Elizabeth Woodville was born about 1437, possibly in October, at Grafton Regis, Northamptonshire. She was the firstborn 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 the realm; Elizabeth's mother, in contrast, was the widow of the Duke of Bedford, uncle of King Henry VI of England.