In 1459, and probably towards the end of that year, Eleanor, who was then approaching her 23rd birthday, became a widow. How Sir Thomas Boteler died is unknown. Although it is possible that he was either killed or injured at the battle of Blore Heath, it is equally possible that he died of some illness. The earliest surviving mention of his death is in a deed issued by his father on 15 January 1459/60.1 It was at about this time that Ralph, Lord Sudeley, built the beautiful chapel (St Mary’s Church) at Sudeley Castle (see plate 3). No doubt a new chapel was already planned as part of the overall rebuilding of the castle, but possibly this chapel was in part conceived as a memorial for Ralph Boteler’s only son.
Seen today from the outside, the building survives substantially as Lord Sudeley left it:
all with embattled parapets. The (renewed) windows are Perpendicular, with carved stops to the hood-moulds, those of the west doorway representing Henry VI and Queen Margaret (Boteler supported the Lancastrians), though the figures in the niches are nineteenth century … [The interior, however, damaged during the Civil War,] is now the creation of Sir George Gilbert Scott, c.1859–63. The church comprises a nave and chancel without structural division.2
This chapel at Sudeley would make a fitting commemoration of the lost hopes of the Boteler family, for the death of Sir Thomas had put an end to Lord Sudeley’s dynastic ambitions. He now lost interest in his recently acquired Hertfordshire manor of the Moor which, in 1460, he conveyed to trustees: John Eure, Thomas Clopton and others. These, in turn, conveyed the Hertfordshire manor back to the abbot.3 We shall meet John Eure and Thomas Clopton again later. Lord Sudeley’s return of the Moor was accompanied by an agreement whereby the abbey of St Albans undertook to pray for the good estate of Ralph and his wife and for the repose of the soul of their dead son.
On 28 August 1462, Ralph and Eleanor suffered a further bereavement, when Elizabeth Norbury, Lady Sudeley, followed her son into the grave. Eleanor had probably lived under Lady Sudeley’s care during the first three years of her marriage, and must have come to know her mother-in-law well. As for Lord Sudeley, he and Elizabeth had been married for more than forty years. Though there had perhaps been frequent separations during that time, Ralph had always had a wife and family to come home to. Now he was left entirely alone.
Probably he felt lonely. At all events, on 8 January 1462/3, a little over a year after Elizabeth Norbury’s death, he married the widowed Alice Deincourt (Lovell), who was to outlive him. This second marriage cannot have been in the hope of a replacement Sudeley heir, for Alice Deincourt was about 60 years old when Ralph married her.4 Perhaps she was an old acquaintance and Ralph was feeling lonely.
Eleanor also seems to have known the second Lady Sudeley. It was at about the time of Ralph Boteler’s second marriage that Eleanor initiated her endowment at Corpus Christi College Cambridge. While her original documentation does not survive, the later (extant) indentures specifically require prayers for the souls of Eleanor herself, of her parents, of Sir Thomas Boteler, ‘of Ralph Buttelar, Lord of Sudeley, and of his wife, and of the parents of the said Thomas Buttelar’. This wording, which at first sight seems strange, becomes intelligible when Lord Sudeley’s two marriages are taken into account. The prayers for ‘Lord Sudeley and his wife’ were clearly intended for Ralph and Alice Deincourt, while the prayers for ‘the parents of Thomas Buttelar’ were for Ralph and Elizabeth Norbury. Thus both Lady Sudeleys were included in Eleanor’s commemoration.
While the details of Eleanor’s relationship with the new Lady Sudeley remain obscure, the fact that they were apparently acquainted is interesting, for Alice Deincourt was (by her first marriage) the grandmother of Francis, Viscount Lovell. We have already noted, through Eleanor’s relationship with the Catesby family, her connection with the future King Richard III’s ‘Cat’, as listed in the famous two-line verse of 1484:
The Catte the Ratte and Lovell owyr dogge
Rulyn all Engeland undyr an hogge.5
We now perceive that she also had a connection with Richard’s ‘Dog’.
