Royal Witches: 15th Century Women Fall Foul of Political Shenanigans

When you think of witchcraft in earlier centuries, you probably think of stereotypically wizened women, huddled around cauldrons or casting curses. You probably wouldn’t immediately think of royal witches.

Yet within the space of a single century, there were four women in England’s royal family that fell prey to witchcraft accusations. Whether they actually practiced witchcraft is unknown, and quite honestly, it’s unlikely they did. Rather, the accusations served a political purpose for those around them.

Their story also tells us about the ways in which people viewed witchcraft as a whole – especially the state. It’s an epic tale, so if you want the deep context and historical background, I highly recommend Gemma Hollman’s Royal Witches: From Joan of Navarre to Elizabeth Woodville. We’re more focused on the ‘witchcraft’ part in this post.

Let’s get to know these fascinating royal witches…

1 Joan of Navarre

Born in 1368 in Pamplona, Navarre, Joan of Navarre married her first husband, Duke of Brittany, in 1386. She later married Henry IV of England in 1403. As his second wife, she gained a huge dower from the king and, by all accounts, they seem to have had a healthy marriage. The fact Henry had children by his late first wife meant there was no pressure on Joan to produce an heir. As it was, she seemed to become the beloved stepmother of Henry V, who became king in 1413.

In 1419, while Henry was away fighting his campaign in France, his government placed Joan under house arrest. They accused of conspiring to kill Henry V using witchcraft. The charges meant the crown could seize her lands to fund Henry’s campaign.

Joan never actually got the chance to answer the charges. The crown held her over the accusations, but no trial ever took place. This meant Parliament didn’t have to pronounce her guilty, and thus execute her, nor pronounce her innocent, and restore her lands. Instead, they kept her in relative comfort in a series of grand manors where she received visitors and kept servants. It’s difficult to know what Joan was supposed to have done because there are no specific details of the witchcraft involved.

Crucially, when Henry V was on his deathbed in 1422, he dropped all charges against her. She regained her property and wealth and returned to society a free woman, later buried beside Henry IV in Canterbury Cathedral in 1437.

That said, she spent three years under house arrest purely so men could help themselves to her money.

They’d also learned just how powerful – and useful – a witchcraft accusation could be.

2 Eleanor Cobham

Born in 1400, Eleanor was the younger daughter of a knight from Surrey. She managed to become the mistress of Humphrey, Henry V’s brother (and Joan of Navarre’s stepson). Once his marriage to Jacqueline of Hainault was annulled, Humphrey promptly married Eleanor in 1428. It caused quite the scandal since she brought no title, money, or lands to the marriage. It sounds like a genuine love match and they set about creating a mini court for themselves, filled with artists and intellectuals.

Unfortunately, Henry VI’s favourites wanted to depose Humphrey. They felt he had too much influence, and they wanted rid of him. This was no simple task, given his popularity with the people and his close relationship with Henry, Humphrey’s nephew. So they looked back at the example set by Henry V and Joan of Navarre to create the next of our royal witches.

In 1441, they accused Eleanor of hiring an astrologer named Roger Bolingbroke. It was treason to predict the death of the king. They also accused her of hiring Margery Jourdemayne, the Witch of Eye, to help her in her nefarious plans. Margery was basically a cunning woman, thought her involvement is an interesting one. Sorcery cases were relatively infrequent and didn’t usually involve cunning-folk (Davies 2007: 1).

The Evidence

Eleanor must have been terrified. The king’s favourites produced figures they claimed she’d used for her sorcery. Rather than refuting the accusations out of hand, she decided to play along, up to a point. She told them she had hired Margery, but to work love magic. Gemma Hollman suggests she may have hired Margery to help her conceive a child, which is a reasonable assumption since Eleanor never had children. Love magic wasn’t illegal, though it wasn’t well thought of. Eleanor must have reasoned that admitting to a lesser charge would avoid the death penalty.

As it was, “there were no specific secular laws against magic” from the twelfth century onwards, with magic considered a matter to be dealt with by the Church, rather than the state (Davies 2007: 1). The activities of cunning-folk were usually moral offences, rather than heresy, unless they got involved in treason or murder (Davies 2007: 2). This explains why love magic was such a problem since it could be disruptive in a social sense (Davies 2007: 2).

Sophie Page also notes that “[a] high proportion of the people tried in medieval courts for using erotic magic […] were women. Female sexual powers were considered more threatening than men’s, particularly in relation to political and religious concerns over the stability of marriage” (2017: 61). Given marriage was the way by which a man secured his legacy, you can see why they were concerned about the validity of a marriage.

For Eleanor, the gamble worked.

Not for Margery. The Church might tolerate a first offence, but the accused witch needed to promise they would change their ways. As a repeat offender, she clearly hadn’t changed her ways. She was executed for heresy.

