Jane Shore, the infamous mistress of Edward IV, was far more than just a royal paramour—she was a woman of charm, intelligence, and resilience who navigated the treacherous politics of 15th-century England. Born Elizabeth Lambert, she rose from a merchant’s daughter to one of the most influential figures at court, using wit and persuasion rather than power or ambition.
Unlike other mistresses, Jane Shore left a lasting legacy, becoming a symbol of grace and endurance in the face of public disgrace. From her rise in Edward IV’s court to her dramatic downfall under Richard III, her story continues to captivate historians and inspire literature, drama, and even modern pop culture.
Rough Transcript of Jane Shore: The Rise and Fall of Edward IV’s Most Famous Mistress
Today, we are going to talk about Jane Shore. She has been mentioned in the podcast in the context of episodes we’ve done on royal mistresses. She was the mistress of Edward IV, but she has never had her own episode dedicated to her, and so I wanted to do that this week. So we are going to dig into the life of Jane Shore as there is something irresistible about Jane Shore’s story.
She wasn’t a queen or a noblewoman, but she moved in the highest circles of power. She was beautiful, yes, but more than that, she was clever, charming, and she had a knack for survival in an era when a woman’s fortunes depended a lot on the men around her. As the favorite mistress of Edward IV, she wielded influence not through scandal or greed, but through persuasion and wit.
She was the kind of woman that people wanted to be around. Men adored her. Even other women seemed to respect her. But when Edward died in 1483, Jane’s charmed existence unraveled at a terrifying speed. She became entangled in the dangerous politics of Richard III‘s rise to power and found herself dragged into the public square for one of the most infamous acts of humiliation in English history.
The story of Jane Shore is one of love, betrayal, adaptability, resilience. She was adored, shamed, imprisoned, and yet somehow she survived. And centuries later, her legend still lingers in literature, art, and historical imagination. So, who was Jane Shore? Who was she before she became the mistress to a king? And how did that change her life? And how do we remember her? So, let’s get into it.
Jane Shore’s Early Life
Jane Shore wasn’t actually named Jane. She was born Elizabeth Lambert around 1445, the daughter of a successful London merchant, John Lambert and his wife Amy. The Lamberts were wealthy enough to give their daughter an unusually good education for the time.
She could read and write. And, more importantly, she knew how to carry herself in high society. Growing up in the bustling mercantile world of London, Elizabeth spent time in her father’s shop. Now, her father was most likely a mercer. That means that he dealt in fine silks and fine cloths, luxury fabrics.
This was actually one of the wealthier trades in medieval London, and of course, as a result, they were a relatively well off family, but it also meant that Jane grew up surrounded by high status customers, including noblewomen, possibly even members of the royal court. A mercer’s shop was actually, it was a bit of a social hub where wealthy women selected fabrics for their gowns, discussed the latest court fashions, and exchanged gossip.
For Jane spending time there, she would have had a front row seat to aristocratic manners, conversations, and trends, absorbing the way these noble women spoke, carried themselves, and interacted with powerful men. It’s no wonder that by the time she reached marriageable age, she had admirers. Her father arranged a marriage with William Shore.
He was a goldsmith and a banker, which was respectable and financially advantageous. But it wasn’t a love match. William was at least 15 years older than she was, and she was really never particularly fond of him. The marriage lasted several years, but in 1476, she successfully petitioned the Pope for an annulment.
The official reason was that her husband was impotent. Now this was a move that was bold and really uncommon for a woman of her status. It was so uncommon for women to successfully obtain an annulment, especially one from the Pope. Marriages in medieval England were sacramental, were legally binding, and dissolving them required serious justification.
Impotence, however, was one of the few acceptable reasons for an annulment because it prevented a marriage from being physically consummated, which was a requirement for it to be valid. Even so, proving impotence was humiliating for both parties. It required witnesses, medical examinations, and sworn testimonies.
A woman seeking an annulment for this reason risked public embarrassment, and the man she accused would have to defend himself against a charge that was deeply shameful and highly emasculating. Now, in Jane’s case, this was a successful petition, so it could mean a couple of things. First, maybe it was a convenient excuse to get out of a marriage that she never wanted.
Or, given that it went all the way to the Pope, maybe she had already caught the eye of someone far more powerful like Edward IV. Maybe, quite simply, she wanted children and she knew she wasn’t going to get them in that marriage. Maybe her husband decided to just okay it because he wanted to avoid a further scandal.
Whatever the truth, Elizabeth Lambert Shore was now free. And within months, she had stepped into the world of power and passion and peril as the most famous mistress of the English king.
Rise to Royal Mistress
Elizabeth Shore didn’t just become a mistress, she became the mistress. The one people remembered, talked about, and centuries later still wrote plays and poems about. It’s likely that her relationship with Edward began shortly after her annulment in 1476.
Now whether their affair had already begun before she freed herself from her husband, or if Edward was simply quick to notice an available beautiful woman, we will never know for sure. But by the time she entered the king’s bed, she was stepping into a world of power and privilege that few women of her status ever experienced.
