Eleanor’s marriage was celebrated late in 1449 or early in 1450.1 She was then 13 or 14 years old. What did she look like? About eighteen years later, at the age of 24, her sister Elizabeth was considered a beauty.2 As for Eleanor herself, descriptions of her may be lacking, but ten years after her marriage to Thomas she would command the attention of a king. There is therefore little reason to doubt that Eleanor was also attractive.
A hint of her probable appearance at about the time of her marriage to Thomas Boteler can perhaps be glimpsed in a portrait by Petrus Christus of Bruges, now in the Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin (no. 532 - see plate 20). This portrait is not of Eleanor herself, but of one of her closest relatives. It was painted probably in 1468, at the time when Elizabeth Talbot, Duchess of Norfolk, with various members of her family, was in Flanders attending Margaret of York’s marriage to the Duke of Burgundy. The sitter was identified as a member of the Talbot family by an inscription on the (now lost) original frame. The painting almost certainly represents Eleanor’s niece, Elizabeth Talbot of Lisle (the elder daughter of Eleanor’s dead brother, Viscount Lisle). In 1468, Elizabeth Talbot of Lisle would have been about 16 – just a year or two older than Eleanor herself had been when she married Thomas Boteler.3 It is likely that in about 1450 Eleanor looked something like this portrait, although the skull in Norwich, which may possibly be Eleanor’s (see below), exhibits more prominent cheekbones and a somewhat wider lower jaw.4
Young brides of aristocratic family, when they first married, ‘usually lived with the groom’s parents until they came of age’,5 and Eleanor, who was little more than a child bride, presumably did so. For the first three years of their marriage, therefore, she and Thomas probably lived in the Sudeley household, and had no separate establishment of their own. At least some of their time will have been spent at Sudeley Castle in Gloucestershire, which was the Botelers’ main residence. At the time of Eleanor’s marriage to his son, Lord Sudeley was in the middle of reconstructing this property in a grand manner. However, the Botelers also had other estates. For example, they held manors in Warwickshire. They also controlled property in London, Hertfordshire and East Anglia (a part of the country which, in the long run, was to be significant for both Eleanor and her sister Elizabeth).
Not all of this property was intended for the family’s habitation. Some was let, to provide additional income. The Botelers’ London property included a messuage, or tenement in Wyndegoose Lane, which ran from Thames Street down towards the river, approximately where the north side of Southwark Bridge now stands. The property was in the parish of All Hallows by the Tower, and Lord Sudeley would later grant it to St Alban’s Abbey. There were further London properties in the parish of St Mildred (Poultry).6 In the 1450s Thomas Boteler held (with others) a messuage, with various lands and tenements, known as ‘Langeleys’ at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire (which he held of his maternal cousin, Abbot John Wheathamstead)7 and there is a record of a quitclaim from John, Lord Clinton and Say to Lord Sudeley in respect of the manor of Jovenellesburg in Hertfordshire8 (in which the latter was enfeoffed with others, including his relatives, Sir Henry Norbury and Sir John Montgomery).9 Also a number of manors in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex came under the control of Lord Sudeley and various colleagues in their capacity as executors of the will of Sir John Fastolf.10
To mark the marriage of Thomas and Eleanor, the Boteler family commissioned from an illuminator at Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, a splendid roll pedigree, showing Sir Thomas’ ancestry and giving a parallel account of the kings of England served by his forebears.11 This roll, commemorating the family which she was about to join, may have been intended as a gift to Eleanor. Her own arms were meant to figure on the pedigree, impaled by those of Thomas, above the entry of their names at the bottom of the scroll. In the event, however, the illuminator left Eleanor’s half of the shield blank. Perhaps he was unfamiliar with the Talbot arms, or perhaps it was thought that it would be unlucky to paint them in before the marriage took place. It may have been the intention that they should be added later, perhaps when children were born. If so, this was never done, and Eleanor’s half of the shield remains blank to this day. Of course, if Eleanor and Thomas were betrothed soon after her birth, and the roll pedigree was commissioned at about that time, the blank shield may have been merely prudent economy. Children did not always survive, and if Eleanor had died in childhood the roll could have been reused for an alternative Boteler bride.
Eleanor had been born and brought up during the final years of the Hundred Years War. As she embarked on her marriage with Thomas, this long war in France was drawing to a close, but another conflict, closer at hand, was about to start. There were stirrings of trouble in England in 1450, caused partly by the failure of Henry VI’s government to hold his father’s conquests in Normandy, and partly by the king’s general incompetence. The murder of Henry’s favourite, William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, was followed by a rising in Kent, led by Jack Cade. The rebels called for the return of the Duke of York from Ireland, where he was serving as lieutenant. In London, meanwhile, Eleanor’s uncle, Edmund, Duke of Somerset, cousin of the king, had been seeking greater influence since the death of his own uncle, Cardinal Beaufort. He had allied himself with the Duke of Suffolk and with Queen Margaret of Anjou, and now took the opportunity provided by Suffolk’s murder to manoeuvre himself into a key position with, ultimately, the title of Constable of England.
