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From: John Carmi Parsons < >
Subject: Re: Eleanor of Castile / Edward's fidelity
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1999 18:50:13 -0400 (EDT)


I discuss the very slight and doubtful evidence for Botetourt's royal
paternity in *Eleanor of Castile*. For reasons which defy interpretation,
Botetourt's name was written in among those of Edward I's children in a
genealogical vignette in one manuscript (and one manuscript only) of the
Hayles Abbey chronicle in the British Library. Whatever was originally
written where Botetourt's name appears was first erased, and his name
added over the erasure with the description "nothus" (bastard). But the
genealogical tables through this MS are highly suspect--Henry III is
credited with a daughter Matilda, for example, and King John is given a
son William, neither of whom is known from any other source.

That Botetourt was a royal bastard is counter-indicated by a number of
other points. As Noel Denholm-Young remarks (*History and Heraldry, 1254
to 1310*) we know the names of several of Botetourt's brothers, and he
bore the same arms as they did, allowing for the then-current practice of
differencing arms merely by changing tinctures. It is, however, an error
on Denholm-Young's part (perpetuated in Given-Wilson's *Royal Bastards of
England*) that Botetourt inherited the manor of Mendlesham in Suffolk; it
came to him by marriage. Given-Wilson in fact relegates Botetourt to his
"doubtful" category (p. 179).

Finally, we possess a roll of the letters dispatched by the future Edward
II in 1304-05. These were published in the 1940s by Hilda Johnstone, who
later wrote a brief biography of Edward II as prince of Wales (1944),
based in part on these letters. In several of the letters, young Edward
shows that he was aware of the kinship that existed between himself and
the descendants of the OOW children of his granduncle Richard of Cornwall;
these individuals are all clearly and explicitly called the prince's
cousins or kinsmen. A number of the letters are addressed directly to
John Botetourt, who was by 1304-05 a royal justice--but in none of these
letters does Edward give the slightest indication, either in the form of
address or in the letters' content, that Botetourt might have been his brother.

John Parsons

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, ED MANN wrote:

> John Yohalem wrote:
> >
> > There is no record of even an affair, much less a child, of Edward I with
> > anyone other than his wives.
>
> Alison Weir lists, but calls "still subject to some doubt" Edward I's
> parentage of John Botetourt.
> See BRF:88.
>
> --
> FWIW; AFAIK; IMHO; YMMV; yadda, yadda, yadda.
>
> Regards, Ed Mann mailto:
>
> References:
> BRF = Weir, _Britain's_Royal_Families_, [page].
>
>

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