Edward was no stranger to mistresses. He had had many before Jane, and would likely have had many more if he had lived longer. But what set Jane apart was that he kept her. Most royal affairs were fleeting, transactional. Women were showered with gifts and titles in exchange for their time. And once the king moved on, they were left to fade into the background.
Jane, though, remained a central figure in Edward’s life until his death in 1483. She wasn’t just a passing distraction. She seemed to be a companion, an advisor, and someone he truly enjoyed having around. Why? By all accounts, Jane was not just beautiful, but she was charming. Thomas More later wrote that she had a merry and playful nature, was intelligent, well spoken, and quick witted.
She knew how to keep a conversation going, to make a king laugh, to make him feel understood. She wasn’t ambitious in the traditional sense, she didn’t use her position to amass land or power, but she did use it to help others. She was actually known to intercede on behalf of people who had fallen out of favor, softening Edward’s temper when needed.
This was rare, most mistresses wielded influence for their own benefit. Jane used hers to protect others. Despite this, she didn’t seem to have left a dynasty behind. There’s no definitive evidence that she had children by Edward, though some later sources speculate that she might have. If she did, they did not play any notable role in Tudor history.
Which suggests that they either died young or were quietly absorbed into noble households without drawing much attention. And what of Elizabeth Woodville, Edward’s queen? There’s no surviving record of how she felt about Jane, but one can imagine it wouldn’t exactly have been warm. Elizabeth was known, though, for her political savvy and her deep devotion to her children.
Watching her husband publicly keep a long-term mistress, one who had real influence, couldn’t have been easy. However, if she resented Jane, she seemed to have kept it to herself. If anything, Jane’s real trouble wouldn’t come from the Queen. It would come after Edward’s death, when her connections to his court became a liability rather than an asset.
Fall from Grace
Now for Jane, Edward’s death in April of 1483 marked the beginning of a steep and painful fall from grace. The king had protected her, valued her, and allowed her to live in comfort at court. But without him, she was suddenly exposed, caught in the whirlwind of political chaos that followed his death. This was a world where women’s fortunes were tied to men, and Jane needed a new protector, fast.
She found not one, but two. Thomas Grey, Marquess of Dorset, and William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings. Now Thomas Grey was Edward IV’s stepson, and the son of Elizabeth Woodville from her first marriage. Hastings, meanwhile, had been one of Edward’s most trusted advisors. Both were loyal to the Woodvilles, the queen’s family.
And in the immediate aftermath of Edward’s death, Jane acted as a link between them, passing messages and helping to coordinate their efforts to secure power for the young King Edward V. This was a dangerous game. With the King dead, his 12-year-old son was meant to succeed him. But, the boy’s uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had other plans.
Richard swiftly moved to take control as Lord Protector, seizing the young king and imprisoning key Woodville allies. Hastings remained outwardly loyal to Richard, but secretly he was working with Dorset, Thomas Grey, and Elizabeth Woodville to resist the Duke’s growing power. And Jane was caught in the middle.
In June 1483, Richard made his move. He accused Hastings of plotting against him and, without a trial, had him executed on the spot. This was one of the very early displays of ruthlessness that really shocked everyone. With Hastings gone, Jane’s fate was sealed. She was arrested, not for treason, but for something far more personal, harlotry.
Richard’s justification for punishing her was that she had lived in sin with multiple men. But everyone knew that this was about more than morality. Jane had been a key figure in the Hastings-Woodville alliance, and Richard wanted to make an example of her.
Her punishment was public penance at Paul’s Cross, the outdoor pulpit at St. Paul’s Cathedral where sinners were shamed before the gathered crowds of London. Jane was stripped of her fine clothes and forced to walk through the city only in her curtail which was a thin sleeveless slip, barefoot, carrying a taper, a wax candle, as a symbol of her disgrace. It was meant to humiliate her, to break her down before the public.
But if Richard expected the people of London to mock her, he miscalculated. Jane was still beautiful. Despite her disgrace, she walked with dignity. According to Thomas More, she carried herself so well that instead of scorn, she inspired sympathy. She had been Edward IV’s favorite mistress, and the people still remembered her fondly.
Instead of turning them against her, the spectacle of her penance actually made Richard look cruel and vengeful. After her penance, Jane was sent to Ludgate prison where she was held in miserable conditions. It should have been the end of her story, but Jane Shore was nothing if not adaptable and resourceful, and even in prison she found a new way to survive.
Life After Edward IV
Sitting in prison in 1483, disgraced and humiliated, seemingly abandoned, this could have been the kind of fall that many women in her position never recovered from. And yet, even in prison, Jane caught the attention of another man, Thomas Lynham, Richard’s Solicitor General. Lynham wasn’t a powerful noble, but he was an important figure in the legal world, and by all accounts, he became infatuated with Jane.
Perhaps he saw in her what Edward had, a woman who was witty, charming, and captivating. Perhaps he simply pitied her. Either way, he was determined to marry her, a move that stunned his peers and, most of all, Richard himself. He personally wrote to his chancellor, Bishop John Russell, expressing his great marvel that Lynham wanted to wed a woman who had been so publicly shamed.