These troubles at national level had echoes in the Talbot family, and also in Eleanor’s extended family, including the Mowbray household of the Duke of Norfolk (into which Eleanor’s sister Elizabeth was now married). The return of the Duke of York, from Ireland, and the rivalry between York and his cousin, Somerset, for power in the royal council confronted the Duke of Norfolk with a choice. In November he gathered men of his affinity around him at Ipswich, before riding to the Parliament at Westminster, where he chose to support his uncle, York, against the Duke of Somerset.12
Had he been in England, the Earl of Shrewsbury would have been faced with a similar, difficult choice of which side to support. Indeed, it would potentially have placed him in a grave dilemma. He had long ties of comradeship and trust with the Duke of York, arising out of their association in the French war. However, he also had similar connections – not to mention family connections (through their marriages with two of the Beauchamp sisters) – with Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Fortunately, perhaps, under the circumstances, he was still a prisoner in France, and was thus spared from making any decision in the matter.
The Talbots, however, already had ongoing conflicts of their own. Having seized by force the three disputed Berkeley manors of Wotton, Simondshall and Cowley, Eleanor’s mother, Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, had had her possession of them confirmed (albeit for her life only) by a court at Cirencester in 1448. In 1450 Lord Berkeley, adopting Margaret’s own tactics against her, seized them back. Apparently not expecting to be able to maintain his hold on them, he spent his time wreaking destruction on the manor house at Wotton. As Eleanor’s mother herself later reported, Lord Berkeley and his son, William:
which at that time kept within the Castle of Berkeley a great number of right riotous, unlawful and evil disposed people ... there assembled to them a great multitude of such misgoverned people arrayed in manner of war (the said Earl of Shrewsbury ... then being in Normandy upon the safeguard of the duchy of Normandy), riotously came to the said manor of Wotton, and entered into the same, and the gates and doors of the said manor they brake, and all to hewe and cut the great and principal timber of the roofs and galleries, and other necessaries sawed and cut in two, the walls, vaults, quines of doors and windows they razed and tore a-down, the ferments of iron in the windows, hinges for doors and windows, gutters and conduits of lead, as well upon the houses as under the earth, they brake and beare away; And the said manor of Wotton in all that they could defaced and destroyed, insomuch that the reparations thereof cost the said earl, countess, John Viscount Lisle, and their servants then there being, to the value of four thousand marks’.13
Margaret, furious, retaliated by sending her eldest son, Lord Lisle, to beseige her enemy in his castle at Berkeley. This conflict in Gloucestershire must have been particularly uncomfortable for Margaret’s youngest daughter, Elizabeth, in her new home among the Mowbrays. It was, to say the least, awkward for Elizabeth to know that her mother Margaret was locked in combat with her father-in-law’s aunt, Isabel Mowbray (Lady Berkeley), and the latter’s husband and sons. We shall return to this conflict later, for the dispute continued for years to come.
Eleanor’s eldest brother, John, Lord Lisle, was now in his mid 20s. His family in 1450 consisted of his wife, Joan, and their 2-year-old son, Thomas. His elder daughter, Elizabeth – probable future subject of the Petrus Christus portrait – was born in about 1451. Lord Lisle had not recently served in France with his captive father. It was not that his life had been peaceable, but his battles had been fought not in Normandy but in Gloucestershire, where he kept up the family feud with Lord Berkeley. It seems likely that he was living chiefly, at this period, in the disputed (and recently wrecked) manor house at Wotton-under-Edge. It was probably there that he received the news from France that his father, the Earl of Shrewsbury, had been set free.
The same news will have reached Eleanor at Sudeley, Elizabeth at Framlingham, and their mother, probably at Blakemere. King Charles VII had demanded the Earl of Shrewsbury as a hostage when he finally took Rouen in 1449, and the Duke of Somerset had, perforce, acquiesced. From a window overlooking the cathedral, Lord Shrewsbury had watched the French king march into the city, the surrender of which marked the final English capitulation in Normandy. The earl had later been received by Charles VII, who, however, would not release him until the English fulfilled their undertaking to give up their remaining garrisons at Harfleur and other places. Only when Falaise finally surrendered, in July 1450, was Lord Shrewsbury set free.
Even so, it was to be many months before he saw his family in England. The French king had imposed certain conditions before releasing his noble hostage, for the name of Talbot had long been a thorn in his side. The earl was not to return home directly. First, he had agreed to travel to Italy, where he would make a pilgrimage to Rome. Lord Shrewsbury, in his own way a deeply religious man, was content with this. It was a good year for making a Roman pilgrimage, for 1450 was a Jubilee year.14 Pope Nicholas V, who had already restored the city walls of Rome, was celebrating the Holy Year with very great splendour.
It is probable that the pontiff received the earl during his pilgrimage. The Basilica of St Peter, however, may have been a disappointment to Lord Shrewsbury. The long Western Schism, which had only recently come to an end, meant that no repairs or rebuilding had been carried out either at the basilica or at the Papal palace for a very long time. The architect Leon Battista Alberti had recently reported to the Holy Father that St Peter’s was in a dangerous condition, with the south wall leaning 6ft from the perpendicular, so that ‘I am convinced that very soon some slight shock or movement will cause it to fall. The rafters of the roof have dragged the north wall inwards to a corresponding degree.’ Plans for tearing down the old basilica and the building of an entirely new church had already been made, although the work was to advance only very slowly, and little progress was made before the death of Nicholas V. Nevertheless, the Earl of Shrewsbury must have been one of the last pilgrims to Rome to see the Emperor Constantine’s old, fourth-century church before work started on the rebuilding of the east end. He may also have witnessed one of the disasters of the Jubilee when, because the crowds of pilgrims were so great, some two hundred people were crushed to death on the Sant’Angelo Bridge.15
Lord Shrewsbury did not arrive back in England until 1451. Before leaving France, he had made a further promise to Charles VII, that he would never again bear arms against the King of France.16 Having extracted this oath from his old adversary, and bearing in mind also the earl’s advanced age (for by this time he was about 64), Charles VII must have believed that he had effectively safeguarded himself from any further encounters with ‘le Talbot’.
