The Last Knight Errant: Sir Edward Woodville & the Age of Chivalry by Christopher Wilkins Read Free Book Online

about her. It sounded a good opportunity and so the young King, a great womanizer and ‘licentious in the extreme’, came to see for himself. Elizabeth was certainly beautiful and predictably took the opportunity of appealing ‘that she might be restored unto such small lands as her late husband had given her in jointure’. She must have been quite enchanting:
    The King was moved to love her by reason of her beautiful person and elegant manner. But neither his fits nor his threats could prevail against her jealously guarded virtue. When Edward held a dagger to her throat in an attempt to make her submit to his passion, she held still and showed no sign of fear, preferring rather to die than live unchastely with the King. This incident only fanned the flames of Edward’s desire. He judged her worthy to be a queen whose virtue could withstand the approaches of even a royal lover.
    So reported Dominic Mancini, an Italian cleric visiting England in 1483, who was providing political intelligence for his master in France.
    Apart from his lack of success with Elizabeth, the King had other pressing problems: rebellion in the north and an empty exchequer. Reacting to the emergency, he postponed the opening of parliament, sold royal jewels, borrowed money, sent his artillery on and, summoning troops to meet him at Leicester, rode out from London on 28 April 1464.
    At Stony Stratford he paused, told the court he was going hunting and rode the four miles over to Grafton. There he married Elizabeth on 1 May 1464 at a service in the little chantry at Grafton which was held in the presence of her mother, four or five others ‘and a young man who helped the priest to sing’. Afterwards King Edward took his new wife straight to bed. When he eventually reappeared at his court he told them he was exhausted from ‘hunting’ and went to his official bed.3
    He went hunting for the next two days and then rode off to run his war. It was the first time an English king had married for love or lust4 and it remained secret until four months later when the matter of finding a ‘befitting bride’ for the King was raised at a meeting of the Great Council. ‘Perchance our choice may not be to the liking of everyone present,’ replied the King, adding, ‘nevertheless we will do as it likes us.’ 5 He then declared that he had married Elizabeth Woodville. The Council was horrified. Not only did they regard it as the loss of a strategic opportunity but also as most unsuitable.
    The King may have argued that it was better to have an English bride than a foreign one; that her mother was sister to the Count de St Pol, descended from great men such as Simon de Montfort and had been wedded to the much admired Duke of Bedford; or that the heroic Black Prince had married a divorcee with five children. It would not have made any difference. The Council knew that Elizabeth had neither land nor money, was five years older than the King and that her father’s family were not even proper nobles. They were promoted gentry who had risen with little more than courage, ability and good looks. Rather more importantly it meant giving up the opportunity of a useful diplomatic marriage. Nevertheless this marriage was to shape Edward Woodville’s life.
     
    The last 30 years had been an exciting time for nobles and knights, with wars in France and then war at home. Edward’s father, Sir Richard Woodville, had been a captain in the French wars under the great Duke of Bedford and then, in the campaign following the Duke’s death in 1435, he had fallen in love with Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the Duke’s young widow. She was 20 years old, ‘handsome and lively’, recently appointed a ‘Lady of the Order of the Garter’ and a rare good match for a mere professional soldier. Her marriage to Bedford had been diplomatic, so she was available for love and came with an inheritance of one-third of his English income of £4,000 a year, together with the share of his huge