Eleanor didn’t escape unscathed either. Henry’s favourites claimed her marriage to Humphrey was invalid because she had procured his affections through magic. This meant he couldn’t have consented to the marriage as he was under her influence. The Church forcibly divorced Eleanor and Humphrey, and she lived out the rest of her life under house arrest, moved from castle to castle across England and Wales.

She never saw Humphrey again, dying at Beaumaris Castle in 1452.

Yet the second wife of John, Duke of Bedford – Humphrey’s older brother – would have watched this unfold. She too would end up on the wrong end of a witchcraft accusation, yet she’d use what she’d learned to come out of it better.

3 Jacquetta of Luxembourg

This second wife was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, born in 1415. Her marriage to the Duke of Bedford in 1433 made sense. If anything had happened to Henry VI before he produced an heir, the Duke (his uncle) would have become king. Jacquetta, already born of European royal blood, would have been queen.

Widowed following the death of John, Duke of Bedford in 1435, Jacquetta needed Henry VI’s permission to remarry. After all, she was part of the royal family, and marrying someone else with a claim to the throne could cause problems.

Jacquetta certainly didn’t marry anyone with a claim to the throne – but she also incurred Henry VI’s wrath by marrying in 1437 without his permission. Given her second husband, Sir Richard Woodville, was a somewhat lowly knight, Henry VI would never have granted his permission. This explains why Richard and Jacquetta married in secret. Yes, Richard’s father was on the King’s Council, and the Woodvilles were a rising family. But Jacquetta was expected to marry higher.

A Happy Marriage

Either way, Jacquetta and Richard had fourteen children, with twelve reaching adulthood. Jacquetta was almost perpetually pregnant, continuing to give birth into her 40s. Her daughter, Elizabeth, was born in either 1437 or 1438. We’ll come back to her.

For a while, Jacquetta and Eleanor Cobham were the only royal women left—quite a lofty position for these apparent royal witches. Queen Catherine, Henry VI’s mother, and Joan of Navarre had both died. When Eleanor was accused and stripped of her title, only Jacquetta remained. As a result, she was part of the party to bring Margaret of Anjou to England to marry Henry VI in 1445. It seems the pair got on well, and Jacquetta became Margaret’s lady-in-waiting. Everything seemed fine…

Spoiler – It Wasn’t

Edward IV married Elizabeth Woodville, Jacquetta’s daughter, in secret. He started appointing the Woodvilles to lofty positions. The Earl of Warwick, who had helped put Edward IV on the throne, was sore that the Woodvilles had replaced his own family, the Nevilles, as the family closest to Edward.

After capturing the king and executing Richard Woodville in 1469, he targeted Jacquetta as part of his plot to prove the Woodvilles would ruin England. He didn’t want to attack Elizabeth outright since she had too much support as queen, but her mother? She was fair game to become the next of the royal witches.

Following the example of the accusations against Eleanor Cobham, one of Warwick’s squires claimed Jacquetta had used image magic. This was a form of sorcery in which the practitioner would create an image of a person as a means of having an influence over them. For example, you might create their image out of lead, and then snap it in half.

This was precisely what Warwick produced as ‘evidence’. It’s unclear who the figure was actually supposed to be, though some think Warwick suggested it was him. Did Jacquetta cause his ‘fall’ from grace using magic?

It Get Worse

Next, Warwick’s witness claimed he’d seen images of the king and queen, implying Jacquetta used image magic to force Edward to fall in love with Elizabeth. If people believed this, he could force an annulment of the marriage, declare Edward and Elizabeth’s children illegitimate, and rid himself of Elizabeth’s family.

Except people weren’t daft and Jacquetta certainly outmanoeuvred him. She’d saved London from being pillaged by Margaret of Anjou’s forces, so she wrote to London’s mayor and aldermen for help. They threw their support behind her, causing Warwick to back off. It forced Edward to order an investigation, but the story fell apart under questioning.

Another witness shredded Warwick’s witness’s story since the image produced as evidence had nothing to do with Jacquetta. The images of the king and queen didn’t exist. Warwick released Edward and Parliament officially exonerated Jacquetta in 1470. They’d always been on her side and recorded the verdict for posterity.

Jacquetta had won… but one of the accusations would rear its ugly head again for her daughter.

4 Elizabeth Woodville

Elizabeth married her first husband, Sir John Grey, in 1452. After he died in 1461, his family tried to block Elizabeth’s claim to his land for their children. Somehow, although no one is entirely sure how, she ended up meeting King Edward IV, and marrying him in secret in 1464. This caused a huge uproar since, as Eleanor Cobham had done, she brought no titles or real wealth to the marriage. Parliament had hoped for a European bride to form an alliance with another territory.

Still, the people came to like Elizabeth, and it seems even Parliament appreciated her cool head. Despite the turbulence of the years surrounding Edward’s reign, Elizabeth weathered the storms. She had plenty of children with Edward, including two male heirs – Edward and Richard.

