Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  In some ways Humphrey’s story recalls that of his grandfather, John of Gaunt. Perhaps the latter may have been Humphrey’s model. In 1425 (at a time when he still believed himself married to Jacqueline of Hainaut) the beautiful and clever Eleanor Cobham became Humphrey’s mistress, and in 1428, after his marriage to Jacqueline had been declared null and void, Humphrey married Eleanor.13 Like his grandfather’s third marriage to Catherine de Roët, Humphrey’s marriage to Eleanor was regarded as something of a mésalliance. Nevertheless, the marriage itself was initially a happy one, though it seems to have been childless.14

  However, in 1441 Eleanor fell foul of the authorities, and found herself condemned for witchcraft including treasonable necromancy. Eleanor’s great mistake had probably been to seek to explore the horoscope of the young King Henry VI in the hope of discovering his likely date of death. Of course, if the young king had died without children then Eleanor’s husband would have succeeded to the throne and Eleanor herself would have become Queen of England.

  Her confessor or chaplain, John Hum (Hume/Home), was one of those involved, and it was Hum who accused the duchess. He was a canon of Hereford and St Asaph and served as chaplain and secretary to both Eleanor and her husband. Others of Eleanor’s associates who were arrested were:

  master Thomas Southwell a canon of St Stephen’s chapel at Westminster … and master Roger Bolyngbroke a man expert in necromancy,15 and a woman called Margery Jourdemayne surnamed the witch of Eye beside Winchester [sic for Westminster]: to whose charge it was laid that these four persons should, at the request of the said duchess, devise an image of wax like unto the King, the which image they dealt so with, that by their devilish incantations and sorcery they intended to bring out of life, little and little, the King’s person, as they little and little consumed that image.16

  Although Eleanor denied most of the charges brought against her, she did admit to involvement with Margery Jourdemayne, ‘the Witch of Eye next Westminster’, from whom she had obtained certain potions.17

  Margery Jourdemayne (born before 1415, executed 27 October 1441) had an unusual name. It would be tempting to think that this may have been a feature of fifteenth-century women reputed to have magical or supernatural powers, because a roughly contemporary sortilega (fortune teller) in fifteenth-century Colchester likewise had the rather strange name of Jeweyn Blakecote.18 Did women of this profession tend to be foreign? Is it possible that Margery Jourdemayne’s name is our first recorded example of a professional or ‘stage’ name; that her French surname was jour demain and meant ‘Tomorrow’ and was perhaps meant to imply that Margery had the power to foretell the future?19 These seem tempting speculations. But in fact Jourdemayne was Margery’s married name. Her birth surname is unknown. Her husband was William Jourdemayne, who came from a family of yeomen established in Middlesex since at least the end of the previous century. The surname is undoubtedly old French in origin, but jour de main may simply have been an appellation for a workman employed on a daily basis.20

  Unfortunately for Eleanor Cobham, Margery had something of a reputation – and also a record. ‘From the early 1430’s Margery seems to have kept the company of a number of respected and learned clerics and courtiers’.21 She is reported to have foretold that Edmund Beaufort, first (or according to some calculations, second) Duke of Somerset, would die ‘at a castle’. When Edmund was killed in 1455, at the first battle of St Albans, he discovered, as he lay dying, that he was at the Castle Inn! We shall have more to say about Edmund Beaufort later. But as for Margery, she may also have been previously involved in reputed plots against the life of Henry VI.

  Eleanor admitted that she had known Margery Jourdemayne for some ten years, and that she had made use of her services. However, her statement at her trial was that the potions she obtained from Margery were merely intended to help her conceive a child by her husband. Despite her denials of the other charges, Eleanor was found guilty. The case against her was pursued strongly – probably partly for political reasons, in order to bring down her husband or at least reduce his power and influence.

  After being forced to do penance in various parts of London on Monday 13 November, Wednesday 15 November and Friday 17 November 1441, escorted by the mayor and other officials, the unfortunate ex-duchess was imprisoned for life. A letter from King Henry VI to his chancellor survives, which gives orders for her transportation to Cheshire, and Henry commanded that those who escorted her ‘lette not, for sekenesse or ony dissimulacion of hir, to carie hir thedir as we have appointed’.22 She died in prison in 1452. Margery Jourdemayne and others of Eleanor’s co-accused were less fortunate, however. Margery was burned at the stake, while the other confederates were hanged, drawn and quartered.