When Eleanor’s father finally came home, the threat of domestic trouble still hung in the air. In March 1451/2 the Duke of York and his supporters nearly came to blows with the adherents of the queen and Somerset, at Blackheath. York naively trusted the invitation he received from the other side to come and put his case to King Henry VI. As a result, he found himself detained and forced to forswear rebellion. During the summer, a summons came from the king for Norfolk and his uncle of York, to meet him at Canterbury. As a result the Duke of Norfolk took fright, distancing himself from his uncle’s cause. Elizabeth Talbot and her Mowbray in-laws spent the winter at Framlingham, where they enjoyed a family Christmas, surrounded by their household, and by persons of the Duke’s affinity, including, perhaps, John Paston, who certainly received an open invitation.17
Meanwhile a more lively time was being had in Gloucestershire. Bolstered by the return of her formidable husband, Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, renewed her attack on her cousin, James, Lord Berkeley. In June, Lord Berkeley, still beseiged in Berkeley Castle, had received the following letter from his wife, Isabel Mowbray (then working on his behalf in London) warning him that his adversaries were up to no good:
To my right worshipful and reverend lord and husband be this letter delivered.
Right worshipful and reverend lord and husband. I commend me to you with all my whole heart, desiring always to hear of your good welfare, the which God maintain and increase ever to your worship. And it please you to hear how I fare, Sir, squall and squall; Thomas Roger and Jacket have asked surety of peace of me, for their intent was to bring me into the Tower, But I trust in God to morrow that I shall go in bail unto the next term, and so to go home And then to come again; And Sir I trust to God and you will not treat with them, but keep your own in the most manliest wise, ye shall have the land for once and end: Be well ware of Venables of Alderley, of Thom Mull and of your false Counsell; keep well your place, The Earl of Shrewsbury lieth right nigh you, and shapeth all the wiles that he can to distress you and yours, for he will not meddle with you openly no manner of wise but it be with great falsedom that he can bring about to beguile you, or else that he caused that ye have so few people about you, then will he set on you, for he saith he will never come to the king again till he have done you an ill turn; Sir your matter speedeth and doth right well, save my daughter costeth great good; At the reverence of God send money or else I must lay my horse to pledge and come home on my feet: keep well all about you till I come home, and treat not without me, and then all things shall be well with the grace of Almighty God, who have you in his keeping.
Written at London the Wednesday next after Whit Sunday.
Your wife the Lady of Berkeley.’18
Faction fighting between the supporters of the Talbots and the supporters of Lord Berkeley, both of whom were maintaining private armies, continued throughout the year, terrorising the countryside, causing havoc, and making life generally uncomfortable for the local population (which either side claimed to be defending from the lawless molestations of the other).
Matters came to a head on 6 September 1451, when a party of men serving Lord Berkeley descended upon the home of a blind man called Richard Andrews, a tenant of the Earl of Shrewsbury. In Lady Shrewsbury’s words: ‘William Berkeley sent twenty of that same mischievous men to a tenant’s house of the said Earl of Shrewsbury called Richard Andrews, which was a blind man, dwelling from the said castle [Berkeley Castle] ten miles, to rob the said Richard Andrews.’19 As a Talbot tenant Andrews was evidently seen as fair game, and the men ransacked the house looking for valuables. They were disappointed by what they found, and since enquiry failed to persuade their blind captive to produce any significant sums of money, Lord Berkeley’s men decided to resort to torture. Lady Shrewsbury takes up the story again. ‘For cause they found but little good in substance, they took a brand iron and set it on the fire till it was glowing hot, and then they took the blind man and would have set him upon it, for he would be a know of no more good, And through that dread that they so put him in, he told then where his good was.’ Fortunately for Richard Andrews, his neighbours, aware of his plight, had meanwhile sent in all haste to Lord Lisle to let him know what was afoot. Setting out at once with a young army of his own, the viscount reached Andrews’ house in the nick of time and caught Lord Berkeley’s men off guard. They were apprehended without much of a struggle.
