The New Murrey and Blue blog

Back in 2010, historian Dan Snow was married in secret to Lady Edwina Grosvenor, daughter of the Duke of Westminster.

I’ve looked but I can’t see that Dan mentions Edward IV‘s probable ‘secret marriage’ to Eleanor Talbot in any of his Twitter or other postings on history. (He did once post a very entertaining picture drawn by one of his children which featured Edward IV overlooking Warwick‘s severed head after Barnet…)

I’d be curious as to his opinion. It seems many historians are still resistant to the idea that Edward could have married Eleanor…despite Edward’s reputation with women (including marrying Elizabeth Woodville secretly), and the fact that many royals did in fact make secret unions–Henry VIII with Anne Boleyn (also bigamous; his annulment from Catherine was not finalised), Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, George IV and Mrs Fitzherbert, Louis XIV of France and Madame de Maintenon*. The French even had a system of ‘openly secret’ marriages, where the royal, once he already had heirs and if his Queen was deceased, would marry an older lady in private, without Banns, and with only a priest, the couple, and a witness or two present. (This actually sounds very similar to the description of Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville…)

Article on Dan Snow’s secret marriage:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1334244/Dan-Snow-Lady-Edwina-Grosvenor-married-secret.html

• … as did John Lennon, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, Andre Previn, Ed Sheeran and Adele, among others, albeit not by a Bishop of Liverpool.