English and British royal mistress relationship between the King and De Vere was of a homosexual nature Edward IV had numerous documented mistresses. The best known was Elizabeth Shore, also called Jane Shore. He reportedly had several illegitimate children: The legitimacy of Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, whom he had secretly wedded in May 1464 without disclosing it to his Parliament until 5 months later, was questioned after Edward's death (9 April 1483) by the Bishop of Bath, Robert Stillington, who claimed he had precontracted in marriage Edward to Lady Eleanor Talbot, daughter of Lord Talbot and widow of Sir Thomas Butler. According to the
Elizabeth Woodville she was forced to yield pre-eminence to Henry's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, and her influence on events in these years, and her eventual departure from court into retirement, remains obscure. Elizabeth Woodville was born about 1437, possibly in October, at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire. She was the first-born child of a socially unequal marriage between Sir Richard Woodville and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, which briefly scandalised the English court. The Woodvilles, though an old and respectable family, were gentry rather than noble, a landed and wealthy family that had previously produced commissioners of the peace, sheriffs, and MPs rather than peers of