Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  Of course, if Edward had already contracted a secret marriage with Eleanor, then his Woodville marriage was bigamous. Subsequently, the king’s apparent besottedness with Elizabeth Woodville was ascribed to witchcraft on the part of the bride and her mother, and the latter was prosecuted on these grounds in 1469–70. ‘The sorcery suit … apparently presumed that necromancy had been necessary to secure such a marriage!’51 Whatever the real motivation underlying the king’s decision, the rapidity with which Edward had succumbed to Elizabeth’s charms apparently lent itself readily to supernatural explanations.

  Like the alleged earlier Talbot marriage, the Woodville marriage was not made public at the time. As we have seen, it was only publicly announced four months later – to general amazement – and to the fury of Eleanor Talbot’s powerful uncle, the Earl of Warwick, whose marriage negotiations with Bona of Savoy were then just approaching a successful conclusion.

  Although she was an unpopular choice with most of the English aristocracy, Elizabeth Woodville was subsequently crowned queen with some splendour. Edward’s Woodville union went on to produce a horde of children, including the so-called Princes in the Tower and Elizabeth of York, future mother of the house of ‘Tudor’. As for Elizabeth’s conduct in the role of queen, that has received various judgements. Trained, perhaps, by her aristocratic mother, royal style seems to have come naturally to Elizabeth, and many who saw her were impressed. On the other hand she alienated much of the old nobility by her nepotism. Her political involvement, while often unclear and even disputed, seems also to have attracted adverse comment. Her interventions in the case of Sir Thomas Cook and in the executions of the Earl of Desmond and the Duke of Clarence are cases in point.52

  As for Eleanor Talbot, she had borne the king no children.53 After the public announcement of Edward’s Woodville marriage, she seems to have continued (or resumed) living quietly at her sister’s dower house, East Hall, at Kenninghall in Norfolk. She continued her association with Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. It is also often stated that she became a nun. This is incorrect, but she did progressively retire into a quasi-religious life as a laywoman attached to the Carmelite order – a course which Edward IV may privately have welcomed. She remained completely silent regarding her relationship with the king. Nor did she ever make any attempt to contest Edward’s Woodville marriage in the Church courts.

  Precisely why Edward should initially have kept his Woodville marriage a secret and then decided to publicly reveal and acknowledge it is yet another of the many mysteries in this complex case. Speculations regarding his motivation have included witchcraft, or that Edward was eager to avert the proposed marriage with Bona of Savoy (but surely he could just have said ‘no’), or that Elizabeth Woodville may have been pregnant in September 1464 (but in that case she must subsequently have miscarried, since her first recorded child by the king was not born until February 1466). The mystery cannot finally be resolved. However, it does very strongly reinforce the fact that Edward IV’s marital conduct was consistent only in its unpredictability, owing nothing, apparently, to any normal considerations of royal policy or diplomacy. Given Edward IV’s strange conduct with Elizabeth Woodville, the possibility of an earlier secret marriage with Eleanor, followed by bigamy, certainly cannot be ruled out purely on grounds of logic.

  The king’s announcement at Reading may chiefly have surprised his then Keeper of the Privy Seal, Canon Robert Stillington, because as we have seen, slightly later sources identify Canon (later Bishop) Stillington as having been present at the king’s marriage to Eleanor Talbot, either as a witness or as the priestly celebrant.54 If in September 1464 Canon Stillington enquired further about the king’s Woodville wedding then, as an expert in canon law, he must have been worried by what he found out. Since the marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had reportedly been solemnised several months previously, on 1 May 1464, this meant that it post-dated by about three years the king’s alleged contract with Eleanor. Such chronology would have made the Woodville marriage potentially bigamous, and under canon law it could have been considered invalid by the Church courts, making any children born of it automatically illegitimate.55 The fact that the king had publicly acknowledged the Woodville wedding made no difference to any of this.

