctuary, they wouldn’t be harmed or locked in the Tower. 

He promised to marry them to “gentlemen born,” give them marriage portions, and pay Elizabeth 700 marks a year. Shortly after, she and the girls came out.

Look at what she’d been living with. She’d been crammed into the abbey for ten months with five daughters, under guard, with the monks no doubt counting the cost. 

Richard was in his early thirties. They could have been stuck there for decades. The other way out was to take the veil and give up any future for the girls.

So she took the deal and got her daughters out alive, whatever it cost her pride. And at the same time she’d been quietly working with Margaret Beaufort to marry her eldest daughter, Elizabeth of York, to Henry Tudor. That plan won out at Bosworth in 1485.

If you ask me, she was playing a much longer game than anyone gave her credit for.

Why Did She Retire to Bermondsey Abbey?

Nobody knows for sure, and historians disagree on this one. Her daughter, Elizabeth of York, married Henry VII in January 1486, and Elizabeth Woodville regained her title and lands. Then on February 12, 1487, she moved into Bermondsey Abbey in Southwark, and her lands were passed to her daughter.

That same month, the Lambert Simnel plot was brewing, and some historians think Henry VII pushed her out because he didn’t trust her. Others, like Arlene Okerlund, point to evidence from July 1486 that she was already planning to retire. 

A widow moving into an abbey wasn’t unusual, and Bermondsey had a long royal connection.

I lean toward a bit of both. She was in her fifties and had buried a husband, two brothers, and at least three sons. A quiet life may have looked rather nice. 

But she was also still being talked about as a bride for James III of Scotland in 1487, which hardly sounds like a woman Henry had written off.

How Did Elizabeth Woodville Die, and What Did Her Will Say?

She made her will at Bermondsey on April 10, 1492. It’s short, and it breaks my heart a little.

She asked to be buried with Edward IV at Windsor, without “pompes entreing or costlie expensis.” 

Then she left her blessing to her children and admitted that she had “no wordely goodes to do the Quene’s Grace, my derest doughter, a pleaser with.” A former queen of England, with nothing to leave the current queen but her love.

She died on June 8, 1492. Her funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on June 12 was very plain. One onlooker complained it wasn’t fitting for a queen, though plain was exactly what she’d asked for.

For centuries, nobody knew what killed her. Then in 2019, Euan Roger of the National Archives drew attention to a 1511 letter by the Venetian ambassador Andrea Badoer. It says the queen-widow, “mother of King Edward,” had died of plague. 

If he was right, it would explain the hurried, quiet burial. The letter was written 19 years after her death, so I’d take it as a strong clue rather than proof.

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