The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family (33 page)

It is possible, however, that Elizabeth Woodville had another brother living – an illegitimate one. Anthony Woodville’s surviving papers show payments of wages to a Richard Woodville.
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This is unlikely to be his legitimate brother Richard, who had his own estates to occupy his time; illegitimate sons, by contrast, could often be found in the service of their legitimate brothers. Moreover, a Richard Woodville attended Prince Arthur’s christening in 1486 as an esquire for the king’s body.
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This again would not be the legitimate Richard Woodville, who had become Earl Rivers after Richard III’s defeat at Bosworth and thus would have been referred to as such. The surname could be coincidence, of course, but given the prominence of the queen’s relations at Arthur’s christening, it seems far more likely that there was a family connection between them and this esquire. Finally, following the death of Edward Woodville, Henry VII had continued to send English forces to assist the Bretons. One of the commanders he sent was a Sir Richard Woodville, who was killed at Nantes in 1490.
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Taken together, these references strongly suggest that before his marriage to Jacquetta, or even during it – perhaps during one of Jacquetta’s many pregnancies – the elder Richard Woodville fathered an illegitimate son, who took up his brother Edward’s Breton cause and died in it.

As for Richard, 3rd Earl Rivers, he had lived as quietly as an earl as he had as a knight. He played his part at court ceremonies, and had joined the king on his northern progress of early 1486.
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During Henry VII’s reign, he served on commissions of the peace in Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire and was among those commissioned to take musters of archers. Richard was also commissioned to investigate treasons, felonies, and conspiracies in Hereford in 1486 and to try petitions presented to Parliament in 1487.
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Even as an earl, he seems to have made no effort to look for a wife.

The third Earl Rivers died on either 6 March 1491 or 25 April 1491; as he had made his will on 20 February 1491, the earlier date appears more likely.
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He named his nephew the Marquis of Dorset as his heir and ordered that he be buried at St James at Northampton in a place made ready. Rivers asked that Dorset be a good lord to one William Hartwell, apparently Rivers’s deputy as keeper of Sawcey (Sausy) Forest, ‘for he had never none advantage by me but ever labour and pain’.
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Finally, he asked that Dorset sell as much underwood at Grafton as was needed to purchase a bell ‘for a remembrance of the last of the blood’.

On 28 June 1491, Henry VII and Elizabeth of York’s second son, Henry, was born. The arrival of the future Henry VIII into the world did not excite much comment, and it is not known whether Elizabeth Woodville attended his birth. He would never come to know his maternal grandmother, for her own eventful life was drawing to a close.

The dowager queen wrote her will on 10 April 1492.
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Styling herself as ‘by the grace of God Queen of England, late wife to the most victorious Prince of blessed memory Edward the Fourth’, she asked that she be buried next to the king at Windsor, ‘without pompous entering or costly expenses’. Elizabeth requested that her ‘small stuff and goods’ be disposed to satisfy her debts and to provide for the welfare of her soul. Having ‘no worldly goods to do the Queen’s grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children, according to my heart and mind’, she left Queen Elizabeth, and her other children, her blessing.

Elizabeth died at Bermondsey on 8 June 1492.
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Two days later, her body was taken by water to Windsor, in accordance with her wishes; according to the herald’s report, the late queen was buried immediately. The late queen was accompanied by two of her executors, John Ingleby, the Prior of the Charterhouse at Sheen, and Dr Thomas Brent, her chaplain; by her cousin, Edward Haute; by an unnamed gentlewoman; and by Grace, described as an illegitimate daughter of Edward IV. Nothing is known about Grace other than this single mention of her in the account of Elizabeth’s funeral, but her presence suggests that Elizabeth did not greatly resent the products of her husband’s extramarital flings.

The next day, workers constructed a hearse – a structure built around a coffin (or, here, a burial site) which could hold candles and banners as well as accommodate the most important mourners. Elizabeth’s hearse, the herald noted, was:

    such as they use for the common people, with four wooden candlesticks above it and a cloth of black cloth of gold over it, with four wooden candlesticks of silver and gilt every each having a taper of no great weight, and two escutcheons of her arms pinned on that cloth.