  Henry V’s other brother, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford (1389–1435), married first Anne of Burgundy and second Jacquette de St Pol, a member of the house of Luxembourg who, as a result of her marriage became an English royal duchess. In the end John’s marriages both proved childless. He left only one surviving child; his bastard daughter, Mary.

  But in 1436, after Bedford’s death, his widowed duchess, Jacquette, remarried in secret. Her second husband, Richard Woodville, was the son of John of Lancaster’s chamberlain. Jacquette’s initially secret union with this Sir Richard Woodville ultimately produced a large family. This family included a daughter, Elizabeth Woodville, who, in her turn, was to contract a secret royal marriage, as a result of which she also involved both herself and her mother in accusations of witchcraft. We shall explore Elizabeth’s story in the next chapter. First, however, we should examine the last and arguably most important of the alleged secret marriages of the royal house of Lancaster – a case which touched the throne itself.

  The death of King Henry V at Vincennes on 31 August 1422 had left his consort, Catherine of France, a young widow. At the time of his death she was just approaching her twenty-first birthday. In the wake of Henry’s corpse, Catherine returned to England, where her infant son, Henry VI (still less than one year old) was residing. Thereafter she lived a quiet life, although she appeared in public on important ceremonial occasions.

  Catherine’s mother, the French queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, had enjoyed the reputation of being something of a nymphomaniac. It is possible that Catherine inherited Isabeau’s strong sexuality, for one chronicler reported that, after the death of Henry V, Catherine found herself ‘unable fully to curb her carnal passions’.23 Within two years of her husband’s death she had apparently begun to form an amorous attachment to the late king’s young cousin, Edmund Beaufort, later Count of Mortain (1427), Earl of Dorset (1438) and Duke of Somerset (1444) – a descendant of John of Gaunt’s third marriage and a member of his legitimised Beaufort bastard line of descendants. Edmund (whom we encountered earlier as one of the clients of the ‘Witch of Eye’, Margery Jourdemayne) was about 19 years old, and still unmarried and untitled, when he attracted the attention of the youthful queen mother.

  The Parliament held at Leicester in 1426 seems to have been aware of Queen Catherine’s new attachment, because the House of Commons petitioned the chancellor – Edmund’s uncle, Henry Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester – to allow widowed queens to remarry at their own behest, upon payment of a fine. Perhaps the Commons had been induced to do this by Edmund himself – or indeed, by his uncle, the chancellor. Unfortunately, as Colin Richmond has remarked, regarding the liaison between Queen Catherine and Edmund Beaufort ‘almost everything is obscure’.24 But at all events, the government was unsympathetic and hostile. The late king’s surviving brothers, John, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, were completely opposed to any union between Queen Catherine and Edmund Beaufort. Perhaps Edmund was already perceived as a man with strong political ambitions and a taste for power. Certainly he was to emerge as such later.

  In the face of official opposition the proposed bill was dropped. In its place, a rather different new bill was presented to Parliament by the government in 1427, and duly passed int
o law. This ruled that widowed queens of England could only remarry with the consent of an adult king. Given that Henry VI was still only a child at the time, the purpose of this new legislation was clearly aimed at curbing Queen Catherine’s amorous activities. The text of the bill is not now to be found in the Rolls of Parliament for 1427, but two copies survive elsewhere, and a translation of the first copy is quoted in Appendix 3 (below).25 The second copy is accompanied by contemporary annotations to the effect that the Lords Spiritual were worried lest the bill might prevent a marriage between a couple who had already had sexual intercourse. Did the bishops and abbots know – or suspect – that Edmund Beaufort was already Queen Catherine’s lover?

  Like so many points in this story, how far Catherine actually went in expressing her love for Edmund Beaufort is unclear. But some authors have canvassed the notion that her second son, known to history as Edmund Tudor, but whose first name was clearly derived from that of Edmund Beaufort, was also fathered by the latter.26 Edmund Tudor’s date of birth is not precisely known, but he must have been born by 1430 at the latest, to allow time for the birth of his younger brother or half-brother (see below).

