Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  Indeed the traditional account of the outbreak of the Wars of the Roses – while almost certainly a later fantasy – pictures York and Somerset plucking their rival roses and shouting at one another in the Temple Gardens.36 It may well have been that York knew very well that the next potential ‘Lancastrian’ king, Edward of Westminster, was not a true Lancastrian but a descendant of the originally bastard Beaufort line. York and his family may also have suspected more than they could prove about the paternity of Edmund and Jasper ‘Tudor’. At all events York’s son, Richard III, would later (in 1484–85) make a point of proclaiming the bastard descent of his rival, Henry Tudor (later Henry VII). If Richard was speaking of Henry’s maternal Beaufort descent then his use of the word bastard was not strictly accurate, since the Beauforts had been legitimised. However, if Richard III’s words were a veiled allusion to the belief that Henry VII’s father was the illegitimate son of Catherine of France by Edmund Beaufort, then his allegation of bastard descent, albeit unproven (and in those days unprovable), was possibily accurate. In the final analysis, only future DNA research might be able to establish clearly whether the so-called Tudor dynasty was perhaps not Tudor at all, but Beaufort, and therefore bearing the Plantagenet Y-chromosome in the veins of its male lineage.

  In the sixteenth century the pattern of secret second marriages for royal ladies which the Duchess of Bedford and Queen Catherine fostered and promoted during the Lancastrian epoch was to be perpetuated among Catherine’s ‘Tudor’ descendants. In the first half of the sixteenth century Mary Tudor, Queen of France, entered into a secret second marriage with Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, while her elder sister, Margaret, Queen of Scotland did likewise with Archibald Douglas, Earl of Angus and subsequently with Henry Stewart, Lord Methven. Perhaps the environment which permitted those domestic second and third marriages of his sisters – coupled with the domestic marriage policy adopted by his grandfather, Edward IV, together with the possibly ambitious sexual politics of his putative great-grandfather, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset – all exercised some influence upon Henry VIII. The various Tudor royal marital shenanigans will be considered shortly. Before that, however, we have now arrived at the first disputed English royal marriage which raises doubts about the identity of a king’s consort. It is time to explore the little-known but fascinating story of how the Yorkist king Edward IV interpreted royal marriage policy.

  9

  TALBOT’S DAUGHTER

  AND THE GREY MARE

  * * *

  L’histoire est une suite de mensonges sur lesquels on est d’accord

  History is a set of lies agreed upon

  Emperor Napoleon I of France

  * * *

  King Edward was, and stoode, marryed, and trouth-plyght, to oone Dame Elianore Butteler [Talbot] (doughter of the old Earl of Shrewesbury) with whom the saide King Edward had made a precontracte of matrimonie longe tyme bifore he made the said pretensed mariage with the said Elizabeth Grey [Woodville] in manner and fourme aforesaide.

  Act of Parliament of 1484

  * * *

  Our first clear example of a disputed kingly marriage is the case of Edward IV (reigned 1460–83). Edward was the first monarch of the new, Yorkist dynasty, which held the throne from 1460 until 1485, and he seems to have gained an impressive (though perhaps exaggerated) reputation for the strength of his libido.1

  In the context of matrimony, Edward IV’s name has been linked with four women. Chronologically the first of the four was the noble and royally descended Eleanor Talbot (Butler), with whom Edward had a relationship from about 1460 until maybe 1462 or 1463. The fact of this relationship is generally accepted. The only question mark is in respect of its nature. Was it a marriage, as Parliament declared in 1484, or an illicit relationship? Edward’s second partner was Elizabeth Wayte (Lucy), the daughter of a gentry family from Hampshire. She became the king’s mistress in about 1461–62 and bore him probably two children. We could ignore her, were it not for the fact that ‘Tudor’ historians later invented (solely in order to be able to deny) an alleged marriage connection between her and the king (see below). Edward IV’s third partner was Elizabeth Woodville (Grey), the eldest daughter of Jacquette, Duchess of Bedford (whom we met in the previous chapter), by her second husband, Richard Woodville.2 The last of the four was Bona of Savoy, a kind of foreign princess3 whom Edward never actually married, but with whom a marriage was negotiated on his behalf by the king’s powerful cousin, the Earl of Warwick.

