Elizabeth Woodville - Early Life and First Marriage

Early Life and First Marriage

Elizabeth was born about 1437 at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire, the daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers and his wife, the former Jacquetta of Luxembourg, widow of John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford. Although spelling of the family name has sometimes been modernized to "Woodville", it was spelled "Wydeville" in contemporary publications by Caxton and as "Widvile" on Queen Elizabeth's tomb at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

She may have been a maid of honour to Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI in 1445, when she was about eight years of age. The identification of Elizabeth as the "Isabel Grey" referred to in the record in question is uncertain, however; as A. R. Myers and George Smith have each noted, assuming that the eight-year-old Elizabeth was then married to John Grey, there were several women by the name of Isabella or Elizabeth Grey, including an Elizabeth Grey who is noted as serving Margaret and as being the widow of a Ralph Grey. In about 1452, she married Sir John Grey of Groby, who was killed at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461, fighting for the Lancastrian cause, which would become a source of irony as Edward IV was the Yorkist claimant to the throne. Elizabeth had two sons from the marriage, Thomas (later Marquess of Dorset) and Richard.

Elizabeth was called "the most beautiful woman in the Island of Britain" with "heavy-lidded eyes like those of a dragon", suggesting a perhaps unusual criterion by which beauty in late medieval England was judged.