Now the tables were completely turned, and Lord Berkeley’s men were put in fear of their lives. As a result, one of them, the oddly-named Rice Tewe, turned coat and offered, in exchange for his life, to give the Talbots entry into Berkeley Castle, a prize which Lady Shrewsbury had long coveted. We have two accounts of what followed. According to Lord Berkeley’s eldest son, William:
the sixth of September in the said thirtieth year of Henry ye sixth, The said countess and her husband being then unjustly seised of their manors of Wotton, Simondshall and Cowley, the warth, newleyes, and Sagesland, by their subtle and damnable imaginations, laboured, entreated and hired one Rice Tewe, being then servant to the lord James, to deceive and utterly to destroy him the said lord James and his four sons, William, James, Maurice and Thomas, then being in the Castle of Berkeley with the said lord James their father: which said Rice, having the keeping of the keys of the said castle, early in a morning let in the lord Lisle, son to the said earl and countess, with great numbers of people warlike arrayed, and there took the said lord James and his said four sons in their beds, and there kept them in prison in great duress by the space of eleven weeks, by the commandment of the said countess; they by all that time knowing no surety nor certainty of their lives, but ever waiting the hour of their cruel death.20
Lady Shrewsbury’s account, on the other hand, continues:
And straight they rode to the said castle. And when they come to the castle gate Rice called upon the watch, and anon the said watch went to the said lord James who had the keys in his own keeping, and he them delivered to one Thomas Fleshewer [Fletcher?] then being yeoman of his chamber, who came and opened the wicket gate of the castle, and the servants of the viscount Lisle entered to take the said misgoverned men, and took the place without any hurt or misdoing to any person.21
It is clear, at any rate, that Lord Berkeley and his four sons were captured, and that the Talbots took the castle. Lady Berkeley, however, seems not to have been present. Probably she was still in London, upon her husband’s business, and thus escaped capture with the rest of her family.
What followed next is debatable, depending upon whether one chooses to believe the Talbot or the Berkeley account of events. Undoubtedly Lord Berkeley and his sons signed bonds in favour of the Talbots for enormous sums of money. Lady Shrewsbury insisted that they did so voluntarily; an explanation which possibly strains our credulity somewhat. Lord Berkeley and his sons, on the other hand, said that they only signed under duress, and in terror of their lives. Margaret, in any case, gleefully hauled the Berkeleys and their bonds before a court at Chipping Campden on 4 October, and subsequently a court at Cirencester ruled in favour of Margaret’s rights to the Berkeley inheritance. As 1451 drew to a close there must have been a great air of celebration in the Talbot camp. At last, thirty-four years after the death of her grandfather, the Countess of Shrewsbury finally seemed to have secured possession of his entire inheritance. Her rival and his sons were in her hands, and in her power. Surely her victory was now complete.
Alas, there was one tiny flaw in her triumph. The absence of Isabel Mowbray from Berkeley Castle on the night of 6 September meant that she was still at large and free to act. Early in 1452, with great courage, not to say temerity, Lady Berkeley challenged Lady Shrewsbury in the courts at Gloucester. She was to pay dearly for this, for Margaret had her thrown into Gloucester gaol, where she languished for many months with no one to help her, finally dying there shortly before Michaelmas. Nevertheless, by her bold and decisive action Isabel had sown the seeds of Margaret’s defeat.
In October 1452 the court at Cirencester confiscated to the crown the entire Berkeley estate, as the only means, for the time being, of putting an end to the violent disturbances which had troubled the area for so long. Thus the focus of attention moved to King Henry VI. Everything would now depend upon who had most sway with him. Margaret was probably relatively unconcerned at this stage, anticipating that, through the influence of her husband and her brother-in-law, the Duke of Somerset, her claims would soon be vindicated. She could not forsee the final, tragic twist of fate that would rob her of her chief support and undermine all her long endeavours.22
At Framlingham, meanwhile, the imprisonment and subsequent death of Isabel Mowbray at the hands of the Talbots can scarcely have been well received. Unfortunately for his aunt, the Duke of Norfolk was in a rather weak position and therefore not well placed to help her. His involvement with his uncle of York had undermined his credibility in the eyes of the king. In Holy Week of 1452, in London, he was glad to accept the amnesty that the king offered on Good Friday. After Easter he had returned to Framlingham Castle. In June he had been granted a royal pardon, but there were strings attached. Lady Shrewsbury’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Somerset, objected to some of the members of Norfolk’s council, in particular, Debenham, Lee and Tymperley. The Duke of Norfolk was forced to dismiss them. The Duchess of Norfolk and her servants were also apparently under suspicion for Yorkist sympathies. Since he and his household were viewed askance by the king and the Duke of Somerset during this period, Norfolk was not in a position to help his aunt Isabel against Somerset’s Talbot relations. The Mowbrays tried hard to keep out of the limelight for the rest of 1452, and spent their time quietly at Framlingham, occupying themselves not with national politics but with local issues.
Throughout this troubled period, Eleanor had presumably been living quietly at Sudeley, under the care of her mother-in-law. On his return home, Lord Shrewsbury seems to have been perturbed to discover that Lord Sudeley had as yet made no provision to grant Eleanor and Thomas the estates which would comprise her jointure.23 This failure is possibly explained by the fact that Lord Sudeley himself had been out of England, serving in Calais. However, a major change in Eleanor’s life was now looming. Early in 1452 she celebrated her 16th birthday. Her marriage with Thomas Boteler could now be consummated. Hopefully there would be children. With an eye to the future, Lord Sudeley began making plans for the young couple to set up a home of their own.
