Brad Verity made this excellent post, infra, back in October 2013 and said:
"Hicks's discovery that Lumley's wife was actually named 'Margaret', not
'Elizabeth', is interesting and a document from 1480 that mentions the
couple is a great find. The document should be examined to confirm that it
does indeed refer to Thomas Lumley and his Plantagenet wife, and not to,
say, Thomas, 2nd Lord Lumley (who lived until 1485) and his wife Margaret. I
will try and have a look at the document (PRO DURH3/54/22 m.8) the next time
I make it out to the National Archives."
I wonder if you have ever had an opportunity to view and analyze that
document, Brad?
Cheers, Spencer
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From: Brad Verity <
royald...@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: Descent from King Edward IV of England to George Home, of
Virginia, died 1760
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 14:20:39 -0700 (PDT)
References: <
mailman.4.138265632...@rootsweb.com>
In-Reply-To: <
mailman.4.138265632...@rootsweb.com>
On Monday, October 21, 2013 10:53:17 AM UTC-7, Douglas Richardson wrote:
> 1) King Edward IV, by his mistress, Elizabeth Waite, widow of _____ Lucy:
Douglas, historian Michael Hicks, in his 2003 book 'Edward V: The Prince in
the Tower', states that no Elizabeth Waite Lucy existed:
"Not having read Titulus Regius, Sir Thomas More presumed that the lady of
the precontract was the Dame Elizabeth Lucy, 'a proud high-minded woman' of
dubious loyalty, of whom he had heard. More reported that Edward had seduced
her and had already fathered a child by her before his marriage, when the
King's mother the Duchess Cecily claimed that Edward 'was sure' to her and
'her husband before God'... More's story is rather vague. For a start, who
was she? Was Lucy her birth-name or her marital name? She cannot have been
the Dame Elizabeth Lucy around in More's day, who was married three times
before dying in 1536 and was still bearing children in the 1510s, fifty
years after the supposed contract. The Elizabeth Lucy (née Wayte), who was
perhaps the daughter of the Hampshire squire Thomas Wayte, does not appear
to exist. Nor can she have been the daughter of the childless Sir William
Lucy of Richards Castle in Herefordshire and Dallington (Northants.) (d.
1460). ...
Most probably our problem arises because she was not called Elizabeth - this
was a mistake of More's, a natural confusion with the notorious lady around
in his own day - but Margaret."
Hicks then goes on to make the compelling case that Edward IV's mistress
(before his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville) was Margaret Fitzlewis, who had
married Sir William Lucy in 1453, and was widowed in 1460. Her subsequent
history is checkered, with rejected suitors and a murdered second husband,
Thomas Wake.
Points that Hicks doesn't bring up, but which add to his case for Margaret
Fitzlewis as Edward IV's pre-marriage mistress and mother of his daughter
who was married to Sir Thomas Lumley, are 1) Margaret Fitzlewis was a cousin
of Warwick the Kingmaker thru their Montagu mothers, and Warwick was very
influential with Edward in the first years of his kingship, and would have
encouraged, perhaps even orchestrated, the affair, similar to how the Duke
of Norfolk encouraged his nieces, Anne Boleyn & Catherine Howard, with Henry
VIII. 2) Margaret Fitzlewis's death in 1466 would have left the
responsibility for her daughter in the hands of the king himself. And it
does seem to be Edward IV who arranged the marriage of his illegitimate
daughter with the Lumleys.
On Thursday, October 24, 2013 4:12:16 PM UTC-7, Leo van de Pas wrote:
> The inscription dates from the time of John, 6th lord Lumley (1547-1609),
> so
> this is a secondary source that for all we know may rely on legend rather
> than any primary document.
I'm not clear whether or not the Chester-le-Street Lumley monument
specifically names Thomas's wife as 'Elizabeth', or whether it just states
she was a bastard daughter of Edward IV?
