It has to be repeated: Elizabeth Lambert’s destiny was at first that of all girls born in the city of London in about 1450 towards the end of the Hundred Years War. She was born in or close to a year of violence and destined never to escape from it throughout her childhood and adolescence. Then possibly in the early 1470s she herself acted with a different kind of violence, breaking away totally from her earlier life; a different life overwhelmed her personally, and she would surely have been influenced by those chaotic, uncertain times. Soon the Wars of the Roses had gathered momentum and as battle followed battle few people in England had been able to escape the invasive cruelty they engendered: it affected most households in the land, although some parts of the countryside escaped. Much of this violence involved, directly or indirectly, the man who was to change Elizabeth’s life later. However, it was his life that was now about to change, his personal life, and the way it happened cannot be omitted from this story.
Edward, known as the Earl of March when young, was about eight years older than Elizabeth Lambert and had been born in Rouen in 1442 when it was still in English hands. He was the eldest surviving son, as already described, of the Duke of York and his wife Cecily, who was a member of the Neville family. Edward’s younger brother, the second son, Edmund, was followed by George and finally the youngest son, Richard, was born in 1452, in England. Altogether Cecily gave birth to ten surviving children, five of them sons. Then, in 1464, Cecily announced, to everyone’s amazement, that she had been unfaithful to her husband before Edward’s birth and as a result the young king had been born illegitimate.
Why did she say this, and was it true? Maybe it was true, and in the twenty-first century there is still argument about it, started or at least developed in 2000 by Michael K. Jones, who claimed to have found the evidence among the archives of Rouen cathedral.1 The truly interesting point is why she risked making this shocking announcement, but the reason in fact was simple: she had to think of something, anything in fact that might influence her son Edward because he, unsurprisingly now that he was king, was thinking about marriage, and as far as Cecily was concerned, he had acted in an unpardonable, irresponsible way: he had chosen someone for his queen, but he had chosen the wrong woman. The trouble was, now that he was king of England, he had to acquire a suitable consort, and was this woman, in Cecily’s eyes at least, suitable? No, far from it. As the king’s mother, Cecily had an importance of her own and when she made statements about important events, those who were close to her listened.
As a teenage boy Edward had already displayed a natural talent for military activities and all that implied. When he was only twelve or so he was reported to be leading an army, although of course there would be experienced soldiers at his side. Children in the fifteenth century were not allowed to have a long childhood for they might easily lose their parents early, and had to be equipped for self-reliance. This is why Edward’s younger brother Edmund is said to have attended important council meetings in Westminster when he was only ten, and it would not be long before the York parents, especially Cecily, would begin to think well in advance about a useful, even prestigious marriage for her eldest son. After her husband’s death at Wakefield in 1460 she was on her own, although fortunately the Neville family was there to support her if necessary. But Cecily, as will be seen later, was a strong-minded woman quite capable of managing her own and her young son’s lives. Her second son, Edmund of York, had died with his father at Wakefield and Edward surely now received more attention than ever.
For the last few years his life had been dedicated to his military conquests, but now that he was king he would have to strengthen his position as a royal person as far as he could. The 1548 version of Edward Hall’s Chronicle, edited by Richard Grafton, and known as The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke, referred to the third year of King Edward IV’s reign2 by quoting the useful proverb ‘Marriage is destiny’: and this destiny, everyone believed at the time, would form the new and crucial development in the young man’s life. The king was no longer merely a brilliant teenage boy who had avenged his father’s death and had then won the decisive battle of Towton, thus temporarily at least defeating the Lancastrian hopes of retaining the throne. Henry VI was still in name king of England, but Edward assumed he had dismissed him and therefore in principle the country was now his own. However, the status of the new king had to be confirmed seriously as soon as possible, even if he had already been given two coronations, one secular, one religious.
