A 500-year-old letter discovered in the National Archives has revealed that the “White Queen” Elizabeth Woodville, the grandmother of Henry VIII, may have died of the plague.

Elizabeth, the wife of Edward IV, mother of Edward V and maternal grandmother of Henry VIII, died in 1492 after spending the last five years of her life in Bermondsey Abbey in London. No cause of death was recorded at the time, and there are no known contemporary accounts of her passing. However, while digging through transcripts and translations of Venetian documents relating to England, National Archives records specialist Euan Roger stumbled on a letter from the Venetian ambassador to London, written 19 years after her death.

The letter, dated July 1511, sees the ambassador, Andrea Badoer, state that “the Queen-Widow, mother of King Edward, has died of plague, and the King is disturbed”. Roger said the ambassador could only be referring to Elizabeth Woodville, mother of the princes in the Tower and a woman renowned for her “lynx-eyed” beauty, which drew the attention of Edward IV. It is the only known reference to Elizabeth’s death being caused by plague, but Roger believes that if the queen did in fact die in this way, it provides an alternative explanation of why accounts of her funeral are so modest.

Although Elizabeth had requested a simple funeral “without pompes entring or costlie expensis donne thereabout”, Roger writes in an academic article just published in the Oxford journal Social History of Medicine that “the ceremonies were so lacking as to shock the herald narrator who documented the events”. Her body was transported down the Thames by just five people, taken in secret into Windsor Castle with no bells tolling, and immediately buried on arrival with none of the usual funerary rites.

“Unless there was a specific need for haste – such as death from a contagious disease – it seems inconceivable that such a secretive and speedy journey would be necessary,” writes Roger. “Immediate burial on arrival at Windsor strongly suggests the later Venetian account of plague as the cause of Woodville’s death, and it was fear of infection and miasmatic air, rather than the Elizabeth’s request for a simple funeral, that was behind the haste with which early proceedings took place.”

The herald notes that “ther was non offryng to the corps during the masse” – usually lengths of cloth were placed across a corpse during a funeral. “If we accept that Elizabeth Woodville died from plague, it makes sense that she had been buried as soon as was possible, and there was therefore no body available for dressing,” writes Roger.

During the late 15th and early 16th century, England experienced regular outbreaks of plague and sweating sickness. The Venetian ambassadors to England regularly commented in their letters home about the plague, with Badoer making “constant” requests for a replacement to be sent. In November 1517, Badoer wanted to leave; by July 1518, two of his servants had died of the plague, and he had suffered sweating sickness twice in a week.

Roger said that Badoer knew of Henry VIII’s “deep-seated fear of disease” – particularly the Black Death, which may have claimed his grandmother’s life. Roger notes that the King’s fears were likely exacerbated by the death of his elder brother Prince Arthur in 1502, his mother Elizabeth of York in 1503, and his son, Prince Henry, in 1511, just a few months before Badoer’s report.

“The death of Henry VIII’s grandmother from plague and the memory of such an event at court clearly remained in the King’s thoughts several years later – the rumours of such a fear becoming so resonant at court that they were picked up by even an alien ambassador – leaving Henry with a deep-seated fear of contagious disease,” writes Roger. “It starts to shed light on Henry’s own emotional state. He still clearly feared the disease and while he had no heir, the entire Tudor lineage was at stake.”

His daughter Mary, who would become Queen Mary I, would be born five years later in 1516. Elizabeth Woodville’s life was fictionalised in Philippa Gregory’s bestselling novel The White Queen, which describes her as a “woman who won the love of a king and ascended to royalty by virtue of her beauty”. Gregory’s books were also the basis for a BBC television series, starring Rebecca Ferguson in the title role.