  Edward IV is generally accepted to have contracted a clandestine marriage with Elizabeth Woodville in 1464. Although this marriage was initially a secret, the young king did subsequently acknowledge Elizabeth as his queen, and the children she gave him as his heirs. However, his marital situation is complicated by his alleged earlier marriage to Eleanor Talbot, in 1460 or thereabouts.4

  The story of the Talbot marriage was only made public after Edward IV’s death in April 1483, in circumstances we shall first review very briefly, and then examine in more detail. On Edward IV’s death, his eldest son by Elizabeth Woodville was initially accepted as King Edward V. However, the new king was a minor, and needed someone to act as his regent or ‘Protector’. This position belonged by right to the senior prince of the blood – in this case the boy’s paternal uncle, Richard, Duke of Gloucester. However, the boy’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, tried to seize power for herself and her family. The Woodvilles were unpopular with the English aristocracy, most of whom backed the Duke of Gloucester for the role of Protector. As Gloucester made his way south to London to take office, the queen mother fled into sanctuary at Westminster Abbey.

  Soon after Gloucester was officially recognised as Edward V’s Protector, Bishop Stillington of Bath and Wells, former Chancellor to Edward V’s father,5 precipitated a constitutional crisis by revealing to a royal council meeting that Edward IV had married Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, several years before his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville. Since Eleanor had still been alive at the time of Edward’s secret marriage to Elizabeth, this allegation, if true, meant that the king’s second marriage was bigamous.6 Consequently all the children of that Woodville marriage – including Edward V – were bastards.

  After considering the case, the royal council – which on this occasion was actually a large body comprising all those peers who were then in or near London – accepted the evidence, set aside Edward V, and offered the throne to Gloucester, who thus became King Richard III. The decision was later ratified by a full Parliament. What subsequently became of Edward V is unknown, but he is popularly believed to have been murdered, and has gone down in history as the elder of the two so-called Princes in the Tower.7

  During the reign of Richard III Elizabeth Woodville was demoted from queenship, while Edward IV’s marriage to Eleanor Talbot was publicly proclaimed. Later, however, Richard’s opponent, Henry VII – who, as we shall see, had his own axe to grind – restored Elizabeth Woodville’s queenship and did his best to write Eleanor out of history completely. These later manoeuvrings make it difficult, now, to get at the truth.

  Edward IV had not been born close to the throne. He seized the Crown from his distant cousin, Henry VI, in 1461. It had been Edward’s father, Richard Duke of York, who had first formally advanced the Yorkist claim to the English throne in 1460.8 York was the descendant of Edward III’s third son, Lionel, Duke of Clarence. He therefore argued that he was of a more senior royal line of descent than the Lancastrian kings, because the latter were only descended from Edward III’s fourth son. York arguably had a valid case,9 and one possible motive why he chose to advance his claim to the throne at this stage was considered in the previous chapter. However, the Duke of York never personally attained the Crown, because he was killed by his Lancastrian opponents in December 1460. It was early in the following year that the Yorkist claim was finally made good – by the duke’s eldest son, Edward Earl of March (Edward IV).

  At the time of his accession Edwa
rd IV was 19 years of age and not yet married. The young king was 6ft 2in in height, and had brown hair.10 At this young age he was still of athletic build, though later he would run to fat. He seems to have been drawn to women a little older than himself, and both Eleanor Talbot and Elizabeth Woodville fit into this category. The pattern of royal upbringing, which we have already documented, makes it unlikely that Edward was still a virgin in 1460. But in spite of his later reputation, we know the names of very few of his sexual partners. Moreover, unlike Charles II (see below), Edward seems to have engendered very few royal bastards – with the exception of the numerous progeny he had by Elizabeth Woodville, who were later technically ruled to be illegitimate.11 Since his relationship with Elizabeth Woodville proves that the king was fertile it is curious that, if he had numerous illicit relationships, these resulted in so few illegitimate children. Contemporary English evidence (as opposed to foreign or later propaganda) seems to suggest that, while not faithful to his consort(s), the king was probably more of a serial monogamist in the matter of mistresses, than the keeper of a large harem.

