On 29 September 1464 Edward IV dropped a bombshell at a gathering of lords and nobles at Reading Abbey. The Earl of Warwick Richard Neville had been eyeing up a foreign marriage for the king, to fulfil his dynastic and royal responsibilities. However Edward had already married, in secret, the widow of a Lancastrian soldier: Elizabeth Woodville.
Edward and Elizabeth's marriage, which was said to have taken place in May of that year, triggered a social jolt through the ranks of the nobility, as the Woodville siblings were married off to eligible earls and dukes to raise their own status. Not everyone was impressed with this, the Tudor Chronicler Edward Hall remarking that the Woodville marriages were 'joyous to the queen and profitable to her blood', but that the nobles of the realm 'more marvelled than allowed this sudden rising and swift elevation'. Among them, Warwick bristled. Not only had he been hard at work smoothing the way for a foreign alliance but the nuptials of the large brood of Woodville brides snapped up eligible bachelors Warwick may have been eyeing up for his own daughters, Isabel and Anne.
 |
| The site of Margaret's wedding to Lord Maltravers, Reading Abbey (my own) |
One of the first of Elizabeth's siblings to walk down the aisle was Margaret. Her date of birth is not certain, but some online sources date it to around 1454. The date is possible, with the youngest Woodville, Catherine, being born in around 1458, although is (as far as I am aware) unsubstantiated. Susan Higginbotham in The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family has suggested that she was the fourth youngest sibling, and a younger sister of the new queen, Elizabeth.
Margaret's wedding to Thomas FitzAlan, Lord Maltravers the heir to the Earl of Arundel, occurred by 17 February 1465, when it was recorded, matter of factly, in the Paston Letters, although Agnes Strickland, the Victorian historian, records it as taking place earlier, in October 1464, just weeks after her sister's first public appearance as Edward's wife. If Strickland's dating is accurate, Edward and Elizabeth may have been secretly negotiating the match before the end of September, the Woodville rise orchestrated even before Elizabeth was introduced at court. Far from being a random choice as a husband, Maltravers was already in Edward IV's favour, having been made a Knight Banneret at his coronation in 1461 and his father an active supporter of the Yorkist regime.
 |
| Arundel Castle, West Sussex, Photo by Ray Harrington on Unsplash |
The wedding took place in Reading Abbey, the site of Henry I's burial in 1136 and the later wedding of John of Gaunt to Blanche of Lancaster in 1359. As the autumn sun streamed in through the stained glass windows of the abbey church, Margaret, in the time it took her to utter her vows, found herself elevated to the status of a future countess. If the dating of Margaret's birth in c.1454 is correct, she would have been only around ten years old at the time of her marriage. If this is true the bride and groom would have lived separately until they were in their late teens. The site today is a ruin, but part of the abbey church survives.
Maltravers succeeded to his father's earldom in 1487, according to Cokayne, when Margaret was in her thirties. As Countess of Arundel she would have spent her time at Arundel Castle in Sussex, attending to the household, overseeing finances and dealing with the important business of birthing new Arundel heirs. The Peerage website states that they had four children, the last born in 1477. Today Arundel Castle is very different from how Margaret would have remembered it, being heavily rebuilt in the nineteenth century although some Medieval features such as the gatehouse and keep survive.
The couple played a part in ceremonial occasions at court too, including the christening of Edward IV and Elizabeth's youngest child Bridget, in November 1480, at Eltham. Margaret held the chrisom (christening robe), while Lord Maltravers carried the basin, both central roles in the proceedings.
Margaret succeeded as countess in 1487, under Henry VII, in the year of the Battle of Stoke. The battle is often considered to mark the end of the Wars of the Roses, although Henry would face a later Yorkist threat to his rule during the 1490s, as the pretender Perkin Warbeck launched a bid for the crown. Little else is known about her life, but she did survive Richard Duke of Gloucester's systematic attacks on the Woodvilles in 1483 and lived to see her husband granted the role of godfather to the Tudor Prince Arthur in 1486. Richard may have overlooked Margaret because of the favour the FitzAlan family had shown to him. Her father-in-law William had fought for the Yorkists at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461 and had been granted a prominent role at Richard's coronation in July 1483.
Margaret would have faced the agony of the Wars of the Roses, too. Her father Richard Woodville and her brother John were executed in 1469, while her brother Anthony Woodville was beheaded in 1483, as Richard Duke of Gloucester established power. Her mother Jacquetta Woodville died in 1472.
Susan Higginbotham states that Margaret died before 6 March 1491. Her husband lived on into the early reign of Henry VIII, dying in 1524. Both Margaret and Thomas were buried at Arundel. Margaret and Thomas' son William went on to succeed his father as earl, and held the significant but perhaps unenvious position of attending the coronation of Anne Boleyn, only to preside at her trial just three years later.
 |
| William FitzAlan, 16th earl of Arundel and Margaret's father-in-law Wikimedia Commons |
Margaret is one example of the rises of power that could be achieved during the national chaos of the Wars of the Roses. She was born one of the youngest in a large family living in the village of Grafton, and before her teens was propelled to a future countess by her marriage. Hers was one of the marriages that angered the Earl of Warwick and contributed to his switch in allegiance to Lancaster in the late 1460s (remembering that her mother-in-law Joan was the earl's sister). With the life of a countess now ahead of her, there is nothing to suggest she didn't perform the role well, and she secured the future of the Arundel dynasty through her son William. Margaret navigated the difficulties at court in the aftermath of Edward IV's death and survived into the reign of the Tudor Henry VII, the family gaining the favour of both Yorkist and Tudor kings along the way. Margaret is not often discussed at length, but in so many ways she played one of the central roles of the Wars' conflict. Imagine what Margaret could tell us about Elizabeth Woodville, the Yorkist court and the early reign of Henry VII.
This post is part of a series of Forgotten Women of History. You can find more stories of history's overlooked women here.
You might also like: The Effigy of Sir Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury in Burghfield, The Mysterious Disappearance of Sir Francis Lovell, and A Visit to Great Malvern Priory
Want to read more about women who lived during the Wars of the Roses? Check out my book, published by Pen and Sword Books. Order your copy here.
Notes and Sources
Susan Higginbotham, The Woodvilles, The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family
Edward Hall, Hall's Chronicle
Fenn, The Paston Letters, vol 1, p195
Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, vol 1 p149-151
The Peerage website (accessed 15 February 2023)
Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vol 2
0 Comments