For those of you who wish to know more about Eleanor Talbot, I strongly recommend Eleanor, The Secret Queen by John Ashdown-Hill. Even if you disagree with Dr. Ashdown-Hill's conclusions - and if you are sceptical about Richard III you will feel obliged to - there is nothing wrong with the factual content of the book, which gathers together everything that can be known about this lady.
Instead of trying to give you a digest of this text, I shall give you the key points of my conclusions on Eleanor, following my study of this book.
1. She was quite definitely the daughter of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, which (incredibly) has been doubted by some historians. Talbot's name is little known these days, but at the time he was a hero, roughly equivalent to Churchill or at least Field Marshal Montgomery.
2. It is wrong, therefore, to think of Eleanor as 'obscure'. Although her own marriage to Sir Thmas Butler of Sudeley was a modest one, her father was a leading nobleman and her sister was the Duchess of Norfolk. (The same Duchess of Norfolk who served as Principal Lady-in-Waiting at Margaret of York's wedding and was the mother of Anne Mowbray.)
3. Eleanor's mother was a Beauchamp - Margaret, eldest daughter of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. A lady of very high rank by birth, if this needs to be said, half-sister to Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick. Which makes the 'Kingmaker' Eleanor's uncle. (Perhaps fortunately for Edward IV the family quarrel between the Beauchamp sisters meant this connection was not emphasised.)
4. Another Beauchamp sister, Eleanor, married the Somerset killed at St. Albans. So, Henry Duke of Somerset and his brothers were Eleanor's first cousins.
Of course it is impossible for Ashdown-Hill, or anyone else to prove that Eleanor's alleged secret marriage to Edward IV took place. By the nature of such marriages no evidence can be extant, the witnesses being long dead. Then again, we have almost as much evidence for the ceremony as we have for that between Edward and Elizabeth W. It's really Edward's acknowledgement of the latter ceremony that makes the difference. The event itself was equally irregular.
Edward was evidently attracted to women some years older than himself and preferably widows - Eleanor, Elizabeth, 'Jane' Shore and Elizabeth Waite/Lucy all seem to fit the template.
However, let's forget personal attractions for a minute. Could there have been a political reason for Edward to marry Eleanor? Possibly, just possibly. Edward was keen to conciliate Somerset (an issue to which I shall return in due course) and in that context his marriage to Somerset's cousin might have been seen as a white rose/red rose union. With the added bonus of bringing the powerful Talbot family on board into the bargain. Given that Warwick and Montagu were very annoyed by Edward's pardon of Somerset, it would be in line with Edward's trouble-avoidance philosophy to keep the matter temporarily secret. And then when Somerset defected to the other side again, it would give a reason for an angry Edward to dump Eleanor and turn to the gorgeous Elizabeth.
It's a fascinating subject for speculation, but it can't be proved. What Ashdown-Hill has proved is that Eleanor had land which a) she did not inherit b) she did not hold by dower or jointure c) which she could not afford to buy. This land was almost certainly granted to her by Edward; and since Edward did not go around granting lands to random females, there is something there that cannot easily be explained away.
Anyway, read the book, see what you think.
6 comments:
It's been a long time since I've read this and I'm too lazy to dig it out, but I remember thinking that Ashdown-Hill assumed too readily that since the land wasn't inherited or jointure or dower land, it must have come from Edward IV. It struck me as strange, and still does, that if the lands had belonged to the crown, Ashdown-Hill couldn't find some mention of them as being such.
Hi Susan,
The land must have come from somewhere. It definitely wasn't dower, jointure or inheritance. Eleanor was relatively poor and is most unlikely to have been able to raise cash to purchase - anyway, why would she when she had no children? So the only other answer seems to be a gift or grant. The Crown is by far the most likely person/body to make such a grant.
There may be another solution, but I'm scratching my head to think of one.
I suppose it's possible that her father granted her some land during his lifetime or that during her widowhood, she exchanged some of her jointure or dower land for the estates in question. If the grant did come from the king, however, one alternative explanation is that it might have been hush money to keep her from claiming that whatever (if anything) had taken place between them constituted a marriage.
I have wondered before about this 'shadowy' woman and will definitely find a way to get this book. I only wanted to ask you what argument between the Beachamp sisters to which you refer and did it have lasting effects of a political nature? I know this probably comes across as a pretty dense question, but I haven't heard of or don't remember hearing about this before.
Hi Susan
It would be extremely unusual in the 15th C for a father to grant land to a daughter. If done at all it would be parcel of a marriage contract and probably demised to her and the heirs of her body with remainder to Shrewsbury's heirs.
Yes, indeed, it might have been 'hush money.' But we can only speculate. I'm pretty confident if there was more evidence as to the origin of this land Ashdown-Hill would have found and published it.
Hi Elizabeth,
The dispute between the Beauchamp sisters was caused by the Beauchamp inheritance. This passed from their father, to their brother and then their niece.
When the niece died it was held that because Anne Beauchamp was her full-blood aunt - the other three being half-blood, born to Warwick's first wife - Anne should receive the whole inheritance.
The sisters and their husbands were not pleased by this, but all they were allowed was the Berkeley/Lisle inheritance from their mother and *nothing* from their father.
Talbot, for example, felt that he as the husband of the eldest sister, ought to have been Earl of Warwick.
Post a Comment