Elizabeth’s three unmarried daughters, Anne, Katherine, and Bridget, arrived at Windsor on 12 June. Anne would later marry Thomas Howard, then Earl of Surrey, while Katherine would marry William Courtenay, the heir to the earldom of Devon. Bridget was a nun at Dartford Priory. Queen Elizabeth, who would bear a short-lived daughter, Elizabeth, on 2 July 1492, had already taken to her chamber and could not attend the funeral. Also absent from the funeral was the queen’s second daughter, Cecily, who was married to John, Viscount Welles, a half-brother of Margaret, Countess of Richmond. Perhaps the viscountess was attending the pregnant queen. The Duchess of Bedford and Buckingham did not attend but was represented by one of her two daughters. The dowager queen’s daughter-in-law, Cecily, Marchioness of Dorset, was present, as was her niece Elizabeth Herbert, daughter of her sister Mary.

On 13 June, Anne, Katherine, and Bridget attended a requiem mass for their mother. That same day, the men arrived. They included Dorset; Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex, the dowager queen’s nephew by her late sister Anne; Viscount Welles; and Charles Somerset, the illegitimate son of Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset (and the new husband of Elizabeth Herbert). That night, a dirge was sung. The herald who recorded the funeral ceremonies grumbled that there were no new torches or poor men in black gowns, only ‘a dozen divers old men holding old torches and torches’ ends’. Elizabeth Woodville’s wishes of a simple funeral were being followed, apparently too well for the herald’s taste.

The next day, John Vaughan, a canon at Windsor, sang the mass of our Lady, at which Dorset offered a gold piece. A ceremony of offering followed, at which the Lady Anne, acting in lieu of her sister, the queen, offered the mass penny. Lady Katherine Grey bore Anne’s train. The other daughters, carrying their own trains, offered pieces of gold, after which Dorset offered his own piece of gold, followed by the rest of the company. The ceremony concluded with the giving of alms.

Of Jacquetta and Richard Woodville’s children, only the youngest, Katherine, now remained. Little is known about her life with Jasper Tudor, Duke of Bedford. In his study of Bedford, R.S. Thomas notes that the duke spent most of his last years at Thornley and Sudeley in Gloucestershire and at Minster Lovell in Gloucestershire. In January 1494, the king visited and was treated to ginger, oranges, lemons, and marmalade; sadly, whether the duchess was present is unknown.
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Probably Katherine enjoyed taking possession of Minster Lovell, the former home of Richard III’s vanished ally Francis, Viscount Lovell.

Jasper died on 21 December 1497 at Thornbury, having made his will on 15 December, and was buried at his request in Keynsham Abbey.
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His businesslike will makes only one mention of Katherine, in the form of a request to his executors that ‘my Lady my wife and all other persons have such dues as shall be thought to them appertaining by right law and conscience’. He did not name Katherine as an executor. Whether he thought she was not suited to the task, or whether he simply preferred men for the job, is unknown. Katherine in any event might have had her mind on something else, because by 25 February 1496, just two months after Jasper’s death, she married her third husband, Richard Wingfield, who was about twelve years younger than the duchess, then in her late 30s.
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The eleventh of the twelve sons of Sir John Wingfield of Leatheringham, Suffolk, and his wife, Elizabeth, he could have hardly had great material prospects, so presumably it was either personal attraction or a desire to forestall a political marriage that brought the duchess so precipitately into his bed. Henry VII fined the impetuous couple £2,000 for marrying without royal licence, although ultimately it was Katherine’s oldest son, Edward Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who had to come up with the fine once he entered into his inheritance.
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Katherine would have probably known Richard for some time, as there were already ties between the Wingfields and the Woodvilles. Richard’s mother, Elizabeth FitzLewis, was connected to Mary FitzLewis, Anthony Woodville’s second wife.
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Two of Richard’s brothers, and perhaps Richard himself, had served in Katherine’s household, and some family members had rebelled against Richard in 1483 and fought for Henry VII at Bosworth.
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Katherine did not enjoy her youthful husband for long; she died just over a year later on 18 May 1497.
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It is tempting to speculate that she died from the effects of a late-life pregnancy, but there is no evidence that either of her last two marriages produced children. Her burial place is unknown. In his will made many years later, Wingfield, who remarried and was to enjoy a distinguished career in Henry VIII’s diplomatic service, remembered to order masses for the soul of his ‘singular good Lady Dame Katherine’.
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For all the turmoil and carnage of the fifteenth century, it was not violence that finished off the Woodville family, but an accident of biology: the failure of Jacquetta and Richard’s five adult sons to beget legitimate male heirs. Thus, with the death of Katherine, the story of the Woodvilles became absorbed into the stories of the noble families into which Jacquetta’s and Richard’s daughters married – indeed, into the story of England itself.

