The title ‘lady’ has several distinct meanings, and its various uses are not always well understood, in these egalitarian times. The application of this title is naturally contingent upon the existence of an aristocracy.1 In a fifteenth-century context the word ‘lady’ is actually an anachronism, and Eleanor’s contemporaries would have been more likely to give the title in its French form, dame. However, since surnames such as Boteler and Widville are also generally rendered in their equally anachronistic modern spellings, we need not scruple over the term ‘lady’. Four categories of women can be identified to whom this title was and is applied.2 We shall see that Eleanor Talbot was a ‘lady’ on two counts.
The daughter of a senior English peer (earl, marquis or duke) has the courtesy title ‘Lady [+ her Christian name]’. She holds this title automatically and for life. She retains it even if she marries an untitled husband. This rank is often held from birth, as it certainly was in the case of Eleanor’s younger sister, Elizabeth, Duchess of Norfolk. Eleanor herself was perhaps not, strictly speaking, porphyrogenita, since her father did not attain his English earldoms until she had already passed her 6th birthday (though he was already Count of Clermont at the time of Eleanor’s birth). But certainly from the moment her father became an Earl, Eleanor was Lady Eleanor for life.
The wife of an English knight or baronet has the title ‘Lady [+ her husband’s surname]’. This is a rank quite distinct from (and inferior to) that of a senior peer’s daughter. Nevertheless, when Thomas Boteler was knighted, in about 1455, Lady Eleanor also acquired this title of ladyship, thereby becoming Lady Boteler.
There is also a third kind of ladyship, where the rank pertains to the wife of a peer. In such a case it is used in the form ‘Lady’ [+ husband’s title]. Had Sir Thomas Boteler not predeceased his father, Eleanor would also, in due course, have become a lady of this third category, with the style Lady Sudeley. In the event, the premature death of Sir Thomas precluded her acquisition of this additional title.
A fourth use of this title, which still today retains the French form, Dame, is as applied to female professed religious, particularly, in the modern world, to nuns of the Benedictine order. This religious use of the title seems to have been more widespread in the fifteenth century. However, since Eleanor was never a nun of any order, the title is unlikely to have been bestowed upon her for religious reasons, particularly since there were ample secular grounds for its application in her case.