Begats Time!!! LOL

When recounting the apocryphal meeting between Elizabeth Woodville and King Edward IV beneath the oak tree near the Woodville family manor that led to their clandestine wedding in May 1464, history books almost invariably concentrate on her status as a commoner. She was indeed the daughter of a minor noble, Sir Richard Woodville, only recently created Lord Rivers, and she was the widow of a knight, Sir John Grey, heir to Lord and Lady Ferrers de Groby, who had been killed several years earlier at the Battle of St Albans. She had two sons, the eldest already 14, so she was several years older than Edward, though all agree she was a very beautiful woman. The implication, certainly shared by many contemporaries, is that she was a wholly unsuitable bride for a Plantagenet prince, a parvenu and upstart, who somehow entrapped Edward through her feminine wiles. In fact, however, she had seriously blue blood flowing in her veins and had important dynastic links with the royal family itself. She was far from an ordinary knight's daughter, a most uncommon commoner.

Fully to appreciate Elizabeth's ancestry it is necessary to go back in time & check out the begats. Henry VI's Protector, John Beaufort, Duke of Bedford, at the age of 33 took a bride, Anne of Burgundy, but she died in childbirth in 1432, leaving John without heirs. He needed another wife and his choice fell on the 17-year-old Jacquetta de Luxembourg, daughter of Pierre I, Count of St Pol. They were married at Therouenne in France only five months after his first wife's death. However, in September 1435 John himself died leaving Jacquetta a widow still in her teens. She found herself in the same position as Katherine of Valois, still young, independently wealthy, a member of the royal family by marriage, but in her case without even a child to look after, and she chose to follow the precedent set by her royal sister-in-law to marry, it would seem, for love. In emulation of Katherine’s secret affair with Owen Tudor, Jacquetta settled on a dashing young knight far beneath her social status, Sir Richard Woodville (or Wydevill), the son of her late husband's chamberlain. They married only 18 months after the Duke's death.

The scandal over the marriage was almost as great as that of Katherine of France and Owen Tudor. The young couple had to pay the immense fine, for the times, of £1,000, for pardon for marrying without the King's licence.....Jacquetta must have been truly a fabulously wealthy widow.

The couple were soon accepted at Court, however. Sir Richard and Lady Jacquetta were members of the party sent to escort Margaret of Anjou to England to marry Henry VI in 1444, and in 1448 Richard was created Baron Rivers. He became a Privy Counsellor, a Knight of the Garter, Seneschal of Aquitaine and a leading support of the House of Lancaster in the Wars of the Roses.

Lord and Lady Rivers had at least 10 children; Elizabeth Woodville was their eldest daughter. So when Edward IV encountered Elizabeth on that fateful day in 1464, he met the cousin of King Henry VI's erstwhile aunt and it is very probable that he already knew her; he would certainly have known of her.

And what of Jacquetta's and therefore Elizabeth's ancestry? Jacquetta's father, Pierre of Luxembourg, Count of St Pol, was a representative of the illustrious House of Luxembourg,  very important players in medieval Europe. The family first came to major prominence when Henry of Luxembourg was elected Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor, in 1308. When Jacquetta and the Duke of Bedford married, Henry's great-grandson Sigismund of Luxembourg was not only the reigning Holy Roman Emperor (the last before the accession of the House of Hapsburg to that office), but also King of Bohemia and King of Hungary. The marriage would thus have been seen as an alliance with the imperial house itself. Pierre had inherited the County of St Pol from the important French family of de Chatillon and through them could trace his descent from the Dukes of Brittany and Louis VI of France (1108-1137), from Henry III of England (1216-1272) from the great Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa (1152-1190) and even from Isaac II Angelus, Emperor of Byzantium (1185-1195 and 1203-1204).

Pierre de Luxembourg's wife, Jacquetta's mother, was an Italian princess, Marguerite del Balzo (or des Baux) daughter of Francesco, Duke of Andria (in Apulia) Marguerite's grandfather Nicolo des Ursins (or Orsini), Count of Nola, was himself the great-grandson of Guy de Montfort, Count of Nola, the only surviving son and heir of the great Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester (the founding father of the English Parliament) and his wife Eleanor, daughter of King John of England. After the Battle of Evesham in which his father was killed Guy fled to Italy and was there granted the County of Nola. The des Ursins themselves were descended from Gentile Orsini, brother of Pope Nicholas III (1272-1280). Marguerite could also trace her ancestry to Adenalfo d'Aquino, the brother of the great philosopher and theologian St Thomas Aquinas, who lived 1225-74 and who had been canonised in 1323.

So through her mother, Elizabeth Woodville was very much of royal blood and, in the days when dynastic links were important, Edward would certainly have been well aware of this. Elizabeth Woodville was technically a commoner but of seriously illustrious ancestry and a close relative, by marriage at least, of the Lancastrian royal family.

It is perhaps ironic that Katherine of France and her Owen's grandson, Henry Tudor, was to marry Jacquetta of Luxembourg and her Richard's granddaughter, Elizabeth of York. These two were the progenitors not only of the Tudor dynasty but also of all subsequent monarchs of England and Great Britain.

Incidentally the elder of Elizabeth's two sons by her first marriage, Thomas Grey, was created Marquis of Dorset in 1475. His grandson, Henry Grey, became Duke of Suffolk and married the niece of Henry VIII (himself, of course, a grandson of Elizabeth Woodville), Frances Brandon.

Their eldest daughter was the ill-fated nine days queen, Lady Jane Grey.