  Since Edward is reputed to have had a strong sex drive, it is probable that, if he were attracted to a woman, he would not readily have accepted her refusal of his advances. Thus, if the woman did not immediately succumb to his love-making, he might have said the first words that came into his head in order to achieve his objective. Some have suggested that this is precisely what happened in the case of both Eleanor Talbot and Elizabeth Woodville. But while it might be easy to imagine Edward thoughtlessly uttering those dangerous words ‘I’ll marry you’ in two – or even more – cases, such conduct cannot completely explain his relationships with Eleanor Talbot and Elizabeth Woodville, for reasons which we shall see presently.

  Actually, nothing is known about any girlfriends of Edward IV prior to his accession, and his first known attachment was with Eleanor Talbot. She was the daughter of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, the granddaughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and the niece of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick (‘the Kingmaker’), and of Eleanor Beauchamp (Beaufort), Duchess of Somerset. Eleanor, who was descended several times over from King Edward I (see, for example, Family Tree 3) has been much maligned by generations of historians, who have spent some five centuries casting aspersions on her birth, her ancestry and her morals. However, it has now been proved beyond any possible doubt that Eleanor’s family was precisely as stated.12 Eleanor’s morality is also now established beyond any reasonable doubt.

  In fact, as we shall see, there are good and serious reasons for doubting the commonly held explanation that Eleanor was merely Edward IV’s mistress. Nevertheless, most previous writers have discounted Eleanor’s claim to be married to Edward IV. The general tendency has been to assume that Eleanor simply became the king’s mistress, and that is how she is usually described by historians. This conclusion is chiefly based on two assumptions. The first assumption is that Richard III’s subsequent use of Eleanor’s story was a wicked lie, published purely for his own selfish political advantage. The second assumption is that the later actions of Henry VII in respect of Eleanor were completely pure and disinterested. This seems rather naïve and simplistic. The notion that Richard III was simply making use of Eleanor’s name might or might not be true. But to simply assume that to have been the case is to consciously or unconsciously adopt a partisan position, because actually we have no surviving clear evidence in the matter. Indeed the famous nineteenth-century historian, James Gairdner, openly stated it as his opinion that there was no justification for making such an assumption.13

  Likewise to assume that the subsequent actions of Henry VII were disinterested is also partisan – and very naïve in the light of Henry VII’s other known actions. To quote his very own words on the subject, Henry had the strongest possible interest in making sure that Eleanor’s claim to be Edward IV’s wife ‘maie be for ever out of remembraunce and allso forgot’,14 because of course, if Eleanor Talbot was Edward IV’s true wife, then Henry VII’s own wife, Elizabeth of York – the eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, and the supposed Yorkist heiress, mother of the ‘Tudor’ dynasty and ancestress of all future English sovereigns – was nothing more than a bastard with no claim to the throne.

  In our attempt to understand the complex issue of Edward IV’s marital conundrum, it is vital to remember what we already know about the nature of marriage at this period. We have learned that in the fifteenth century there were no marriage certificates, so that documentary proof of any marriage at this time would be very hard to come by. We also need to remember that, while they were not recommended by the Church, secret marriages were very common practice, and were universally accepted as valid. Finally we need to remember that such secret marriages required nothing more than an exchange of promises to marry on the part of the contracting couple, followed by sexual intercourse. No witnesses – even no priestly celebrants – were necessary. Inevitably, such secret marriages can be exceedingly hard to authenticate. Even at the time (as the medieval Church court records show very clearly) many matrimonial disputes resulted from this complicated situation.15