Some documents relating to this phase of Eleanor’s marriage are preserved in the Warwickshire County Record Office, where they survive as part of an archive relating to the manor of Fenny Compton. They deal with transfers of this and other Warwickshire manors, together with certain properties in Wiltshire. The first document in the series is a deed of gift from Lord Sudeley, issued in Burton Dassett, and dated 10 May 31 Henry VI (1453). By this document he enfeoffed his son and daughter-in-law (together with their still hypothetical issue) with the manors of Burton Dassett, Griff and Fenny Compton, all in Warwickshire, together with the lands and tenements called ‘Shipleys Thing’ in Griff.24
Two related documents are associated with Lord Sudeley’s deed of gift.25 Both are letters of attorney, bearing the same date as the deed itself. The first emanates from Lord Sudeley and carries instructions to give seisin of the three manors to Thomas and Eleanor. The second is from Thomas and Eleanor, instructing their attorney, Thomas Throckmorton, to accept livery and seisin from Lord Sudeley.
Given their letter of attorney, it is not necessary to assume that either Thomas or Eleanor was present in person in Burton Dassett on 10 May 1453, and their whereabouts at that time remain unknown. Their letter of attorney bears the seals of the young couple. Unlike his father, Thomas Boteler did not employ a heraldic device. His seal matrix almost certainly comprised the bezel of a signet ring. The red wax impression shows a hart, impressively antlered, partially surrounded by what may be intended as an elaborate letter ‘T’. The seal is circular, and ropework borders the design.
Eleanor’s seal is also not heraldic. Again, a signet ring was clearly used. This is evident from the fact that the scalloped shoulders of the ring have left impressions in the wax. These marks show that, like the contemporary signet ring of the Earl of Northumberland (found on the battlefield of Towton, and now in the British Museum), the design on Eleanor’s signet ran horizontally across the ring, and not vertically, as on a modern example. The bezel was oval, engraved with a daisy, or marguerite, bearing ten petals and flanked by sprigs of leaves. While not a particularly appropriate symbol for Eleanor herself, this flower was undoubtedly used by Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury, as her name emblem.26 It therefore seems likely that Eleanor had received this ring as a gift from her mother.
Of the property granted to Thomas and Eleanor by Lord Sudeley, Griff lies just to the south of Nuneaton (of which, in the 1920s, it became a suburb). As early as the reign of William the Conqueror, the adjacent manor of Chilvers Coton had already been held by Harold, son of Earl Ralph, Lord of Sudeley. Harold held 8 hides (960 acres) in Chilvers Coton; land which subsequently descended in the de Sudeley family. When a later Ralph de Sudeley founded Arbury Priory in the twelfth century at Chilvers Coton, and also granted land there to the order of Knights Templar, the focus of his own estate moved to the adjacent hamlet of Griff, where a new manor house for the de Sudeleys was established in about 1185.
After the death of the last male member of the de Sudeley family in 1367, the manor of Griff passed (1380), like the other Sudeley lands, to his nephew, Thomas Boteler. The descent of the manor of Griff to Ralph Boteler, Lord Sudeley, is fully set out in a patent of 1469.27 The manor of Griff, as held briefly by Thomas and Eleanor, had a total area of 508 acres, under various kinds of cultivation. The least valuable land was the woodland, valued at less than 1d per acre. Most profitable was the small quantity of meadow land, which brought in 1s 3d per acre. There were 200 acres each of arable and of grazing land, valued respectively at about 8½d and 7¼d per acre. Thomas and Eleanor presumably stayed from time to time at the manor house at Griff, the origins of which dated back to the late twelfth century. Of this manor house nothing now remains.
The couple’s second Warwickshire manor, named in the deed of gift as Cheping Dorset, and in Eleanor’s inquisition post-mortem as Great Dorset, is now called Burton Dassett and is situated in the south of the county, a few miles to the east of Stratford-upon-Avon, and south-east of Warwick. Burton Dassett was known, from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, by a range of names, such as Magna Dercet (or Derset), Derced Major, Dassett Magna and Great Dorcestre, to distinguish it from its smaller southern neighbour, now called Avon Dassett, but formerly known as Parva Dersete.
The more recent history of this manor has been very different from that of Griff. Whereas the latter is now a busy suburb, Burton Dassett is now almost deserted. Ironically, while neighbouring Avon Dassett has become quite a large and prosperous village, the once greater Burton Dassett now houses only a church, a beacon tower and a few scattered farm houses among fields of sheep, the whole comprising a country park famed for its scenic views. In Thomas and Eleanor’s day, however, the manor was well populated, its tenants providing an annual income of £18 in rents; more than half of the revenue from the manor. Its present depopulated state is due to the enclosures of the Belknap heirs of Ralph Boteler, Lord Sudeley, who, having inherited the manor, drove off the 350-strong population in Tudor times to make way for the sheep.
The large and beautiful church of All Saints still houses medieval wall paintings, but the stained-glass windows in the chancel that once displayed the Sudeley arms, and that survived into the eighteenth century, are now no more. The nearby hilltop, where the sixteenth-century beacon now stands, once also housed Eleanor’s windmill. This was ruined by a storm in 1655, but was reconstructed and then survived until it was finally destroyed by another storm in 1946. Early twentieth-century photographs exist (plate 5) which show the windmill standing beside the beacon tower.28
Burton Dassett was a good deal smaller than Griff, comprising only 204 acres. The area is hilly, so it is not surprising that in the fifteenth century only 125 acres of the land were in use for arable farming, although the exposed hilltop made an ideal site for the windmill where grain could be brought from elsewhere to be milled. Most of the land was in use as meadow, though the hay produced at Burton Dassett apparently commanded a lower price than the hay at Griff – only 1s an acre, as opposed to 1s 3d. There was a small amount of grazing land and, given the hilly nature of the terrain, this was probably used in the fifteenth century, as it is today, for sheep. This may account for the fact that it too brought in less money per acre than the grazing land at Griff – 6d instead of about 7¼d. The grazing land at Griff was perhaps used for cattle. The comparatively poor terrain of the hilltop at Burton Dassett may also have been the site of Thomas and Eleanor’s rabbit warren. There is still a manor house at Burton Dassett, but the present building was erected long after Eleanor’s day. It is likely, however, that Burton Dassett was Thomas and Eleanor’s principal residence from 1453 until 1459.
