Bona of Savoy.
Eleanor’s powerful uncle, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, had been a strong supporter of his cousin, Edward IV, in the latter’s work to win and hold the crown. As a result the Earl of Warwick was generally seen (and saw himself) as wielding great power and influence. As the Yorkist hold on the kingdom was consolidated in 1464, Richard Neville thought to use his power to influence Edward IV in what was to be one of the most important decisions of the reign: the choice of a suitable bride to share the throne with him and perpetuate the dynasty.
Richard Neville may well have been aware that, for a time, in 1461, his wife’s niece, Eleanor Talbot, had attracted the king’s attention, but it is clear that, in 1464 at least, he knew nothing of the king’s marriage with her. He likewise clearly knew nothing of the king’s relationship with Elizabeth Widville. What he will have seen (because it was, to a degree, public knowledge) was that the king’s interest in Eleanor had waned by mid 1462, and that Edward had engaged in relationships with a mistress and also with a partner of his own sex. To Warwick, who had his eye on a foreign royal bride for Edward IV, the first piece of news may not have been unwelcome. As for the king’s more recent attachments, while they reinforced the eclipse of Eleanor, they were clearly of no dynastic significance.
Thus, as far as Warwick knew, the king was free to marry. In 1463 and 1464 he explored various possible partners for his cousin, and although nothing was formally agreed, the king appeared willing for Warwick to carry on searching.1 Then in mid September 1464, at a council in Reading, Warwick urged the king to agree to his latest proposed dynastic alliance, which comprised a marriage to the King of France’s sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy. To the astonishment not only of Warwick but also of everyone else, the king blithely announced that such an alliance was impossible because he was already married. Even more astonishing to those few people like Canon Stillington and the Duchess of Norfolk who may have known the nature of Edward’s attachment to Eleanor must have been the fact that the bride whom the king now named was not Eleanor Talbot, but Elizabeth Widville.
Bona of Savoy.
It is an interesting question why Edward IV, having entered into a secret contract with Elizabeth Widville in May 1464, should then have decided to make the matter public in September. Pressure from the Earl of Warwick for the king to agree to marry the third proposed bride whom he had found in two years hardly seems an adequate explanation. Later, Warwick would press Edward to arrange a French (rather than a Burgundian) royal marriage for his sister, Margaret of York. On that occasion Edward apparently experienced absolutely no difficulty in simply saying no to him.
One possible explanation of the king’s behaviour is that Elizabeth Widville found herself pregnant in September 1464. Or perhaps she had merely told the king that she was pregnant, in order to pressurise him into acknowledging her marriage. If she was really pregnant in September 1464, obviously she must have miscarried shortly afterwards, for Elizabeth of York, her first child by the king, was not born until 11 February 1465/6.
The king’s announcement must most particularly have astonished and perplexed his keeper of the privy seal, Canon Robert Stillington, who had been present when the king had contracted himself to Eleanor.2 If Canon Stillington now sought further information regarding the king’s Widville alliance then, as an expert in canon law, he cannot have been reassured by what he learned. The marriage to Elizabeth Widville had been contracted several months previously, on 1 May 1464. This meant that it postdated by about three years the king’s contract with Eleanor. The Widville alliance was therefore bigamous, and any children borne to the king by Elizabeth Widville would be bastards.
As we have already seen, in a bigamy case of this kind it was only if the second ‘marriage’ had been celebrated openly and in public that it would have had anything to redeem it. Such circumstances would not indeed have made the second union a valid marriage, but because Elizabeth Widville would then be presumed to have entered into her contract with Edward in good faith, any children she produced could have been recognised as legitimate, and the church would have reserved its opprobrium for the king and Eleanor. Indeed, as previously observed, Eleanor would have been held culpable on the grounds that she ought to have raised objections to the new ‘marriage’ at the wedding service when the priest invited those present to voice any known obstacles to the proposed Widville union.
However, it now became clear that the Widville ‘marriage’ had not been solemnised in a public ceremony. It had, in fact, been a secret rite, celebrated clandestinely at Grafton Regis, reportedly with the bride’s mother as a witness.3 This meant that Eleanor, who had had no knowledge of what was going on, had also had no opportunity to protest, or stop the Widville ‘marriage’ from taking place. Thus she was an innocent party in the eyes of the Church, while, under canon law, not only was the Widville ‘marriage’ invalid, but also any children born of it would be illegitimate.4 The fact that the Widville marriage was subsequently publicly acknowledged by the king was completely irrelevant.5
What, if anything, Canon Stillington did about all this in the autumn of 1464, we do not know. Strictly speaking, of course, since he was not one of the three partners, he was not required to do anything. Even so, he may have seen it as his duty to privately warn Edward of the possible consequences for any future children that might be born as a result of his Widville union. The fact that, as we have seen, the king determined, at about this point in time, to appoint Robert Stillington to the next vacant English bishopric (even in the face of initial difficulties with Rome) suggests that Edward was very conscious that Stillington possessed dangerous knowledge, and that he wished to placate him. Thus, the episcopal nomination may possibly suggest that the two men had discussed the situation. It can certainly be construed as evidence that Edward IV wished to encourage Stillington to keep quiet about his earlier contract with Eleanor Talbot.
Of course, had Eleanor chosen to dispute the Widville marriage in the ecclesiastical courts, she could have cited Stillington as a witness and he would then have been obliged to give evidence under oath. Eleanor, however, did nothing. Possible reasons for her inaction have already been considered in chapter 15 (above). Since Stillington himself was not a party to any dispute in respect of the king’s marriage – and since there was, in any case, no formal dispute – he too was at liberty to do nothing, and this is the course that he seems to have adopted at this stage. Indeed, it is very difficult to see what else he could have done. He had, after all, been confronted by Edward IV with a fait accompli.
