Woodville, threw her once more into utter despair, and in 1484 she was compelled, partly through fear of starvation, to surrender herself and her daughters into the hands of Richard, under a solemn oath, taken in presence of the council and the city authorities, that their persons should be secure.

She was then placed under the actual custody of Nesfield, a squire of the body to Richard, to whom an annual sum was allotted for her maintenance as a private gentlewoman. There she remained until the successful revolution that placed Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, on the throne, with her daughter Elizabeth as his partner of it.

Notwithstanding what has been said of Henry the Seventh's harsh and unfeeling conduct to his mother-in-law, no proof of this exists; while, on the contrary, it is recorded, on the best evidence, that a month after the marriage of her daughter to Henry the Seventh, she was put into possession of the dower palaces of Waltham, Farnham, Maplebury, and Baddow, besides a pension of two hundred pounds per annum; to which was added, in 1490, an annuity of four hundred pounds. The assertion that she fell into disgrace with the king for abetting the schemes of the Earl of Lincoln and Lambert Simnel-the one appointed by Richard the Third to usurp the place of her own children on the English throne, the other the supposed son and grandson of her bitterest enemies, Clarence and Warwick-seems really too absurd to be credited, and is indeed disproved by the fact that she appeared at court on several occasions afterwards, and was chosen by Henry as godmother to his first-born son.

It appears that the king, wishing to establish a firmer league with Scotland, conceived the singular plan of making up a marriage between the queen dowager and James the Third; but the death of the young monarch, who was many years the junior of his proposed wife, put an end to the scheme.

About the year 1490, Elizabeth retired into the convent of Bermondsey, where, being seized with a fatal illness, she made a will. In this will, dated April 10, 1492, a copy of which is given in Sir Harris Nicolas's "Memoir of Lady Jane Grey," the great-great-granddaughter of this queen, she earnestly requested that she might be buried, as simply and unostentatiously as possible, beside her husband at Windsor ; and she shortly after expired, surrounded by her daughters. Thus ended the eventful and melancholy career of Elizabeth Woodville, who, whatever may have been the defects of her character, certainly, by her cruel misfortunes, commands more the pity than the censure of posterity.