By the time Lord Sudeley made his grant to Thomas and Eleanor, the latter’s father was once again active on the international scene. Following the loss of Normandy, the English government was concerned to preserve the Aquitaine from the incursions of the French king. Its mind turned naturally to that great national champion of the French wars, Lord Shrewsbury. Despite his promise to Charles VII, Lord Shrewsbury was now sent to fight in the Aquitaine.29 This time his son, Lord Lisle, accompanied him. It is not, of course, impossible that, among other considerations, the English government saw this as an opportunity to calm the situation in Gloucestershire by getting Shrewsbury and Lisle out of the country.
The Earl of Shrewsbury made his will in Portsmouth on 1 September, and set sail with his son for Bordeaux.30 With them they took two of their prisoners, the younger sons of Lord Berkeley. Subsequently, on 12 February 1452/3, possibly simply as a reward, possibly with the idea of giving Lord Shrewsbury an increased personal stake in the defence of the province, Henry VI granted ‘for life, to Lewis Talbot, knight, son of John, Earl of Shrewsbury’ rents and revenues in the Aquitaine.31
When he rode into battle at Castillon, early in 1453, Lord Shrewsbury left off the armour which he had sworn never again to wear in the field against King Charles’s forces, despite the fact that this left him highly vulnerable. Although one might think that the spirit of his promise not to bear arms against France should have precluded Lord Shrewsbury from fighting at all, it seems clear that he himself thought that he was adhering to his oath by this dangerous compromise. Predictably, perhaps, he was either dragged from his horse or the animal was killed under him, and he was then dispatched by a blow from a battleaxe to the back of his skull, which no helmet protected.32 The manner of his death was rather similar to that of King Richard III at the battle of Bosworth in August 1485. Lord Lisle, and one of Lord Berkeley’s sons, died with the Earl of Shrewsbury. Lord Berkeley’s other son was captured by the French. Lord Shrewsbury’s face was disfigured, and his body was no doubt stripped by those who picked over the field after the battle. Only by inserting a finger inside the dead mouth and feeling the gap left by Lord Shrewsbury’s missing left molar was one of his squires able to identify the old Earl’s body for the French victors on the day after the battle.
This time, then, Eleanor’s father did not return home. Initially, the French buried him with honour on the battlefield, erecting a little chapel on the site.33 Not until forty years later, towards the end of the fifteenth century, was his grandson, Sir Gilbert Talbot, to fetch Lord Shrewsbury’s remains back from France, to lie, as the earl had requested in his will, in the church at Whitchurch, near his beloved Blakemere. When the remains of the first Earl of Shrewsbury were examined in 1874, the cause of his death was still readily apparent. ‘Immediately behind the right parietal eminence of the cranium was a perpendicular fracture, evidently caused by a sharp instrument.’34
By dying at his father’s side, Lord Lisle later provided Shakespeare with the basis for the moving (but chronologically misplaced) episode in his play Henry VI, part 1, act 4, scene 7, where the body of his son is placed in the arms of the dying father. Eleanor’s brother left a very brief will, which gives no details of either property or beneficiaries. However, it is of interest for its accompanying grant of probate, which, most unusually, emanates not from some diocesan official but from the Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury in person. It seems likely that this circumstance is due to the fact that Eleanor’s half-brother, the second Earl of Shrewsbury, had contested his father’s testamentary dispositions, thus embroiling the Talbot heirs in litigation.
The death of Eleanor’s father completely undermined the position of his widowed Countess. The new Earl of Shrewsbury was Margaret’s stepson, John II, with whom she was on bad terms. Her husband had tried to secure her position and at the same time provide for the children of his second marriage by dividing up his inheritance, hiving off the Lestrange portions (which were not entailed) for his second wife and family. Naturally, this was not well received by his heir, who at once prepared to do battle for this property which he considered rightfully his.
To free his hands for the conflict with his stepmother, the new Earl of Shrewsbury had every incentive for bringing all other conflicts that might have involved him to a rapid conclusion. The Berkeley inheritance dispute fell within this category. As he was not himself a Berkeley descendant, the second earl had no personal interest in the matter and with all possible speed he made peace with Lord Berkeley, agreeing to some financial compensation. In token of their accord, the elderly James – a widower since the death of his wife, Isabel, in Gloucester prison – now married the new Earl of Shrewsbury’s sister, Joan Talbot.