  Some historians have expressed surprise that Canon Stillington took no action in respect of Edward IV’s marital situation in the autumn of 1464. Once again this is to misunderstand the situation. Stillington was not in a position to take any action. Only Eleanor – the supposedly wronged party – could have cited Edward IV before the Church courts. However, she did nothing. While many medieval English women in a similar marital situation did successfully seek legal remedy in the Church courts to substantiate their married status, for Eleanor such a course of action was probably never a realistic possibility.56

  If Stillington had indeed married Edward IV to Eleanor – or even witnessed their marriage vows – he possessed potentially dangerous knowledge. Once the Woodville marriage had been made public, a marriage contract with Eleanor could never be acknowledged. The whole topic had to be kept secret, and reportedly the king ‘held them not his friends nor good subjects which mentioned it’.57 It would therefore not have been surprising if the king sought to buy off Stillington. Significantly, immediately after the public announcement of his Woodville wedding, the king decided to grant Robert Stillington an annual income. He also decided to appoint the canon to the next vacant English bishopric.58 Apparently these moves worked. Through the remainder of the 1460s Stillington held his peace.

  The death of Eleanor Talbot in June 1468 made things easier, and the king must have breathed a sigh of relief. With Eleanor safely buried in the choir of the Norwich Carmel, Edward probably thought he was safe. But another factor now emerged. In 1464, when Edward IV’s Woodville marriage was made public, the heir to the throne had been Edward IV’s 14-year-old brother, George, Duke of Clarence (coincidentally a neighbour of Stillington’s in the south-west of England, and a friend of the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk). Naturally, when Elizabeth Woodville started producing children by the king – especially when she gave birth to the couple’s three sons, in 1470, 1473 and 1477 – Clarence’s position changed dramatically.

  During the 1470s someone seems to have decided to enlighten Clarence. Previously there had been no sign that the duke had any knowledge of the king’s alleged Talbot marriage. However, by about 1476–77 he certainly seems to have heard about it. Never the most thoughtful of men, Clarence unwisely revealed his secret knowledge, causing a panic in the mind of Elizabeth Woodville. Incidentally, for her too, this may well have been the first intimation of the nature of her husband’s former relationship with Eleanor. Mancini tells us that she now began to fear that her own marriage was invalid, and that her son would never succeed to the throne unless Clarence was silenced.59 As a result, Elizabeth incited Edward IV first to arrest, and then later to execute his brother.

  Significantly, the Duke of Clarence’s execution on Wednesday 18 February 1478 was closely linked in time with the arrest and imprisonment of Bishop Stillington. The bishop’s imprisonment is thought to date from about 15 February, just prior to Clarence’s execution.60 Apparently either the king or the queen had drawn the obvious (though possibly erroneous) conclusion that Stillington must have been the source of Clarence’s information.61 Stillington remained in the Tower until about the end of the second week of April.62 Commynes tells us that he was released only on payment of a fine.63 Stillington was not formally granted a pardon until Saturday 20 June 1478. However, that pardon wiped his slate clean with a ‘declaration that Robert, Bishop of Bath and Wells, has been faithful to the king and done nothing contrary to his oath of fealty, as he has shown before the king and certain lords’.64

  Given the fact that neither Eleanor nor Edward IV ever made any public statement about a marriage between them during their respective lifetimes, one problem which confronts us in trying to assess fairly whether or not this marriage was a real
ity is the fact that none of our surviving written sources for their relationship is precisely contemporary. The situation in relation to Edward’s Woodville marriage was rather different. Although that wedding was also secret, and no contemporary documentary evidence exists to prove what took place, the king himself acknowledged the Woodville union later in that same year in which it had allegedly been contracted.

