Bermondsey Abbey's next distinguished visitor was Elizabeth of York, a lady who if not one of the most interesting of female characters herself, is unquestionably so from the circumstances of her strange and eventful history.
She came to Bermondsey, as much a prisoner as a visitor, and she owed that imprisonment to the man whom she herself had helped place on the throne - Henry VII., the grandson of the widow of Henry V., and of her second husband, Owen Tudor.
That two such women should meet in the same place to spend the last years of their lives, forms no ordinary coincidence.
It was on a visit to Jaquenetta, the Duchess of Bedford (then married to her second husband, Sir Richard Woodville), that Edward IV. first laid eyes on the Duchess' daughter, Elizabeth Gray, widow of Sir John Gray who was slain at the second battle of St. Alban's.
The knight's estates had been forfeited to Edward, and the young widow, who is said to have been as eloquent as she was beautiful, took the opportunity to throw herself at the king's feet, and implore him for the sake of her innocent and helpless children to reverse the attainder.
She rose with more than the grant of what she had asked - the king's heart was hers. Edward, perhaps for the first time, was seriously touched and to the surprise of the nation in general, and to the disapproval of many of the king's partisans, the Yorkists, the king announced his marriage with the widow some months after at a solemn assembly of prelates and nobles in the ancient abbey of Reading.
Amidst the surprise, the king's brother, the Duke of Clarence, and the Earl of Warwick, led the Queen into the hall, and made her welcome among all present. Thus ends one chapter of her life.