It had to be admitted that the vote of approval for his accession had been a somewhat haphazard affair, and his advisers began to think about how his position could be strengthened and enhanced. There was one obvious way in which this could be done fairly quickly: he must acquire a suitable wife to be his queen who would provide him with legitimate heirs to inherit the kingdom. The new monarchy, it was assumed, would surely then be safe. Everyone in the country, not only the nobles, but the entire population (except of course the fervent Lancastrians, who had not yet lost all hope of recovery) assumed now that the king’s advisers would find a suitable young foreign princess quickly and negotiate an advantageous marriage settlement. It was the normal way to proceed.
In the meantime the hard-working middle classes, especially in the city of London, continued to advance their business, for they knew that when the king married he would need extra money to pay for the upkeep and staffing of his future household, meaning that he would come to them for even more loans. There was still no other way of raising additional funds beyond those allocated regularly by parliament and these were never enough. John Lambert would naturally be more than pleased that the country now had a Yorkist king, for the house of York appealed to him; perhaps they seemed more enterprising on all fronts, and enterprise was something that John Lambert and the city merchants understood and appreciated.
In fact the Earl of Warwick, the ‘Kingmaker’, as he had been named, had not wasted any time: he was already at work, making diplomatic overtures to various royal families in Europe. On Edward’s behalf he naturally aimed high, visiting France in the hope that the French king’s daughter would be available as the future queen of England. King Louis XI thought she was too young, but this shrewdly intelligent monarch was never short of ideas: in the hope of maintaining good relations with Edward and England he suggested that his wife’s sister might be suitable instead.
The French queen’s sister, Bona of Savoy, was an attractive girl, and sisterin-law to the king of France, but Warwick came to realise that she would not be a suitable queen of England, as her status was not high enough, and as a result the negotiations seemed to stall. Before they ended, however, Warwick, still in France, heard devastating news from home; to his horror he learnt that the young king in England had let him down: he had admitted that he was married already. As a result Warwick was made to look a fool and this thoughtless behaviour by the king was something he resented for the rest of his life. Bona herself and the French royal family were naturally more than disappointed: they felt they had been badly treated, insulted in fact, and later it fell to Shakespeare, in Henry VI, Part III, Act III, Scene 3, to give the young girl a chance to express her feelings, for she did not enjoy her status as a failed wife-to-be and failed queen of England. Either she had quickly become vindictive or else she sarcastically dismissed the whole incident as a waste of time for herself and especially for the French court. She instructed Warwick:
Tell him, in hope he’ll prove a widower shortly,
I’ll wear the willow garland for his sake.
She did not believe in polite regrets. It should be added here that fairly soon after the possible alliance with England had come to nothing Bona embarked upon a successful marriage to the Duke of Milan, so nobody had to feel distressed on her behalf. An earlier attempt by Warwick to find a suitable wife for Edward had led to even more trouble because he had been asked to approach the Spanish royal family and suggest that Isabella of Castile might be a good choice. Unfortunately however this too came to nothing and the young princess subsequently married the King of Portugal, a step which led without much delay to the union of that country with Spain. Later in life Isabella remembered her rejection by the English king and announced coldly that it had made her ‘turn away’ from England.3
It was later that Edward then surprised and disappointed everybody in England and abroad: he confirmed what had happened, admitting to his shocked advisers and the members of his family that he was in fact married already. A few months earlier he had made a totally unexpected choice, consulting nobody, as far is known, and then kept the secret for as long as he could.
There are many versions of this story; but Edward Hall and his editor Grafton told it to the Chronicle in various instalments.4 One day in April in 1463 the king was out hunting in Wychwood Forest near Stony Stratford in Northamptonshire and paid a visit to the Manor of Grafton, home of Jacquetta, former Duchess of Bedford, who was now married to her second husband, Sir Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers. Staying in the house at the time was one of her daughters by her earlier marriage, Dame Elizabeth Grey, a young widow whose husband, the Lancastrian supporter Sir John Grey, had been killed at the first battle of St Albans in 1455. Unfortunately for this Lancastrian family the battle had been won by Edward’s Yorkist forces and as a result Elizabeth, the widow, had lost much of her income. Now she hoped for the chance to plead with the new king for some improvement to her life, especially since she had two young sons to bring up.
