Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  22. John de Southeray (born c.1364, died after 1383, knighted 1377, married Matilda Percy; Joan (married Robert Skerne) and Jane (married Richard Northland).

  23. F.G. Hay, Lady of the Sun: The Life and Times of Alice Perrers, London 1966, p. 7.

  24. In France, there was arguably something of a tradition of popular dislike of royal mistresses – an animosity which ran the risk of rebounding on the queen in a case where a king had no mistress (as with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette).

  25. J. Bothwell, ‘The Management of Position: Alice Perrers, Edward III and the Creation of a Landed Estate, 1362–1377’, Journal of Medieval History, 24 (1998), pp. 31–51 (p. 31).

  26. J. Taylor & W.R. Childs, eds., & L. Watkiss trans., The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham 1376–1394, Oxford 2002, p. 45.

  27. The St Albans Chronicle, p. 47.

  28. O. di Simplicio, Autunno della stregoneria, Bologna 2005, p. 63; evidence in the case of Lorenzo di Giovanni Lancellotti, 1583, 1591.

  29. The St Albans Chronicle, p. 47.

  30. http://theroyaluniverse.com/royal-witches/ (March 2012).

  31. The foundation of the Order of the Garter was said to be based on an incident at a royal ball when the Countess of Salisbury dropped her garter and the king retrieved it for her. The countess in question is not named and could have been either Catherine or Joan.

  7 THE LOVE-MATCHES OF EDWARD III’S CHILDREN

  1. In fact the Black Prince never succeeded to the throne, because he died before his father.

  2. C. Given-Wilson, ed., The Chronicle of Adam of Usk 1377–1421, Oxford 1997, p. 63.

  3. These three sons were Sir Roger de Clarendon, whose mother was Edith de Willesford, and a boy called Edward (who died young) and Sir John Sounder, the identity of whose mother (or mothers) is unknown.

  4. Blanche died in 1388–89.

  5. Stories claimed that Edmund Crouchback was actually the elder brother of Edward I and had a superior claim to the throne. These stories were pure invention, but later Henry IV (son of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster) based his claim to the throne upon them. See J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Lancastrian Claim to the Throne’, Ricardian 13 (2003), pp. 27–38.

  6. Constance’s mother, Maria de Padilla, had been secretly married to Pedro, but later Pedro was forced to repudiate this marriage, and keep Maria only as his mistress. The legitimacy of Constance and her younger sister was therefore debatable. The question mark over the marriage of Pedro the Cruel shows that problematic royal marriages were not only a feature of English history.

  7. Catherine’s marriage also gave the future Castilian – and later Spanish – monarchs a good claim to be heirs of the house of Lancaster. Their claim was only bettered by the descendants of Catherine’s elder half-sister (the daughter of Blanche of Lancaster), who married into the Portuguese royal family. When these two Lancastrian lines of descent were united in the person of Philip II of Spain, they formed the basis of his claim to the English throne – a claim which led, in 1588, to the launching of the Spanish Armada.

  8. Her married name was Swynford.

  9. The precise date is not recorded, but they were certainly married by 1365. J. Lucraft, Katherine Swynford the history of a medieval mistress, Stroud 2006, 2010, pp. 5–6.

  10. Possibly as early as 1365 – though some historians prefer a date of 1368. As with many aspects of this story, the precise date is not recorded.

  11. Again, there are differing interpretations of the date at which their liaison started. However John and Catherine themselves both specifically declared, in their request to the pope to confirm their marriage in 1396, that their relationship postdated the deaths of Hugh Swynford and Blanche of Lancaster: Lucraft, Katherine Swynford, p. 11.

  12. The reason for this has been said to be that they were all born at the Castle of Beaufort in France, but this appears implausible – see Lucraft, Katherine Swynford, p. 24.

  13. Lucraft is unsure about this. See Katherine Swynford, p. 12.

  14. By a papal bull in September 1396 and by royal patent in February 1396/97.

  8 SECRET WEDDINGS AND WITCHCRAFT IN THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER

  1. L.B. Campbell, ed., The Mirror for Magistrates, New York 1960, p. 435.

  2. The royal mistress was Elizabeth Lambert (aka ‘Jane Shore’), last mistress of Edward IV.

  3. The house of Lancaster was briefly restored to the throne in 1470–71, before finally disappearing completely.

  4. See Chapter 9, below.

  5. di Simplicio, Autunno della stregoneria, p. 67.