> This citation is again to a secondary source, a modern tabulation from a
> document reportedly compiled ca 1505, Harleian MS 1074. The information is
> taken from folio 306r (one of 15 leafs tracing the descendants of of Sir
> John Nevill, lord of Raby). The quotation may reflect accurately what was
> written in the early 16th century, assuming that the estimated dating is
> correct in the first place, but of course there can't be certainty without
> sighting the original. Douglas Richardson would probably find it
> worthwhile
> to do this, as on folios 84v-87r there is a account of the earls of
> Arundel
> that perhaps gives the surname of the family as understood by heralds in
> the
> early Tudor period.
I feel this pedigree drawn up by the heralds at the orders of Henry VII and
his mother the formidable Margaret Beaufort, is very solid evidence for the
marriage of Thomas Lumley to Edward IV's daughter. The point of the pedigree
was to show how the nobility was related to the king - a mistake or
assumption of a bastard daughter of the late Edward IV (and so a half-sister
to the current queen Elizabeth of York) wouldn't have been tolerated.
Unfortunately, the pedigree doesn't give us the first name of Edward IV's
bastard daughter.
> 4. Tonge, Vis. of Northern Counties 1530 (Surtees Soc. 41) (1862): 27
> (Lumley ped.: Thomas Lumley, son and heyre to George, maried Elisabeth,
> bastard doughter to Kyng Edward the iiijth ).
> Visitations are mainly useful for establishing what was said, but very
> often
> not satisfactorily documented, when a family wanted to cement (or invent)
> its hereditary prestige with officialdom.
Herald Thomas Tonge's 1530 Lumley pedigree is the earliest known source to
give the first name 'Elizabeth' to Edward IV's daughter who married Thomas
Lumley. Tonge's informant was her grandson John, 5th Lord Lumley
(c.1492-1545), who may not have known his grandmother, as she may have died
before he was born. Either the herald or Lord Lumley could have been in
error as to her first name.
Michael Hicks says that her first name was actually 'Margaret', not
'Elizabeth', and cites a document in the National Archives as his source.
"And the Margaret (not Elizabeth, as wrongly reported from the 1530s on),
natural daughter of Edward IV, who was married to Sir Thomas Lumley by 1480,
when 'our most excellent and dread prince and lord King Edward IV' induced
Bishop Dudley to grant them a licence (PRO DURH3/54/22 m.8; John Leland's
Itinerary, ed. J. Chandler (Stroud, 1993), 337; R. Surtees, History &
Antiquities of the County Palatine of Durham, 4 vols (1816-40), ii. 141;
Byrne, Lisle Letters, 140n, 141n. They had eight children. As Richard Lord
Lumley (d. 1510), married in 1489, was thirty and more in 1508 and his own
son John Lord Lumley was eighteen in 1510, Richard must have been born in
the mid 1470s to a teenaged bride conceived very early in the 1460s, GEC
viii. 271-3; J.W. Clay, Extinct & Dormant Peerages of the Northern Counties
of England (1913), 130; Calendar of Inquisitions post mortem, Henry VII,
iii, nos. 360, 432; Testamenta Eboracensia, ed. J. Raine, iii, Surtees Soc.
lv (1864), 355; Forty-Fourth Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public
Record Office (1883), 45; see also Biographies, 563). The King's involvement
and her forename suggest that she was his bastard by Margaret Lucy,
problematically short though the generations are."
> Where to go from here?
I think there is very strong evidence that Edward IV married his bastard
daughter to Thomas Lumley. I find Hicks's argument that it was really
Margaret Fitzlewis, Lady Lucy, and not 'Dame Elizabeth Lucy' as More
reported many years later, who was Edward IV's pre-marriage mistress, is
very compelling, and have reflected that in my database. Hicks's argument
that Lumley's wife was the daughter of this union makes sense
chronologically, though it is only a supposition and likely can never be
definitively proved. I have the mother of Lumley's wife as Margaret
Fitzlewis in my database, with a cautionary note.
Hicks's discovery that Lumley's wife was actually named 'Margaret', not
'Elizabeth', is interesting and a document from 1480 that mentions the
couple is a great find. The document should be examined to confirm that it
does indeed refer to Thomas Lumley and his Plantagenet wife, and not to,
say, Thomas, 2nd Lord Lumley (who lived until 1485) and his wife Margaret. I
will try and have a look at the document (PRO DURH3/54/22 m.8) the next time
I make it out to the National Archives.
Cheers, -----Brad
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