#I found myself revaluating her *a lot*. and these incredibly lazy historical approaches with her have really turned me off in general.

[wonder-worker]

I should clarify that we don't know if Thomas More actually met Elizabeth Shore! While he claimed that he did, David Santiuste has pointed out that More's description of Elizabeth in her later years, "where a 'fallen woman' loses her beauty, echoes familiar tropes in moral literature" at the time. It was very common to find such narratives in Tudor England, such as Robert Henryson's popular poem, Testament of Cresseid. So, while most historians have (unfortunately) taken More's claim at face-value based on that description, it can and should be questioned more than it has been till date.

Also, More's knowledge about Elizabeth's life was distinctly lacking and unreliable* in a way that makes it hard to believe he was getting his information from her. For example, he claimed that she was still married to William Shore in 1483 even though we know she had divorced Shore years ago; he didn't know that Richard III had accused her of having an affair with Thomas Gray despite the very public nature of that accusation; and he either didn't know or deliberately erased the fact that she married Thomas Lynom (and had a child with him) shortly after her penance walk. Instead, More seems to have created a tragic afterlife for her, claiming that she ended her life destitute and friendless, which was...almost definitely untrue (her reality would have been far, far happier). His claim that Richard III accused Elizabeth Shore of witchcraft was also most probably false and invented by More himself: the Great Chronicle never mentions any such thing, Richard's own proclamations against her suggest against the idea, and a textual comparison to Vergil's account (which More directly used as a source for that specific scene) indicates that More seems to have inserted Elizabeth Shore into the accusation that was, historically, only levelled at Elizabeth Woodville**.

In short: We don't know if More truly met Elizabeth Shore; at the very least, his claim should be taken with a grain of salt. But even if More did meet her, or at the very least came across her (which is plausible, as her second husband had a flourishing career under the Tudors and died in the 1510s), his haphazard knowledge of her makes it very unlikely that he could have questioned her about events of her life. Alternatively, if he did question her, he seems to have had no problem massively editing, rewriting or outright inventing several crucial and defining aspects of her life to suit his own narrative convenience. Whatever the case, it's clear that More was not using Elizabeth Shore as a source of information. It's also clear that he demonstrably did not care about historical accuracy where she was concerned*** (his descriptions of her are incredibly self-indulgent and generic) and should not be taken at face-value when talking about her life.

*We don't know if she and Edward IV truly had an affair, or if it was actually long-term & public (both of which are different things, and both of which have no verifiable evidence as of now). But even if they did have some kind of relationship, evidence strongly contradicts the idea that she was a visible figure during his reign - which may explain More's haphazard knowledge of her. Indeed, the author of the Great Chronicle could not even remember her name, merely calling her "a woman named Shore", with a blank space left before her surname. Similarly, the Elizabethans - who derived their knowledge of her entirely from More's account being printed and circulated from the 1540s - seem to have been so unfamiliar with her that they invented a fake name, fake husband (a goldsmith named Matthew) and fake backstory for her. More himself, in addition to his various inaccuracies about her, claims that she had a memorable role at court while simultaneously taking it for granted that his audience will not know who she is (which...does not make sense). He also literally never bothers to mention her name throughout his account; we don't know if he even knew what it was. Compare this to the consistent and matter-of-fact way contemporary and post-contemporary chroniclers spoke of Alice Perrers and Katherine Swynford, or how Rosamund Clifford's name was organically remembered across the centuries. In contrast, the absence of Elizabeth Shore in post-contemporary chronicles, and the ignorance that both More and the Great Chronicle displayed for the most basic elements of her life, cast immense doubt on the idea of her so-called visibility. If she had an affair with Edward IV, we can also conclude other things about their relationship based on current evidence, which may explain why chroniclers had such lacking knowledge of her. For one, she never received any official grants or rewards from Edward throughout his reign, a striking contrast to Alice Perrers and Katherine Swynford who received plenty from their royal lovers during Queen Philippa and Constance of Castile's lives. With the variety of 14th century English and 15th century French & Breton precedents that Edward had at his disposal when it came to rewarding royal mistresses in such a way, we can only conclude that if they were in a relationship, he simply did not want to honour Elizabeth Shore in such a public manner (ie: through patent and Parliament rolls, etc). Nor did Edward ever favor her parents, despite his patronage of so many other London merchants. It's very hard to understand how someone who had so little influence that she was incapable of obtaining grants for herself or her family would somehow have been able to intercede on behalf of others as Thomas More (very generically and romantically) claimed she did. Indeed, Elizabeth is absent from all known cases of intercession during Edward's second reign, and specific examples dispel the idea that she was viewed as a figure of visible influence like Alice and Katherine had been (see: the Merchant Adventurers Company sending desperate appeals to influential figures at court in 1480; Elizabeth Lambert is conspicuously absent from the list). In my opinion, if historians claim that Edward III and John of Gaunt's affairs with Alice and Katherine were "discreet" during Philippa and Constance's lives despite having actual contemporary evidence of their affairs via records and chronicles, then we must necessarily view the (potential, unverified, unknown) relationship between Edward IV and Elizabeth Shore as 10x more discreet considering we have no evidence for it at all. Based on what we know so far, given that post-contemporary chroniclers could not even remember her name, I think this interpretation is only fair.

