- Mary Woodville
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Mary Woodville Countess of Pembroke Spouse(s) William Herbert, 1st Earl of Pembroke Issue Elizabeth Herbert, 3rd Baroness Herbert Father Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers Mother Jacquetta of Luxembourg Born 1456 Died 1481 (aged 24-25) Mary Woodville (c. 1456–1481) was sister to Edward the Fourth's Queen, Elizabeth Woodville, and to Anthony Woodville, the "Lord Rivers" of Shakespeare's Richard III.
Biography
She was one of the many daughters of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers and his wife, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. After Edward's public recognition of Elizabeth as his wife, the new queen's five brothers and seven unmarried sisters began to improve their family's rather lowly condition through a series of advantageous marriages, as befitted the kinsfolk of a queen. In September 1466, Mary was betrothed to William Herbert, the eldest son and heir of the first Earl of Pembroke. Lord Herbert had been Henry VII's guardian. The young William was recognized as Lord Dunster in view of his approaching marriage (a grant of the lordship of Dunster and all the possessions of its attainted lord, James Luttrell, in Somerset, Devon and Suffolk, had been secured by his father in June 1463).
In January 1467, Mary Woodville was married to Lord Dunster at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle "amid profuse magnificence." The bride was ten or eleven years old; her groom, aged fifteen.
Two years later, Lord Dunster's father, the first Earl of Pembroke, was executed on the orders of Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick. Nothing seems to have aggravated Warwick more than the marriage of the Lady Mary, the Queen's sister, to Herbert's eldest son. Dunster became the second Earl of Pembroke following the death of his father.
Pembroke proved rather ineffectual in governing South Wales. Mary's death in 1479 considerably weakened her husband's links with the prince's associates, and he was forced to give up the earldom of Pembroke for that of Huntingdon, and a less valuable endowment in Somerset and Dorset. He remarried.
Their only child was a daughter, Elizabeth Herbert, 3rd Baroness Herbert, who married Charles Somerset, later Earl of Worcester. Elizabeth was of great importance to the Somerset family, as she brought to them wealth and a legitimate relationship to royalty. The barony of Herbert was created by patent in favor of her husband, although during her lifetime she held the barony of Herbert in her own right.
References
- Cokayne, George E. Complete Peerage of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom, Extant, Extinct, or Dormant. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1887. (p. 207) googlebooks Retrieved May 4, 2008
Categories:- 1450s births
- 1481 deaths
- Women of medieval England
- 15th-century English people
- 15th-century women
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