According to legend she met the king as he rode through the forest, and, holding the two boys by their hands, she knelt down in front of him. Had it all been carefully planned? Most people, after all, knew that Edward was highly susceptible to attractive women, and Elizabeth Grey was certainly attractive, even if she was in difficulties.
She ‘found such grace in the King’s eyes’, the Hall-Grafton Chronicle continued, ‘that he not only favoured her suit but much more fantasised about her person, for she was a woman more of formal countenance, than of excellent beauty, but yet of such beauty and favour, that with her sober demeanour, lovely expression, and with a feminine smile, (neither too wanton nor too humble) besides, her tongue was so eloquent, and her wit so pregnant, she was able . . . to allure and make subject to her, the heart of so great a king.’
Before this meeting in the wood, legendary or not, Dame Elizabeth Grey may have had nothing more in mind than the restitution of what she had lost through her husband’s death, for after all Edward was clearly responsible, if indirectly, for that death. However, the young man found the widow infinitely more interesting than she had expected and looked her over with an experienced eye: ‘After that King Edward had well considered all the lineaments of her body, and the wise and womanly demeanour that he saw in her, he determined first to attempt if he might provoke her farther, if she would be his sovereign lady, promising her many gifts and fair rewards, affirming farther, that if she would thereunto condescend, she might, after being his paramour and concubine, be changed to his wife and lawful bedfellow: which demand she so wisely, and with such covert speech answered and impugned, affirming that she was for his honour far unable to be his spouse and bedfellow: So for her own poor honour, she was too good to be either his concubine or sovereign lady.’ Edward had not expected this response, for in the past his invitations, if that is the word, had hardly ever been refused. The chronicler continued: ‘that where he was a little before heated with the dart of Cupid, he was now set all on a hot burning fire, thanks to the confidence that he had in her perfect constancy and the trust that he had in her total chastity, and without any further deliberation he determined with him self clearly to marry with her . . .’
If the young king had first thought of asking advice he must soon have realised that everybody would attempt to make him change his mind. Although Edward was inclined to fancy any presentable woman he met and was already well experienced in the techniques of seduction, he was not used to rejection. According to later gossip he had actually threatened Elizabeth Grey with a dagger and was even more impressed when she continued to resist him.
So what was he to do? The answer was simple as far as he was concerned: he made up his mind that he would marry the woman who had had the courage to resist him, but he would marry her in secret. Which he did on 1 May 1463 in the presence of a very few people including her mother Jacquetta, the former Duchess of Bedford, who was presumably surprised but inevitably pleased by this match, which was now legal. In order to keep the secret no banns had been published and it is not clear where the ceremony took place: it could have been in Grafton Regis, perhaps in the Bedford family chapel, but it was not in a church. Other chroniclers wrote that the marriage was conducted by a priest and Fabyan added one picturesque detail, there was also present a boy ‘to help the priest sing’. Naturally, after this ceremony, the couple spent several nights together, still in secrecy, presumbly in the Bedford manor house. Edward, who explained his absence to his attendants by saying that he had been out hunting, seemed to be behaving like an adolescent boy, but he must surely have realised that moves were afoot at court to find him a suitable wife who would take her place as a suitable queen. He still seemed to think he could manage the situation somehow. In fact he succeeded in doing so for the entire summer of 1464. Then there was a Council meeting in September, held in Reading, and on that day there was no escape for the young king, since his future marriage was on the agenda. There was some discussion and eventually Edward was forced to admit that he was married already. Nobody was pleased, in fact everyone was horrified: the king of England simply had no right to act in such an irresponsible way.
‘When this marriage was bruited abroad,’ wrote the chronicler further, ‘foreign kings and princes marvelled and mused about it: noble men detested and disdained it: the common people grudged and murmured at it and all with one voice said that his inadvisable hasty wooing and speedy marriage, were neither meet for him being a king, nor consonant with the honour of so high an estate.’
