#sorry i also don't know much about joan of navarre!

[richmond-rex]

Hi! I’m reading “Later Plantagenet and Wars of the Roses Consorts” after seeing several interesting posts on it, and I’m a little confused because in Joan of Navarre’s section, Elena Woodacre said that Joan “was certainly the only English queen to have been supposedly accused of witchcraft, even if other royal women were rumored to have dabbled in dark arts”. I may have misunderstood, but didn’t Richard III accuse Elizabeth Woodville of the same in formal Parliament? I think his (Richard’s) accusation was far more explicit, actually: Henry V’s Parliament Rolls say “Joan, queen of England, had plotted and schemed for the death and destruction of our said lord the king in the most evil and terrible manner imaginable”. It’s evident that they probably mean witchcraft, but it’s the Chronicles of London that specify what she was accused of; Henry’s Parliament does not. In Richard’s “Titulus Regius”, however, it’s explicitly stated that “by Sorcery and Witchcraft, committed by the said Elizabeth, and her Mother, Jacquetta" (doubly striking because Jacquetta had already stood trial and been cleared of those charges, with her innocence recorded in Parliament). I think it was probably just a confusing wording choice; I think Woodacre probably meant that Joan was the only queen to be *detained* on the basis of witchcraft (which she mentions in another chapter), although the book also mentions that Joan was never actually formally tried or charged for witchcraft or any other crime (the way Eleanor Cobham and Jacquetta were) so I'm a little confused whether the causes for her detainment were formal or informal or even specified. I don't know much about Joan, though, so maybe I've gotten a few things mixed up.

Hello! Yeah, honestly I don't see how you can say Elizabeth Woodville wasn't actually accused of witchcraft. The allegation against her in parliament doesn't go in full detail but none of the allegations in Titulus Regius do, including the allegation of bigamy, which according to all logic should be really detailed and discussed at length yet it's not. There's also a letter by Richard to his adherents in the North dated 10 June 1483 accusing Elizabeth and her kin to plan his and Buckingham's murder by casting their horoscope, which was something that Eleanor Cobham was also accused of, if I'm not mistaken. I'm calling my friend @une-sanz-pluis here to see if she has any clue about what they mean about Joan's uniqueness in witchcraft allegations.

#sorry i also don't know much about joan of navarre! #ask #anon #elizabeth woodville #joan of navarre #eleanor cobham duchess of gloucester #jacquetta woodville