The Woodvilles: the Wars of the Roses And England's Most Infamous Family
“Normally, once a pregnant queen ‘took to her chambers’, men would be barred until the child was born, but in this case, four ambassadors from France, one of whom, Francois of Luxembourg, was related to the queen, managed to be admitted into this all-female sanctum. When the men saw the queen, she was with not only the king’s mother, but with her own mother as well.1 This rare glimpse of Elizabeth Woodville belies Bacon’s later claim that she had been ‘banished [from] the world into a nunnery; w...here it was almost thought dangerous to visit her or see her’.2 Clearly, she had not been shut off from all contact with her family, although the extant records furnish no clue as to how often she saw or heard from them. Elizabeth of York’s privy purse expenses, which would give us an idea as to whether messages or visits were exchanged between mother and daughter, do not survive for this period (or indeed for any other period other than the last year of the queen’s life), and heraldic accounts by their very nature were concerned only with court ceremonies, not day-to-day interactions.MoreLess
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