  Unfortunately some modern historians seem to have found it very difficult to understand fifteenth-century marriage practice, and have therefore made serious mistakes in their explanations of the alleged relationship between Edward IV and Eleanor. Many have written of something which they call a ‘precontract’ – thereby implying that this royal relationship was something which fell short of being a true marriage. This is nonsense. Although the word ‘precontract’ was used in Richard III’s Act of Parliament, its reference there was retrospective, and indeed ‘precontract’ is a word which can only be used retrospectively. One could not make a thing called a ‘precontract’ in the fifteenth century – or at any other time. One could only make a marriage – either openly or in secret. Later, if one of the contracting parties committed bigamy, then, in relation to the second and bigamous marriage, the term ‘pre-contract’ could be used retrospectively, to refer to the first – and valid – marriage. Historians have frequently failed to understand this basic point, and have used the term ‘precontract’ inappropriately and incorrectly.

  Eleanor Talbot was of royal descent on both her father’s and her mother’s side. Indeed, two of her first cousins, Isabel and Anne Neville, subsequently married the two younger brothers of Edward IV, and one of them – Anne Neville – ultimately became Queen of England. Thus Eleanor can certainly be considered to have been of potentially queenly birth. Her dual descent from the royal family and her aristocratic status also both militate against the notion that Eleanor would have embraced with delight the dubious honour of becoming the king’s mistress. No lady of such a high social status as Eleanor had accepted the post of royal mistress in England for well over a century. Even the less well-born Elizabeth Woodville, a few years later, firmly rejected that position, and insisted upon marriage.

  As for Eleanor’s character, like her sister the Duchess of Norfolk, and others among her closest relatives, she clearly had strong religious beliefs. This is demonstrated by her endowments at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (then basically a religious foundation) and by her subsequent retirement into the quasi-religious life of a tertiary of the Carmelite Order. The Carmelite religious devices which figured on her later signets fully confirm her religious devotion.16 Moreover, Eleanor’s friend and protégé, Dr Thomas Cosyn, the Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, later explicitly described her as Deo devota (‘vowed to God’).17 A lady of such strong religious convictions is an unlikely candidate to have accepted the immoral role of a royal mistress.

  Moreover, there would have been absolutely no reason for Eleanor to make such a compromise. She was a widow, while the king was unmarried. Thus, if Edward loved and wanted her, no impediment stood in the way of the honourable solution of marriage. Upper class widows at this period – particularly young and attractive widows – regularly contracted second marriages.18 T
here was clearly no legal impediment to prevent a King of England from marrying a widow, for, as we have already seen, at the start of the fifteenth century Henry IV had married the widowed Joanna of Navarre, while in the fourteenth century the Black Prince had married the widowed Joan of Kent.

  Eleanor was probably five or six years older than Edward IV, for she seems to have been born about the end of February 1436. Her father, John Talbot, first Earl of Shrewsbury, had been a hero of the Hundred Years’ War between England and France, and in the second half of the fifteenth century his name was familiar to everyone in England. Thus, when the later Act of Parliament, which formally declared that Eleanor had been married to Edward IV, referred to her as the ‘doughter of the old Earl of Shrewesbury’, it was saying something very important, and using a name which was a national byword at the time. As for Eleanor’s mother, she was of even higher birth than her husband. She was John Talbot’s second wife, Lady Margaret Beauchamp, the eldest daughter of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, and elder sister of Eleanor, Duchess of Somerset.

  No contemporary portraits of Eleanor now survive, but in 1468 her sister (who by that time had become the Duchess of Norfolk) was described as ‘very beautiful’.19 It is therefore likely that Eleanor was also a beauty. Although her mother, Margaret Beauchamp, may have had fair hair, some of Eleanor’s closest relatives – including her sister and at least one of her nieces – seem to have inherited the dark colouring of her father, Lord Shrewsbury.20 Eleanor, too, may therefore have had dark brown or black hair, and brown eyes. Both she and her sister also seem to have had aquiline noses (a feature found in both their parents). A skeleton in Norwich Castle Museum which may well be Eleanor’s is that of a healthy young woman who had been about 5ft 6in in height.21 The modern reconstructed picture of Eleanor published here is based upon the skull of that skeleton, and its colouring is inspired by surviving portraits of Eleanor’s sister and niece.