Jacquetta of Luxembourg (1415/1416 – 30 May 1472) was the elder daughter of Peter I, Count of St Pol, Conversano and Brienne and his wife Margaret de Baux (Margherita del Balzo of Andria). She was the mother of Elizabeth Woodville, queen to King Edward IV of England.
Family and ancestryHer father Peter I of Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol was also the hereditary Count of Brienne from 1397 to his death in 1433.
Peter had succeeded his father John, Lord of Beauvoir and mother Marguerite of Enghien. They had co-reigned as Count and Countess of Brienne from 1394 to her death in 1397.
John was a fourth-generation descendant of Waleran I of Luxembourg, Lord of Ligny, second son of Henry V of Luxembourg and Margaret of Bar. This cadet line of the House of Luxembourg reigned in Ligny-en-Barrois.
Her mother Margaret de Baux was a daughter of Francois de Baux, Duke of Andria and Sueva Orsini. Sueva was a daughter of Nicola Orsini, Count of Nola (27 August 1331 – 14 February 1399) and Jeanne de Sabran.
Nicola Orsini was a son of Roberto Orsini, Count of Nola (1295-1345) and Sibilla del Balzo. Sibilla was a daughter of Hugh de Baux, Great Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples.
Roberto Orsini was a son of Romano Orsini, Royal Vicar of Rome and Anastasia de Montfort. Anastasia was the oldest daughter and heiress of Guy de Montfort, Count of Nola and Margherita Aldobrandeschi.
Guy de Montfort was a son of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester and Eleanor of England. Eleanor was the youngest child of John of England and his Queen consort Isabella of Angoulême.
Jacquetta herself was an eighth-generation descendant of John and thus distantly related to the Kings of England descending from him.
First marriageOn 22 April 1433 at 17 years of age, Jacquetta married John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford at Therouenne. The Duke was the third son of King Henry IV of England and Mary de Bohun.
Jacquetta was a cousin of Sigismund of Luxembourg, the reigning Holy Roman Emperor, and King of Bohemia and Hungary. The marriage was meant to strengthen the ties of the Kingdom of England with the Holy Roman Empire and to increase English influence in the affairs of Continental Europe.
The marriage was childless and the Duke died on 15 September 1435 at Rouen.
Second marriageSir Richard Woodville, son of Sir Richard Wydevill who had served as the late Duke's chamberlain, was commissioned by Henry VI of England to bring the young widow to England. During the journey, the couple fell in love and married in secret (before 23 March 1436/1437), without seeking the king's permission. Enraged, Henry VI refused to see them but was mollified by the payment of a fine. The marriage was long and very fruitful: Jacquetta and Richard had sixteen children, including the future Queen Elizabeth.
By the mid-1440s, the Woodvilles were in ascendancy. Jacquetta was related to both the King and Queen Margaret. Her sister, Isabelle de Saint Pol, married Queen Margaret's brother while Jacquetta was the widow of Henry VI's uncle. As royalty, she outranked all ladies at Court with the exception of the Queen. As a personal favourite and close relative of the Queen, she also enjoyed special privileges and influence at court. Margaret influenced Henry to create Richard Woodville Baron Rivers in 1448, and he was a prominent partisan of the House of Lancaster as the Wars of the Roses began.
Wa rs of the RosesThe Yorkists crushed the Lancastrians at the Second Battle of St Albans (22 February 1461) and Edward IV, the first king to be of the House of York, took the throne. Elizabeth's husband Sir John Grey was killed in the battle. In 1464, on Jacquetta's instructions, the beautiful, widowed Elizabeth and her two young sons accosted the young king, as he hunted in Whittlebury Forest near the Woodville manor. Elizabeth pleaded with the King for the estates confiscated from her husband to be restored to her sons. Thoroughly bewitched by Elizabeth, Edward offered to make her his mistress, but she held out for marriage. A desperate Edward married Elizabeth in secret, but the marriage was not disclosed for months. Once it became common knowledge, however, the alliance displeased the Earl of Warwick, the King's most trusted ally, and his friends.
With Elizabeth now Queen of England, the Woodvilles rose to great prominence and power. Richard was created Earl Rivers and appointed Lord High Treasure in March 1466. Jacquetta found rich and influential spouses for her children and helped her grandchildren achieve high posts. She arranged for her 20-year-old son, John Woodville, to marry the widowed and very rich dowager Duchess of Norfolk, Catherine Neville. The bride was at least 45 years older than the groom at the time of the wedding. The marriage caused a furor and earned the Woodvilles considerable unpopularity.
The rise of the Woodvilles created widespread hostility to them. They had deserted the Lancastrian side, and were now displacing longtime Yorkists in the King's favour, such as Warwick and the King's brothers George and Richard.
In 1469, Warwick openly broke with Edward IV and temporarily deposed him. Earl Rivers and his son John Woodville were captured and executed by Warwick on 12 August at Kenilworth. Jacquetta, broken-hearted, survived her beloved husband by three years and died in 1472, at about 56 years of age.
Witchcraft accusationsIn 1469, Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, took Edward IV into custody and executed Jacquetta's husband. Shortly thereafter, Thomas Wake, a follower of the Earl of Warwick’s, accused Jacquetta of witchcraft. Wake brought to Warwick Castle a lead image “made like a man of arms . . . broken in the middle and made fast with a wire,“ and alleged that Jacquetta had fashioned it to use for witchcraft and sorcery. He claimed that John Daunger, a parish clerk in Northampton, could attest that Jacquetta had made two other images, one for the king and one for the queen. The case fell apart when Warwick released Edward IV from custody, and Jacquetta was cleared by the king’s great council of the charges on January 19, 1470.[1] In 1484 Richard III in the act known as Titulus Regius[2] revived the allegations of witchcraft against Jacquetta when he claimed that she and Elizabeth had procured Elizabeth's marriage to Edward IV through witchcraft; however, Richard never offered any proof to support his assertions.
HeritageThrough her daughter, Queen Elizabeth, Jacquetta was the grandmother of Elizabeth of York, Queen of Henry VII. As such, she is an ancestress of all subsequent English and British monarchs, including Elizabeth II, and seven other present-day European monarchs.
Children of Jacquetta de Luxembourg and Richard Woodville