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Identifying Mistresses: Just Who Slept With Edward IV?
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Brad Verity
Nov 6, 2013, 4:04:38 PM11/6/13
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In his 'The History of King Richard III', Sir Thomas More writes, "The Duchess [Cecily, duchess of York, Edward IV's mother], with these words nothing appeased, and seeing the King [Edward IV] so set thereon that she could not pull him back, so highly she disdained it that under pretext of her duty to God, she devised to disturb this marriage [to Elizabeth Woodville], and rather to help that he should marry one Dame Elizabeth Lucy, whom the King had also not long before gotten with child. Wherefore the King's mother objected openly against his marriage, as it were in discharge of her conscience, that the King was betrothed to Dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband before God":
http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Richard.pdf
More, born in 1478 so only age four when Edward IV died, wrote this account between 1512 and 1519, and it wasn't published until after his death. This is the earliest reference that can be found of "Dame Elizabeth Lucy". In the next paragraph, More continues, "Whereupon Dame Elizabeth Lucy was sent for. And although she was by the King's mother and many others filled with good encouragement-to affirm that she was betrothed unto the King-yet when she was solemnly sworn to say the truth, she confessed that they were never betrothed. However, she said his Grace spoke so loving words unto her that she verily hoped he would have married her, and that if it had not been for such kind words, she would never have showed such kindness to him, to let him so kindly get her with child."
One hundred years later, in 1619, historian George Buck writes, "Elizabeth Lucy was the daughter of one Wayte of Southampton, a mean gentleman, if he were one ... the king had a child by her, and that child was the bastard Arthur, and commonly called (but unduly) Arthur Plantagenet. And he was afterwards made Viscount Lisle by Henry VII".
Ten years later in 1629, Somerset Herald John Philipot, working with Wayte descendant Anthony Bruning of Wymering, compiled what is now known as the 'Philipot pedigree', in which a daughter of one Thomas Wayte of Hampshire is described as "first concubine to King Edward the 4th, mother of Arthur Viscount Lisley". From Buck and the Philipot pedigree, historian John Ashdown-Hill, in his 1999 article for The Ricardian, entitled 'The Elusive Mistress: Elizabeth Lucy and Her Family' (many thanks to Paul Reed for sending me the article), deduces that Edward IV's mistress was the daughter of the Thomas Wayte of Hampshire who died 10 April 1482 (per his M.I.), and is buried in St Michael Church, Stoke Charity, Hampshire. The only marriage Ashdown-Hill locates for this Thomas Wayte is in 1465, to Elizabeth, daughter of John Skilling, and widow of John Wynnard (living 1464). This doesn't prevent Ashdown-Hill from presuming Thomas Wayte must've had a previous wife, who was the mother of his daughter Elizabeth, who in turn was married to some otherwise unidentified man named Lucy.
Frankly, the identity of the mother of Arthur, Viscount Lisle, was staring Ashdown-Hill in the face. He just couldn't see it, as he was so intent on taking the Philipot pedigree and George Buck, both written about 150 years after the death of Edward IV, at face value: that the first name of Arthur's mother was 'Elizabeth' and that she was married to a man named Lucy. On 6 October 1487, Elizabeth Skilling Wayte, the widow of Thomas Wayte, made her will (proved 4 December 1487), and bequeathed, "Item I bequeath to Alice Wayte my husbands bastard doughter toward her marriage a ffedirbed, a bolster, x pair of she tis, iii pelowes of down, a coveryng for a bed of grene and red, a grete pott and a litill pott of brasse, a grete panne and a lit ell panne of brass, ij basins of pewter, iii candilstikkes of laton, ij qwisshins of carpette ij quysshins of ffloures. And if it happen the said Alice to decesse or she be married, thenne I will that alle the bequest by me to hir bequethed be distributed and disposed by myre executor for the soul of the said Alice, my soul and all cristen soulez after his best discretion to the pleasure of Almyghte Ihesu."
Alice Wayte, unmarried but apparently old enough to set up a household in 1487, is the only recorded child of the Thomas Wayte who died in 1482, the one whom the Philipot pedigree makes the maternal grandfather of Arthur Viscount Lisle. If born before her father's marriage in 1465 to the widowed Elizabeth Skilling Wynnard, Alice was at least age 22 in 1487, perhaps a few years older.
