Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty by Elizabeth Norton Page A

overcome in her constancy even by an infatuated king.
     
    Elizabeth’s defiance only served to increase Edward’s ardour, and he rashly promised her marriage, with the couple wedding in secret on 1 May 1464.
    The marriage of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, although hasty, proved to be a personally very happy union, and they remained close until Edward’s death nearly twenty years later. Politically, however, it was a disaster and alienated Edward both from the powerful Warwick, who would eventually be nicknamed ‘The Kingmaker’, and from Edward’s younger brother, George, Duke of Clarence, who complained that it was beneath his brother’s dignity to marry a widow. Edward’s mother, Cecily Neville, was deeply offended and, damagingly, in a fit of pique, swore that Edward was the product of an adulterous affair rather than the true son of her husband, Richard, Duke of York. Edward ignored this criticism and determinedly presented Elizabeth as his queen, arranging for her to be crowned in a grand coronation and ennobling her relatives. This was personally satisfying for Elizabeth, but it led to the deep unpopularity of the Woodvilles, who were accused of obtaining the best marriages in England. Henry Stafford’s young nephew, the Duke of Buckingham, was one such target of the Queen, and he was married to her youngest sister, Catherine Woodville. Elizabeth obtained the King’s niece for her eldest son Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and, scandalously, the elderly dowager Duchess of Norfolk, ‘a slip of a girl of about eighty years old’, for her twenty-year-old brother, John Woodville. The Woodvilles were seen as upstarts and acquisitive, which did nothing to help Edward’s popularity in England.
    Matters came to a head in 1469, when Warwick and Clarence came out in open rebellion against the King, issuing a proclamation jointly with Warwick’s brother, the Archbishop of York, on 12 July 1469:
The king our sovereign lord’s true subjects of divers parts of this his realm of England have delivered to us certain articles [remembering] the deceitful, covetous rule and guiding of certain seditious persons, that is to say, the Lord Rivers [Elizabeth’s father], the Duchess of Bedford his wife, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, Humphrey Stafford, Earl of Devonshire, Lord Scales [Elizabeth’s eldest brother] and Audley, Sir John Woodville and his brothers, and others of this mischievous rule, opinion and assent, which have caused our sovereign lord and his realm to fall into great poverty and misery, disturbing the administration of the laws, only tending to their own promotion and enrichment.
     
    Although, politically, Margaret Beaufort was very much opposed to William Herbert, as the guardian of her son, his mention in the proclamation would have been alarming for her.
    William Herbert was one of Edward IV’s staunchest supporters, and this made him an immediate target in the rebellion against the King. As well as receiving Henry Tudor’s wardship, Herbert had also been rewarded with Jasper Tudor’s lands and the earldom of Pembroke itself in 1468. Following his flight from Pembroke in 1461, Jasper had spent time with his half-brother Henry VI in Scotland. He was one of Margaret of Anjou’s must trusted supporters and, in 1462, travelled with her to France to help negotiate an agreement with Louis XI for military aid in return for the surrender of Calais. Jasper was one of the signatories to the treaty agreed between Margaret and Louis on 28 June 1462, and he followed the Queen back to England towards the end of the year. Margaret’s invasion of 1462 proved to be ineffective, and for the next few years, Jasper spent time both in Scotland and in France whilst he worked towards Henry VI’s restoration. In 1465, Henry VI was finally captured at a religious house in the north of England and ‘carried to London on horseback, and his leg bound to the stirrup, and so brought, through London, to the Tower, where