(Janet McTeer as Jacquetta in The White Queen)
If you have
been watching Philippa Gregory’s THE WHITE QUEEN on Starz no doubt you are
captivated by Janet McTeer’s performance as Jacquetta Woodville, Elizabeth
Woodville’s mother. Since the series starts
when Elizabeth meets and marries the Queen, the audience is only privy to
Jacquetta’s story through dialogue and her interaction with other
characters. Jacquetta’s story, however,
is interesting in its own right.
Elizabeth Woodville would never have thought she could aim so high as to
marry the King of England if she hadn’t had the example of her parents’
marriage before her. If a mere knight could marry the widow of a royal duke,
brother and uncle of a king, then nothing was out of the realm of possibility. Jacquetta
managed not only marry for love which was almost unheard of in the 15th
century, but she also managed to thrive and survive not only under the
Lancastrians but under the Yorks as well. If that weren’t impressive enough,
she also managed to beat a charge of witchcraft.
Jacquetta was
born sometime in 1416; the exact date is unknown, probably at the family
chateau in France. She was the second child of a noble family. Her father Peter
was the Count of Saint-Pol, Conversano and Brienne. He eventually inherited the title of Count of
Luxembourg after the death of his great aunt.
Her mother Margaret de Baux was descended from Simon de Montfort and
Eleanor of England. Although her family wasn’t royalty per se, Jacquetta was a
distant relation of Sigismund, the Holy Roman Emperor, and King of Bohemia and
Hungary. She could also claim that she
was descended from the water goddess Melusina who married Siegfried, the first
Count of Luxembourg. Their marriage lasted until he saw her in her true guise,
half-woman, half-fish, in the bathtub.
He was understandably a little freaked out. Melusina and her bath sank through the rock
of the castle and disappeared.
The world she
was born into was a world at war.
England and France had been fighting over the French throne since
1337. England claimed the throne through
Edward II’s wife Isabella who was the daughter of Philip IV of France. Since France operated under Salic law, which
meant women couldn’t inherit the throne, the crown had gone to distant branch
of the family, the House of Valois. By the time Jacquetta was born the year
after the English victory at Agincourt; the war had gone on for almost 80
years, decimating both France and England.
Her family
was vassals of the Duke of Burgundy who sided with the English against their
traditional enemy France. Jacquetta’s Uncle Louis served as John, Duke of
Bedford’s chancellor for 10 years and was named executor of his will. Her other
uncle, Jean of Luxembourg, was Joan of Arc’s jailor after one of his vassals
captured her at the siege of Compiegne and brought her to Beaurevoir, the
family chateau. Jean held her for 4 months while his wife, step-daughter and
great-aunt pleaded with him not to turn Joan over to the English. However after his great-aunts death in 1430,
Jean accepted 100,000 livres from the English to hand her over.
Jacquetta’s
education was typical for young woman of her class. She was probably taught to
read, but not to write. Rich people had
scribes for that kind of thing. Nowadays we call them personal assistants. She
was probably sent away as a young girl to live with noble relations, serving as
a maid in waiting. She would have
learned the skills necessary to be a lady of the manor, embroidery, music,
dancing, how to manage servants and the household. She would need all those
skills in her new life as the wife of John, Duke of Bedford. His wife, Anne of
Burgundy, had died in November of 1432.
It was a dynastic marriage, cementing the alliance between England and Burgundy. Five months after his wife’s death, 17 year
old Jacquetta married the 42 year old Duke in a service performed by her uncle
Louis. Apparently the Duke of Bedford fell hard for Jacquetta’s beauty and
youth. However, the marriage came at a
price. The Duke of Burgundy was furious;
he considered the marriage an insult to his sister’s memory. The Duke of
Bedford’s marriage brought neither territory nor a dowry. The alliance between
Burgundy and England was hanging by a thread.
Burgundy would soon ditch England and throw in his lot with the French.
Jacquetta was
now the first Lady in France and the 2nd Lady in England behind
Catherine of Valois, the Queen Mother.
That must have been a huge responsibility for a 17 year old, but
Jacquetta rose to the challenge. The
marriage seems to have been happy although they never had children. Her husband not only had a huge library but
also an alchemy laboratory, what more could a girl ask for? The couple spent a
year in England after their wedding. The Duke of Bedford was at a crossroads. After devoting much of his life to overseeing
English territories in France, he longed to retire but the situation in France
was too dicey. Things weren’t much
better in England. There was a power
struggle going on in England between Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the uncle of
Henry VI and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.
This power struggle would eventually end up as what we know as The War
of the Roses.
Jacquetta
barely had time to adjust to being the Duchess of Bedford before her husband died
at Rouen on September 14th, 1435.
Before his death, he had appointed a 30 year old soldier as the new
captain of the Calais garrison. As the Duke’s health failed, Jacquetta and
Richard grew closer. The Duke of Bedford
made Jacquetta his sole heir, left her his lands for life, and also left his
priceless library. A widow at 19, she was wealthy but her life still was not
her own. She was granted a widow’s
pension but on the condition that she didn’t marry without the King’s
permission. But the heart wants what the
heart wants, and Jacquetta and Richard fell in love. They married sometime in late 1436 or early
1437. When the King requested that
Jacquetta come to England to court, the couple confessed and Jacquetta was
fined £1,000 for her misalliance. The
King eventually forgave the couple, perhaps his heart was softened since his
own mother Catherine of Valois had fallen in love with Owen Tudor.
