Married BEF 1460 to Grey, John of Groby, Sir, Lord Ferrers 7th

Child 1: Grey, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset 1st, b. BEF 1461
Child 2: Grey, Richard, Sir, b. BEF 1461

Also called Wydeville
Married BEF 1460 to Grey, John of Groby, Sir, Lord Ferrers 7th

Child 1: Grey, Thomas, Marquess of Dorset 1st, b. BEF 1461
Child 2: Grey, Richard, Sir, b. BEF 1461

Elizabeth Woodville was born in 1437, the product of a marriage nearly as scandalous as the one which she was to enter into in 1464. Her father, Richard Woodville was of an old English family of minor gentry, and in 1436 he had been fortunate enough to accompany Jacquetta, the Duchess of Bedford on a voyage from England to Rouen. Not long afterwards, Jacquetta’s husband died, and she subsequently married Richard Woodville. In contrast to her second husband, Jacquetta was of a noble European family - she was the daughter of the Count of St. Pol and a descendant of the Emperor Charlemagne. She had married John, Duke of Bedford, a younger brother of King Henry V who was therefore a prince of the highest rank in England - the marriage made her the first lady in England, since the current King, Henry VI was a child and had no Queen. On the death of her husband, the Duke of Bedford, she inherited his estates, making her extremely wealthy.

It was therefore not surprising that the marriage of this eminent noblewoman to a relatively low-born husband created a scandal. Jacquetta’s brother, the Count of St. Pol, disowned her, and in England the couple were fined £1,000 (in those days a great deal of money) for marrying without the King’s consent. When the child King Henry VI entered maturity the royal attitude towards them softened somewhat, and Richard Woodville was created Baron Rivers.

They had numerous children, one of whom was Elizabeth Woodville. Like her mother, it was her second, not her first marriage that proved controversial. Her first husband was a well-born knight, Sir John Grey of Groby to whom she bore two children. All this was taking place against the background of the Wars of the Roses and the Woodville family, and Elizabeth’s husband Sir John Grey were part of the Lancastrian faction. In 1461, Sir John was killed at the Battle of Towton, where the Yorkist claimant to the throne of England, Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians and secured the throne.

It is not known exactly where and when the new King Edward IV met or became attracted to Elizabeth Woodville, all that is known is that they were married secretly on May 1, 1464. It is almost certainly true that as the historian Polydore Vergil wrote, Edward was led into marriage, “by blind affection and not by the rule of reason” for Elizabeth herself was universally described as a beauty. The marriage was deeply unpopular with almost everyone. For a start, Elizabeth Woodville came from a Lancastrian family; she was also low-born (notwithstanding the lineage of her mother), the marriage shattered the plans of several nobleman to arrange a marriage for Edward IV with a foreign princess, and she also had a large family who began to demand favours from their new royal relative.


Elizabeth Woodville's arms. Click here for the complete blazon.

Edward IV responded to the Woodvilles demands by arranging a series of brilliant marriages for his Queen’s siblings. Her sister Katherine was married to a resentful Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham (a nobleman of very distinguished lineage), and even worse, her brother John (aged 20) entered into a “diabolical marriage” with the Duchess of Norfolk who was extremely wealthy and was also 40 years older than her bridegroom. The Woodville family were (according to a contemporary writer) “detested by the nobles because they who were ignoble, and newly-made men were advanced beyond those who far excelled them in breeding and wisdom”. The Queen herself was described as “a busy and negotiating woman.”

The magnificent arms granted to Elizabeth Woodville by her husband were a perfect reflection of her position. Five of the six quarterings are coats of arms derived from her mother Jacquetta’s family. Nestled in the lowliest bottom right-hand corner are Elizabeth’s parental arms of Woodville. Technically arms should only be inherited through the mother, if she was an heiress - i.e. she had no surviving brothers, whereas Jacquetta did have a surviving brother. Even if this was the case then the mother’s arms were usually placed in a subordinate position on the shield to the arms of the father. For Elizabeth Woodville to bear such arms was to trample over the rules of heraldry, just as surely as she and her family had trampled over the conventions of English social hierarchy.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this, is that the Woodvilles felt the need to have this heraldic validation of their lineage. The arms fooled no one, for the family were still clearly regarded as upstarts by many of their contemporaries, but they saw it as necessary to maintain the image of being nobly born; to at least go through the motions, in order to function in that kind of society. It was rather like a wealthy businessman today attempting to break into the world of the country aristocracy by buying a stately mansion and going hunting every week. Another factor in the adoption of these arms might have been that Edward IV was influenced by the fact that his rival Henry VI’s wife, Margaret of Anjou had magnificent European quarterings of her own, and that he felt his own Queen should be able to equal them.

The attempt by the Woodvilles to gatecrash the higher echelons of society was to have serious political consequences. It was partly their unpopularity which led, in 1483 on the death of Edward IV, to the usurpation of the throne by his younger brother, the infamous Richard III. Edward IV and Elizabeth’s son, King Edward V was only a child and would presumably have fallen under the influence of his mother and her family had he continued to reign, and this was unacceptable to many noblemen. One of the prime movers behind Richard’s usurpation was Henry, Duke of Buckingham who had so resented his enforced marriage to Katherine Woodville. Edward V and his younger brother Richard, Duke of York were subsequently murdered. Although after the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, Elizabeth recovered some of her influence when the new king Henry VII married her daughter Elizabeth of York, she was to end her days in forced seclusion in a convent, probably as punishment for plotting against Henry VII.

Queen's College, Cambridge is entitled to use Elizabeth's arms, as she was one of their patronesses.  Ironically, it is the arms of Margaret of Anjou's (Elizabeth Woodville's rival as queen) which are more frequently used, as she was the founder of the College.

The complete blazon of Elizabeth Woodville's arms:
Quarterly of six: 
1st (for Luxembourg) argent, a lion rampant, double-queued gules, crowned or.
2nd (for Baux) quarterly, 1st and 4th gules, an estoile argent; 2nd and 3rd azure, semé-de-lis or.
3rd (for Cyprus) barry of ten argent and azure, a lion rampant gules.
4th (for Ursins) gules, three bends argent, on a chief per fess argent and or, a rose gules.
5th (for St. Pol) gules, three pales vair, on a chief or, a label of five points azure.
6th (for Woodville) argent, a fess and a canton conjoined gules.