Following the death of Thomas Boteler, the widowed Eleanor had automatically retained, in dower, the manors that Lord Sudeley had granted to her and her husband on 10 May 1453.6 These comprised the three Warwickshire manors of Griff, Burton Dassett and Fenny Compton.7 There was no obvious reason why any change should have been made to this arrangement, and in the normal course of events Eleanor would have held these three manors for the remainder of her life, and upon her death they would have reverted to Lord Sudeley or his heirs.
In the thirty-ninth year of the reign of Henry VI (1460/61), however, for reasons which are unclear, Eleanor returned Griff to her father-in-law.8 It is difficult to understand why Eleanor should have surrendered one of her manors in this way, although such a surrender is not unique.9 The clear implication in her inquisition post-mortem is that the initiative for this transfer was Eleanor’s, for we are told that Lord Sudeley ‘agreed’ to it. Since, in so far as one can judge, both Eleanor and her sister Elizabeth subsequently remained on good terms with members of Lord Sudeley’s family, they cannot have harboured any resentment, and the transfer must therefore have been amicable. The surrender cannot be dated very precisely, but it seems highly likely that Eleanor’s return of Griff to Lord Sudeley was linked to, and in fact, immediately followed, another transaction which took place at about this time.
On 15 January 38 Henry VI (1459/60), Lord Sudeley had issued a quitclaim to Lady Eleanor in respect of the manor of Fenny Compton.10 By this quitclaim he resigned all title to this manor, in Eleanor’s favour. From this point onwards the 23-year-old Eleanor held Fenny Compton absolutely, in her own right, and not in dower.
The reason for Lord Sudeley’s action likewise remains a matter for conjecture, but it may argue a degree of regard and affection for Eleanor on the part of her father-in-law, which Eleanor probably reciprocated.11 ‘Coresidence gave women an opportunity to develop a warm relationship with their husbands’ parents.’12 It is possible that the transactions between Eleanor and Lord Sudeley in respect of Fenny Compton and Griff also parallel the contemporary agreement between Lord Sudeley and St Alban’s Abbey in respect of the manor of the Moor (see above). In the case of the Hertfordshire manor, Lord Sudeley – now without direct heirs to provide for – traded landed property in exchange for prayers for the souls of himself, his wife and his son. It is possible that his agreement with Eleanor was along similar lines, for it must have been at about this time that Eleanor was planning her endowment at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and it can be no accident that this endowment mentioned not only Eleanor’s birth family but also her relatives by marriage. Nor can it be accidental that Eleanor ultimately gave Fenny Compton to her sister Elizabeth, who bore the responsibility, as Eleanor’s executrix, for maintaining the Corpus Christi endowment.
The total value of Eleanor’s jointure as a widow is difficult to assess. The value of Fenny Compton is not precisely recorded,13 and it is unclear what other lands Eleanor held and when she acquired them. Nor is it entirely clear which of Eleanor’s lands (other than Burton Dassett) were strictly speaking part of her jointure.
English aristocratic widows’ jointures during the period 1450–90 seem to have ranged in value from £10 a year to well over £1,000 a year. Daughters and wives of knights tended to have the smaller incomes, as might be expected, generally less than £50. Daughters and wives of peers were expected to be better off than this (though to have a jointure which produced an income of more than £500 a year was quite exceptional).14 Eleanor’s manor of Burton Dassett produced an annual income of just over £30. The surrendered manor of Griff had yielded an annual income of about £20.15 Assuming that Fenny Compton brought in at least as much as Griff, Eleanor’s annual income from her two Warwickshire manors must have surpassed £50 in total. Since Eleanor held, in addition, a manor in Wiltshire, together with adjacent rents and other sources of income, her total annual revenue may well have amounted to £75 or more.16 This was a reasonable sum – though not lavish. As a total income, it approached the 10 per cent of the value of Eleanor’s dowry, which would normally have been expected to constitute her annual revenue from her jointure alone.17
It was not unusual for noble widows to hold property above and beyond what constituted their jointure. Usually any such property was a gift or legacy from a husband. Occasionally the woman herself purchased land. Fenny Compton was not the only manor that Eleanor held in her own right during her widowhood. At some stage she also acquired the above-mentioned property in Wiltshire, which we must examine in some detail since it may be connected to Eleanor’s relationship with King Edward IV.