It is worth remembering here that Shakespeare thought this story so entertaining that he used it in Henry VI Part III, Act III, Scene 2, transposing it into a London palace and inventing a rapid dialogue between the two parties, but still following the story that had by then become common knowledge; he also introduced Edward’s two younger brothers, George and Richard, who listened carefully to most of this dialogue as they stood apart, presumably in a corner; they found the whole thing something of a joke, and before they left the scene Clarence remarked, ‘he is the bluntest wooer in Christendom’. George, Duke of Clarence, was about thirteen years old at the time and his brother Richard was eleven.
Shakespeare presumably introduced this scene before he evoked Warwick’s efforts in France in order to emphasise that Edward had consciously deceived the man to whom he owed his kingship. The story was soon known all over Europe and gossip from Italy made it even more dramatic: it was said that Elizabeth had had a dagger of her own and used it to intimidate the king. So there was a choice for those who retailed the story – who took the defensive action and who was aggressive? In the end it did not matter, Elizabeth Grey had her way: if Edward wanted her in his bed, he must marry her.
Various efforts were made to change Edward’s mind but of course it was far too late. His new wife’s mother, Jacquetta, daughter of Pierre, the Count of St-Pol, was not of royal blood but her father had been one of the most powerful magnates in France, so she could not be dismissed as a woman with no aristocratic family behind her, as many people had complained. Edward’s mother, Cecily of York, had several arguments in addition to the astonishing statement of her own infidelity: she became even more furious and reminded her son that he had once entered into an arrangement, a kind of betrothal or pre-contract, with a certain Lady Elizabeth Lucy who had also borne one of his children, but Edward, undismayed, thought this to be a good sign: he could produce children (he had had at least two by this date, normal among the aristocracy of the time), his new wife already had some and so they would surely have some more together.
In desperation Cecily arranged an interview with Elizabeth Lucy who admitted that she had had sexual relations with Edward but there had been no betrothal. Her description of how her son was conceived, relayed by Sir Thomas More, gives an amusing indication of Edward’s charm. No woman could resist him: ‘Whereupon Dame Elizabeth Lucy was sent for. And albeit that she was by the king’s mother and many other put in good comfort to affirm that she was ensured unto the king, yet when she was solemnly sworn to say the truth, she confessed that they were never ensured’ (i.e. engaged).5
She then gave her own description of how the king had seduced her: ‘Howbeit,’ she said, ‘His Grace spoke so loving words unto her that she verily hoped he would have married her, and if it had not been for such kind words she would never have showed such kindness to him to let him so kindly [i.e. naturally] get her with child.’ Edward, well before his marriage, had already had years of practice in seducing young women and knew exactly how to approach Elizabeth Lucy. At the time a betrothal or engagement could in fact have been legally binding. Sir Thomas More adds, ‘This examination solemnly taken, when it was clearly perceived that there was none impediment, the king, with great feast and honourable solemnity married Dame Elizabeth Grey . . .’. As More’s editor adds, ‘More seems to describe Elizabeth’s coronation in 1465, not her secret marriage in 1464.’6 Fortunately, Elizabeth Lucy’s love-child, Arthur, was well brought up by the Lisle family, later ennobled by Henry VIII and lived until he was at least sixty.
By now of course even Cecily of York had more or less given up her protests but after Edward’s death another attempt was made to prove that he had been as good as married already when he secretly wed Elizabeth Grey. This refers to the possibility that he had been engaged to a Lady Eleanor Talbot, although there is no definite proof of this. However, an unexpected, surprising genealogical table was published in The Ricardian vol. XIV of 20047 in which this lady was listed as having made two marriages. Lady Eleanor was a daughter of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, by his second wife, Margaret Beauchamp of Warwick, and had been born in about 1436, one of five children. She married in 1449 or 1450 Thomas Butler of Sudeley but – according to the table on p. 90 – in 1461, she was widowed, upon which she acquired a second husband: Edward IV. This fact was mentioned after Edward’s death and used by the Duke of Gloucester, expecting to become Richard III, as one further alleged proof that Edward had been illegally married to Dame Elizabeth Grey and therefore his children could not legally succeed to the throne. However, in the meantime Eleanor had died, in 1468.