  Edmund Tudor’s ostensible father was Owen Tudor, who was reportedly a member of Queen Catherine’s household, but who may actually have had a connection with the household of Edmund Beaufort.27 In 1430 or 1431 Catherine is alleged to have married Owen Tudor, an attractive, if comparatively lowly, young man whom she had reportedly met either at a dance or while he was swimming. Rather curiously, a marriage between Catherine and Owen Tudor has been generally assumed, although, interestingly, there is no more documentary evidence of such a marriage than there is in the later case of Edward IV and Eleanor Talbot (see below). Moreover – also as in the case of Edward IV and Eleanor – there was no strictly contemporary talk about Queen Catherine’s alleged second marriage. Her reported mésalliance remained a secret from the general public until after Catherine’s death on 3 January 1437. Nevertheless, secret marriages were very easily contracted in the fifteenth century. Moreover, in the case of Queen Catherine and Owen Tudor, despite the complete lack of documentary evidence we do have the undoubted fact that the widowed queen gave birth to three or possibly four children of whom Owen was later reputed to be the father.28

  Actually, as we have seen, the paternity of Queen Catherine’s second son, Edmund Tudor, has been questioned. Unfortunately the available chronological evidence is not precise enough to give us much help in determining this matter. Conversely, Catherine’s third son, Jasper Tudor, born in about 1431, has generally been accepted as having been the son of Owen Tudor. There is no written evidence available in the case of either Edmund or Jasper to help us resolve the question of paternity. Nevertheless, there is clear evidence of a different kind, though its significance has been hitherto overlooked. This evidence takes the form of heraldry.

  Coats of arms belong to individuals, not to families. Nevertheless the sons of an armigerous father are allowed to use versions of the father’s coat of arms, marked by some point of difference, called a mark of cadency. During the Plantagenet period marks of cadency sometimes took the form of a ‘bordure’ (coloured surround or border) added to the father’s arms. Thus, for example, Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainaut, bore his father’s arms with the addition of a silver (or white) bordure. Similarly, after his legitimisation, John Beaufort, the eldest son of John of Gaunt, bore the English royal arms, surrounded by a blue and silver (or white) bordure as a mark of cadency. This coat of arms was later inherited by Edmund Beaufort (see Plate 6). Sons of Edmund Beaufort would have been entitled to use the same arms, but with some change in the colour or design of the bordure.

  Owen Tudor also bore a coat of arms. However, it was nothing like the royal arms, and there was no reason why it should have been. Owen’s shield was red in colour, and bore a chevron coloured ermine, surrounded by three helms in white or silver (see Plate 5). If Edmund and Jasper Tudor were Owen Tudor’s sons they should have borne a version of the same coat of arms as their father, with some mark of difference – either a coloured bordure or a label.

  But, astonishingly, neither Edmund nor Jasper Tudor used arms remotely resembling those of Owen Tudor. Instead both brothers bore the royal arms with a blue bordure, marked in Edmund’s case with alternate golden martlets (heraldic birds) and fleurs de lis, and in Jasper’s case, with gold martlets only (see Plates 7 and 8). These coats of arms, which owed nothing whatever to the arms of Owen Tudor, were clearly derived from the arms of Edmund Beaufort. The blue and gold bordures of Edmund and Jasper Tudor were simply versions of the blue and white bordure of Edmund Beaufort, modified for cadency. Apart from this modification the three coats of arms were identical. The arms of Edmund and Jasper Tudor, which were entirely appropriate for putative sons of Edmund Beaufort (who would, via that paternity, have inherited some English royal blood), were wholly inappropriate for sons of Owen Tudor (who would have had no single drop of English royal blood in their veins). The whole purpose of medieval heraldry was to show to the world who one was. And the coats of arms of Edmund and Jasper Tudor proclaimed, as clearly as they could, that these two ‘Tudor’ sons of the queen mother were of English royal blood, while their bordures suggest descent from Edmund Beaufort. The only possible explanation seems to be that Beaufort was their real father.

