Katherine Woodville: Cradle-Robber?

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been working on a novel about Katherine Woodville, wife of Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham who was Richard III’s ally and then his enemy. I do most of my research in the library, but I do a fair amount of Googling also to see if any leads turn up online.

In doing so, I was perturbed to find this Wikipedia entry about the Duke of Buckingham, in which it’s confidently stated that the young duke was forced to marry Katherine when he was 12 and she was 24, thereby causing Buckingham to resent the entire Woodville clan. Wikipedia, fortunately, can be corrected, but several Ricardian sites and publications, like this one (scroll down to the sentence past the reference to note 25), repeat the same story. It brings to mind a rather unpleasant picture of Katherine, no doubt with the grinning approval of Nasty Elizabeth, sending her little husband to bed without his supper if he refused to let her have her way with him.

Fortunately for Katherine (and the Duke), the story, at least as far as Katherine’s age goes, is, like so many other anti-Woodville stories, utter nonsense. Katherine’s marriage to Buckingham was indeed arranged when Buckingham was a royal ward, and Buckingham, like any other royal ward, didn’t have a say in the matter. But Katherine, far from being in her 20’s at the time, was younger than her husband when the couple married, sometime between September 1464, when Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville’s secret marriage was disclosed, and May 1465, when Henry Stafford and Katherine attended the queen’s coronation, where they are named as the Duke and the younger Duchess of Buckingham. (The elder Duchess, Henry Stafford’s grandmother, was also present at the coronation.)

Katherine’s age is given in a 1492 post-mortem inquisition of her brother, Richard, where she is described as “aged 34 or more.” This puts Katherine’s birthdate at around 1458, making her a child of around seven at the time of her marriage. Henry Stafford, born on September 4, 1455, would have been only nine at the time of the coronation. (Brad Verity, who kindly brought the IPM and other Woodville genealogical information to my attention, has posted about this and other Woodville genealogical matters here.)

Of course, IPMs are not infallible. Katherine’s youth at her marriage, however, is attested by two other primary sources. First, a detailed account of Elizabeth Woodville’s coronation exists, in which the major participants and the roles they played are listed. As mentioned earlier, both the Duke of Buckingham and his Duchess were present, and both are mentioned as being carried upon squires’ shoulders. No other duke or duchess was given similar treatment, so it’s safe to assume (in the absence of evidence that either or both parties sprained their ankles immediately before the coronation) that the Buckinghams were carried because they were children, presumably so they could see and be seen and/or so they wouldn’t tire out during the lengthy ceremony, dressed as they were in heavy ceremonial robes. (No mention is made of how the squires fared; one hopes for their sakes that the duke and duchess weren’t hefty youngsters.)

Katherine also appears in her sister Elizabeth’s household records for 1466-67, where payments were given to three people for attending upon her. Similar payments were made for the Duke of Buckingham and his younger brother, Humphrey, who were in Elizabeth’s care at the time. It seems apparent that Katherine, like her young husband and brother-in-law, was being brought up in her sister’s household.

So while it’s possible that Henry may have come to resent his marriage because he was his wife’s social superior (though it’s far more likely that his resentment arose because he was never given an active role to play in Edward IV’s reign), it’s certainly not the case that his wife was an older woman scheming with her sister the queen to exploit her wealthy little husband. She was a mere child, with no more control over her marriage than her young husband had over his.

Katherine’s second and third marriages, however, did involve large age gaps; perhaps it is the third marriage that has led to the misinformation about her first. Katherine's second husband was none other than Jasper Tudor, uncle to Henry VII; the match was made by November 7, 1485. Tudor was 55, over twice the age of the 27-year-old Katherine. The benefit to both parties seems to have been purely material: Katherine got the jointure and dower she had been denied in Richard III’s reign due to Buckingham’s treason and execution; Jasper got a wealthy, landed bride.