Most authorities, including Muriel St Clare Byrne, the editor of his correspondence, suggest a date of birth for Arthur between 1462 and 1464. But David Grummitt, Arthur's biographer in the ODNB, points out, "This seems unlikely for two reasons. First, it presupposes that Edward IV did not beget, or at any rate acknowledge, any illegitimate children after his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1465. Second, a fifty-year-old uncle seems an unlikely jousting companion for the young Henry VIII in the early 1510s."
A "my Lord the Bastard" was supplied clothes by the Great Wardrobe in 1472 (PROE101/412/8 m.3). Many historians and genealogists have assumed this refers to Arthur, the only known bastard son of Edward IV. But historian Michael Hicks points out, "The boy was not named and seems unidentifiable". If Arthur had grown up in the royal household, as has been assumed from this reference, it would seem there would be more than this single mention of him. For all we know, as these records were not public and only written for the eyes of a handful of administrators, "my Lord the Bastard" was a nickname given by the wardrobe clerk to an individual he didn't care for,
The first known appearance of Arthur Plantagenet in record is in 1501/02, when he is in the household of his half-sister the queen, Elizabeth of York. He is listed among her household servants at her funeral in 1503. This suggests a man in his early 20s, not a man in his late thirties and nearing middle age. Arthur was likely born around 1480, give or take a year or two, in the late years of his father's reign, not in the first decade of it. If the Philipot pedigree is accurate as to his maternal Wayte grandfather, then the likeliest candidate for his mother is Alice, the bastard daughter, unmarried but full-grown in 1487, of Thomas Wayte of Hampshire (d. 1482).
Although Ashdown-Hill, in his Elizabeth Lucy article, states, "While there is no proof that Elizabeth 'fille' [the wife of Thomas Lumley] and Arthur Plantagenet had the same mother, this is perfectly plausible. Indeed, so far as one can tell, it is the only explanation that is chronologically possible." Maybe at a casual glance, which is all most historians have seemed to give it, but on closer inspection, as with Arthur above, chronology shows it very unlikely, if not impossible that Margaret Lumley, the daughter of Edward IV who was herself a mother in 1478, shared a mother with Arthur Plantagenet, who surviving records suggest was born around the same year.
Historian W.E. Hampton in his 1979 article for The Ricardian, entitled 'Plantagenet and Lumley' (again, many thanks to Paul Reed for sending me this article as well), states, "All pedigrees agree that Thomas [Lumley]'s wife was a bastard daughter of Edward IV named Elizabeth (Elizabeth Lucy sometimes being named as her mother)". Hampton doesn't speculate further on the identity of her mother, but does go on to mention that the first name of Lumley's wife was not Elizabeth, but Margaret, going on to mention the 1486 IPM of Thomas, Lord Lumley (citing the 44th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper, p. 451) and the 1478-9 conveyance of Beautrove (citing the 35th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper, p. 134) as proof. The abstracts of both of these were posted and discussed last week on the newsgroup. So two historians, Hampton and Hicks, have now corrected the first name of Edward IV's daughter to Margaret, correcting the College of Arms who have had her (since 1530) as 'Elizabeth', due to an error by herald Thomas Tonge.
Hampton also points out that Beautrove is now Butterby Manor House in Croxdale, Durham:
http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/1006.html
And that the writ of diem clausit extremum for Margaret's husband Thomas Lumley was issued in Durham on 29 July 1503, citing 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper (1875), p. 72, as his source for the date.
Writing around the same time as Sir Thomas More, in 1512-13, historian Polydore Vergil touches upon the relationship between Edward IV and Warwick the Kingmaker in the first years of Edward's reign, "and yt caryeth soome colour of truthe, which commonly is reportyd, that king Edward showld have assayed to do soome unhonest act in the earls howse; for as muche as the king was a man who wold readyly cast an eye upon yowng ladyes, and loove them inordinately":
https://archive.org/stream/polydorevergil00camduoft#page/116/mode/2up
Some incident clearly happened where the young Edward IV made sexual advances towards a woman in Warwick the Kingmaker's household in the early years of his reign. Reports of it survived fifty years afterwards, to the time that Virgil was writing his history. And More's story, also fifty years after the fact, may have some truth to it: that a noblewoman was seduced by Edward IV and bore him a child, known enough about the court that the king's mother Cecily, duchess of York, called for this woman to make a statement in the hope that it would prevent his Woodville marriage (so we're not talking a kitchen maid here). Edward IV acknowledged his bastard daughter Margaret and married her to a wealthy northern family, the Lumleys, by 1477, with her bearing a son the following year. As Michael Hicks suggests, the child born to the noblewoman Edward IV seduced in the first couple years of his reign, works well chronologically to be his daughter Margaret, necessarily born 1461-63.
