In 1066 the manor of Grafton was held freely by the Saxon Godwin, who also had estates nearby at Cosgrove and Furtho. After the battle of Hastings, the victorious Norman knights were given vast land holdings throughout England. Grafton was given to Robert Count of Mortain, half-brother of William the Conqueror, whose sub-tenant William held four-fifths of one hide, as recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086. The Normans retained strong links with their native Normandy. Some time between 1086 and 1106 (when his estates were forfeited by rebellion), Robert's son and successor Count William gave to the abbot and convent of Notre-Dame de Grestain [Greatain], a Benedictine house near the mouth of the Seine founded by William's grandfather in 1040, all that he possessed in Grafton, together with the church there. The abbot of Grestain thus appears as the tenant of Grafton in the early 12th-century survey of Northamptonshire.

Grestain continued to hold Grafton until the middle of the 14th century, at which time there were seven free tenants and 15 other tenants of the manor, the number later rising to 31 tenants. Most of the abbey's dealings with the village refer to disputes over ownership, the abbot's gift of six oaks to Grafton in 1245 being a rare exception. The abbey was generally successful in resisting the claims of various parties, including that of Walter de Wideville, Lord of Grafton (the first mention of the famous name of Woodville which was to form such a central part of Grafton's history).

However, its absentee role became more complicated at the beginning of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. The patron of Grestain, Jehan de Melun, Sire de Tancarville, was captured at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, the great victory won by Edward III. This was also the year of the Black Death, and with the twin scourges of war and the plague devastating the north of France, the abbot of Grestain was hard pressed to raise a ransom for his patron. He decided to dispose of the abbey's holding at Grafton to a merchant named Tidemann de Lymbergh. Tidemann appears to have been acting simply as a middleman: in 1350 he secured a licence to grant the former Grestain estates to any English man he chose, to be held of the king by the service of one knight's fee, and four years later sold his holding at Grafton to Sir Michael de la Pole, a wealthy Hull merchant, for the remainder of the term of a thousand years. Grafton, together with some of the Grestain manors which passed through Tidemann de Lymbergh's hands, remained in the possession of the de la Pole family for the next three generations.

Michael de la Pole had one of the most spectacular careers in late medieval England. In 1385 he was created Earl of Suffolk and Chancellor of England, but the following year he was impeached and convicted by Parliament with many of his lands forfeit. The proceedings against him were declared void in August 1387 but, fearing for his life, in December that year he fled the realm. In his absence he was found guilty by Parliament in February 1388 of high treason, and all his honours forfeit. He died at Paris in 1389. Nevertheless, the manor remained in the possession of the de la Pole family for a further fifty years. In 1440 it passed to Richard Wideville and his wife Jacquetta. From about this date the mansion can legitimately be called a 'manor house' as the home of the Wideville family, during which time the village was known as Grafton Wideville. A measure of Grafton's increasing importance during this period can be gauged from the grant made by Earl Rivers (as Richard Wideville had become) in 1465 of a weekly market at his manor of Grafton.

Before the advent of the Woodvilles, as they came to be called, Grafton played a peripheral role in English history. Nevertheless, standing on one of the major roads from the capital to the midlands and the north, it witnessed many stirring events, including the funeral cortege of Queen Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I. The great medieval King, conqueror of Wales and 'Hammer of the Scots', was devastated by the death of his beloved wife at Harby in Nottinghamshire on 4 December 1290. Eleanor had been his constant companion for many years, and had even accompanied her husband on the Crusades, where she is supposed to have sucked poison from his wound. The King commanded that her body be brought to London for the burial in Westminster Abbey (although her heart and entrails were buried separately in Lincoln), and that crosses be erected wherever her body rested for the night, surmounted by statues of the Queen: hair loose, a sceptre in her hand. On 9 December the procession wound its way slowly past the village of Grafton en route from Northampton, where the original Eleanor's cross still stands, to Stony Stratford. The final landmark at Charing Cross remains one of the most evocative sites in London, though the Cross there is a replacement for the one pulled down and destroyed in the English Civil War. The cross at Stony Stratford suffered a similar fate but was never replaced.

In ancient documents the Woodville family name occurs in many forms: Wideville, Widevile, Wivill, Wydeville and Woodville. It is, however, the latter version that has been most generally used in modern times. On Queen Elizabeth's tomb it is spelt Widville.

Wydvilles, who claimed descent from a Norman called William de Wydville and his wife Emma, a Saxon, were in fact an old family of minor gentry who settled in Northamptonshire during the reign of Henry II. (1154 - 1189), when a Willelmus de Widviull of Northamptonshire is mentioned in the "Liber Niger Scaccarii," the earliest extant register of England tenants in Chivalry and their holdings - Woodville being liable to provide half a soldier.

The Woodvilles continued to rise in local importance and in 1297 a John de Wydevill held lands to the amount of £20 yearly and upwards and as such, summoned under general writ to perform military service in person with horse and arms in parts beyond the seas. He married Alice of Passenham and from this marriage came a son, John de Wydeville, who claimed privileges in Cleley hundred in 1329. He, too had a son, Richard de Wideville, who became one of the most influential men in the country. He held the office of High Sheriff eight times in the reign of Edward III (1327-1377), and married Elizabeth, daughter and heiress of Sir John Lyons of Warksworth.

Woodville Family Tree

Click on the red names on the Family Trees to find out more about the Royal connections with Grafton...