The Wiltshire property comprised the manor of Oare-under-Savernake, together with ‘divers messuages, lands, tenements, rents, reversions and services’ in ‘Draycote, Coldecot and Chikeladerigg’, all in the same county (or counties).18 There are various difficulties in respect of these Wiltshire properties, not the least of which is the fact that neither in the Wiltshire archives, nor in the national archives does any record appear to survive of Eleanor’s tenure of them. It is also not entirely clear what is meant, in this case, by ‘the manor of Oare-under-Savernake’.
Oare and the nearby forest of Savernake are situated about 10 miles west of Newbury, a little to the south of Marlborough, in north-east Wiltshire (near the Berkshire border). Draycote is clearly Draycott FitzPayne, which neighbours Oare. Chikeladerigg (Chicklade Ridge) refers to Chicklade, a tiny hamlet in south-west Wiltshire, now transected by the A303. Chicklade seems too small to have qualified as a village in the Middle Ages. It has no medieval (or later) parish church. It lies about 10 miles west of Stonehenge and 5 miles south of Warminster, near the county boundary with Dorset. The ‘Great Ridge’, where Eleanor’s land lay, rises up steeply on the northern side of the hamlet. ‘Coldecot’ is more of a puzzle. It may be Calcutt in Wiltshire, or possibly Caldecote in Warwickshire (north of Nuneaton).
How and when had Eleanor acquired her holdings in Wiltshire? There is no clue in the Fenny Compton archive in the Warwickshire County Record Office, which is the only surviving source to mention these holdings. There seem to be three possibilities. The Wiltshire lands might perhaps have come to Eleanor from her own family. Alternatively they might have been a gift from the king, designed, perhaps, to help to maintain Eleanor – or to keep her quiet. The third possibility is that Eleanor herself purchased them.
The last of these options is difficult to evaluate. Did Eleanor have sufficient income to purchase land and manors? As for the other possibilities, for Eleanor to have brought landed property from her natal family to her Boteler marriage would have been highly unusual, given that she was not an heiress.19 Rather, Eleanor would have been expected to bring a cash dowry to her marriage. Indeed, we have already seen that she did so. ‘A woman’s dowry constituted her inheritance and forestalled her making any further claim on the family estates, although fathers could, and often did, leave their daughters additional legacies in their wills.’20 Eleanor would have had no claim on family lands, and is extremely unlikely to have acquired any unless by any chance her father chose to leave some to her.
In point of fact, however, no bequest to Eleanor is mentioned in the first Earl of Shrewsbury’s will, nor in the wills of Lord Lisle or Sir Louis Talbot, the two brothers who predeceased her.21 As for the possibility that Eleanor might have been left the Wiltshire property by her mother, the dowager Countess of Shrewsbury, who died on Sunday 14 June 1467,22 there is a major difficulty with this explanation. Following Margaret’s death, writs of diem clausit extremum were almost instantly dispatched to the escheators of the numerous counties within which she had held lands. These comprised Gloucestershire, Somerset, Staffordshire, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Devon, Worcestershire and Warwickshire. Writs were also sent to the mayors of Lincoln and London in their capacity as escheators of those cities.23 No writ was dispatched to the escheator of Wiltshire. The clear implication is that Margaret held no lands in that county. She cannot, therefore, have left any Wiltshire property to her daughter, Eleanor.
The lack of clarity as to what exactly Eleanor held in Wiltshire complicates the discussion. The forest of Savernake itself seems to have been under the control of Edward IV’s great uncle, Edward, Duke of York, earlier in the fifteenth century. There is a record of a grant made by him in favour of the Carmelite friars, giving them the right to collect fuel there.24 Subsequently the forest was certainly in the hands of the crown and was conferred on the royal consort. In 1452 Henry VI granted it to his queen, Margaret of Anjou, and in 1466 Edward IV gave it to Elizabeth Widville.25 If Eleanor’s Wiltshire property included any part of the forest, such a gift can only have come to her from the king.