  By contrast, talk of the Talbot marriage first seems to have surfaced only nine years after Eleanor’s death when, as we have seen, the matter was apparently brought to the attention of Edward IV’s younger brother, George, Duke of Clarence. Even then, the subsequent Act of Attainder against Clarence did not refer to Eleanor or mention her alleged marriage with the king. For Elizabeth Woodville any such reference in an Act of Parliament – even if accompanied by an official denial of the Talbot marriage – would have been the equivalent of shooting herself in the foot! Nevertheless, the act did condemn the duke for speaking against the king, ‘and agaynst the persones of the blessed princesse oure alther soveraigne and liege lady the Quene, of my lorde the Prince theire son and heire, and of all the other of thaire moost noble issue’.65 An account of the case against Clarence written five years later also records that:

  the queen then remembered the insults to her family and the calumnies with which she was reproached, namely that according to established usage she was not the legitimate wife of the king. Thus she concluded that her offspring by the king would never come to the throne unless the duke of Clarence were removed.66

  The earliest surviving explicit written reference to the marriage between Edward IV and Eleanor dates from six years later, when both Eleanor and the king were dead. This was Richard III’s Act of Parliament – quoted in part at the opening of this chapter – which recognised Eleanor as Edward’s true wife on the basis of the evidence then presented to Parliament – evidence which does not now survive. It was penned in 1483–84, in a political context which is regarded as highly significant by those historians who oppose any idea of a marriage between Edward IV and Eleanor. Of course the question of Eleanor’s marriage was of great importance in 1483, since it constituted the chief basis upon which Edward IV’s son, Edward V, was set aside, and the throne passed to Richard III – younger brother of Edward IV and of the executed Duke of Clarence.

  As we shall see in due course, when we explore the alleged marriage between Charles II and Lucy Walter, such later evidence does indeed sometimes need to be treated with caution, because it can be biased. However, in the case of the alleged marriage between Edward IV and Eleanor Talbot we can – and should – balance the later evidence from the two opposing camps of Richard III and Henry VII. Thus we can confront the bias alleged against Richard III in 1483–84 with the later ‘Tudor’ bias. It must be misleading – and unhistorical – to consider the possible bias of the first side only, while ignoring that of the second. An examination of the different ways in which the two opposing camps handled the question of Eleanor’s alleged marriage with Edward IV is revealing, and it may be legitimate to draw certain conclusions from their conduct.

  So what actually happened in 1483–84? When Edward IV died unexpectedly, in April 1483, his elder son by Elizabeth Woodville was proclaimed king as Edward V. The queen mother then sought to claim the role of regent for her under-aged son. According to the continental European political scene familiar to her mother, Jacquette, this would have been an entirely normal procedure. According to English precedent, however, the regent’s powers belonged not to the widowed queen but to the closest living male paternal relative of the new sovereign – in this case Edward IV’s only surviving brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. A contest ensued between the queen mother and her supporters on one side, and the Duke of Gloucester and the majority of the English nobility on the other. It was in this context that, on Monday 9 June 1483, Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, finally went public in respect of the Talbot marriage. Reportedly the Bishop made a vital and earth-shattering statement to a meeting of the royal council – in effect an incipient but still unofficial Parliament – which was held on 9 June between 10 am and 2 pm at the Palace of Westminster.67

  Stillington declared that Edward IV’s marriage with Elizabeth Woodville had been bigamous because at the time of the Woodville marriage the king was already married to Eleanor Talbot, who was still living in 1464. We are told that the bishop himself claimed to have been present at Edward’s marriage to Eleanor, in consequence of which he now pronounced that all the children born of the Woodville marriage, including Edward V, were illegitimate (and therefore debarred from inheriting the throne). Stillington’s revelation is the key element of the events of the summer of 1483, and it was chiefly upon the basis of his statement that Edward V was set aside.68 The throne passed to Richard Duke of Gloucester as the next male heir, and he was proclaimed king as Richard III.69

  The decision to change the order of succession was made by those members of the House of Lords who were then in London.70 It was ratified by a full Parliament the following year in the form of the celebrated Act of titulus regius of 1484 (see Appendix 3). This act makes it clear that evidence had been presented (though it does not itemise what that evidence was). It then sets out in detail the reasons for Richard III’s enthronement. Amongst those reasons, it states in completely unequivocal terms that Edward IV was married to Eleanor Talbot,71 and that his subsequent ‘pretensed marriage’ to Elizabeth Woodville was invalid.72 There can be very few (if any) other medieval royal relationships which have been accorded such impressive legal confirmation as to be authenticated by an Act of Parliament!

