Prince Arthur

Arthur, Prince of Wales

circa 1500

Private collection, Hever Castle, Kent

Arthur, Prince of Wales was born on the 19th or 20th of September 1486 and was the eldest son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York and the elder brother of Henry VIII. His birth represented the symbolic union of the warring Houses of Lancaster and York, helping to cement the Tudor dynasty after the Wars of the Roses.

Named after the legendary King Arthur, he was born in Winchester, a city associated with Camelot, fulfilling Henry VII’s efforts to evoke a new golden age for England. Arthur became Duke of Cornwall at birth and was made Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester in 1489. His christening at Winchester Cathedral was attended by notable figures, including his grandmother Elizabeth Woodville and aunt Cecily of York.

Arthur was highly valued as the future of the Tudors and was given an extensive household and education. His tutors included leading scholars such as Bernard André and Thomas Linacre. He studied Latin, classical literature, rhetoric, and history, and was described as an intelligent, capable, and amiable youth. Contemporary accounts note his tall stature, reddish hair, and resemblance to his younger brother, Henry.

From a young age, Arthur was involved in governance. He was made Warden of the Marches towards Scotland in 1490 and later Keeper of England when his father travelled to France. A Council of Wales and the Marches was established to strengthen royal authority in the region, and Arthur was based at Ludlow Castle from 1493.

Arthur’s marriage was central to Tudor foreign policy. By age three, plans were in place to marry him to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. The Treaty of Medina del Campo (1489) arranged the marriage, aiming to solidify an Anglo-Spanish alliance against France. A papal dispensation was granted due to their young ages, and the couple were formally betrothed by proxy in 1497.

Arthur and Catherine exchanged affectionate letters in Latin, though they struggled to understand each other's pronunciation. Catherine arrived in England in October 1501, and the pair were married on the 14th of November 1501 at St Paul’s Cathedral. Their wedding was a grand affair followed by a public bedding ceremony, unique in 16th-century England.

After their marriage, Arthur and Catherine moved to Ludlow Castle. However, in March of 1502, both fell ill with an unknown disease possibly sweating sickness, plague, tuberculosis, or influenza. Arthur sadly succumbed to his illness and died on the 2nd of April 1502, just shy of his 16th birthday. Catherine thankfully survived the illness, but Arthur’s death was a severe blow to Catherine, his family and the Tudor succession plans. His body was interred at Worcester Cathedral, where a chantry was later built over his tomb.

His death reshaped English history. With Arthur gone, his younger brother Henry became heir. Catherine remained in England and was vulnerable for some time however, after papal dispensation, she married Henry in 1509 shortly after his accession to the throne. However, their marriage would become a focal point of political and religious crisis. 

The issue of whether Arthur and Catherine consummated their marriage became critical decades later. Catherine always maintained they had not, but Henry VIII used the claim that they had as justification for annulment when he sought to marry Anne Boleyn. This eventually led to the break with Rome and the English Reformation.

Arthur’s legacy is subtle but profound. Though he never ruled, his brief life shaped the course of Tudor politics and the religious future of England. He is buried at Worcester Cathedral; his bowels were separately interred at St Laurence’s Church in Ludlow, where a stained-glass image commemorates him. A portrait of Arthur, owned by Henry VIII, was rediscovered in more recent times.

In 2002, the 500th anniversary of Arthur’s death was commemorated with a requiem mass at Worcester Cathedral. Despite being once hailed as the great hope of the Tudor dynasty, Arthur remains one of its more overlooked figures, overshadowed by the dramatic reign of his brother.

Free Prince Arthur Worksheet

Prince Arthur Worksheet

Elizabeth Woodville.

Elizabeth Woodville: From Northamptonshire Widow to Queen of England, and Grandmother of the Tudors

Elizabeth Woodville  

If you stand on the ridge above Grafton Regis, a sleepy Northamptonshire village of stone cottages and hedgerows, it’s hard to picture the woman born there in c. 1437 who would upend the English throne. Elizabeth Woodville, later queen to Yorkist king Edward IV, and ultimately grandmother to Henry VIII, straddled two civil wars, navigated lethal court politics, and left a family tree that still shapes how we think about the late Middle Ages. Yet her story feels surprisingly modern: a whirlwind romance, a blended family, ruthless rivals, and the strain of constant public scrutiny. 

 

The country girl and the scandalous first marriage

Elizabeth’s parents were an odd pair for 15th‑century England. Her father, Sir Richard Woodville, was respectable gentry who’d made good through military service; her mother, Jacquetta of Luxembourg, was high European nobility and the widowed Duchess of Bedford, once aunt‑by‑marriage to Henry VI. Their elopement, they skipped the king’s permission and paid a fine later, was already tabloid material. Elizabeth, their eldest, grew up in a large, ambitious household that was noble enough to mingle with kings but provincial enough to stick out at court.

Around 1452 she married John Grey of Groby, a Lancastrian knight. The match looked promising until the Wars of the Roses erupted in 1455. John fought for Henry VI and died at the second Battle of St Albans in 1461, leaving Elizabeth a 24‑year‑old widow with two little boys, Thomas and Richard. She moved back to her parents’ estate, her future uncertain, until a chance meeting changed everything.

