1. Elizabeth Woodville was a key figure in the Wars of the Roses, a dynastic civil war between the Lancastrian and the Yorkist factions between 1455 and 1487.
24 Facts About Elizabeth Woodville
1. 2.
Elizabeth Woodville died at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461, leaving Elizabeth a widowed mother of two young sons.
3.
Elizabeth Woodville was known for her beauty but came from minor nobility with no great estates, and the marriage took place in secret.
4.
Edward was the first king of England since the Norman Conquest to marry one of his subjects, and Elizabeth Woodville was the first such consort to be crowned queen.
5.
Elizabeth Woodville subsequently played an important role in securing the accession of Henry VII in 1485.
6.
Elizabeth Woodville was forced to yield pre-eminence to Henry VII's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort; her influence on events in these years, and her eventual departure from court into retirement, remain obscure.
7.
Elizabeth Woodville was born in about 1437, at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire.
8.
Elizabeth Woodville was the firstborn child of a socially unequal marriage between Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, which briefly scandalised the English court.
9.
Around 1452, Elizabeth Woodville married John Grey of Groby, the heir to the Barony Ferrers of Groby.
10.
Elizabeth Woodville was killed at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461, fighting for the Lancastrian cause.
11.
Elizabeth Woodville was called "the most beautiful woman in the Island of Britain" with "heavy-lidded eyes like those of a dragon".
12.
When his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, who was both a commoner and from a family of Lancastrian supporters, became public Warwick was both embarrassed and offended.
13.
Elizabeth Woodville was often seen as arrogant and disrespectful for actions that would be seen as normal by a lady of higher rank, such as her predecessor Margaret of Anjou.
14.
Elizabeth Woodville engaged in acts of Christian piety in keeping with conventional expectations of a medieval queen consort.
15.
Elizabeth Woodville's acts included making pilgrimages, obtaining a papal indulgence for those who knelt and said the Angelus three times per day, and founding the chapel of St Erasmus in Westminster Abbey.
16.
Richard accused Elizabeth Woodville of plotting to "murder and utterly destroy" him.
17.
The act contained charges of witchcraft against Elizabeth Woodville, but gave no details and the charges had no further repercussions.
18.
Additionally, Elizabeth Woodville was stripped of all her entitlements as queen dowager and her lands reverted to the Crown.
19.
Elizabeth Woodville promised to provide them with marriage portions and to marry them to "gentlemen born".
20.
Elizabeth Woodville was accorded the title and honours of a queen dowager.
21.
At Bermondsey Abbey, Elizabeth Woodville was treated with the respect due to a dowager queen.
22.
Elizabeth Woodville was laid to rest in the same chantry as her husband King Edward IV in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.
23.
Elizabeth Woodville spends much of the play bemoaning her fate as family members and supporters of her are killed, including her two young sons.
24.
Elizabeth Woodville is one of Richard's cleverest opponents and among the few who see through him from the beginning, though she is mostly powerless to stop him once he murders her allies in the court.