  Subsequently Catherine also bore a daughter, and there are unconfirmed rumours of yet another son, although many authorities consider that story questionable. In the absence of any heraldic evidence relating to these children nothing can be said about their paternity.

  Queen Catherine died on 3 January 1437, while her ‘Tudor’ children were still very young. Shortly after her death, Edmund Beaufort married Lady Eleanor Beauchamp, by whom he subsequently fathered a number of children. Curiously, Eleanor Beauchamp was the aunt, and probably also the godmother,29 of Lady Eleanor Talbot, whose reputed secret marriage to Edward IV will be explored in our next chapter. Eleanor Beauchamp’s marriage to Edmund Beaufort was initially secret and unlicensed, which only goes to prove that Edmund Beaufort was as capable as anyone of marital mischief. The marriage between Edmund and Eleanor was only pardoned and granted recognition by the Crown on 7 March 1438.30

  We should note that Edmund Beaufort probably did not marry Eleanor Beauchamp until after Queen Catherine’s death.31 It was also not until after her death that Catherine’s alleged marriage with Owen Tudor become a matter of public discussion. Owen himself lived on until 1461, when he was captured after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, and subsequently beheaded at Hereford.32 His last words are reported to have been ‘that hede shalle ly on the stocke that was wonte to ly on Quene Katheryns lappe’.33 Owen’s body was buried at the Franciscan (Greyfriars’) priory church in Hereford, and there is a curious sequel to the story of Catherine and Owen’s alleged marriage, associated with the ultimate fate of Owen’s burial.

  In the 1530s, at the time of the dissolution of England’s religious houses, Henry VIII did very little to rescue any royal burials from the doomed churches. The body of his illegitimate son, the Duke of Richmond, was rescued from Thetford Priory – but by the Howard family (dukes of Norfolk). As for Henry himself, he had just two bodies rescued – those of his sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France (from Bury St Edmund’s Abbey) and of his grandfather, Edmund Tudor, from the Greyfriars’ Church in Carmarthen. Curiously, however, the body of Henry VIII’s supposed great-grandfather, Owen Tudor, was not rescued from the Hereford Greyfriars’ Church. Could it have been that Henry VIII knew more about his true paternal ancestry than later historians? If his grandfather, Edmund Tudor, had been the son not of Owen Tudor, but of Edmund Beaufort, then Henry VII would have had no real family connection with Owen. However, he would arguably have had a rather better Lancastrian claim to the throne than was previously suspected, being descended from John of Gaunt and the Beauforts on both his father’s and his mother’s side (see Family Tre
e 4).

  In this case there would be no justification for applying the surname ‘Tudor’ to the English sixteenth-century royal family. As Richmond has remarked, ‘the idea of renaming sixteenth-century England is an appealing one’.34 Interestingly, Dr Cliff Davies has recently presented powerful evidence that the so-called Tudor royal family itself scarcely ever used the surname Tudor. ‘Until the final years of Elizabeth’s reign, the term was very rarely used to refer to the governments of the kings and queens we now know as ‘Tudors’.35 Davies has his own very cogent reasons to explain this point, but perhaps an additional one might have been the fact that the so-called ‘Tudors’ knew very well that their progenitor was not Owen Tudor but Edmund Beaufort.

  Interestingly, there has long been other evidence of Edmund Beaufort’s ambitious nature, which may have had the Crown as a target, if not for himself then at least for one of his sons. Henry VI’s marriage to Margaret of Anjou remained childless for some years, and Henry VI has been reported to have been averse to sexual contact. However, in 1453, when Henry was mentally ill, Margaret of Anjou became pregnant and subsequently gave birth to a son, known as Edward of Westminster. He became Prince of Wales, and, in the normal course of events, would have succeeded to the throne in due course – if his Yorkist cousin, Edward IV, had not pre-empted the Lancastrian succession. However, it has long been questioned whether Edward of Westminster was truly fathered by Henry VI, and the leading contender for his paternity is none other than Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset!

  In fact, Richard, Duke of York’s overtly expressed claim to the throne seems to have arisen not so much out of his objection to the rule of the Lancastrian dynasty as such, as from the great personal hostility which seems to have existed between York and his cousin Somerset – alias Edmund Beaufort.