As for her manor of ‘Draycote’, by a very curious coincidence the manor of Draycott FitzPayne was held by the Skillings, the family to which Elizabeth Skilling (wife of Thomas Wayte, who was the reputed father of a mistress of Edward IV) belonged.26 However, there was also a second estate at Draycott, in addition to the one held by the Skillings. By 1242 this second estate was in the hands of the Berkeley family ‘and was still part of the Lordship of Berkeley in 1401 … Although said to be in Draycot until at least 1442 it became part of Oare tithing and the base of the reputed manor of Oare.’27
It is tempting to conclude that this second Draycott manor formed part of Eleanor’s holdings, and was an inheritance which came to her from her mother’s Berkeley ancestors. Eleanor’s choice of words when referring to her Wiltshire property, while in itself proving nothing, could be consistent with such a conclusion.28 In fact, however, as we have seen, it seems impossible that Eleanor acquired any land in Wiltshire from her mother. Moreover, there are other difficulties about this explanation, which relate to the identities of the sub-tenants of the Wiltshire lands.
The sub-tenants of the Berkeleys’ manor of Oare were the Cotel family in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the lease was inherited by the Paultons in the fifteenth century. ‘Before 1442 … William Paulton (d.1450) settled Oare on his daughter Gillian when she married John Cheney.’29 Subsequently the Berkeleys’ manor of Oare remained in the hands of the Cheney family as sub-tenants until at least the late seventeenth century. However, the Fenny Compton archive contains a clear and unequivocal statement that all Eleanor’s Wiltshire lands had passed, by 1474, into the hands of one Thomas Rogers.30 This implies that whatever land Eleanor held in Wiltshire, her estate there cannot possibly have included the manor once held by the Berkeley family.
It would, of course, be extremely helpful if any confirmatory material in respect of Eleanor’s Wiltshire tenures survived in the Wiltshire archives. Sadly, nothing of the sort has been found there, though there is certainly corroboration of the existence of John Cheney, and of his family’s connection with the manor of Oare.31 Until and unless further information comes to light, mysteries will remain in respect of Eleanor’s Wiltshire land holdings.
One interesting question requiring consideration is where Eleanor resided, following the death of Sir Thomas Boteler. Even if she already held the Wiltshire property at that stage (which seems unlikely), clearly she cannot have lived there, since there was a sub-tenant in residence. During her marriage, Eleanor and Thomas may well, from time to time, have visited the de Sudeley manor house at Griff, but after 1461, at the latest, the surrender of Griff to Lord Sudeley would have ruled out this possibility. This leaves only the manor houses at Burton Dassett and Fenny Compton, either or both of which might have been used by Thomas and Eleanor during their marriage.
Neither of these medieval manor houses is now extant,32 but it is probable that Eleanor was living in one of them at the time of her husband’s death, and presumably she remained in residence, for a time at least. It is also apparent, from records of the movements of Edward IV, that in 1460 and 1461, while staying in Warwickshire, the young Yorkist king may have visited either or both of these manor houses, and may have married Eleanor in one of them (see below). However, at some point after Thomas Boteler’s death, Eleanor’s main focus of attention seems to have shifted from Warwickshire to East Anglia.
The Boteler family had links of its own with East Anglia, where, at various times, Lord Sudeley had held portions of a number of manors.33 The pedigree roll which had been commissioned to mark Eleanor’s marriage to Thomas was of East Anglian manufacture. Also, Lord Sudeley and his second wife were formerly commemorated in a stained glass window at Chilton church, near Sudbury (Suffolk).34 It is conceivable, therefore, that Eleanor initially began visiting the eastern counties in the company of her father-in-law. There is no indication, however, that Eleanor herself ever held any of the Boteler family’s manors in this part of the country. It is therefore likely that, at some point after becoming a young widow, Eleanor sought the company of her younger sister Elizabeth, who, in 1461, had become Duchess of Norfolk.
