Elizabeth Wydeville: The Slandered Queen

Abstract

The latest biography of Elizabeth Wydeville has little new to say on the events of the controversial queen's life, but is more passionately defensive of her character than previous works. What is new is its extensive detail about the rest of the Wydeville family whose reputations Professor Okerlund is also attempting to redeem. Whole chapters are devoted to their exploits, in particular those of Anthony, second Earl Rivers, whom she depicts as the perfect courtier, whose cultured life and high morals set him apart from most of Edward IV's court. Okerlund succumbs to the biographer's temptation of exaggerating the political and cultural importance of her subjects, but the evidence she presents for reconsidering the Wydevilles' role deserves to be read. Unfortunately, in defending the Wydevilles, Professor Okerlund tends to direct against Richard III the same unfair innuendo for which she castigates the Wydevilles' detractors. For example, she asserts that William Colyngbourne was hanged and disembowelled for composing a ‘seditious rhyme’. No mention is made of Colyngbourne's principal crime of inciting Henry Tudor to invade England. The absence from the bibliography of any substantial biography of Richard III may explain such errors. Indeed, the bibliography makes no reference to some of the most recent published and unpublished work on Elizabeth Wydeville and her family (by A.J. Pollard, D. Neale, T. Westervelt and myself). For the most controversial aspects of the queen's life there is a surprisingly heavy reliance upon sixteenth-century sources, especially Thomas More, and the uncritical approach to many fifteenth-century sources is disappointing. The book is clearly written for the general reader. There is little analysis of the events described and too much romantic conjecture, although detailed descriptions of sites such as the sanctuary grounds at Westminster Abbey shed interesting light on the queen's experiences. Sometimes the approach is just too simplistic, notably with regard to the queen's religious life: Okerlund asserts that Elizabeth Wydeville ‘had always been a deeply religious woman—even choosing Reading Abbey as the site of her honeymoon’. Naturally Elizabeth had nothing to do with the choice of Reading Abbey for a meeting of the king's council. How her stay there after the revelation of her clandestine marriage might be considered a ‘honeymoon’ is hard to imagine, and in the context of the fifteenth century it is certainly no indicator of particular piety. Despite such weaknesses, for the general reader this is an entertaining and accessible book, well-equipped with timelines and genealogical tables, and attractively illustrated. Read in conjunction with other works on the period, it provides a useful alternative perspective on the queen and her family.