When was Elizabeth Woodville born?

I have just read a Wikipedia article which gives the date of Elizabeth Woodville's birth as 3 February 1437. Oh really? The truth is that we have no evidence at all for her date of birth and that is the case for every one of the Woodville children. We can speculate and make informed estimates but however we do this we are groping in the dark. In any case, the February 3rd date seems far too early, for reasons which I will outline.

The portrait above is attributed to John Stratford who was appointed by Edward IV as the King's painter in 1461. The attribution was made by William A. Shaw in a 1934 article for the Burlington Magazine about Early English Portraiture. As an expert in this field he was may have been right about the approximate date, based on stylistic analysis and given the tools at his disposal in 1934, but in more recent times other experts have questioned the originality of the work and it is suggested that the portrait is a copy of a lost original.

Now the interesting piece of information for the historian is the inscription in the top left corner in gold lettering. It is not clear in this image but it reads: "Aetat SVE 26, Anno Dom 1463." which translates as: "Aged herself 26, 1463." That seems clear enough and we can deduce that she was born in 1437, that she was 27 when she married the 22 year old Edward IV, and that she was 42 years old when she gave birth to her last child Bridget in 1479. This is all quite plausible and 1437 is the generally accepted date for her birth.

However, I would like to raise a flag. 1463 seems a highly unlikely date for the portrait to be painted. At the time she was the widow Grey and probably not on the king's radar. Even if he was showing interest in 1463, arranging for her portrait would have been a highly public and expensive undertaking and given the secrecy of the wedding in 1464 would seem to be quite unwise. In any case she would have been known as Lady Grey at that date. It would be more plausible if the portrait was undertaken after the marriage and prior to the coronation, therefore at any time between October 1464 and may 1465 and one would lean to 1465 as the preferred date. If indeed it was painted as early as this at all.

This portrait resembles in its pose several other extant portraits of the queen and it is likely that the original of these was painted after 1471, when Edward returned to the throne. The earliest surviving painting, from the royal collection, now in the Ashmolean Museum, is thought to have been painted between 1513 and 1530, and all of the other portraits are, like this one, much more precise and skilfully painted than the Ashmolean portrait.

Elizabeth Woodvile from the Ashmoleum Museum, painted c 1513-1530

A further mystery surrounding the painting at the top of this article is that it was owned by William Shaw himself, apparently, and its whereabouts today is unknown. The only evidence of it is a colour photograph in the Connoisseur Magazine published in 1911.

So we have to ask ourselves if we can take any of this 'evidence' seriously. Dr William Shaw was a respected academic but it does now seem odd that this portrait has never come to light. Queens' College are quite polite about this: 'The portrait has never been reported by anyone other than Dr Shaw, and its present whereabouts are unknown.' However, being less well-mannered, I am inclined to ask if this was ever a genuine portrait, but merely a copy made by someone in the 20th century with the inscription that communicated the message that the generator of this page intended. This was after all the era of the Piltdown Man and the Loch Ness Monster, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fell for some contrived photographs that purported to show fairies at the bottom of the garden. Have no basis other than a suspicious mind to make any accusation against Dr Shaw but I don't think we should put any energy into trying to explain these dates.

Which brings me back to the beginning. We really do not know when Elizabeth was born.

We have one date to guide us and that is 23 March 1437, when Duchess Jacquetta and Sir Richard Woodville were fined £1000 for marrying without the king's permission. The duchess was noticeably pregnant at the time so an earlier union must be presumed. We could suppose that the first child was born later that year.

But was it Elizabeth? Antony we believe from other evidence was born c 1440, although that could have been as late as 1442. He was definitely the eldest male to survive childhood. Elizabeth is also believed to be the eldest daughter and the birth of two sons by  her first marriage would support that view. Her eldest, Thomas, was probably born c 1455, and while some argument can be made for 1452, the later date is more likely. If we take 1455, that would make Elizabeth 18 at the birth of her first child, which seems lateish. Were she born in 1439, she would then be 16.

Bear in mind that she was probably married as a child. Her sister Jacquetta was married in 1450 and it seems to me that must assume that Elizabeth was married to John Grey either at the same time or earlier. It cannot be, in my view, that younger daughters were married before older sisters. This being the case, she probably moved to the Grey household and lived there until the pair were old enough to consummate the marriage. We should take into account too that the later disputed grant of three manors to the young Greys was made in 1456, probably after the birth of the first son and in expectation of a second. This should also incline us to a 1455 year of birth for Thomas Grey.

I should also mention in this context that there were some other Woodville children who probably died young. A fragmentary note written by Robert Glover, a herald in the 1567, lists the children of the Woodville family and in addition to those we know about there was a second  Richard, a Louis and another John. As there was both a John and a Richard who lived to adulthood we might guess that these other boys died young. Richard, of course, would be an expected name for the first-born son. Sir Richard Woodville's father was Richard, and it was entirely conventional to name the first born son after the paternal grandparent. Louis was probably named after Jacquetta's brother, who by this time was Count of St Pol. So there is room for at least two births before 1439. Could they both have been boys?

Possible of course but pure speculation. I do however incline to a 1439 date  for Elizabeth's birth. If she were born in 1437 she would be a full five years older than Edward and that has always seemed a lot to me, particularly t that age. Edward was 22 in 1464 and five years was practically a quarter of his life. Three years might seem a lot less.

The only definitive statement we can make about the birth year of Elizabeth Woodville is that we don't know it and may never know it.