Probably Eleanor first visited her sister’s household at Framlingham Castle, a building which is still standing. The modern visitor, gazing at the castle across the fields and over the mere, or approaching it from the town, could be forgiven for thinking that this chief dwelling of the Mowbrays (and of the Bigods before them) has survived the centuries intact, for the outer curtain walls and towers, built of flint, are remarkably well preserved. Alas, when one crosses the now dry moat and takes the path that John Mowbray and Elizabeth Talbot must often have taken, through the castle gateway,35 the illusion is shattered. Inside the walls almost nothing now survives of what they would have known. Nevertheless, the scene that would have presented itself to their eyes can be reconstructed.
The gatehouse itself was a substantial building, containing two chambers. To the right, just inside the gateway, the all-important castle well stood then as now, but in their day it was covered by a small building with accommodation above. Against the wall to the left (west) stood domestic service buildings (footings of which remain), including the kitchen, distinguished by its tall, pointed roof with louvres through which the smoke and heat could escape.
Further to the north, but still on the left-hand side, on the site now occupied by the later poor house, stood the thirteenth-century great hall, adjoined by two chambers at its northern end. An inventory, taken in 1524, calls these ‘the chamber at the hall end’ and ‘the inner chamber at the hall end’.36 At the southern end of the great hall, between the hall and the separate building which housed the kitchen, were ‘the great chamber’, ‘the dining chamber’, ‘the chamber at the great chamber end’, and another ‘inner chamber’.
Opposite this thirteenth-century block, abutting the right-hand (eastern) wall, stood the castle chapel, next to which was the original great hall, dating, like the chapel, from about 1150. Replaced by the newer thirteenth-century great hall on the opposite side of the enclosure, the old great hall had been converted to other uses, and housed the ‘wardrobe’ (which was a sort of storehouse) and probably the armoury, as well as a room known as ‘the chapel chamber’, which was perhaps used for guests. One of the windows in the outer wall of the old great hall had been recently enlarged to form a doorway, through which the duchess and her ladies could pass by a little footbridge across the moat to reach the new private garden in the deer park. Between the chapel and the gatehouse, against the eastern curtain wall, ran timber buildings housing the stables.
The main residential block, where the chambers of the Duke and Duchess were to be found, was freestanding within the open space enclosed by the curtain walls. It was probably located between the chapel and the main gate, for an aerial photograph of the site shows signs of what could be the rectangular foundations of a building towards the western end of the castle precinct.37 This block probably dated from the late fourteenth century or later. It may even have been erected by the first Mowbray duke. It was described in the seventeenth century by Leverland. ‘Between the hall and the chapel, fronting the great gate of the castle, was a large chamber with several rooms and a cloister under it.’38
The ‘several rooms’ that were on the first floor of this block are probably those listed in the 1524 inventory as ‘the Lord’s chamber’, ‘Lady Oxinford’s chamber’, ‘the inner chamber to Lady Oxinford’s chamber’, ‘the young ladies chamber’ and ‘the inner chamber there’. The Lord’s chamber was doubtless the room used by the fourth Duke of Norfolk in his day, and Elizabeth Talbot’s room was probably the one which the inventory calls (after its most recent inhabitant) ‘Lady Oxinford’s chamber’.
The 1524 inventory helps us to picture the interior furnishings of the castle in John and Elizabeth’s time. After all, the second Howard duke, who died in 1524, was born in the same year as Elizabeth Talbot, though he outlived her. Also, the inventory specifies that many of the furnishings were old, which implies that they had been at Framlingham for a long time, so that John and Elizabeth may well have owned them, and Eleanor may well have seen them when staying at Framlingham.