The letter reveals that Richard attempted to talk Lynham out of it, urging the bishop to persuade him otherwise. But, he also added that if Lynham couldn’t be dissuaded, Jane should be released into the custody of her father until Richard could personally oversee the marriage arrangements. Lynham wasn’t deterred.
He married Jane and, against all odds, she returned to something resembling a respectable life. They had at least one daughter. Jane was no longer just a discarded royal mistress. She was the wife of a man with an official position in government. Lynham managed to survive Richard’s downfall in 1485 when Henry VII took the throne after Bosworth.
Though he lost his position as Solicitor General, he remained a bureaucrat under the new Tudor regime. He worked in the Welsh Marches and later as a clerk controller for Prince Arthur’s household in London. As for Jane, she faded quietly into obscurity. She lived long enough to see the end of the Wars of the Roses and the rise of Henry VIII.
By the time she died, likely around 1527 or so, she was an old woman in a world that had long since moved on. Some sources suggest that she may have died in poverty, others indicate that Lynham’s continued government work meant that she was never completely destitute. She had been adored, disgraced, and discarded, but she had also survived.
Now as for her daughter that Jane had with Thomas Lynham, frustratingly, very little is known about her. She doesn’t appear to have played any kind of significant role in court or left a lasting historical footprint. The strongest evidence for her existence comes from John Lambert’s will, that was Jane’s father, written in 1487, in which he left a sum of 40 shillings to Julia Lynham, a name believed to refer to Jane and Thomas Lynham’s daughter.
The idea that she was named in the will indicates that she was still alive at that time, but beyond that, records become murky. There’s no direct mention of her marrying, having children, or serving a court. Some researchers have tried to trace potential descendants, and one 17th-century inscription suggests a connection between the Lynham family and the Hake family, a gentry family from Whittlesea in Cambridgeshire.
The inscription mentions an Alice Lynham, daughter of Thomas Lynham, who married a Simon Hake, who was a Member of Parliament. The idea is that Alice may have been Jane’s daughter, and so she may have had grandchildren who lived well into the Elizabethan era. It’s possible that Jane’s daughter lived a quiet and respectable life benefiting from her father’s bureaucratic career, but avoiding the kind of court intrigue that defined her mother’s youth.
Legacy and Cultural Impact
Now, Jane’s story didn’t end with her death. In fact, in many ways, that’s when it actually just really began. Over the centuries, she was transformed from a historical figure into a literary archetype. The beautiful, tragic woman who fell from grace, not because of ambition or greed, but because of love and loyalty.
The first major depiction of Jane comes from Thomas More, who likely met her in her later years. His account describes a woman who was not just beautiful, but witty, lively, and intelligent, a woman whose pleasant behavior made her irresistible. He paints her as a mistress who used her influence not for personal gain but to help others and who retained her dignity even after being publicly shamed.
More’s sympathetic portrayal would shape nearly every later interpretation of her life. By the 17th and 18th centuries, Jane’s story had been dramatized on stage. Nicholas Rowe‘s 1714 play, The Tragedy of Jane Shore, turned her into a romantic heroine, a woman who remained faithful to Edward’s memory, resisted Richard’s tyranny, and died in poverty and despair.
The play was a hit, performed well into the 19th century, and cemented Jane’s image as a victim of male power, rather than a political player in her own right. Before Rowe, Shakespeare had already given her a nod in Richard III. She’s never seen on stage, but she’s frequently referenced as Mistress Shore, a woman of ill repute who had swayed powerful men.
The real Jane Shore was far more than a seductress. But in Shakespeare’s world, she became a symbol of Edward’s moral failings. Poets of the 16th and 17th centuries also found inspiration in Jane. Thomas Churchyard‘s poem in Mirror for Magistrates, which was in 1563, portrays her as a repentant sinner who meets a tragic end, while Michael Drayton‘s Heroical Epistles in 1597 romanticizes her downfall, emphasizing her lost beauty and fading influence.
By the Victorian era, Jane’s story had been fully romanticized. Nineteenth-century artists painted her as a tragic beauty, half-clothed, humiliated, yet graceful during her infamous walk of penance. She appeared in historical novels where she was often portrayed as the ultimate fallen woman, beautiful, kind, and doomed by fate.
Her real political entanglements and strategic choices were mostly erased in favor of sentimentality. Perhaps one of the most unexpected modern references to Jane comes from Game of Thrones. There’s an infamous walk of shame scene that’s widely believed to have been inspired by Jane’s own penance at Paul’s cross.
So, Jane remains one of the most fascinating women of the late medieval period, not because she was a queen or a noblewoman, but because she managed to leave a mark on history despite being neither. She lived on the margins of power, but she influenced kings, courtiers, and politicians. She was desired and then discarded, but she didn’t disappear.
Even when Richard III tried to erase her, she emerged from Ludgate prison with a new husband and a second act. So there you go. The reality of Jane is, as always with most things in history, far more interesting than the way historical fiction portrays it. So what do you think about Jane Shore? Let me know in the comments wherever you’re listening to this.
Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.
She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).