  6. di Simplicio, op. cit., p. 65. See also King James VI’s Newes from Scotland, London 1591, pp. 21–23, which describes the attempted use of pubic hair for a love spell; also Francesca Matteoni, Blood Beliefs in Early Modern Europe, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Hertfordshire 2009, p. 206 for the use of pubic hair in love charms.

  7. Matteoni, Blood Beliefs in Early Modern Europe, p. 204.

  8. Matteoni, op. cit, p. 208.

  9. di Simplicio, op. cit., p. 63–67. The gradual evolution of St Martha from the patron saint of Christian households to a powerful and demonic voodoo figure is fascinating.

  10. From the Encyclopedia of 5000 Spells, cited on http://gypsymagicspells.blogspot.com/2011/06/medieval-fish-spell-for-love.html (April 2012).

  11. http://thewriteplaceatthewritetime.org/explorationoftheme.html (April 2012).

  12. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Lancastrian Claim to the Throne’, Ricardian 13 (2003), pp. 27–38.

  13. Eleanor is referred to as Humphrey’s wife in, for example, a memorandum in the Close Rolls dated 20 May 1441.

  14. Humphrey had two illegitimate children, but probably by unnamed French mothers rather than by Eleanor Cobham. They were Arthur of Gloucester (d. 1447) and Antigone (who is an ancestress of Queen Elizabeth II on her mother’s side).

  15. Elsewhere Bolingbroke was described as a ‘gret and konnyng man in astronomye’ and ‘renowned in all the world’. Quoted in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Jourdemayne,_%22the_Witch_of_Eye%22 (April 2012).

  16. Fabyan’s Chronicle, ed. 1811, p. 614, quoted in H. Ellis, Original Letters Illustrative of English History, London 1827, Vol. 1, p. 106.

  17. ‘Eye’ is an old version of Edbury, a district not far from the modern Catholic Cathedral of Westminster, in the vicinity of Victoria Station.

  18. J. Ashdown-Hill, Mediaeval Colchester’s Lost Landmarks, Derby 2009, p. 161. Jeweyn Blakecot appears in the Colchester records for 1466–67.

  19. Apparently neither Margery nor Jeweyn foresaw their own future misfortunes.

  20. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margery_Jourdemayne,_%22the_Witch_of_Eye%22 (April 2012).

  21. Ibid.

  22. Ellis, Original Letters, p. 107. In this letter the king insultingly refers to his aunt merely as ‘Alianore Cobham late called Duchesse of Gloucestr’.

  23. J.A. Giles, ed., Incerti scriptoris chronicon Angliae de regnis trium regum Lancastrensium, London 1848, part 4, p. 17, cited in ODNB, M. Jones, ‘Catherine of Valois’ (consulted online March 2012).

  24. ODNB, C. Richmond, ‘Edmund Beaufort, First Duke of Somerset’ (consulted online May 2012).

  25. Leicestershire Record Office B. R. II/3/3, and PRO C 49/16/11.

  26. ODNB, M. Jones, ‘Catherine of Valois’ (consulted online March 2012).

  27. Rather as Richard Woodville was a member of the household of John of Lancaster (see above).

  28. Edmund and Jasper Tudor, a daughter, Margaret, who probably became a nun and died young, and possibly a third son called Owen Tudor (although the existence of the last-named is somewhat doubtful).

  29. Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, p. 22.

  30. CPR 1436–1441.

  31. The precise date of this secret marriage is unknown, but by the end of 1437 Edmund and Eleanor were married.

  32. He even fathered a bastard son, David, in about 1459. ODNB, R.A. Griffiths, ‘Tudor, Owen’ (consulted online, March 2012).

>   33. J. Gairdner, ed., The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, CS, new series, vol. 17, 1876,p. 211.

  34. Richmond, ‘Edmund Beaufort’, ODNB.

  35. http://www.cherwell.org/news/academic/2012/05/31/tudor-name-is-misnomer-claims-don (consulted June 2012). I am grateful to Annette Carson for calling my attention to Davies’ research.

  36. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Act II, scene iv.

  9 TALBOT’S DAUGHTER AND THE GREY MARE

  1. J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Elusive Mistress: Elizabeth Lucy and her Family’, Ricardian 11 (June 1999), pp. 490–505 (p. 498).

  2. Jacquette, of the house of Luxembourg, was a high-born lady, but Richard Woodville was a nobody (see above).

  3. In reality Bona (daughter of the Duke of Savoy and sister of the Queen of France) was not exactly a ‘princess’.

  4. The reasons for suggesting this date are explored below.

  5. Stillington was chancellor 1467–70 and 1471–73.

  6. For full details see J. Ashdown-Hill, Richard III’s ‘Beloved Cousyn’: John Howard and the House of York, Stroud 2009, p. 9 et seq.