As their blood became diluted over the years, so too did the sense of the Woodvilles as individuals. They became an amorphous mass, and an unsympathetic one at that as political propaganda, unsubstantiated legend, and myth collected about them. Yet although the Woodvilles, like our own families, shared collective triumphs and tragedies, they were as individual as we are. Even with the blurring effect of time, we can still pick out distinct personalities amid the whole of the Woodvilles: the knight who dared marry a duchess, the widow who captivated a king, the jouster who went to his death wearing a hairshirt, the young knight who charmed Ferdinand and Isabella and who died fighting for a cause not his own, the men and women who quietly went about their daily duties. We should not do them the disservice of forgetting them.

(Source:
History and Antiquities of Northampton
)

    To the worship of God of our Lady and of all the company of Heaven, this is the will of me Thomas Widevill of Grafton in the county of Northampton Squire as it sheweth more plainly beneath by parcels made at Grafton. Abovesaid the 12th day of the month of October the year of the reign of King Henry the Sixth after the conquest the thirteenth.

        In the first, I will that my feoffees of my lands make no estate of them to no manner Aman unto the time that my debts been paid, my will and my testament fully performed, and [this] done, I will that my said feoffees of my lands make a lawful estate to my brother Richard Widevill and to the heirs males of his body lawfully begotten in and of my manor and all other my lands and tenements rents reversions and services with all their appurtenances whatsoever they be in Grafton beside Aldrynnton with the hundred of Cleyle in the said county of Northampton. And if the said Richard my brother die without issue male of his body lawfully begotten then I will that all the said manor lands and tenements rents reversions and services with all other their appurtenances whatsoever they be in Grafton abovesaid together with the said hundred of Cleyle reverting wholly to my right heirs. Also I will that my said feoffees make a lawful estate to my right heirs in and of all my lands and tenements as well of my purchases of fee simple rents reversions and services with all other their apurtenances whatsoever they be in Westpury in Hertwell in the said county of Norhampton in Hulcote in the county of Bedford in Burton milles in the county of Buckingham to holden to them and to the right heirs of their bodies lawfully begotten for evermore in party of recompensation of the said manor of Grafton with the appurtenances. And if my said right heirs die without heirs of their bodies lawfully begotten then I will that all the said lands and tenements of my purchase and fee simple with rents reversions and services with all other their appurtenances whatsoever they be revert to the right heirs of John Wideville my father. Also I will that after my debts be paid my will and my testament fully performed that then my said feoffees make a lawful estate to my right heirs and to the heirs of their bodies lawfully begotten in and of all my manors lands and tenements rents reversions and services with all other their appurtenances whatsoever they be in the towns and in the fields of Northampton, Horton, Easton, Hulcote, Thurneby, Asshen, Roade, Hertewell, and Quinton or in any other place the which be undevised with in the said county of Northampton. And if my said right heirs die without issue of their bodies lawfully begotten then I will that the said lands and tenements rents reversions and services with all other their appurtenances wholly revert to the right heirs of my said father John Wideville. Also I will that my said feoffees keep the manor of Stoke Brewerne and Aldryngton and all other lands and tenements meadows leases and pastures rents reversions and services with the avowsons of the church of the said Stoke and Aldryngton, and all other appurtenances in the said Stoke, Aldryngton, and Shittehanger in the county of Northampton still in their hands unto the time that they have reserved thereof 200 marks [133 6
s
8
d
