Death of Mary of York, second daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, at Greenwich Palace, London, buried at St Georges Chapel, Windsor

Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Family

Possible date for Edward IVs secret marriage Elizabeth Woodville (born 1437), daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers, the widow of a Lancastrian.  It was later claimed that he was at that time already – also secretly – married to Eleanor Talbot, who was still alive at this time.  Therefore the marriage to Elizabeth Woodville would be bigamous.

Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville

Birth of Richard of Shrewsbury, second son and sixth child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, at Shrewsbury.

Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Family

Henry VII (portrait at National Portrait Gallery, London)

Marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York

On 18 January 1486, Henry VII  (Tudor) married Elizabeth of York, eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.  It seems Henry needed to be urged by Parliament to make good his promise to marry Elizabeth, before actually doing so.  Plans for Elizabeth’s coronation were only made in September 1487 and she was finally crowned on 25 November 1487, more than a year after giving birth to their first son, Arthur.

Elizabeth died on 11 February 1503 at Richmond Palace.  Henry died six years later, on 21 April 1509, also at Richmond Palace.  They are buried next to each other in Westminster Abbey.

Reference:  Rosemary Horrox, ‘Elizabeth (1466–1503)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.  (online accessed: 27 January 2011)

Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth of York, Elizabeth Woodville, Henry Tudor

Birth of Anne of York, seventh child and fifth daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, at Westminster Palace.  Married to Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Surrey, the son of Richard’s close associate John Howard.  Died 11 November 1511, buried first at Thetford Priory, Norfolk, but relocated after the Reformation to the Church of St Michael the Archangel, Framlingham.

Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Family

Birth of Edward, eldest son and fourth child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.

Tags: Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Family

On Thursday evening, 21 August 2014, Abbey’s Books in Sydney’s CBD hosted a launch for our member Isolde Martyn’s newest book, The Golden Widows. The publishers, Harlequin Mira, provided a lovely selection of wine and hors d’oeuvres for the after-work crowd, which included a good turnout of fellow Ricardians and Plantagenet Society members, many of whom queued to buy the book and have it signed by the author.

The official program began when the book’s editor spoke to those assembled and then introduced Isolde who gave a gracious talk thanking everyone involved with the publishing of this book. She explained that the story is that of Lancastrian widow, Elizabeth Woodville, who later married King Edward IV, and the Yorkist sister of Warwick the Kingmaker, Kate Neville, also newly widowed. Life in the 15th century was hard for all widowed women, even the young and beautiful – wherever their loyalties lay in the War of the Roses.

With her love and extensive knowledge of the late medieval era and armed with finely honed historical research skills, Isolde has produced a new book that promises to be as satisfying to her fans as have her previous works.

You can find out more about previous Isolde’s books by visiting her website.

The Golden Widows is available in Australia and New Zealand in print format or as an e-book through Amazon etc.

Tags: Books, Elizabeth Woodville, NSW Branch

Dr John Ashdown-Hill’s research was instrumental in finding Richard III’s remains and confirming that the skeleton was really his.  This lead earlier this year to a new edition of his book The Last Days of Richard III, originally published in 2010.  The title of the new edition The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig tells us where it has been updated.

In July he has a new book coming out – Royal Marriage Secrets.  It covers quite a wide time-scale – ending up with the little known case involving the present Queen’s grandfather.  But it contains quite a bit of Ricardian interest.  Edward IV Eleanor and Elizabeth, of course, but also when is a Tudor not a Tudor, and samples of medieval love spells and potions in case anyone should want to try them!  I have pre-ordered my copy and am waiting for it with eager anticipation.

Meanwhile John has been spending time underground in the burial vault of the Duke and Duchess of Clarence.  Are they still there?  How did George – and Isabel – really die?  Why did George turn out the way he did?  And what did he really look like?  He is trying to answer these and other questions in a new book called The Third Plantagenet.  According to the Book Depository it should be out on 3 March 2014.

The picture on the left shows John Ashdown-Hill’s suggestion for the cover design. (Picture supplied by John Ashdown Hill)

Tags: Books, Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, George of Clarence, Richard III

Literature Matters:  The White Queen

The White Queen by Philippa Gregory, World Book Night edition, 2013

I only read this book because my local library gave me a free copy on World Book Night – and by the time I’d finished, I was sincerely glad I hadn’t paid for it.

The underlying story is good (based on the incredible life of Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of Edward IV, it could hardly be anything else); and two pages of bibliographic references show that the author has done her homework. That she has drawn from some of the more lurid sources isn’t surprising – this is, after all, a romantic novel – thus we see Elizabeth waylaying Edward for their first meeting as a supplicant clutching the hands of her two little boys; and shortly after, the hackneyed ‘death before dishonour’ scene in which she grabs his dagger and threatens to cut her throat rather than be seduced. The heroine and her mother are both shown as practising witches, capable of whistling up storms, causing Richard of Gloucester to lose the use of his arm and, of course, ensnaring Edward; and throughout, Elizabeth harks back to her supposed descent from the French water-goddess Melusina. (The legend of Melusina and her ducal lover crops up periodically, in passages intended to echo Elizabeth and Edward’s relationship. I found these chokingly annoying, but luckily they appear in italics so can be easily spotted and skipped without detriment to the main narrative).

The bulk of the story is told in the first person, present tense, by Elizabeth Woodville. This gives The White Queen a certain freshness and immediacy, although the style is difficult to carry off plausibly in this genre, and I wasn’t overly impressed by Gregory’s attempt. The early chapters are riddled with references to Edward as a ‘boy’; and while he might have been five years Elizabeth’s junior, I can’t imagine her (or any 15th century lady) using the term for a man well into his majority – let alone for a proven warrior who had reigned as king for three years by the time the story starts. Much of the dialogue is clunky and full of over-explication; this may be necessary to communicate the background history to the reader, but it makes for some pretty unlikely conversations between characters of the time. And Gregory wins my personal award for ‘Most Excruciating Bit of Dialogue in Any Historical Novel’ with Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford’s remark to Cecily, Duchess of York, regarding the latter’s son George, Duke of Clarence: ‘…what would one call him?’ She pauses to wonder what one would call Cecily’s favourite son, then she finds the words: ‘An utter numpty.’ Unbelievable! Bad enough to employ such a grotesque anachronism; even worse to deliberately draw attention to it as though it’s clever and funny. (I guess Gregory thinks it is; she must be laughing all the way to the bank to have fans who pay good money to read such ghastly stuff).

To me, the best parts of The White Queen were the lively battle scenes (possibly because they’re not told in Elizabeth’s voice), the imaginative resolution of the ‘Princes in the Tower’ mystery and Elizabeth’s relationship with Richard III in the closing chapters. But altogether I found it an unsatisfying experience which left me baffled as to why this author is so popular – she’s certainly no Jean Plaidy or Antonia Fraser. Her graceless prose has nothing beautiful to wallow in, nothing substantial to get the teeth into; her sentences are short, her language so basic that (bar a modicum of sex and violence) she might be writing for children. Maybe that’s the appeal – it’s quick, simple, undemanding bland pulp. But if The White Queen is a fair representation of Gregory’s work, it’ll be the first and last of it I read – and I sure as hell won’t be watching the forthcoming TV adaptation!

Conclusion? Don’t waste your money. Buy David Baldwin’s non-fiction biography of Elizabeth Woodville instead; it beats this hands-down for readability and interest.

The above was first published on 16 May 2013 on Helen’s website ‘Helen Rae Rants!‘.  We thank her for permitting us to publish it here as well.

Tags: Elizabeth Woodville