  7. The other ‘Prince in the Tower’ was Edward V’s younger brother, Richard, Duke of York. There is no proof that the two boys were murdered. If they were, then the identity of their alleged murderer is still a historical hot chestnut – but that is another story! Here our focus is on the question of their father’s marriage.

  8. This was the start of the so-called ‘Wars of the Roses’ – though that name was only invented in the nineteenth century.

  9. The Lancastrian dynasty owed the Crown only to the usurpation of Henry IV, who deposed Richard II in 1399 and seized power. Henry IV himself, and his son Henry V, had both viewed the ancestors of Richard Duke of York with suspicion, knowing that the descendants of Lionel, Duke of Clarence might have a claim to the throne superior to their own.

  10. See A. Sutton and L. Visser-Fuchs, The Royal Funerals of the House of York at Windsor, London 2004, pp. 113–24.

  11. The king acknowledged one illegitimate son, Arthur, Lord Lisle (later surnamed ‘Plantagenet’). We also hear of two illegitimate daughters, Grace and Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Arthur were probably borne to the king by Elizabeth Wayte (Lucy). The identity of Grace’s mother is unknown. There are much later rumours of a child called Edward of Wigmore, borne to the king by Eleanor Talbot, but there is no contemporary evidence that such a person ever existed and there are excellent reasons for doubting the story, since such a son could have claimed to be heir to the throne, as Charles II’s son Monmouth later did.

  12. See original source material published in Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, pp. 192, 195, 205–207.

  13. Gairdner, Richard the Third, p. 91.

  14. Henry VII’s Act of Parliament of 1485: RP, vol. 6, p. 289.

  15. E.g. Muriel de Dunham v. John Burnoth and Joan, his ‘wife’: N. Adams and C. Donahue, eds., Select Cases from the Ecclesiastical Courts of the Province of Canterbury, c.1200–1301, London 1981, p. 337 and passim.

  16. Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, pp. 125–26; 129.

  17. Corpus Christi ColIege, Cambridge, Parker Library, Ms. XXXI. 121.

  18. More than 45 per cent of such women remarried: Harris, English Aristocratic Women, p. 10.

  19. Beaune and d’Arbaumont, Mémoires d’Olivier de la Marche, vol. 3, pp. 106–107. Eleanor was formerly represented amongst the mourners depicted on her mother’s tomb at old St Paul’s Cathedral in London, but of course this was destroyed in the Great Fire of London.

  20. A fine portrait by Petrus Christus of one of Eleanor’s nieces shows an attractive brunette with an aquiline nose.

  21. For a detailed report on this skeleton, see Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, pp. 174–75.

  22. Warwickshire County Record Office, L 1/82. See also J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘’The Inquisition Post Mortem of Eleanor Talbot, Lady Butler, 1468’, Ricardian 12 (2000–02), pp. 563–73.

  23. In August 1460 he was at Higham and Stratford St Mary, in Suffolk, in company with the Duke of Norfolk’s cousin, John Howard, of Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk. Ipswich Record Office, HA 246/B2/498. John Howard himself later became Duke of Norfolk (1483).

  24. Her sister, Countess Warenne, her late husband’s cousin, Sir Thomas Montgomery, and her uncle, the Earl of Warwick, would all have been well placed to help Eleanor into the royal presence.

  25. M. Jones, ed., P. de Commynes, Memoires, Harmondsworth 1972, pp. 352–54, 397.These words were penned with hindsight. Commynes wrote down his account in about 1490. In 1460–61 Robert Stillington had not yet become a bishop.

  26. Before Edward IV seized the throne Stillington had been in the service of King Henry VI.

  27. Jones/Commynes, Memoires, p. 354.

  28. As already noted, Eleanor was the granddaughter of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and the niece of Henry Beauchamp, Earl (later Duke) of Warwick, and of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.

  29. C.A.J. Armstrong, ed., D. Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard the Third, Gloucester 1989, pp. 96–97.

  30. For Cecily’s disapproval of Elizabeth Woodville, see ODNB, M. Jones, ‘Elizabeth (née Woodville)’ (consulted online March 2012). However, the story of her disapproval of the relationship with Elizabeth Lucy is later, and could be merely an invention.

  31. P. Maddern, ‘Honour among the Pastons: gender and integrity in fifteenth-century English provincial society’, Journal of Medieval History, 14 (1988) p. 358.