The whole castle was extensively hung with tapestries, some of which the inventory describes as ‘counterfeit Arras’. The tapestries in the great hall were of the kind which the inventory calls ‘verders’: rich tapestries ornamented with representations of trees or other vegetation. This kind of tapestry was hung in many rooms of the castle. The tapestries in the great hall, in addition to verdant foliage, also had many animals depicted, while in the great chamber were tapestries with depictions of the labours of Hercules. The dining chamber was 56ft long by 26ft wide. This room is known to have had glazed windows (as no doubt many of the other rooms did too) and a tiled floor. Its walls were hung with tapestries depicting one of the Sybils, and on one wall hung a large mirror, perhaps a convex glass, intended to reflect the light, similar to that shown on the rear wall in van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Marriage’ portrait. The dining chamber also housed a chair upholstered in tawny velvet, fringed with red, white and green silk, with a cushion of black velvet and blue satin.
Many (perhaps all) of the chambers had fireplaces. We know that this was the case in the Lord’s chamber, because ‘anderons’ (fire dogs) are mentioned there. No doubt Eleanor’s brother-in-law, John Mowbray, slept here in the 1460s. There was no bed in this room in 1524, but the ‘large bed of state’ stored in the wardrobe probably belonged here. It was hung with curtains of cloth of gold, white damask and black velvet, and had a valence of yellow, green and red silk. The Lord’s chamber had ‘verders’ on the walls and curtains at the windows.
The room which was probably once Elizabeth Talbot’s chamber was also hung with ‘verders’. The bed was of wood panelling. Like most of the great beds of the period, it was not a ‘four-poster’. Instead, it had a suspended canopy (the ‘seler’) from which the curtains hung. At the head of the bed the area between the bed itself and the seler was also covered in fabric. This part of the bed was known as the ‘tester’, from the French word for ‘head’. In this case the tester and seler were of black and purple velvet and the bed had a counterpane to match. The underside of the seler was lined with green satin, and there were panels of matching green satin in the centre of the counterpane and forming the middle panel of the tester. The bed curtains were of yellow and purple sarcenet, and the bed had the usual valence of green, yellow and red silk. There were carpets in the window embrasures, and cushions, perhaps on window seats.
The chapel and the old great hall had Norman windows, small, with rounded arches. The east window of the chapel partly survives, as it cut through the outer walls of the castle. It was flanked by two smaller arcaded recesses. The chapel had a high, pitched roof with lead guttering.39 The interior of the chapel was hung with Arras-style tapestries. The high altar had a reredos of tapestry, showing the crucifixion, and over it hung a baldachin of blue satin powdered with gold (perhaps in the form of stars), with a valence of white, red and green silk. On the altar stood a jewelled crucifix of silver parcel gilt, and two pairs of matching candlesticks. Before the altar was a carpet of English manufacture. There were two side altars, with silver gilt statues of the Virgin and of St John. Both side altars had silver gilt candlesticks. The chapel had ‘a pair of organs with four stops’, and all the necessary equipment for its functioning, including many sets of rich vestments, altar frontals, altar cloths, silver gilt chalices, pattens, a processional cross, censers, a silver incense boat, silver cruets, a silver holy water bucket and sprinkler, a silver sanctus bell and valuable illuminated antiphoners, plainsong books, missals bound in crimson or purple velvet, and books of the gospels, bound in silver gilt. There were eight albs for children – either altar boys or choirboys.
In all, Framlingham Castle had some twenty-nine rooms. There were only eight bedsteads in the castle, but in addition there were ‘livery featherbeds’ and ‘mattresses for men and grooms’ providing beds for a total of ninety-five people. At the time of the 1524 inventory the stables at Framlingham contained thirty-three horses, with three more stabled at Earl Soham Lodge, a few miles away. The castle’s scullery contained a cauldron and an assortment of cooking pots and pans, made of brass, together with household vessels of pewter, but there was also tableware of silver or silver gilt. Some of this was clearly old, however, and the inventory records that the gold on the silver gilt spoons was worn away, which indicates that they may well have dated from fifty years previously, when John Mowbray and Elizabeth Talbot inhabited the castle. Some of the tapestries and carpets were also said, in 1524, to be old and worn. This inventory, taken at a time when the castle was about to be abandoned and enter its long decline, thus evokes the Framlingham of the 1460s, which Eleanor Talbot would have known.