29th of September 1464-Elizabeth Woodville is formally introduced to the royal council and acknowledged as Queen of England at Reading
Elizabeth was formally introduced to the court on Michaelmas Day, when the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick escorted her into the chapel of Reading Abbey. There she was ‘openly honoured as queen by all the lords and all the people’, although Warwick’s close associate, John Lord Wenlock, probably expressed the feelings of many when he wrote ‘we must be patient despite ourselves’.
The idea of a young, handsome king marrying for love on Mayday may have been borrowed from romantic tradition and Edward, who was constantly attended by courtiers and had virtually no privacy, would have found it difficult to meet his bride secretly over a period of almost five months… But if some of the details of the tradition are speculative, it is clear that there was little time between the proposal and the marriage, and that Elizabeth was surprised by the speed of events… many contemporaries would probably have agreed with Charles Ross that it was the ‘the impulsive love match of an impetuous young man’.
From David Baldwin’s Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower
“On Michaelmas Day, 29 September 1464, the King formally presented his new bride to his subjects, or at least as many of them who could gather in and around Reading Abbey. There ‘Lady Elizabeth was admitted into the abbey church, led by the Duke of Clarence and the Earl of Warwick, and honoured as Queen by the lords and all the people.”
From left: Rebecca Benson as Margaret Plantagenet, Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York, Jodie Comer as Elizabeth of York, Joanne Whalley as the Duchess of Burgundy, Essie Davis as Dowager Queen Elizabeth and Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort in The White Princess
From left: Jodie Comer as Elizabeth of York, Rebecca Benson as Margaret Plantagenet, Essie Davis as Dowager Queen Elizabeth and Suki Waterhouse as Cecily of York in The White Princess
From left: Jodie Comer as Elizabeth of York, Essie Davis as Dowager Queen Elizabeth, Jacob Collins-Levy as Henry VII and Michelle Fairley as Margaret Beaufort in The White Princess
«Those chronicles that give a date for Edward IVandElizabeth Woodville’smarriageeach specify the same one: 1 May. This date is compatible with the known movements of Edward, who was at Stony Stratford the night of 30 April 1464 and could have made an excursion to and from Grafton that morning, as claimed by Fabyan in the sixteenth century:
«[I]n most secret manner, upon the first day of May, King Edward spoused Elizabeth […] which spousals were solemnised early in the morning at a town called Grafton, near Stony Stratford; at which marriage were no persons present but the spouse, the spousess, the Duchess of Bedford her mother, the priest, two gentlewomen, and a young man to help the priest sing. After which spousals ended, he went to bed, and so tarried there three or four hours, and after departed and rode again to Stony Stratford, and came as though he had been hunting, and there went to bed again. And within a day or two after, he sent to Grafton to the Lord Rivers, father unto his wife, showing to him he would come and lodge with him a certain season, where he was received with all honour, and so tarried there by the space of four days. In which season, she nightly to his bed was brought, in so secret manner, that almost none but her mother was of counsel.»
Several historians, however, have questioned the May Day date. As David Baldwin notes, ‘The idea of a young, handsome king marrying for love on Mayday may have been borrowed from romantic tradition’. J.L. Laynesmith agreed that ‘1 May is a suspiciously apt day for a young king to marry for love. May had long been the month associated with love, possibly originating in pre-Christian celebrations of fertility and certainly celebrated in the poetry of the troubadours’.
Whether the couple were married on May Day or later, the scant record does bear out Hall’s claim that a priest was present at the wedding. A Master John Eborall, whose church of Paulspury was close to Grafton and Stony Stratford, is said to have offered in 1471 to intercede in a land dispute involving the queen ‘supposing that he might have done good in the matter, forasmuch as he was then in favour because he married King Edward and Queen Elizabeth together’. A chronicle known as Hearne’s Fragment adds that the priest who married the couple was buried at the high altar of the Minories in London, but leaves a blank space for the man’s name.”
- «The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England’s Most Infamous Family» by Susan Higginbotham.
Pictured: The marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. Illuminated miniature from Vol 6 of the Anciennes chroniques d'Angleterre by Jean de Wavrin, 15th century.
“I present unto you Queen Elizabeth, your undoubted Queen”
Elizabeth Woodville was crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey on May 26, 1465; where both of her parents were present for the ceremony. The event made possible that their marriage to be finally announced and was recorded in “Coronation of Elizabeth Woodville” written by G. Smith, 1935, a contemporary account as:
“Clothed in mantel of purple and a coronal upon her head” beneath a purple silk canopy carried by four barons of the Cinque Ports.”
After the royal procession left the abbey, the queen was led to her chamber, where she was dressed in purple surcoat and brought into the Hall to dine. Each time the queen took a bite, she herself removed her crown, putting it back when she was finished. - David Baldwin’s book Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower.