But it all went wrong after the early death of Edward IV in 1483. His son, Edward V, was only 12, and too young to become king. Edward’s youngest brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had himself declared Lord Protector. This would have been fine if he’d run the country as regent – much as Humphrey did before the coronation of Henry VI.

Except Richard seized the throne to become Richard III. Elizabeth fled to Westminster Abbey with her children to claim sanctuary, which had saved her once before. Richard persuaded her to part with the boys for Edward’s coronation and took them to the Tower of London. They never left.

The Flimsy Accusations

Richard suddenly announced people had been plotting against him and finally accused Elizabeth of being the latest of the royal witches. The King’s Council, who liked Elizabeth, considered it nonsense, especially since Richard claimed Elizabeth worked with Jane Shore, one of Edward IV’s mistresses. This, at least, is the story passed down to us, though there’s no evidence in chronicles of the time that he made these specific allegations. It seems Richard threw a lot of accusations in the hope at least one of them would stick.

Either way, Richard relied on the idea Elizabeth had used sorcery to force Edward to marry her. He repeated the accusation used against Eleanor Cobham, but he wanted to invalidate Edward V’s claims to the throne. With Edward’s children now illegitimate, he was the only York family member left with a claim to the throne.

Interestingly, Richard never provided any evidence, simply repeating it was the “common opinion” in the land. This feels like the medieval equivalent of “everyone knows” and “do your research”. They riffed on the old accusations against Jacquetta, even though she’d been exonerated. Mud sticks, after all.

The Accusations were Pointless

But Richard didn’t need to make these accusations. He got rid of the Woodvilles by chasing them out of England or executing them as traitors. He was a powerful and wealthy king, and Elizabeth was a penniless former queen living in Westminster Abbey.

He brought no formal charges against Elizabeth—it seems the accusations were enough to sow doubt about Edward V’s legitimacy. As it was, with the possible threat of Henry Tudor massing an army of Edward’s sympathisers, Richard actually needed Elizabeth on his side. He persuaded her out of sanctuary and she and her daughters rejoined the court to legitimise his rule.

Elizabeth regained some of her old status, and in a way, she got her revenge when Richard fell at the Battle of Bosworth.

She lived out her life in peace and quiet, seeing her daughter Elizabeth crowned as the queen of Henry VII. But she has been long thought of as one of England’s most famous royal witches.

What do we make of these royal witches?

Witchcraft was an easy thing to accuse, especially since the burden of proof fell on the accused. It was a lot harder to prove you weren’t a witch than to prove someone was one. Even if proclaimed innocent, the accusation never entirely disappeared. Such accusations could, and did, cling to people.

In the 15th century, women in court were weak in terms of available power. This made it easier to bring down a man by attacking the women close to him. Love magic was a common accusation since it dovetailed with what was believed to be a woman’s greatest preoccupation – finding, and keeping, a husband. Given the sheer number of divinatory practices designed to help women predict who and when they would marry, even into the 20th century, it’s easy to see why it was important.

Then there was the class element.

Eleanor Cobham and Elizabeth Woodville were both daughters of knights who ended up marrying a prince and a king respectively. Given the importance for powerful men to marry women who brought lands, titles, or money, their decision to marry for love left the women vulnerable. Why else, people would ask, would these men marry commoners, unless witchcraft was to blame?

The royal women were vulnerable precisely because of their position. They held social and cultural capital, but little else. Even when they were the second wealthiest person in the land, as Joan of Navarre was, a witchcraft accusation could tear them down.

It’s interesting that none of the women were executed for their supposed crimes. It seems their power still protected them up to a point. Joan and Jacquetta, the two highest-born of the royal witches, escaped with the least harm. Elizabeth at least saw the downfall of her accuser. Poor Eleanor had the worst time of it, and is perhaps most associated with magic in the records.

Expedient Accusations

We’ll never know if any of them did use witchcraft. Joan and Elizabeth were particularly famous for their religious piety, so it’s unlikely. And believing that kings and princes married low-born women due to witchcraft, rather than the personal attractions of the woman in question, actually does the men a disservice. It strips them of the right to make up their own minds about their own lives.

But the stories do show the way in which accusations were thrown and withdrawn according to the political climate. Many of them were openly disbelieved, making the accusations handy excuses rather than solid convictions. It’s almost as if the people making them didn’t really believe in witchcraft, and just wanted to cheat to get their own way…

What do you think of these royal witches?

References

Davies, Owen (2007), Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History, London: Continuum.

Hollman, Gemma (2019), Royal Witches: From Joan of Navarre to Elizabeth Woodville, Cheltenham: The History Press.

Page, Sophie (2017), ‘Medieval Magic’, in Owen Davies (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Witchcraft and Magic, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 29-64.