The Arrest of Elizabeth Woodville

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In November 1486, a great rebellion broke out in Ireland, falsely believed to be lead by the Earl of Warwick (then in reality confined in the Tower), the son of the late Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV.

A meeting was immediately held in the Charter House, at Shene, where first a general pardon was agreed, free from all exceptions, and the second resolution was (as a curious commentary on the first) to arrest Elizabeth Woodville, the Queen Dowager.

The Queen was immediately arrested, deprived of all her property, and held as a prisoner in the monastery at Bermondsey. Henry's historian, Bacon, recounts the following:

"whereat there was much wondering that a weak woman, for the yielding to the menaces and promises of a tyrant [he is alluding to her relationship with Richard III.], after such a distance of time in which the king had shown no displeasure or alteration, but much more after so happy a marriage between the king and her daughter, blest with issue male [only two or three weeks before], should, upon a sudden mutability or disclosure of the king's mind, be so severely handled."

Such it appears was the motive for this arrest set forth by the king. No one, however, believed in the truth of the allegation and Bacon, following the chronicler Hall, gives a remarkable explanation of the incident. Having observed that the prompter of the young counterfeit of the Earl of Warwick, a priest, had never seen the Earl, he continues,

"So it cannot be, but that some great person, that knew particularly and familiarly, Edward Plantagenet, had a hand in the business, from whom the priest might take aim. That which is most probable, out of the precedent and subsequent acts, is, that it was the Queen Dowager from whom this action principally originated. For, certain it is that she was a busy, negotiating woman, and in her withdrawing chamber had the fortunate conspiracy for the king against King Richard III. been batched, which the king knew, and remembered perhaps but too well, and was at this time extremely discontent with the king, thinking her daughter, as the king handled the matter, not advanced, but depressed; and none could hold the book so well to prompt and instruct this stage play as she could."

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