Misnamed possible mistress of King Edward IV of England
Elizabeth Lucy, also known as Lady Lucy, Lady Elizabeth, and Elizabeth Wayte, daughter of Thomas Wayte of Hamptonshire, (born ca. 1445) was the possible mistress of King Edward IV of England, and possible mother of several children by him, including Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle. Arthur was known in his youth as Arthur Wayte. He was elevated to the title, Viscount Lisle, by Henry Tudor (Henry VII).
(Sources: George Buc, Master of the Revels, Dr. John Ashdown-Hill)
Accounts of her life
Elizabeth's lover Edward IV
Lucy's family background is not known. The Victorian historian James Gairdner refers to her as a "courtesan of obscure birth".[1] However, Thomas More calls her "dame" Elizabeth, portraying her as a naive girl seduced by Edward. He states that Edward's mother, enraged by her son's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville after he had already made Lucy pregnant, had stated that Lucy was legally engaged to him ("precontracted"). Lucy denied they had been officially engaged but said,
"his grace spoke such loving words to her, she verily hoped he would have married her, and if it had not been for such kind words she would never have shown such kindness to let him to kindly get her with child."[2]
More goes on to assert that Richard III later revived the claim in order to declare Edward's children by Elizabeth illegitimate, and thereby take the throne for himself. However, it was later discovered that Richard had in fact named Eleanor Butler as Edward's precontracted wife. Butler was already dead, and could not therefore be questioned about the claim.
The 17th century historian George Buck portrays Lucy differently from More, depicting her as a sexually uninhibited young woman. Edward "loved her well, and she was his witty concubine, for she was a wanton wench and willing and ready to yield herself to the king and his pleasures without conditions."[3]
Elizabeth Wayte
The 18th century antiquarian John Anstis in The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (London, 1724) identified her with "Elizabeth Wayte", the daughter of Thomas Wayte of Southampton, saying she was the mother of Arthur Plantagenet.[4]Bridget Boland suggests that Edward may have met her while travelling in the south of England in 1461.[4] Chris Given Wilson and Alice Curteis also equate her with Wayte, saying that her son was probably born sometime between 1461 and 1464.[5] The name "Lucy" is presumed to derive from a later marriage, though Michael Hicks suggests she was a "young widow" when she met Edward.[6]
While it remains unclear whether or not Wayte and Lucy are identical, it is widely believed Lucy was also the mother of Elizabeth Plantagenet (born circa 1464), who married Sir Thomas Lumley in 1477. She may also have been the mother of other children by the king.[7]
Notes
↑ James Gairdner, History of the life and reign of Richard the Third, to which is added the story of Perkin Warbeck: from original documents, Cambridge University Press, 1898, p.92.
↑ Richard Marius, Thomas More: A Biography, Harvard University Press, 1999, p.107.
↑ Charles Carlton, Royal Mistresses, Taylor & Francis, 1990, p.24.
1 2 Bridget Boland, The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement, University of Chicago Press, 1983, p. 2.
↑ Chris Given Wilson, Alice Curteis, The Royal Bastards of Medieval England, Routledge, 1984, p. 162.
↑ Hicks, Michael, English Political Culture in the Fifteenth Century, Routledge, New York, 2002, p.16.
↑ C. Ross, Edward IV (1974), pg. 316, footnote 2 (citing BM Arundel MS. 26, ff. 29v-30v); C. Given-Wilson & A. Curteis, Royal Bastards of Medieval England (1984), pp. 158,161–174.
Related Research Articles
Edward IV was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England fought between the Yorkist and Lancastrian factions between 1455 and 1487.
Lady Eleanor Talbot, also known by her married name Eleanor Butler, was an English noblewoman. She was a daughter of John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury. After the death of Edward IV of England in 1483 it was claimed by Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, that she had had a legal precontract of marriage to Edward, which invalidated the king's later marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. According to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, this meant he, rather than Edward's sons, was the true heir to the throne. Richard took the crown and imprisoned Edward's sons, who subsequently disappeared.
Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, 1st Earl of Huntingdon, 7th Baron Ferrers of Groby, was an English nobleman, courtier and the eldest son of Elizabeth Woodville and her first husband Sir John Grey of Groby. Her second marriage to King Edward IV made her Queen of England, thus elevating Grey's status at court and in the realm as the stepson of the King. Through his mother's endeavours, he made two materially advantageous marriages to wealthy heiresses, the King's niece Anne Holland and the King’s cousin, Cecily Bonville, 7th Baroness Harington. By the latter, he had 14 children.
The title of Viscount Lisle has been created six times in the Peerage of England. The first creation, on 30 October 1451, was for John Talbot, 1st Baron Lisle. Upon the death of his son Thomas at the Battle of Nibley Green in 1470, the viscountcy became extinct and the barony abeyant.
Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, KG was an illegitimate son of the English king Edward IV, half-brother-in-law of Henry VII, and an uncle of Henry VIII, at whose court he was a prominent figure and by whom he was appointed Lord Deputy of Calais (1533–40). The survival of a large collection of his correspondence in the Lisle Letters makes his life one of the best documented of his era.
Katherine Neville was a medieval English noblewoman, the eldest daughter of Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, and his second wife Joan Beaufort. Through her mother, she was a granddaughter of John of Gaunt and a great-granddaughter of King Edward III.
In the English or British court, a royal mistress is a woman who is the lover of a member of the royal family; specifically, the king. She may be taken either before or after his accession to the throne. Although it generally is only used of females, by extrapolation, the relation can cover any lover of the monarch, whether male or female. Queen Elizabeth I is said to have had many male favorites, including Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, although it is not known whether the relationships were sexual or not.
Anne Basset was an English lady-in-waiting of the Tudor period, reputed to have been the mistress of King Henry VIII.
Sir John Basset, of Tehidy in Cornwall and of Umberleigh in Devon was Sheriff of Cornwall in 1497, 1517 and 1522 and Sheriff of Devon in 1524. Although himself an important figure in the West Country gentry, he is chiefly remembered for his connection with the life of his second wife and widow Honor Grenville, who moved into the highest society when she remarried to Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle KG, an illegitimate son of King Edward IV, and an important figure at the court of King Henry VIII, his nephew.
Katharine Basset was an English gentlewoman who served at the court of King Henry VIII, namely in the household of Queen Anne of Cleves, and was briefly jailed for speaking against him. Three of her letters to her mother Honor Grenville survive in the Lisle Papers.
Cecily Bonville, 7th Baroness Harington, 2nd Baroness Bonville was an English peer, who was also Marchioness of Dorset by her first marriage to Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset, and Countess of Wiltshire by her second marriage to Henry Stafford, 1st Earl of Wiltshire.
Honor Grenville, Viscountess Lisle was a Cornish lady whose domestic life from 1533 to 1540 during the reign of King Henry VIII is exceptionally well-recorded, due to the survival of the Lisle Papers in the National Archives, the state archives of the UK.
The Lisle Papers are the correspondence received in Calais between 1533 and 1540 by Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle (c.1480-1542), Lord Deputy of Calais, an illegitimate son of King Edward IV and an uncle of King Henry VIII, and by his wife, Honor Plantagenet, Viscountess Lisle, from several servants, courtiers, royal officials, friends, children and other relatives. They are an important source of information on domestic life in the Tudor age and of life at the court of Henry VIII.
The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487), known at the time and for more than a century after as the Civil Wars, was a series of civil wars fought over control of the English throne in the mid-to-late fifteenth century. These wars were fought between supporters of two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: Lancaster and York. The wars extinguished the last male line of the House of Lancaster in 1471, leading to the Tudor family inheriting the Lancastrian claim to the throne. Following the war and the extinction of the last male line of the House of York in 1485, a politically arranged marriage united the Houses of Lancaster and York, creating a new royal dynasty which inherited the Yorkist claim as well, thereby resolving the conflict.
Elizabeth Grey, 5th Baroness Lisle, 3rd Viscountess Lisle was an English noblewoman and heiress.
A royal bastard is a child of a reigning monarch born out of wedlock. The king might have a child with a mistress, or the legitimacy of a marriage might be questioned for reasons concerning succession.
Elizabeth Grey, 6th Baroness Lisle was an English noblewoman during the reigns of Henry VII and VIII.
Anne Devereux, Countess of Pembroke, was an English noblewoman, who was Countess of Pembroke during the 15th century by virtue of marriage to William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Lisle was an English nobleman who was created Viscount Lisle in 1483, in recognition of his wife's descent.
John Basset (1518–1541) was an English gentleman from Devon, a member of the old Basset family, and heir to a substantial inheritance. His short life is well documented in the Lisle Papers. He studied law at Lincoln's Inn and at the age of 20, at the start of a promising career, entered the household of Thomas Cromwell, Lord Privy Seal, but died suddenly aged only 23, albeit having married and produced a son and heir, born posthumously. His stepfather and father-in-law was Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle, Lord Deputy of Calais (1533–1540), a bastard son of King Edward IV and thus uncle of King Henry VIII, whose arrest with that of his mother in 1540 at Calais for heresy and treason, was a major, potentially catastrophic, event in his life. He died a year after the arrests, from an unknown illness, but his siblings all went on to have successful careers, especially his younger brother James, mostly as royal courtiers, apparently unaffected by the crisis.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