This is why Edward’s mother, Cecily, who could think of no other reason for urging her son against the marriage, had confessed, in her efforts to discourage him, that she herself, who had been pregnant so often, had experienced an adulterous relationship before Edward’s birth. Edward probably did not believe her and had silenced his mother’s complaints by the one statement that could not be contradicted: ‘I am king,’ he said. And it could have been argued that whether he was desperately in love or not he felt that now was the time to make it clear that he was thoroughly grown up and that nobody could tell him what to do.
It was later assumed that the Earl of Warwick, who had been made to look ridiculous when trying to find a wife for a king who was secretly married already, concealed his resentment for the time being. He swallowed his pride sufficiently when he was asked in 1465 to accompany Elizabeth to Reading Abbey where she was honoured as Queen, implying that the legality of the marriage had been accepted. Even stranger perhaps was the presence there also of Edward’s younger brother the Duke of Clarence who later, as is well known, disapproved of most things that Edward did and was to develop into an obvious enemy of the queen. However, it also became clear that these two men soon began to have a secret understanding which was totally anti-Edward and developed eventually into serious hostility.
Surely no romantic novelist could have invented a better story than King Edward’s marriage, and for a time few people seriously questioned what lay behind it. It was certainly not as romantic as it might have seemed and several aspects of it were challenged by J.R. Lander in his interesting essay on marriage and politics in Crown and Nobility 1450–1509 of 1976. He explained how the Woodvilles had not suddenly invented social progress through advantageous marriages; their relatives, the powerful Neville family, which included the Earl of Warwick, had achieved great success through this system over a long period. After all, the marriage contract, which had survived ever since the Christian Church had existed in England, was a well-known method of rising in the world for people who had no career, something true of virtually all women, and even of some men, among the aristocracy. How far there had been a secret plot to offer Elizabeth Grey, née Woodville, to the 22-year-old king can obviously never be known. At the same time it was wrong to dismiss her mother, Jacquetta, as a woman without class. She was, as noted earlier, the daughter of a French count while her brother John and her uncle, the Bishop of Thérouanne, had both played important roles during the reign of Henry V. In her way, she too had lived through a dramatic story with a romantic ending. She had married a middle-aged man and was soon left a young widow, which was precisely her daughter’s situation later. After the death of her second husband her dowry had been returned to her provided that she did not remarry without the king’s consent, but she disobeyed and did so, with the result that ‘their temerity had cost the couple the enormous fine of £1,000 which Cardinal Beaufort characteristically raised for them in return for the duchess’s life interest in various manors in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire’.8 Like mother, like daughter. There was even a rumour in France later that Cecily of York had been unfaithful to her husband with an English archer named Blaybourne, which may have been a joke, but at least it amused the French court.
In the meantime Jacquetta could have regretted whatever secret arrangements had been going on because she was later accused by one Thomas Wake of having secretly made plans herself to bring about the marriage through witchcraft.9 Wake was said to have taken to court a leaden image ‘made like a Man of Arms, containing the length of a man’s finger, and broken in the middle and made fast with a wire’. This was an example of the popular ‘image magic’ often used, or at least attempted, at the time, in the hope of clarifying difficult situations or resolving unpleasant ones which had seemed intolerable. It was thought that this could be the only explanation for young King Edward’s strange and unexpected behaviour, while the accusations became serious, so much so that the king felt he must take some action himself. The case came to court before the Bishop of Carlisle on 22 January 1470 with further allegations that the Duchess of Bedford had also made ‘two other images, one representing Edward IV and another Elizabeth Grey’, but the man who might have testified that these allegations were true, John Daunger, refused to do so. As a result the case collapsed. No doubt enemies of the Woodvilles and the Nevilles had been hoping that memories of the famous earlier accusations against Eleanor Cobham, Duchess of Gloucester, would be strong enough to help the case: the duchess had been condemned to public penance, prison and lifelong exile to the Isle of Man on what seemed like sound evidence: she was accused of enlisting a well-known magician or witch with the aim of harming an enemy and promoting her husband’s interest. She maintained that she was merely using the image-magic devices in a way that would help her to conceive a child, but nobody believed her; she was so ambitious, it was said, that she wanted to be queen.