Hicks then suggests, as no Dame Elizabeth Lucy can be found in records of the early years of Edward IV's reign, More must've been in error as to her name. This makes perfect sense - no landed lady can completely escape written record in this period. Hicks then suggests that More may have been accurate 50 years later as to the lady's surname 'Lucy', but inaccurate as to her first name 'Elizabeth'. If we're looking for a noblewoman surnamed 'Lucy' in the early 1460s, then Margaret Fitzlewis, widow of Sir William Lucy, fits the bill very nicely, for all of the reasons discussed on the newsgroup last week. She listed Warwick Castle as a residence in 1462, indicating she was of the household of Warwick the Kingmaker, and so may have been the lady to whom Vergil alludes.
As I said earlier, there is no way to ever definitively prove that Margaret Fitzlewis Lucy was a mistress of Edward IV and the mother of his daughter Margaret Lumley, but as a theory, it has much to recommend it. So I have it as so in my database with a cautionary note that the relationship is conjectural. I also now have Alice Wayte (living 1487), bastard daughter of Thomas Wayte of Hampshire (d. 1482), as the mother of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle (born about 1480), with the same cautionary note of conjecture.
For me these ladies work much better than an Elizabeth Wayte or Elizabeth Lucy, neither of which can be located within 15th-century records.
Cheers, -----Brad
http://www.thomasmorestudies.org/docs/Richard.pdf
More, born in 1478 so only age four when Edward IV died, wrote this account between 1512 and 1519, and it wasn't published until after his death. This is the earliest reference that can be found of "Dame Elizabeth Lucy". In the next paragraph, More continues, "Whereupon Dame Elizabeth Lucy was sent for. And although she was by the King's mother and many others filled with good encouragement-to affirm that she was betrothed unto the King-yet when she was solemnly sworn to say the truth, she confessed that they were never betrothed. However, she said his Grace spoke so loving words unto her that she verily hoped he would have married her, and that if it had not been for such kind words, she would never have showed such kindness to him, to let him so kindly get her with child."
One hundred years later, in 1619, historian George Buck writes, "Elizabeth Lucy was the daughter of one Wayte of Southampton, a mean gentleman, if he were one ... the king had a child by her, and that child was the bastard Arthur, and commonly called (but unduly) Arthur Plantagenet. And he was afterwards made Viscount Lisle by Henry VII".
Ten years later in 1629, Somerset Herald John Philipot, working with Wayte descendant Anthony Bruning of Wymering, compiled what is now known as the 'Philipot pedigree', in which a daughter of one Thomas Wayte of Hampshire is described as "first concubine to King Edward the 4th, mother of Arthur Viscount Lisley". From Buck and the Philipot pedigree, historian John Ashdown-Hill, in his 1999 article for The Ricardian, entitled 'The Elusive Mistress: Elizabeth Lucy and Her Family' (many thanks to Paul Reed for sending me the article), deduces that Edward IV's mistress was the daughter of the Thomas Wayte of Hampshire who died 10 April 1482 (per his M.I.), and is buried in St Michael Church, Stoke Charity, Hampshire. The only marriage Ashdown-Hill locates for this Thomas Wayte is in 1465, to Elizabeth, daughter of John Skilling, and widow of John Wynnard (living 1464). This doesn't prevent Ashdown-Hill from presuming Thomas Wayte must've had a previous wife, who was the mother of his daughter Elizabeth, who in turn was married to some otherwise unidentified man named Lucy.
Frankly, the identity of the mother of Arthur, Viscount Lisle, was staring Ashdown-Hill in the face. He just couldn't see it, as he was so intent on taking the Philipot pedigree and George Buck, both written about 150 years after the death of Edward IV, at face value: that the first name of Arthur's mother was 'Elizabeth' and that she was married to a man named Lucy. On 6 October 1487, Elizabeth Skilling Wayte, the widow of Thomas Wayte, made her will (proved 4 December 1487), and bequeathed, "Item I bequeath to Alice Wayte my husbands bastard doughter toward her marriage a ffedirbed, a bolster, x pair of she tis, iii pelowes of down, a coveryng for a bed of grene and red, a grete pott and a litill pott of brasse, a grete panne and a lit ell panne of brass, ij basins of pewter, iii candilstikkes of laton, ij qwisshins of carpette ij quysshins of ffloures. And if it happen the said Alice to decesse or she be married, thenne I will that alle the bequest by me to hir bequethed be distributed and disposed by myre executor for the soul of the said Alice, my soul and all cristen soulez after his best discretion to the pleasure of Almyghte Ihesu."