Over the next
twenty years, Jacquetta was kept busy raising her children when she wasn’t at
court. Like her daughter, Jacquetta gave
birth to probably fifteen children, thirteen of whom survived to
adulthood. The Woodvilles were vassals
of William de la Pole, the future Duke of Suffolk from whom they purchased the
manor house of Grafton. Richard had also
served under Edmund, Duke of Somerset. They also spent time at court after
Henry VI married Marguerite of Anjou.
Marguerite was a kinswoman of Jacquetta.
The new Queen’s uncle had married Jacquetta’s sister. The two women became good friends. They were both foreign women who had married
into the English royal family. Over
time, Jacquetta became one of the Queen’s chief ladies-in-waiting. Jacquetta tried to help the new Queen navigate
the English court, advising her to temper her favoritism towards Edmund
Beaufort and de la Pole but her advice fell on deaf ears.
Jacquetta and
her husband were loyal to the King, despite whatever they might have thought in
private about his fitness to rule. They had both been raised to respect The
House of Lancaster. Jacquetta had married into it; her husband had been raised
to serve it. They had been well rewarded for their services; Richard had been
made Baron Rivers. When they arranged their daughter Elizabeth’s married, it
was to another loyal Lancastrian, Sir John Grey. They proved their loyalty to the crown in many
ways. When the King went into a catatonic state, and Marguerite tried to keep
it a secret from the court, Jacquetta knew.
When the Duke of York was Lord Protector, he sailed from England to
Calais. Woodville raised the chain across the harbor to prevent York from
entering which didn’t endear him to the Duke.
However the
Woodvilles were pragmatic. Despite their loyalties to the Lancastrians, they
did not follow the royal family into exile, pledging to continue the fight. No,
the Woodvilles made their peace with the new king. Richard Woodville and his son Anthony were
appointed to the King’s Council, and Jacquetta continued to receive her widow’s
pension. Their position was solidified with their daughter Elizabeth’s marriage
to the young Edward IV. The Woodvilles now rose higher than they ever had under
Henry IV. Jacquetta once again took the
stage as a leading lady at the royal court as mother of the Queen. Richard
Woodville was eventually made Earl Rivers in 1466 and Constable of England, and
all of Elizabeth’s siblings made advantageous marriages.
The
Woodville’s rise of course made them powerful enemies. When the Earl of Warwick, who felt
marginalized by the Woodvilles, rebelled against Edward the IV, the Woodvilles
felt the sting of his blade literally.
Richard Woodville and his son John were captured and executed without
trial by Warwick. Then just to stick the knife in a little more, Jacquetta was
accused of witchcraft by Warwick. Witnesses claimed that Jacquetta made a love
charm consisting of lead dolls of a man and a woman (presumably Elizabeth &
Edward IV) bound with a gold thread. There is no proof one way or the other
that Jacquetta dabbled in witchcraft although Philippa Gregory’s Jacquetta in
The River Queen most assuredly does.
Jacquetta probably knew about the secret relationship between her daughter
& the King, encouraged it, and helped things along. Elizabeth was beautiful
and the King was randy, witchcraft probably had very little to do with the
attraction between the two. When you
think about it, it’s kind of insulting to suggest that the only reason that the
King married Elizabeth was because he was bewitched.
The
punishment for witchcraft was death. It
was to be Warwick’s revenge against the family that supplanted him. Jacquetta
must have been scared shitless. Her
husband had been murdered by Warwick, and her son-in-law was now a prisoner. She was alone and defenseless. She had seen at firsthand what happened when
women were accused of witchcraft. Joan
of Arc had been condemned to death for witchcraft. Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess
of Gloucester and Marjorie Jourdemayne had also been punished for practicing
witchcraft, the former with imprisonment, and the latter to death. No doubt Jacquetta thought her time was up.
And then a funny thing happened. At the last minute, Warwick released her,
without explanation. No one knows what changed his mind. Jacquetta had powerful
friends amongst the Lancastrians still including Marguerite of Anjou. Or it might just have been that once he
realized that he couldn’t rule without Edward IV, he thought better of killing
the King’s mother-in-law. Whatever his reasons, Jacquetta joined her daughter
in The Tower of London. Once Edward IV
had been released by Warwick, Jacquetta appealed to the King to clear her
name. The witnesses subsequently
recanted and Jacquetta was officially cleared of the charge of witchcraft.
Jacquetta
lived long enough to see her son-in-law restored to the throne and proclaimed
King once more in 1471. She died in 1472
at the relatively early age (for us at least) of 56. Through her daughter Elizabeth, she was the
great-grandmother of Henry VIII. After
her death, the allegations of witchcraft survived. In 1484, Richard III revived the allegations,
claiming that she and Elizabeth charmed Edward IV into marriage through
witchcraft.
Sources:
Sarah
Gristwood – Blood Sisters: The Women
behind the Wars of the Roses, Basic Books, 2013
David
Baldwin, Philippa Gregory & Michael Jones – The Women of the Cousins' War:
The Duchess, the Queen, and the King's Mother, Touchstone, 2011