] and paid it to my executors to perform with my will or else until the time that they pretenden title to inherit the said maner of Stoke with the appurtenances tail as it is abovesaid have paid to my said executors the said 200 marks and this payment of this 200 marks in the form of abovesaid had and an annuity of an 100 shilling, be my said feoffees to be granted to the father and the mother of Master John Aylewurd now parson of the church of the said Stoke in case that the said parson die leaving his said father and his mother or one of them, may be made secure to him yearly to be taken of the said manor of Stoke with the appurtenances to them or to one of them longest living to the term of their lives at the terms specified in a deed thereof to them to be made by said feoffees, all this truly and effectually performed then I will that my said feofees make estate to them that pretend to have the inheritance of the said manor be tail according thereto. Also it is my will that my said feofees make estate to the abbot of Saint James beyond Northampton to the convent of the same place and to their successors, in the Hermitage of Grafton, Schawe Woode, and in the manor of Avescote and all other lands and tenements rents reversions and services in Evescote, Patteshull, Derlescote, and Escote, with all their appurtenances wheresoever and whatsoever they be in the county of Northampton and in Fighelden in the county of Wiltshire or oughtwhere else to the term of fifty winter after the date of the deed by my said feoffees there of to them made, and if the same lands may be enpropered to them in the meantime forevermore for to find with five poor men and a keeper for them and for to do other certain observances in the said abbey to the worship of God and for the health of the souls of me the said Thomas Widevill my wives Elizabeth and Ales my father my mother my grandsire Thomas Lyons, Margaret his wife, and all other my friends and all Christian dewryng the said term of fifty winter and forevermore if the said Hermitage wood and manor with the appurtenances may be enpropered to the said abbot and his successors and my said feoffees. Also I will that my said feoffees and my executors purchase as much land as they may have for 200 marks and give it to my said right heirs of their bodies lawfully begotten in full recompensation of the said manor in Grafton aforesaid, and if my said right heirs die without heirs of their bodies lawfully begotten then I will that the said lands by my feoffees and executors with my goods so purchased revert to the right heirs of my father John Widevill. Also I will that my said feofees grant to John Beck my old servant a place and six acres of land with the appurtenances in Grafton abovesaid, in the which he is possessed now and an annuity of one mark be give by deed to be taken to him term of his life of my said manor and all my lands in Grafton at usual terms in the said deed contented with a clause of distress for default of payment. Also I will that my said feoffees grant to Robert Packer my servant a place and six acres of land with the appurtenances in Grafton above said and an annuity of 20 shillings by year by deed to be taken to him term of his life of my manor [and] my lands in Grafton above said at usual terms in the said deed contented with a clause of distress for default of payment. Also I will that my said feofees grant to John of the Botery my servant a place and all the lands and tenements with their appurtenances the which I purchased of John Warwick squire in Westpury to him term of his life yielding thereof yearly a rose flower to my said feofees at the feast of midsummer term of his life and bearing all other charges to the said place and land belonging during the said term. Also I will that my said feofees grant to my niece Elizabeth Holwell an annuity of six marks to be taken to her term of her life of my manor in Hertwell with the appurtenances called Morwelles manor and of all other my lands and tenements in the said town with the appurtenances where so ever they be with a clause of distress for default of payment. Also I will that my said feofees grant to Margaret Broke my servant an annuity of twenty shillings to be taken to her term of her life of my maner and all my lands and tenements in Roode with the appurtenances where so ever they be with a clause of distress for default of payment. In the witness of the which thing to this part of my will tripartite indentured my seal I have put to. Given the day and the year and the place above said. Also I will that my executors shall receive and have to perform my will all manner of rents and pfytes coming of my lands tenements reversions and services the which my feofees shall hold in their hands until my said will be fully performed. Also I will that my said feofees grant to William Butler my servant all my lands and tenements with the appurtenances in Horton by deed to be taken to him term of his life. Also I will that my said feofees grant to Thomas Barbour my servant estate in all my lands and tenements with the appurtenances in Quynton to term of his life. Also I will that my said feoffees grant to William Manning my servant all the lands and tenements that I have in Estneston and Hulcote beside Towcester in the county of Northampton to term of his life.