Stillington’s responsibilities in the matter only began to change when Elizabeth Widville started producing children by the king. The birth of such children raised issues that were not past, but present and future. The present-tense issue arose with the birth of the first living child on 11 February 1465/6. Hitherto the heir presumptive to the throne had been Edward’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence. But George had now suddenly been displaced by a child who was actually illegitimate. It is likely that, from that moment onwards, Stillington’s conscience began to be troubled. He could no longer evade the uncomfortable realisation that, if he outlived the king, he might one day be forced to speak out in public. Indeed, it is possible that as early as the late 1460s he may have felt obliged to raise the issue in private with the Duke of Clarence. Interestingly, in the late 1460s George and his father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, while in no way opposing Edward IV, certainly began to take very firm action to remove the Widville family from power and to restore George to the position of heir to the throne.
The subsequent birth of a male child to Edward IV and Elizabeth Widville – Edward, Prince of Wales, who was born in November 1470 – made the situation even more serious. And the subsequent birth of two further sons to Edward IV and Elizabeth Widville (Richard of Shrewsbury in 1473 and George in 1477) made matters worse. It is therefore highly significant that during the period 1473–77 Edward IV appears to have become suspicious that Stillington may have mentioned the Talbot marriage to his younger brother, George, Duke of Clarence. We shall return to this point shortly.
Originally appointed keeper of the privy seal by Henry VI, Stillington had been retained in this post by Edward IV, who clearly trusted and liked him. Indeed, Edward stunningly demonstrated his faith in Stillington by entrusting him with the Talbot secret. He also gave him the post of chancellor. As for Stillington, he seems to have been (or become) a sincere supporter of the cause of the house of York, and must have viewed the prospect of renewed succession disputes – a danger clearly implicit in the dubious Widville ‘marriage’ – with horror and alarm.
Although a priest, Stillington had bastard children of his own from his student days in Oxford, so, if the marriage question ever was discussed between himself and the king, he would have been able to address the issue with Edward frankly, man to man. As a result Edward may have learned from Stillington that he personally had nothing to fear immediately, as long as Eleanor either held her tongue or was kept silent. This was because, according to the normal procedure of the period, it would have been for Eleanor, as the wronged party, to initiate any legal proceedings against the Widville ‘marriage’ before the Church courts.6
Edward IV had a strong streak of laissez-faire in his make-up. As Eleanor’s public silence lengthened, any anxieties and embarrassment that the king may initially have experienced were probably dispelled. It is even possible that Edward received some form of assurance from Eleanor of her lack of interest in the matter, because, as we have seen, there is circumstantial evidence that while Eleanor lived Edward took some account of her wishes. If he had not already done so, it may have been at about this time that, in some secrecy, Edward granted Eleanor property in Wiltshire.7 It is also notable that his treatment of old Lord Sudeley changed very markedly the minute Eleanor had breathed her last. We shall explore the evidence for this in chapter 18. As for Canon Stillington, we have already noted that Edward nominated him to the next vacant episcopal see in England. In view of Edward’s subsequent reactions to any attempt to refer to the matter of the Talbot marriage, this was most probably the king’s tactful way of indicating to his minister that everyone’s best interests would be served by his silence.
In public terms, Bishop Stillington maintained silence for a number of years and went along with the status quo. Ultimately, however, he was to show by his actions that he remained troubled at heart by what the king had done, particularly in so far as it affected the succession. Also, as we have seen, he may possibly have raised the matter with Clarence in the late 1460s or the 1470s. He certainly brought it to public attention in 1483, following the death of Edward IV. We shall see in chapter 18 how far-reaching were the effects of his explosive revelations.
Meanwhile, in 1464 Eleanor, in her Norfolk retreat, remained content to let matters rest. For her this probably felt the safest way forward. There was therefore no public action that Stillington or anyone else could take. Thus, in 1464, when the Widville marriage was first announced, nothing seems to have been said by anyone, either to Eleanor’s uncle the Earl of Warwick or to the person most affected by Edward’s marital affairs, his brother George, Duke of Clarence (then heir presumptive to the throne). At this early stage, there was, after all, still the potential hope that the Widville union might prove childless. It was therefore Warwick who, together with Clarence, escorted Elizabeth Widville to her enthronement at Reading Abbey on Michaelmas Day (29 September) 1464.8
The following year, on 26 May, the new queen was crowned at Westminster Abbey. Archbishop Bourchier placed the crown upon her head, and John, Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshall of England, though not yet of age, presided over the ceremonial. If the Duchess of Norfolk, Eleanor’s sister Elizabeth, was present, she must have watched with mixed emotions her young husband and his uncle, the archbishop, presiding over the coronation of her sister’s rival. However, perhaps significantly, she is not named among the guests, despite the fact that both her husband and his grandmother, the senior dowager Duchess of Norfolk, are listed as having been present. Nevertheless, her – and Eleanor’s – nephew Thomas, the young Viscount Lisle, certainly attended, for he was made a Knight of the Bath.9 Eleanor’s last surviving brother, Humphrey Talbot, was also knighted by Edward IV towards the end of 1464 or early in 1465. Futhermore, at about the same time, the king announced a retrospective grant to Eleanor’s mother.10 Possibly at this time he felt some need to placate the Talbot family.
Eleanor’s uncle by marriage, Richard Neville, the ‘Kingmaker’, Earl of Warwick.