Towards the end of the year an inquisition post-mortem on the late Earl of Shrewsbury confirmed his eldest surviving son’s inheritance of his titles, and in due course a court of law adjudicated to him all his father’s inherited lands in Shropshire and Gloucestershire except for the manor of Corfham in Shropshire, which his stepmother held in dower. This was only the beginning of a new battle between the dowager countess and the second earl. While it continued, Margaret was to have no leisure to pursue her earlier battle with the Berkeleys, whom her stepson was now openly befriending.
Not only had Margaret been robbed of her strongest prop, her husband, but her influence at court was further seriously weakened in 1453 by the decline in her brother-in-law’s fortunes. In August 1453, Henry VI suffered a complete mental breakdown which left him unaware of who and what was around him. The queen and the Duke of Somerset attempted, for a time, to conceal his sad condition, but the birth of a son to Queen Margaret on 13 October led to the holding of a Great Council.
Attempts by Somerset to exclude the Duke of York from this council meeting were unsuccessful and, once present, York rallied support among the peers. Warwick, Salisbury, Worcester, Pembroke, Richmond and Norfolk combined to back him, and on 27 March 1453/4 York was named protector of the realm. Somerset now found himself imprisoned in the Tower. With her powerful brother-in-law eclipsed at this key moment, Eleanor’s mother saw that the Berkeley inheritance, which had seemed to be within her grasp at last, had eluded her once again. All her dreams had evaporated into thin air.
In the country as a whole, the noise of the conflict between the Duke of York on the one hand, and the Duke of Somerset and the queen on the other, echoed through the great noble households as lords held aloof, or began to espouse one of the competing causes. What side Eleanor’s father would have taken, had he lived, must remain a matter for speculation. He had, it is true, long served the house of Lancaster, and had close ties to the Duke of Somerset, who was married to his second wife’s sister. On the other hand, he had also worked closely with the Duke of York in the vain defence of Normandy, and the two men clearly had great respect for one another. The earl had stood godfather to one of the Duke of York’s children. In the dead earl’s absence, the surviving Talbots took various directions in the incipient conflict.
Eleanor’s half-brother, the second Earl of Shrewsbury, had held no great offices during his father’s lifetime, and in 1453 he continued to stand aloof, viewing the Duke of Somerset, husband of his stepmother’s sister, with suspicion. In fact it was in the council of the protector, York, that the second earl first appeared close to the centre of government. Although he was never a regular member of the protector’s council, he attended meetings from time to time. When the king recovered his senses towards the end of December 1454, and when Somerset, released from the Tower, was restored to power, the latter was soon seen once again to be favouring his sister-in-law Margaret rather than her stepson. Nevertheless, when hostilities broke out, and despite his then rather Yorkist associations, the second Earl of Shrewsbury took no part, on either side, in the first battle of St Albans on Thursday 22 May 1455. From 1456, however, and for reasons that are not perfectly known, he became a moderate member of the court party, being subsequently awarded various honours and appointments by Henry VI (or those who acted for him).
Meanwhile, Eleanor’s father-in-law had also come out in favour of the reigning king. Lord Sudeley was at Henry VI’s side at St Albans,35 and it is reported that when Somerset led the king’s loyal lords out into St Peter’s Street to face the Duke of York’s men, Lord Sudeley bore the royal standard before his sovereign:
Then came the king out of the abbey with his banner displayed, into the same street, and duke Edmund [Somerset] with him, and the Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Northumberland, and the lord Clifford, and the Lord Sudeley bearing the king’s banner.36
It is possible that Thomas Boteler was with his father on this occasion, and it may have been at about this time that Thomas received his knighthood.
Meanwhile, in addition to espousing the cause of Henry VI, Lord Sudeley was making other plans for the future. In 1456 he acquired the manor of the Moor, in Hertfordshire, which he held of the abbot of St Albans, who at that time was Lady Sudeley’s kinsman, John Wheathamstead (a fact which may have facilitated the Sudeleys’ acquisition of the manor). This seems to have been part of a scheme for the aggrandisement of his dynasty, which at that time he no doubt hoped shortly to see consolidated by the birth of grandchildren. It was a hope that was fated to be disappointed.
While her family by marriage was now openly supporting the Lancastrian cause, Eleanor’s closest blood relatives were increasingly evincing Yorkist sympathies. As a result of her Norfolk marriage, Eleanor’s sister, Elizabeth, had, of course, firmly entered the Yorkist camp. The Mowbrays, the Bourchiers, and the Mowbrays’ Howard cousins all supported the Duke of York. However, for the dowager Countess of Shrewsbury the real choice was not between the rival royal houses. As her stepson moved progressively towards the Lancastrian side, so Lady Shrewsbury moved in the opposite direction, though this process was a gradual one and Thursday 16 June 1457, for example, still saw both Margaret and her stepdaughter-in-law, the new Countess of Shrewsbury, attending Queen Margaret of Anjou at the Corpus Christi celebrations in Coventry.37
Margaret’s father, the Earl of Warwick, had, in his day, supported the house of Lancaster, but Margaret’s change of direction was opportunistic, and more concerned with her own affairs than the issue of who wielded power in the country. It clearly arose out of her conflict with her stepson. It was not really the case that she chose to be a Yorkist; rather she rejected the Lancastrian cause because this came to be espoused by her stepson and enemy, the second Earl of Shrewsbury. Many other choices of sides in the dynastic conflict were decided, perhaps, by similarly personal motives.
