ELIZABETH WOODVILLE.

QUEEN OF EDWARD THE FOURTH.

ELIZABETH WOODVILLE-whose rise from the poor and destitute widow of John Gray, son of Lord Ferrers of Groby, to the throne of England, excited no small degree of astonishment and some displeasure, not only in the nation at large, but in certain high quarters-was born about the year 1431, at Grafton Castle.

It seemed as if love had resolved to do more than strike a balance in the fortunes of the family by thus elevating Elizabeth many more degrees above the station that Fate seemed to have assigned her, than he had caused her mother to descend below the high estate to which she was born, as well as below that which her first marriage gave her. A princess of the house of Luxemburgh, this lady became the wife of the Duke of Bedford; and some time after his death, captivated by the attractions of Richard Woodville, a squire of Henry the Fifth, and considered the handsomest man in England, she married him privately, and was for some years his wife before the secret transpired. Notwithstanding this mésalliance, and her indifferent circumstances, the Duchess of Bedford could not but maintain a certain influence in the kingdom of which, on the deaths of the queens Katherine and Joanna, she became, for some period, the first lady.

1 Which were, at one time, particularly distressed; as, on the discovery of her second marriage, her dower was forfeited, but, on her petitioning parliament, subsequently restored.