Contemporary documents confirm this illegitimate daughter of King Edward IV. was named Margaret, not Elizabeth.

Question

The following has been copied from a soc.genealogy.medieval post by Douglas Richardson in 2013.

"It has been claimed by various visitation sources, a Lumley family monumental pedigree in Chester-le-Street, Durham, and an early pedigree dated c.1505 that Thomas Lumley married a bastard daughter of King Edward IV.  Several of these sources (including the earliest one dated c.1505) do not state the given name of Thomas Lumley's wife.  However, several of the visitations including one as early as 1530 claim that the name of his wife was Elizabeth.

That the given name of his wife was actually Margaret, not Elizabeth, is proven by a contemporary license recorded on Membrane 8 of Roll 1 of William Dudley, Bishop of Durham.  An abstract of this record was published many years ago in Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper 35 (1874): 134.  Mention of this record was made by the historian, Michael Hicks, in his book, Edward V: The Prince in the Tower (2003).  My attention to this record was directed by Brad Verity and Matthew Tompkins, whose help is gratefully acknowledged.  

The published abstract reads as follows:

"Date: Year 3 of Pontificate"

"William Bille and William Blenkarne have licence to convey their manors or 'dominia' of Hesilden and Morton to Thomas Lumle, knight, 'dominus' of Lumle, for his life, with remainders over, and the manor of 'dominium' of Bewtrove to Thomas Lumle, esquire (son of George Lumle, knight, the son of Thomas Lumle, knight) and Margaret wife of the said Thomas Lumle, esquire, for their lives, with remainder to the right heirs of the said Thomas Lumle, esquire."

The above record is dated the 3rd year of William Dudley, Bishop of Durham.  According to Wikipedia, Bishop Dudley was nominated to Durham on 31 July 1476 and was consecrated between 1 September and 12 October 1476.  Thus year three of his pontificate would fall in 1478-1479.  The record indicates that Thomas Lumley, esquire, and his wife, Margaret, were granted the manor of Beautrove, Durham in the lifetime of his grandfather, Thomas Lumley, Knt., 2nd Lord Lumley.  As such, this confirms that he is definitely the Thomas Lumley, esquire, "of Beutroby, Durham," whose inquisition is mentioned earlier in this post."

Link to the post

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/7g__mErVKHs/SjdVE1i8Rm8J

Link to the published abstract

https://archive.org/details/ldpd_11897906_035/page/154

Thomas Lumley and Margaret his wife are also mentioned in the Durham IPM of his grandfather Sir Thomas Lumley, Knt., 2nd Lord Lumley, who died 1 April 1485. An abstract of the IPM was published in the 44th Annual Report of the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, pp. 451-452

https://archive.org/details/annualreportdep06offigoog/page/n486

If there are no objections, could Bree or another pre-1500 certified person change her name from Elizabeth to Margaret and add the two documents as souces, thanks.

Comments

Very confused.  Are you saying Elizabeth of York was not her name? (1466-1503)

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I'm saying contemporary documents confirm the alleged illegitimate daughter of Edward IV was named Margaret, not Elizabeth. Elizabeth of York was Edward's legitimate daughter by Elizabeth Woodville/Widville

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I've been caught up with the Eyres and didn't notice til just now... SWEET FIND!!!!:D ... And thx for editing. This one is hot!:)

Answer 1

Thanks for posting this Charlene, I'm not in a position to make those changes at the moment, but can later if no one gets there first.

However, and I should preface this by saying that I've only quickly skimmed the soc.genealogy discussion, I can see there is definite proof that her name was Margaret, but I'm not sure what evidence confirms she was an illegitimate dau of Edward IV?  Apart from the Visitation of 1505?

There also seems to be a discussion pointing out that if she is the dau of Edward Iv, then it is unlikely that Elizabeth Lucy is her mother - perhaps there needs to be some other changes than just her first name?

Comments

Thanks, John.

In regard to Margaret's parents, there is no contemporary evidence to prove that Margaret was the illegitimate daughter of Edward IV and nothing contemporary to confirm who her mother was. It mostly boils down to personal opinions derived from insufficient records.

Hodgson, History of Northumberland, Part II, Vol. I (1827): 316 reproduces an undated ancient account of the Thornton family which mentions Thomas Lumley "did wed King Edwards bastard dawghter"

The other candidate for Margaret's mother is Margaret (Fitzlewis) Lucy. She was mentioned in Michael Hicks 2003 book 'Edward V: The Prince in the Tower', pp. 34-37. Brad Verity transcribed what Michael Hicks wrote here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/7g__mErVKHs/mFgmmZN6hNIJ

Douglas Richardson made the comment that "Mr. Hicks has failed to produce sufficient evidence that Margaret Fitz Lewis was ever the mistress of King Edward IV."  

