The White Queen's birthday

No actual physical record of Elizabeth Woodville's birth survives into the modern era.  But most historians place her arrival in 1437 and many are agreed that the first commoner to be queen of England was most likely an October baby.  The exact date isn't known, and never will be now unless some hidden document comes to light, but we can be fairly certain that sometime around now a little girl was born in Grafton, Northamptonshire who would change the English monarchy forever.

 

Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of England, was born in 1437 and the most popular theory on exactly when places her arrival in October

 

October 1437 gets the nod of approval because of a charter, dated to that month, pardoning Jacquetta of Luxembourg, dowager Duchess of Bedford, for marrying Richard Woodville without the royal permission she needed to wed again.  Some historians believe that the charter co-incided with the arrival of their first child.  We will never know for sure.  At the time Jacquetta of Luxembourg gave birth to her eldest child, there was no law forcing parents to register the arrival of their babies.  The only records were the christening of the child and those ancient books, carefully inscribed over many years by priests who were sometimes barely literate themselves, have been lost to history.  Well to do families, like the Woodvilles, were slightly different as their major events were noted by people other than themselves.  And in the absence of any other offers as a birthday for The White Queen, October will do very nicely.