Eleanor’s two surviving brothers, Louis and Humphrey, are not known to have taken any part in the ensuing conflict. Indeed, it is possible that Sir Louis Talbot was already sick with an illness which, in another year or so, would carry him off to an early grave.38 In so far as they shared the aims and ambitions of their mother, however, and opposed their half-brother (for upon this their fortunes depended), the second earl, who had deprived them of the inheritance which their father had tried to leave them, Eleanor’s brothers must, like Margaret, have inclined towards the house of York.39 Always uppermost in their minds, however, were their own best interests.
As far as is known, no member of the Talbot family took part in the first battle of St Albans. Elizabeth Talbot’s father-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk (who, had he taken part in the battle, would have been on the opposite side to Eleanor’s father-in-law) did assemble his men and march to the aid of his uncle. However, he did not reach St Albans until Friday 23 May – the day after the battle. Consequently he took no part in the engagement. However, Margaret’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Somerset, was killed there, fighting in the market place. He had long feared a ‘fantastic prophecy’ that he would die under a castle and had even avoided going to Windsor because of it. As the Yorkist swords cut him down, he saw that he had reached the place of his doom, for ‘at Saint Albans there was an hostelry having the sign of a castle, and before that hostelry he was slain’.40 York, for the moment victorious, now succeeded his adversary as constable of England.
Meanwhile, in Warwickshire Eleanor was quietly occupied with the domestic routine of her manor house. Doubtless the eyes of the Boteler family were also watching closely for some sign that she was about to perform her other principal duty of producing heirs. But if so, they were disappointed. Lord Sudeley’s hoped-for grandson did not materialise. It is not known whether Eleanor simply failed to conceive, or whether she conceived but miscarried. The pelvis of the skeleton in Norwich that may be hers shows no evidence that its owner had ever experienced childbirth, but the attribution of this skeleton to Eleanor has not yet been established absolutely for certain. Moreover, it is now questioned whether childbirth leaves discernible signs on the skeleton. In any case, the miscarriage of a very immature foetus might well leave no trace on the pelvic bones. For whatever reason, however, Thomas and Eleanor remained childless. There may have been some congenital problem, since similar difficulties were apparently experienced by Eleanor’s sister, Elizabeth.41 In fact, far from increasing, Eleanor’s family circle was shortly to lose yet another member.
In 1453, while the first Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Lisle still lived, Henry VI had granted to Eleanor’s brother, Sir Louis Talbot, ‘all places, lands, lordships possessions, rents and revenues in the duchy [of Aquitaine] now held by the lord of Pons and Pouton ... to the value of 200 marks a year’.42 This may well have been at Lord Shrewsbury’s request – a first move to augment the status of the second son of his second marriage – though it was also part of the pattern of grants of Gascon lands to Englishmen, by means of which the government of Henry VI sought to create an English vested interest in the reconquest of the Aquitaine.43 The subsequent loss of English-held territory in France means that Sir Louis is unlikely to have derived any long-term benefit from this grant. It is also doubtful whether, in the end, Louis derived any great benefit from his father’s will. As we have already noted, the curious grant of probate relating to the will of his brother, Lord Lisle, reflected the conflict of interests which existed between the dowager Countess of Shrewsbury and her children on the one hand, and the second Earl of Shrewsbury on the other.
It is possible therefore that Louis was largely left to make his own way in the world, and he may have attempted to secure for himself by force of arms, either some part of the Berkeley inheritance, or lands which had belonged to his father. In September 1457, there is the record of a ‘pardon to the king’s serjeant, Lewis Talbot, knight, of all treasons, offences, felonies, mis-prisions, murders, forfeitures and contempts before 29 August last, and all actions, suits, quarrels and demands which the king could have against him’. This seems to imply that Eleanor’s eldest surviving brother might then have been involved in disputes of some kind in England.44 Subsequently, in 1458, the ‘declaration of Nicholas Alderley concerning variances and troubles between Sir Louis Talbot, Knight, and John Botlere of Badminton co. Gloucester, [e]squier, for lands and tenements in Tresham and Kilcote’, indicates that there had been further disturbances.45 Tresham, in Gloucestershire, is in the vicinity of Nibley, Wotton-under-Edge and Kingswood and seems likely to have been part of the Berkeley lands. Kilcote, on the other hand, is about 12 miles north of Tresham and 3 miles east of Ross-on-Wye, at no great distance from the Earl of Shrewsbury’s seat at Goodrich Castle. Sir Louis’ claim to it may therefore possibly have been inherited from his father.
Sir Louis Talbot died in 1458. His will was proved in October of that year, though it had been drawn up several years earlier. In it Louis describes himself as ‘of sound mind but sick in body’.46 The phrase is somewhat conventional in this context, yet its use on this occasion suggests that the young man may have been in poor health during the final years of his life. On the other hand his recent involvement in ‘troubles’ means that the possibility that he was injured in some conflict with John Boteler and then died of his wounds cannot be discounted.
Louis left practically everything to his mother, and declared that his burial should be ‘according to the wishes of my mother, the Lady Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury’.47 Where he was ultimately buried is not known. Wrexham church and Gresford church are both obvious contenders, but no monument to him survives in either.48 By the end of 1458, of Eleanor’s immediate birth family, only her mother, her sister and one brother now remained alive. Moreover, a further and even more significant bereavement was shortly to befall her.