  32. Maddern, ‘Honour among the Pastons’, p. 359.

  33. For a fuller discussion of the evidence in this matter, see J. Ashdown-Hill, ‘Lady Eleanor Talbot: new evidence; new answers; new questions’, Ricardian 16 (2006), pp. 113–32. It is also possible that Eleanor’s Coldecot estate was part of Caldicot in Monmouthshire – a royal estate inherited by the Lancastrian kings from the de Bohun family: see O. Morgan and T. Wakeman, Notes on the Architecture and History of Caldicot Castle, Monmouthshire, Newport 1854. I am grateful to Mary Friend of the Richard III Society (Worcestershire Branch) for the suggestion regarding Caldecot, which, however, remains speculative.

  34. Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, p. 147 et seq.

  35. CPR 1461–1467, p. 72.

  36. 30 May 1462. CPR 1461–1467, p. 191.

  37. The patent rolls record commissions in July 1461, March and October 1462, June, October and December 1464, August 1466, February 1468 and November 1469. There were later appointments in 1470, but these, presumably, were made by the government of the restored Henry VI.

  38. Ashdown-Hill, Eleanor, p. 209.

  39. Ashdown-Hill, ‘The Elusive Mistress’, p. 498.

  40. For the chronology of this relationship see ibid.

  41. P.M. Kendall, Richard the Third, London 1973, p. 52.

  42. The medieval English calendar year was different, starting not on 1 January, but on 25 March.

  43. Suggestions that she is identical with ‘Dame Isabella Gray’ – one of the attendants of Queen Margaret of Anjou (consort of Henry VI) – are doubtful: ODNB, M. Hicks, ‘Elizabeth, née Woodville’ (consulted online, March 2012).

  44. Thomas Grey, later Marquess of Dorset, and Richard Grey.

  45. ODNB, M. Hicks, ‘Elizabeth, née Woodville’ (consulted March 2012).

  46. Easter Sunday 1464 was 1 April.

  47. Even today, marriage during Lent tends to be discouraged by the Catholic Church, and if a church wedding does take place during this penitential season then flowers are not permitted. Some Anglican priests also oppose marriage during Lent.

  48. ODNB, Hicks, ‘Elizabeth, née Woodville’ (consulted March 2012).

  49. Ibid.

  50. Ibid. Hicks states specifically that while the details of the story of Edward IV’s Woodville marriage may be believable, they cannot actually be confirmed, and some of them may be fictional.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid.; J. Ashdown-Hill and A. Carson, ‘The Execution of the Earl of Desmond’, Ricardian 15 (2005), pp. 70–93.

  53. The
Act of titulus regius of 1484 maintained the validity of Edward IV’s marriage to Eleanor Talbot. Thus, according to that Act, if Eleanor had borne Edward a child, that child would have been legitimate and the heir to the throne. However the same act also stated specifically that ‘all th’issue and children of the said king (Edward IV) beene bastards, and unable to inherite or to clayme anything by inheritance, by the lawe and custome of England’ (see below: Appendix 4). Although George Buck later suggested that Eleanor may have borne Edward a son (A.N. Kincaid, ed., G. Buck, The History of King Richard the Third, Stroud 1979, pp. 176, 181) there is no other evidence to support this belief.

  54. Jones/Commynes, pp. 354, 397.

  55. R.H. Helmholz, ‘The Sons of Edward IV: A Canonical Assessment of the Claim that they were Illegitimate’, in P.W. Hammond, ed., Richard III: Loyalty Lordship and Law, London, 1986, pp. 91–103. Also Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage, p. 169.

  56. Harris points out (English Aristocratic Women, p. 15) that noblewomen ‘were at a particular disadvantage when they disagreed or quarrelled with their husbands’. If the man in question was the king, the disadvantage would have been greater.

  57. Kincaid, ed., Buck, King Richard the Third, p. 183.

  58. The see of Carlisle had become vacant some months before the Woodville marriage was made public, but Stillington was not appointed to that post. The first English bishopric to fall vacant after the announcement of the Woodville marriage was that of Bath and Wells (available from 14 January 1465).

  59. Armstrong/Mancini, pp. 62–63.

  60. The bishop was still at liberty on 19 January. On that date he was appointed to a commission of the peace for Southampton, CPR 1476–1485, p. 572. However, before Friday 6 March he had been imprisoned in the Tower of London: Gairdner, Richard the Third, p. 91, n. 1, citing the letter from Elizabeth Stonor, dated 6 March 1478, which states that Stillington had been imprisoned since her correspondent departed. The precise date on which Stillington entered the Tower is not recorded, but Gairdner estimates his imprisonment to date from between 13 and 20 February. Given the date of Elizabeth Stonor’s letter, he can hardly have been imprisoned later than about 27 February.