**Re Elizabeth's role in 1483: another thing I want to clarify is that her arrest and penance walk doesn't seem to have had anything to do with Edward IV - as is commonly assumed - but with William Hastings. Simon Stallworth's contemporary letter, written on 21st June, makes it clear that Elizabeth was imprisoned shortly after Hastings' execution. The Great Chronicle likewise emphasizes that she was punished for her affair with Hastings (which mirrors how Richard used her to disparage Thomas Gray, and suggests that he was using the same tactic here to vilify Hastings) without ever linking her to Edward IV. Also, the idea of her being a messenger between Elizabeth Woodville and Hastings is simply not true: it is a modern fantasy theory that has been irresponsibly accepted by historians as a fact. It has no basis in history (it's highly improbable that Elizabeth Woodville and Hastings were in an alliance) and no chronicle, including More, claimed Richard accused her of this.

***In general, Thomas More is very unreliable when it comes to Edward IV's life - specifically his love life - as well. Apart from his false claim that he died at the age of 53 (???), More seems to have invented a page-long fictional story about Edward's alleged pre-contract, claiming that it was actually with Elizabeth Lucy who had once been summoned by his mother to court to try and deter him from marrying Elizabeth Woodville (we know that the pre-contract was with Eleanor Talbot, there is no record of a woman named "Elizabeth Lucy" even existing at the time, and there is no evidence of Edward's council or his mother doing any such thing). Additionally, More claimed that Edward IV discussed his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville with his courtiers before he married her, which is obviously not true. He also claimed that Edward had three long-term mistresses, which is explicitly contradicted by other chroniclers like Dominic Mancini, who arrived in England at the end of Edward's life and clearly states that he was known for having very short-term sexual affairs; it's very hard to understand how Mancini could have gotten such a radically different impression from courtiers and local Londoners if a long-term public mistress like Elizabeth Shore existed at that time. For that matter, the claim is also contradicted by Thomas More himself, who implies that Edward's affairs stopped in his last years ("in his youth given to fleshy wantonness...in his latter days, it lessened and well left"). I'm really not sure how we can reconcile that with what More claims about Elizabeth Lambert. Interestingly enough, More's claim that Edward may have eventually stopped having affairs is actually supported another independent chronicler, Habington, who wrote that "Even from [lust] which was reputed his bofome finn, toward the later end of his life, he was [somewhat] cleare: either [conscience] reforming him, or by continuall faciete growne to a loathing of it". Of course, we don't know if this is true or not, but whatever the case, the point is that More's claims re Edward's love life are ... really not reliable. On the contrary, he has displayed a pretty stellar record of invention, exaggeration and general inconsistency. His claims re Ellizabeth Shore cannot be taken at face-value and should be questioned & doubted far more than they are.

(Of course, this isn't to argue that everything More claimed about Elizabeth was an outright invention. This isn't true at all: he clearly did know some pretty important things about her. But when it comes to the existence and nature of her alleged affair with Edward IV...we just don't know. More could have been making it up; he could have been telling the truth; he could have been narrating what he believed was the truth; he could have been basing his account on a grain of truth while exaggerating/constructing the rest (in my opinion, the last one makes the most sense and fits best with what we know so far). What I'm trying to say is that More's claims regarding their alleged affair are not verifiable and reliable, and his claims regarding the nature of that affair can be contradicted by actual evidence and other sources, including More's own account. All in all - like you said, he can't be used uncritically as a source when it comes to her.

What is your opinion on Elizabeth Lambert? Does she have any unknown related knowledge?

I find her very interesting, particularly with the way her story parallels Alice Perrers and Eleanor Cobham, and I find her a very sympathetic figure. I don't know too much about her since the end of the Wars of the Roses isn't one of "my" periods and the thought of sorting through the Ricardians from the Ricardian-influenced to the Tudorites to find decent information about them just makes me go "no" and give up.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by your second question. We don't know a lot about her since the lives of mistresses aren't very well documented, particularly ones not of aristocratic birth. In addition, a lot of what we know about Elizabeth comes from Thomas More. He did claim to have met her but More can't be used uncritically as a source. The best coverage of Elizabeth's life, afaik, N. Barker's article, 'The real Jane Shore’ in Etoniana, 125 (1972) and 126 (1972). I've not read them myself but I believe Barker was the scholar who discovered "Jane Shore" was in fact Elizabeth Lambert.