Alice Wayte, unmarried but apparently old enough to set up a household in 1487, is the only recorded child of the Thomas Wayte who died in 1482, the one whom the Philipot pedigree makes the maternal grandfather of Arthur Viscount Lisle. If born before her father's marriage in 1465 to the widowed Elizabeth Skilling Wynnard, Alice was at least age 22 in 1487, perhaps a few years older.
Most authorities, including Muriel St Clare Byrne, the editor of his correspondence, suggest a date of birth for Arthur between 1462 and 1464. But David Grummitt, Arthur's biographer in the ODNB, points out, "This seems unlikely for two reasons. First, it presupposes that Edward IV did not beget, or at any rate acknowledge, any illegitimate children after his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in 1465. Second, a fifty-year-old uncle seems an unlikely jousting companion for the young Henry VIII in the early 1510s."
A "my Lord the Bastard" was supplied clothes by the Great Wardrobe in 1472 (PROE101/412/8 m.3). Many historians and genealogists have assumed this refers to Arthur, the only known bastard son of Edward IV. But historian Michael Hicks points out, "The boy was not named and seems unidentifiable". If Arthur had grown up in the royal household, as has been assumed from this reference, it would seem there would be more than this single mention of him. For all we know, as these records were not public and only written for the eyes of a handful of administrators, "my Lord the Bastard" was a nickname given by the wardrobe clerk to an individual he didn't care for,
The first known appearance of Arthur Plantagenet in record is in 1501/02, when he is in the household of his half-sister the queen, Elizabeth of York. He is listed among her household servants at her funeral in 1503. This suggests a man in his early 20s, not a man in his late thirties and nearing middle age. Arthur was likely born around 1480, give or take a year or two, in the late years of his father's reign, not in the first decade of it. If the Philipot pedigree is accurate as to his maternal Wayte grandfather, then the likeliest candidate for his mother is Alice, the bastard daughter, unmarried but full-grown in 1487, of Thomas Wayte of Hampshire (d. 1482).
Although Ashdown-Hill, in his Elizabeth Lucy article, states, "While there is no proof that Elizabeth 'fille' [the wife of Thomas Lumley] and Arthur Plantagenet had the same mother, this is perfectly plausible. Indeed, so far as one can tell, it is the only explanation that is chronologically possible." Maybe at a casual glance, which is all most historians have seemed to give it, but on closer inspection, as with Arthur above, chronology shows it very unlikely, if not impossible that Margaret Lumley, the daughter of Edward IV who was herself a mother in 1478, shared a mother with Arthur Plantagenet, who surviving records suggest was born around the same year.
Historian W.E. Hampton in his 1979 article for The Ricardian, entitled 'Plantagenet and Lumley' (again, many thanks to Paul Reed for sending me this article as well), states, "All pedigrees agree that Thomas [Lumley]'s wife was a bastard daughter of Edward IV named Elizabeth (Elizabeth Lucy sometimes being named as her mother)". Hampton doesn't speculate further on the identity of her mother, but does go on to mention that the first name of Lumley's wife was not Elizabeth, but Margaret, going on to mention the 1486 IPM of Thomas, Lord Lumley (citing the 44th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper, p. 451) and the 1478-9 conveyance of Beautrove (citing the 35th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper, p. 134) as proof. The abstracts of both of these were posted and discussed last week on the newsgroup. So two historians, Hampton and Hicks, have now corrected the first name of Edward IV's daughter to Margaret, correcting the College of Arms who have had her (since 1530) as 'Elizabeth', due to an error by herald Thomas Tonge.
Hampton also points out that Beautrove is now Butterby Manor House in Croxdale, Durham:
http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/English%20sites/1006.html
And that the writ of diem clausit extremum for Margaret's husband Thomas Lumley was issued in Durham on 29 July 1503, citing 36th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper (1875), p. 72, as his source for the date.