Around the same time, Bard Verity wrote an interesting post titled "Identifying Mistresses: Just Who Slept With Edward IV?" https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.genealogy.medieval/KJ3Cv9VvWlA/4F0MfiAHJAsJ

At the end of his post he states:

"As I said earlier, there is no way to ever definitively prove that Margaret Fitzlewis Lucy was a mistress of Edward IV and the mother of his daughter Margaret Lumley, but as a theory, it has much to recommend it. So I have it as so in my database with a cautionary note that the relationship is conjectural. I also now have Alice Wayte (living 1487), bastard daughter of Thomas Wayte of Hampshire (d. 1482), as the mother of Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle (born about 1480), with the same cautionary note of conjecture.

For me these ladies work much better than an Elizabeth Wayte or Elizabeth Lucy, neither of which can be located within 15th-century records."

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Here is what John Ashdown-Hill says about Elizabeth Lucy in a 2018 article titled "The secret intimacies of Edward IV: multiple marriages and a same-sex affair?" 

https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/the-secret-intimacies-of-edward-iv-multiple-marriages-and-a-same-sex-affair/

"Later accounts – beginning with the version of ‘history’ written by the Tudor grandee Sir Thomas More – suggest that, around this time, Edward IV took on a relationship with another young woman, Elizabeth Lucy. More even went as far as to claim that Edward IV was believed, in some quarters, to have secretly married Elizabeth Lucy. More offers a detailed story of how the young king’s mother supposedly knew of this relationship. He also asserts that Richard III’s subsequent claim to the throne was based upon the premise of Edward and Lucy’s marriage.

More goes on to say that the claim was false – making Richard III a usurper. While the offering of the English crown to Richard III was indeed based upon evidence that Edward IV had committed bigamy, the evidence clearly shows that the alleged first (and legal) wife of the young king was not called Elizabeth Lucy. She was, in fact, Lady Eleanor Talbot.

Sadly, there’s not a shred of contemporary evidence that a woman called Elizabeth Lucy ever existed – let alone that she had a relationship with Edward IV. The logical conclusion is that Thomas More’s allegations were simply part of the attempt made by Henry VII and his successors to ensure that the name of Eleanor Talbot was written out of history. Henry VII had initiated this process in 1485, when he repealed unquoted the 1484 act of parliament that had acknowledged Eleanor as “married” to King Edward."

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From the same article, this is what Ashdown-Hill says about Edward IV's illegitimate children.

"The traditional story of Edward IV’s private life asserts not only that he had mistresses, but also that he produced heaps of illegitimate children. However, that too proves to be untrue. The king is recorded as only acknowledging one illegitimate child during his reign. It was a boy, but his name is unknown. Previous historians tended to assume that the boy in question was Arthur Wayte/Plantagenet, later Lord Lisle. However, the evidence clearly shows that Arthur was only finally acknowledged as a royal ‘bastard’ many years after the death of his alleged father. So he cannot have been the illegitimate child who was accorded formal recognition by Edward IV himself.

Curiously, however, one or two girls also seem to have been recognised as illegitimate daughters of Edward IV years later, during the reign of Henry VII. One possible explanation for this is that Richard III was offered the throne on the assumption that Edward’s children by Elizabeth Widville were illegitimate!"

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If we work with the contemporary evidence alone then Margaret wife of Thomas Lumley should not have the surname Plantagenet and she should not be connected as a daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth "Lady Lucy" Wayte (as she is styled here). Margaret's LNAB is unknown and her parents are unknown. Anything else is conjecture.

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Not completely true Charlene that there is no contempoary evidence.  Supporting evidence for her parentage comes from the papal dispensation for the marriage of her son Richard Lumley to Anne Conyers, they being related in the 4th degree (both descended from Ralph Neville (d, 1425)) 

Testamenta Eboracensia, vol. 3 (1865): 355.

There are multiple references to Thomas Lumley marrying a natural daughter of Edward IV.  The question doesn't seem to be whether or not Margaret, wife of Thomas Lumley, was an illegitimate daughter of Edward IV, the question seems to be who exactly was her mother.

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Thanks. Joe. I missed that record. The 1489 dispensation adds support to the Neville pedigree compiled about 16 year's later in  c.1505 which mentions "Thomas Lumley wedded bastard daughter of Edward IVth.”

Link to the c. 1505 pedigree

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044090345620&view=1up&seq=318&size=125

I'm happy to accept it. As to her mother, I will leave it up to those of you with pre-1500 certification.

My request is to just have her name changed from Elizabeth to Margaret.

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Changed her name to Margaret.

Added some sources.

Did some cleaning up.

Still work to do - primarily clarifying the evidence or lack there of for her mother.

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Looks good. Thank you.