A secret marriage that shocked England

King Edward IV (1732)  Artist George Vertue

Legend says the widowed Elizabeth waited under an oak tree near the royal hunting lodge at Stony Stratford to petition the new king, Edward IV, for her sons’ inheritance. Whether oak tree romance or scheming Woodville stage craft, the 22 year old monarch was smitten. On the 1^st of May 1464 they married in secret, with only Elizabeth’s mother and two ladies present. For medieval England, the union broke every rule. Kings married foreign princesses to gain alliances and dowries, not widows of minor lords with two kids, never mind that Edward also skipped the advice of his most powerful adviser, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, soon to be labelled “the Kingmaker.” When the marriage became public, courtiers spluttered. Warwick’s French diplomacy collapsed. The king’s own Privy Council muttered that Elizabeth was “no wife for a prince.”Edward didn’t care. He threw a lavish public coronation for his commoner bride in 1465 and began marrying her large brood of brothers and sisters into England’s top families. From the Nevilles to the Staffords, everyone suddenly had Woodville in‑laws, and plenty of resentment.

Queen in a war zone

The Woodville boom enraged Warwick. In 1469 he rebelled, captured Edward, and executed Elizabeth’s father and favourite brother. A year later he switched sides entirely, restoring Henry VI to the throne for a few chaotic months. Pregnant and vulnerable, Elizabeth fled into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where in the dim candle light of a makeshift lodging she gave birth to the future Edward V.Edward IV bounced back in 1471, defeating Warwick at Barnet and the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury. By summer the queen was back in splendour, mother now to a dozen children, two from her first marriage, ten from her second. Yet court life never settled. Edward’s philandering , Jane Shore was only the most famous mistress, and the jealousy of royal brothers kept the atmosphere sharp.

Widowhood again-and the Princes in the Tower

Description	"The Princes in the Tower"
Date	1878

 By Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet

When Edward IV unexpectedly died in April 1483, probably of pneumonia, Elizabeth became dowager queen at 46. Her son, now Edward V, was 12, and per custom his uncle Richard, Duke of Gloucester, acted as Lord Protector. Almost immediately Richard seized the boy, arrested Elizabeth’s Woodville kinsmen, and, citing an alleged pre contract between Edward IV and another woman, had Parliament declare Elizabeth’s marriage invalid. Overnight her children were branded illegitimate.Edward V and his little brother Richard were lodged in the Tower of London for what everyone assumed would be a brief wait until the coronation. They were never seen again. Their presumed murder still fuels debate, but Richard III took the crown, and Elizabeth, stripped of lands and retitled “Dame Elizabeth Grey”, retreated once more into sanctuary at Westminster with her daughters.

The chess move that birthed the Tudors

Elizabeth was down but not out. She opened secret negotiations with Margaret Beaufort, another formidable widowed mother whose exiled son, Henry Tudor, had a shaky but traceable Lancastrian claim. The two women agreed: if Henry could seize the throne, he would marry Elizabeth’s eldest daughter, also named Elizabeth, uniting York and Lancaster. In December 1483 Henry swore the pledge publicly in Rennes Cathedral.

Two years later, on a Leicestershire field called Bosworth, Richard III fell, and Henry VII became king. He married Elizabeth of York in January 1486, launching the Tudor dynasty and all but ending the War of the Roses. Although there would still be uprisings like at the Battle of Stoke that took place of the 16^th of June 1487. The Battle of Stoke was the last major battle in the War of the Roses. Elizabeth Woodville was restored to her full rank, but court politics were now dominated by Henry’s fiercely protective mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Whether side-lined by the new regime or by her own choice, Elizabeth retired in February 1487 to Bermondsey Abbey, across the Thames from the Tower that had once caged her sons.

Quiet twilight and final mysteries

Bermondsey Abbey wasn’t a grim exile; queens dowager often adopted semi religious retirements. Henry VII gave Elizabeth a pension, and she attended the christenings of her Tudor grandchildren Margaret (the future queen of Scotland) and Henry (the future Henry VIII). Yet royal visits were rare, and contemporary rumours linked her withdrawal to Yorkist plots like the Lambert Simnel rising.

On the 8^th of June 1492, Elizabeth Woodville died at around 55. Her will asked for the simplest funeral possible. Four days later, carried by barge up the Thames, she was laid beside Edward IV in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Chroniclers noted the ceremony’s restraint; modern historians debate whether austerity reflected Henry VII’s parsimony or her own explicit wish. A 1511 Venetian dispatch even claims she succumbed to plague, explaining the haste.

What remains of Elizabeth Woodville?

A dynastic linchpin. Through her daughter Elizabeth of York, she is grandmother to Henry VIII, great‑grandmother to Edward VI, Mary I, and Elizabeth I, every Tudor monarch. A cautionary tale of power and backlash. She showed how quickly favour could curdle: elevate siblings too fast, anger the nobles, and pay in blood. A rare medieval love story. Whatever Edward’s motives, he defied political logic for a private marriage, making Elizabeth England’s first commoner queen and setting precedents for later surprise unions (hello, Henry VIII and Jane Seymour). A survivor’s blueprint. She endured two wars, two widowhoods, the execution of close kin, and the disappearance of her sons and yet still maneuvered to see her grandchildren on the throne.

Why she still fascinates us

Elizabeth Woodville embodies the razor’s edge between ambition and catastrophe. She was romantic heroine and ruthless matriarch, power broker and pawn. Shakespeare paints her as grief stricken mother cursing Richard III; Philippa Gregory casts her as white witch in The White Queen. Academic biographies probe whether she orchestrated politics or merely reacted to crisis.

Strip away the legend and you meet a resourceful woman making high stakes choices in an age when female agency was usually confined to the marriage bed. She married for love, or opportunity, stood up to titans like Warwick and Richard III, and forged alliances that reshaped England. Her life reminds us that behind every royal chronicle lies a human story of risk, loss, and astonishing resilience.

Next time you stroll through Windsor’s echoing chapel or glance at a Tudor portrait, spare a thought for Elizabeth Woodville: the country knight’s daughter who became queen by chance, survived by cunning, and mothered a dynasty that still captures our imagination half a millennium later.

Free Worksheet.

Elizabeth Woodville Worksheet.