Edward IV of England. Reigned 1461-70 and 1471-1483.163

A handsome, affable, and strong king, he made the disastrous mistake of marrying Elizabeth Woodville and showing her family preferment.1

Shored up royal (Yorkist) power by building up royal estates until he owned one-fifth of all the land in England.293

A master showman, he hosted innumerable jousts and pageants, partly as propaganda exercises to show the stability, legitimacy, and power of his reign.294

A widower with two sons when Edward married her, Elizabeth Woodville was despised for her insistent advancement of her rapacious relatives. Edward fell in love with her when she was supplicating on behalf of her sons. Their marriage was initially kept secret, but when finally made pubic it incurred the wrath of the powerful Neville family, which had supported Edward’s bid for the throne.

Upon Edward’s death Elizabeth took sanctuary at Westminster. Richard III (now king and alleged murderer of her two youngest sons, the “Princes in the Tower”) encouraged her to return to court where they lived amicably. After Richard’s death at Bosworth, her status was unclear again with the enthroning of the new King Henry VII. She retired to the nunnery at Bermondsey on a pension. “The refoundation of Queens' College, Cambridge, in the beautiful gallery of which there is an authenticated portrait of her, is the only good thing recorded of her.”543

Prior to her marriage to Edward, she may have served the Lancaster Queen Margaret of Anjou.294

Elizabeth’s haughtiness astonished not only the English, but a German visitor who, in 1466, left this description of the Queen dining in public: “The Queen sat alone at a table in a costly golden chair. The Queen’s mother and the King’s sister had to stand below. And if the Queen talked with her mother or the Queen’s sister, they had to kneel before the Queen until she drank water. Not until the first dish was set before her were they allowed to sit down. The laides and maidens and all who served dishes to the Queen, even if they were powerful Earls, had nevertheless to kneel, as long as she was eating. The feast lasted for three hours....And all were silent, not a word was spoken.”294

Hicks has her name as Wydeville and death date as 1487288