Jacqueline of Luxembourg, a daughter of the Count of St. Pol, when young, lively, and beautiful, found herself given in marriage to John, Duke of Bedford. John was a famous man, doubtless, but very considerably the senior of his bride; and when he died at Rouen, Jacqueline probably considered that, in any second matrimonial alliance, she ought to take the liberty of consulting her own taste. In any case, one of the duke's esquires, Richard Woodville by name, was appointed to escort her to England; and he, being among the handsomest men in Europe, made such an impression on the heart of the youthful widow, that a marriage was the result. For seven long years their union was kept secret; but at length circumstances rendered concealment impossible, and the marriage became a matter of public notoriety.
The discovery that the widow of the foremost prince and soldier of Europe had given her hand to a man who could not boast of a patrician ancestor or a patriotic achievement caused much astonishment, and such was the indignation of Jacqueline's own kinsmen that Woodville never again ventured to show his face on the Continent. To the esquire and the duchess, however, the consequences, though inconvenient, were not ruinous. A fine of a thousand pounds was demanded from Woodville; and, having paid that sum, he was put in possession of Jacqueline's castles.
As time passed on, the Duchess of Bedford, as "a foreign lady of quality," insinuated herself into the good graces of Margaret of Anjou; and Woodville was, through the interest of his wife, created a baron. About the same period their eldest daughter, Elizabeth, became a maid of honor to the queen, and, subsequently, wife of John Grey of Groby, a zealous Lancastrian, who died after the second battle of St. Albans. Finding herself a widow, and the times being troublous, Elizabeth placed herself under the protection of her mother at Grafton. There she was residing when the Yorkist king appeared to pay his respects to the duchess.
Elizabeth probably regarded Edward's visit as providential. She had two sons; and, as the partisans of York were by no means in a humor to practice excessive leniency to the vanquished, the heirs of Grey were in danger of losing lands and living for their father's adherence to the Red Rose. Believing that she had now a capital opportunity of obtaining the removal of the attainder, she resolved to throw herself at the king's feet and implore his clemency.
An oak-tree between Grafton and Whittlebury Forest has since been indicated by tradition as the scene of Elizabeth Woodville's first interview with Edward of York. Standing under the branches, holding her sons by the hand, and casting down her eyes with an affectation of extreme modesty, the artful widow succeeded in arresting his attention. Indeed, there was little chance of Edward of York passing such a being without notice. Elizabeth was on the shady side of thirty, to be sure; but time had not destroyed the charms that, fifteen years earlier, had brought suitors around the portionless maid of honor. Her features were remarkable for regularity; her complexion was fair and delicate, and her hair of that pale golden hue then deemed indispensable in a beauty of rank.
Edward's eye was arrested, and, being in the fever of youth, with a heart peculiarly susceptible, he was captivated by the fair suppliant. Too young and confident to believe in the possibility of his addresses being rejected, the king made love, though not in such terms as please the ear of a virtuous woman. Elizabeth, however, conducted herself with rare discretion, and made her royal lover understand that monarchs sometimes sigh in vain. At length the duchess took the matter in hand; and, under the influence of a tactician so expert, the enamored king set prudential considerations at defiance, and offered to take the young widow for better or for worse. A secret marriage was then projected; Jacqueline applied her energies to the business; and, with her experience of matrimonial affairs, the duchess found no difficulty in arranging every thing to satisfaction.
The ceremony was fixed for the 1st of May, and, since privacy was the object, the day was well chosen. Indeed, May-day was the festival which people regarded as next in importance to Christmas; and they were too much taken up with its celebration to pry into the secrets of others. It was while milkmaids, with pyramids of silver plate on their heads, were dancing from door to door, and every body was preparing to dance round the maypole, that Edward secretly met his bride at the chapel of Grafton, and solemnized that marriage which was destined to bring such evils on the country. As the duchess probably suspected that it was not the first time the king had figured as a bridegroom, she was careful, in the event of any dispute arising, to provide herself with other witnesses than the priest and the mass-boy. With this view she brought two of her waiting-women; and the king, having gone through the ceremony, took his departure as secretly as he came. Ere long, however, Edward intimated to the father of the bride that he intended to spend some time with him at Grafton; and Woodville, who still feigned ignorance of the marriage, took care that his royal son-in-law should have nothing to complain of in regard to the entertainment.
Having thus wedded her daughter to the chief of the White Rose, the Duchess of Bedford converted her husband and sons from violent Lancastrians into unscrupulous Yorkists, and then manifested a strong desire to have the marriage acknowledged. This was a most delicate piece of business, and, managed clumsily, might have cost the king his crown. It happened, however, that while Edward, in the shades of Grafton, had forgotten every thing that he ought to have remembered, Montagu, by his victory at Hexham, had so firmly established Edward's power that the king deemed himself in a position to inflict signal chastisement on any one venturesome enough to dispute his sovereign will. Nevertheless, it was thought prudent to ascertain the feeling of the nation before taking any positive step; and agents were employed for that purpose.
Warwick and Montagu were not, of course, the men for this kind of work. The chief person engaged in the inquiry, indeed, appears to have been Sir John Howard, a knight of Norfolk, whose family had, in the fourteenth century, been raised from obscurity by a successful lawyer, and, in the fifteenth, elevated somewhat higher by a marriage with the Mowbrays, about the time when the chief of that great house was under attainder and in exile. Howard, inspired, perhaps, by his Mowbray blood, cherished an ardent ambition to enroll his name among the old nobility of England; and, to get one inch nearer the gratification of his vanity, he appears to have undertaken any task, however undignified. Even on this occasion he was not by any means too nice for the duty to be performed; and he was careful to return an answer likely to please those who were most interested. Finding that the Woodvilles were rising in the world, he reported, to their satisfaction, that the people were well disposed in regard to the king's marriage. At the same time the aspiring knight was not forgetful of his own interests. He entreated the Woodvilles to obtain, for himself and his spouse, places in the new queen's household; and, by way of securing Elizabeth's favor, presented her with a palfrey, as a mark of his devotion to her service. What dependence was to be placed on the faith or honor of Sir John Howard, Elizabeth Woodville found twenty years later, when her hour of trial and tribulation came.
And now Edward, whose fortunes half the royal damsels of Europe, among others Isabella of Castile, afterward the great Queen of Spain, were eager to share, resolved upon declaring his marriage to the world; and, with that purpose, he summoned a great council, to meet at the Abbey of Reading, in the autumn of 1464. Having there presented Elizabeth to the assembled peers as their queen, he ordered preparations to be made for her coronation in the ensuing spring.