Writing around the same time as Sir Thomas More, in 1512-13, historian Polydore Vergil touches upon the relationship between Edward IV and Warwick the Kingmaker in the first years of Edward's reign, "and yt caryeth soome colour of truthe, which commonly is reportyd, that king Edward showld have assayed to do soome unhonest act in the earls howse; for as muche as the king was a man who wold readyly cast an eye upon yowng ladyes, and loove them inordinately":
https://archive.org/stream/polydorevergil00camduoft#page/116/mode/2up
Some incident clearly happened where the young Edward IV made sexual advances towards a woman in Warwick the Kingmaker's household in the early years of his reign. Reports of it survived fifty years afterwards, to the time that Virgil was writing his history. And More's story, also fifty years after the fact, may have some truth to it: that a noblewoman was seduced by Edward IV and bore him a child, known enough about the court that the king's mother Cecily, duchess of York, called for this woman to make a statement in the hope that it would prevent his Woodville marriage (so we're not talking a kitchen maid here). Edward IV acknowledged his bastard daughter Margaret and married her to a wealthy northern family, the Lumleys, by 1477, with her bearing a son the following year. As Michael Hicks suggests, the child born to the noblewoman Edward IV seduced in the first couple years of his reign, works well chronologically to be his daughter Margaret, necessarily born 1461-63.
Hicks then suggests, as no Dame Elizabeth Lucy can be found in records of the early years of Edward IV's reign, More must've been in error as to her name. This makes perfect sense - no landed lady can completely escape written record in this period. Hicks then suggests that More may have been accurate 50 years later as to the lady's surname 'Lucy', but inaccurate as to her first name 'Elizabeth'. If we're looking for a noblewoman surnamed 'Lucy' in the early 1460s, then Margaret Fitzlewis, widow of Sir William Lucy, fits the bill very nicely, for all of the reasons discussed on the newsgroup last week. She listed Warwick Castle as a residence in 1462, indicating she was of the household of Warwick the Kingmaker, and so may have been the lady to whom Vergil alludes.
As I said earlier, there is no way to ever definitively prove that Margaret Fitzlewis Lucy was a mistress of Edward IV and the mother of his daughter Margaret Lumley, but as a theory, it has much to recommend it. So I have it as so in my database with a cautionary note that the relationship is conjectural. I also now have Alice Wayte (living 1487), bastard daughter of Thomas Wayte of Hampshire (d. 1482), as the mother of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle (born about 1480), with the same cautionary note of conjecture.
For me these ladies work much better than an Elizabeth Wayte or Elizabeth Lucy, neither of which can be located within 15th-century records.
Cheers, -----Brad
Message has been deleted
Brad Verity
Nov 6, 2013, 8:07:07 PM11/6/13
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On Wednesday, November 6, 2013 2:18:31 PM UTC-8, ravinma...@yahoo.com wrote:
> I'm thinking that "my Lord the Bastard" from 1472 probably refers to Anthony or Antoine, the Grand Bastard of Burgundy, who was certainly in England in 1468 and again in 1474 (Edward IV's sister had married the Grand Bastard's brother, so the English ties of the family were strong):
Dear John,
Excellent thought! I much prefer your explanation of the Burgundian visitor to Edward IV's court receiving robes in 1472, to the stated alternative - a bastard son of the king's being raised in the royal household, and only making this single appearance in the household records.
Cheers, ----Brad
> I'm thinking that "my Lord the Bastard" from 1472 probably refers to Anthony or Antoine, the Grand Bastard of Burgundy, who was certainly in England in 1468 and again in 1474 (Edward IV's sister had married the Grand Bastard's brother, so the English ties of the family were strong):
Dear John,
Excellent thought! I much prefer your explanation of the Burgundian visitor to Edward IV's court receiving robes in 1472, to the stated alternative - a bastard son of the king's being raised in the royal household, and only making this single appearance in the household records.
Cheers, ----Brad
gdco...@gmail.com
Feb 19, 2019, 7:59:34 PM2/19/19
to
Greetings,
While pursuing some just-found ancestry, I found this thread and the one from a week before re: Thomas Lumley & Margaret Plantagenet.
I couldn't find anything later, so is the latest word on the mother of Margaret (Plantagenet) Lumley: that she is unknown, but possibly being either Alice Wayte or Margaret (Fitzlewis) Lucy?
Thanks
Greg
While pursuing some just-found ancestry, I found this thread and the one from a week before re: Thomas Lumley & Margaret Plantagenet.
I couldn't find anything later, so is the latest word on the mother of Margaret (Plantagenet) Lumley: that she is unknown, but possibly being either Alice Wayte or Margaret (Fitzlewis) Lucy?
Thanks
Greg
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