Jasper died on December 21, 1495. Just over eight weeks later, Katherine remarried without a license, thereby following the grand tradition of runaway matches made by her mother and her sister Elizabeth. Her third husband, Richard Wingfield, was twelve years younger than Katherine; he was the eleventh son out of twelve and presumably had very limited material assets, so it was likely his personal charms that appealed to the newly widowed Katherine. A mere squire at the time, Richard may have been a member of Katherine’s household. (After coming into his inheritance, Katherine’s eldest son by Buckingham, Edward Stafford, eventually ended up having to pay the fine for his mother’s unsanctioned third marriage, much to his disgust.)

Katherine and Richard’s short-lived marriage—Katherine died in 1497—-probably paved the way to Richard’s eventual success in Henry VIII’s court. Wingfield remarried and had children by his second wife, but did not forget Katherine, directing in his will that prayers be said for her soul. Dying on an embassy to Toledo in 1525, he was undoubtedly fortunate to miss the later downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, to whom he attributed his own success at court.

The Cross-Dressing Young Buckingham

It's generally known among Ricardians, and cited as an instance of his benevolence, that following Buckingham's rebellion against Richard III, the king bestowed an annuity of 200 marks upon Buckingham's widow Katherine, sister of Elizabeth Woodville. What's not so well known is that before that, Richard had placed a price on the heads of Buckingham's two small sons and that Katherine was kept prisoner by him for a time.

Barbara J. Harris recounts the story in her biography of Edward Stafford: the aptly titled Edward Stafford: Third Duke of Buckingham, 1478-1521. (Tudor fans will recall that Edward was eventually executed on orders of Henry VIII; How to Keep Your King Happy was evidently not on the Stafford family bookshelves.) The story appears in a manuscript in the Stafford Public Record Office and according to Harris is reprinted in Owen and Blakeway's 1825 work, A History of Shrewsbury. (The latter is available on Google, but a large chunk of pages is missing from the Google text. An excerpt can be found here.)

At the time Henry Stafford, the second duke, mounted his ill-fated rebellion, he had sent his wife and sons to Weobley, where Sir Richard Delabeare, who had close ties to the Staffords, took six-year-old Edward Stafford to Kinnersley. There he was entrusted to Elizabeth Mors, a servant of Richard's, and William ap Symon. (Whether Edward's four-year-old brother stayed behind at Weobley is unclear.) Harris notes that the Stafford daughters may have remained at the main family residence of Brecon Castle, where they were found and moved to Tretower after the Vaughan family sacked the castle.

Richard III, meanwhile, had placed a reward of 1,000 pounds on little Edward's head and of 500 pounds on his younger brother's head. (One hopes the "head" language wasn't to be taken literally and that Richard III's purpose was to take the little boys into custody, not to kill them.) With this reward in mind, search parties came twice to Kinnersley in search of Edward, who had been dressed like a girl and his forehead shaven accordingly in keeping with the female fashion of the time. Edward having been taken off the premises, the searchers failed to find him, but Richard Delabeare was arrested. Back at Weobley, Katherine Stafford had also been arrested. She was conveyed to London as a prisoner. One wonders if her prison was the Tower and, if so, whether she looked around there for signs of her nephews, Edward V and his brother.

Not long after Katherine's arrest, searchers again arrived at Kinnersley. Elizabeth fled to the park with her charge, waiting there four hours until she was told the danger was past. After that, Elizabeth and William decided to take Edward, again dressed as a girl, to Hereford. As Harris reports it, Edward "rode seated sideways on a pillow behind William ap Symon in the style of a proper young lady." Elizabeth, telling the story later, added sweetly that Edward was "the fairest gentlewoman and the best that ever she hadd in her Daies."

Edward's whereabouts after this are obscure. As Richard III released Katherine Stafford from prison and gave her an annuity, it seems likely that he had lost interest by that point in taking her sons captive. In any case, Edward isn't heard of until after the Battle of Bosworth, after which he was made a Knight of the Bath. He also acquired a stepfather, Jasper Tudor. In 1486, he and his brother were put into the care of Margaret Beaufort, who had been married to the boys' great-uncle.

A nice twist to this story is that Elizabeth Mors, Richard Delabeare's resourceful servant, subsequently married her master. Hey, it's not all unromance here.