The Spring day in 1464 was bright and fair as Edward IV, England’s first Yorkist king, rode with the hunt in Whittlebury Forest. Whether his thoughts lay on his quarry, the weather or the tumultuous times that had brought him the crown, they were soon to be caught by another matter entirely. For there, standing beneath an oak tree, stood the most beautiful of women, a small boy clutching each hand as she watched him approach. Without hesitation she threw herself into his path, pleading with the king to intercede in a matter that would restore the dower lands that were rightly hers and keep her small family from poverty. In that moment the king was struck, not by the earthly arrow of the hunt, but by the arrow of love; a spell from which he would never be released.
That he wanted her there and then there was no question, and none other had before now resisted the handsome young monarch. He could not, however, persuade the vision of loveliness to concede so much as a kiss, and, when there was talk of taking what he desired by force, her protestations regarding her virtue and her honour so shamed the king that he fell on bended knee before her, swearing eternal devotion.
The rest of the story is equally well known; so besotted was the king that heand the pair were married in secret a short while later, much to the shock and consternation of the king’s council and subjects alike when the fact was finally revealed in September of that year.