In the end Elizabeth had been crowned in Westminster Abbey in 1464, her husband having insisted on a lavish ceremony. In accordance with tradition, since he had already been crowned, he did not attend himself, unless he watched the proceedings from a secret hiding place. However, most of those who had complained about the marriage were certainly in the Abbey, and even played some part in the ceremony, having realised that mere complaints would not change the situation. John Lambert also might well have attended the coronation service himself and his daughter, now grown up, may have been taken out to watch the queen on her way to or from Westminster Abbey. Was she enough of a daydreamer to start thinking about her own marriage?
Amidst the condemnations of this unpopular royal marriage and all that followed it in the way of favours for the Woodville family, Edward might have noticed that his wife, Elizabeth, had seven unmarried sisters who, unsurprisingly, did not stay unmarried very long. Many other arranged and profitable marriages took place among endless criticism, especially one union between John Woodville, a young man of about twenty, to a wealthy widowed lady, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, Katherine Neville; who was close to seventy and had already been married three times. Some critics even said she was eighty but this has been disproved. The Woodvilles did not invent the system of advantageous marriage but they obviously carried on the tradition with enthusiasm and it cost them nothing for Edward, presumably, paid most or all the expenses and allotted useful appointments to practically any of his wife’s relatives who needed them. Had he been desperately in love or had he optimistically hoped that he could deal with any difficult situation that might arise? He was a brilliant strategist on the battlefield but he must have realised by now that the social scene was infinitely more difficult to manage.
Edward was probably faithful to his wife for at least a short time and it should be remembered that they had in all ten children (of whom three died in infancy). Unfortunately in one sense for her, the queen gave birth to three daughters before England gained two princes, Edward and Richard, but she could at least feel that she had been the dutiful royal wife and mother.
Edward was the Don Juan of medieval monarchs: he could never resist attractive girls or older women, but it is not clear how soon he acquired new mistresses at this stage of his life. Probably he did not wait very long but did not bring them to any palace where the queen was in residence; he probably arranged some small nearby house where he could visit them easily and secretly. Dominic Mancini later gave a memorable description of Edward’s way of dealing with the women he fancied: ‘He was licentious in the extreme: moreover it was said that he had been most insolent to numerous women after he had seduced them, for, as soon as he grew weary of dalliance, he gave up the ladies much against their will to the other courtiers. . . . He overcame all by money and promises and having conquered [the women] he dismissed them. Although he had many promoters and companions of his vices, the more important and especial were three relatives of the Queen, her two sons and one of her brothers.’10 How could anyone have imagined that not too many years were to pass before one of these sons, the Marquess of Dorset, was believed to be the lover of Jane Shore, the former Elizabeth Lambert, either sharing her with the king when the latter reached his early middle age, or inheriting her after the death of Lord Hastings?
In the meantime, what was happening in the life of the young Elizabeth Lambert? Her parents, like everyone else, would have been watching all these developments at King Edward’s court with fascination. As for Elizabeth, she was probably not old enough to understand all the complex political problems raised by the king’s choice of a queen, but she might have enjoyed the romantic story of the secret marriage.
Now however it was her own marriage that was to preoccupy the Lambert family, for in 1465 she would be at least fifteen, and that was very grown up. In fact, given the tantalising lack of records about her life, there is even a faint possibility that she might have been married already.