  At the time, not one single member of the royal family raised a voice in protest at this turn of events. The dowager Duchess of York, mother of both Edward IV and Richard III, together with their sister, the Duchess of Suffolk and her family, closed ranks in support of the new king. In the Low Countries the other sister of Edward and Richard, ‘Madame la Grande’, dowager Duchess of Burgundy – who, as the sequel would show when Henry VII took the throne, was very well able to give practical expression to any disapproval she might feel at the course of events in England – likewise said and did nothing. Even the demoted queen, Elizabeth Woodville, found not a word to say. She was an intelligent woman and (as Mancini makes clear) had for some years been only too well aware of the consequences which must inevitably follow for her children if the validity of her own marriage to the king was called into question.73

  As for Eleanor’s family, her sister, Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk, attended Richard’s coronation, was well treated by the new king, and seems to have enjoyed a good relationship with him.74 Other members of Eleanor’s extended family also served Richard, apparently without any qualms. Indeed, her Catesby connections openly supported him until his defeat by Henry ‘Tudor’ at the battle of Bosworth in August 1485.75

  However, once Richard was gone, the new monarch showed, by his actions, that he had some interesting priorities. Amongst his first orders as king were the execution of Catesby and the reimprisonment of Bishop Stillington.76 Early in his first Parliament, Henry VII enacted his own laconic act of titulus regius, which said, in effect, that he was king because he was king. He also arranged for a bizarre and unique procedure: the repeal, unquoted, of the titulus regius of 1484. When Acts of Parliament were annulled it was usual at least to précis the original text in the Act of Repeal.77 Henry, however, neatly avoided this by quoting only the first, innocuous, thirteen words of Richard’s Act. He also made unique provision for all copies of the 1484 act to be destroyed ‘upon Peine of ymprisonment … so that all thinges said and remembered in the said Bill and Acte maie be for ever out of remembraunce and also forgott’.78

  Historians working in England for Henry VII subsequently assisted the process of induced national amnesia by allowing reference to Richard III’s claim of a previous marriage of Edward IV to stand, while at the same time substituting for the name of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s daughter, that of the king’
s mistress, Elizabeth Wayte (Lucy). They pretended that Richard III’s case had been that Edward IV had contracted a prior marriage with Elizabeth Wayte, but that she had categorically denied this. It was probably a deliberate, but rather clever lie.

  The complete destruction of Richard’s act (and the case against the Woodville marriage which it encapsulated) was of vital importance to Henry, because under its terms, his intended bride, Elizabeth of York (whom Henry now sought to pass off as the heiress of the house of York) had been declared a bastard. Of course the most logical procedure for Henry VII would have been to disprove the allegation of bigamy in Parliament, by bringing evidence to show that the whole story of the Talbot marriage was a complete fabrication. The fact that instead of doing so, Henry chose to suppress the act entirely – forbidding any copy of it to be kept, and prohibiting any discussion – strongly suggests that the case set out in Richard’s titulus regius was, in fact, unassailable. From Henry VII’s actions alone one could legitimately deduce that Edward IV probably had contracted a secret marriage with Eleanor Talbot, thereby making a complete mess of his matrimonial policy.

  Eleanor’s story and that of Elizabeth Woodville have many clear similarities. Both were widows, from Lancastrian backgrounds, both were attractive, both were a few years older than the king. And in both cases, apparently, Edward’s solution was the same. He went through a clandestine form of marriage and kept the affair quiet. Of course, the final outcome was very different in the two cases. One key distinction between Eleanor Talbot, (who failed to get the king to honour his contract with her) and Elizabeth Woodville (who succeeded), was the latter’s proven fecundity, which Edward is said to have considered a great point in her favour.79 Another key difference was Elizabeth Woodville’s great determination and strength of character. It is plausible that a third difference may lie in the possibility that Eleanor herself decided, in the end, that marriage with Edward was not really what she wanted out of life.