Did BIGAMY get Elizabeth Woodville a crown and who was King Edward IV married to really? Rumours have abounded for centuries that Elizabeth was nothing more than England’s fake Queen because her husband was already married to Lady Eleanor Butler when he exchanged vows with the widowed Dame Elizabeth Grey in 1464. It didn’t help that they were wed in a secret marriage ceremony attended by hardly anyone, save the bride’s mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg and this along with Elizabeth’s fairly low birth made it one of the most scandalous royal marriages in history even before accusations of bigamy emerged. If those accusations were true it would also be one of the most famous royal scandals in general, but is there any real evidence to support this claim? Was Eleanor England’s secret queen? In today’s video from History Calling we go back to the fifteenth century to study the Plantagenet royal family and some of the twists and turns in the famous Wars of the Roses which marred their final decades in power. We’ll look at the primary sources to examine this tale of two wives and the devastating effects it had on the life of Elizabeth Woodville and her children after the death of Edward IV in 1483. Nowhere was this devastation more keenly felt than in the fate of her sons, Edward V and Richard, Duke of York. These two children were locked up in the Tower of London by their uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who promptly claimed that their parents’ marriage was fraudulent, they were illegitimate (as were their sisters, including Princess Elizabeth of York, future Queen consort of Henry VII,) and he was therefore King. Soon afterwards, the boys (known to history as the Princes in the Tower) disappeared, never to be seen again. Was he right though? Was Richard III really King or did he seize on this piece of slander directed against his dead brother and sister-in-law in order to steal the crown from his nephew? How Richard III took the throne is one of the most infamous events in English royal history, but have his motives been unfairly maligned?
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