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From: John Carmi Parsons< >
Subject: Lady Eleanor Butler
Date: 13 Oct 1998 05:13:45 -0700
Most historians are today skeptical of the Eleanor Butler story, chiefly
because it was Richard III's SECOND attempt to establish the illegitimacy
of Edward IV or his descendants.
The first attempt, incredibly enough, was a claim that Edward himself had
been illegitimate. This story probably rested ultimately upon the fact
that Edward had been born outside England, in Rouen. There could, then,
have been some doubts as to the circumstances of his conception and birth,
as there had been with Richard II who had been born in Bordeaux, and who
had against whom there had also been charges that his real father had not
been the Black Prince but a "certain lady-faced priest" who was a member
of Richard's mother's household. In Richard's case, his lack of close
resemblance to the magnificent and warlike Black Prince made it easier for
people to give some credit to these rumors.
What defeated this first claim by Richard was, of course, that in order to
establish Edward's illegitimate, Richard perforce had to claim or imply
that his own mother, Cecily duchess of York, had committed adultery--and
she was still alive in 1483! By some cosmic coincidence, moreover,
Richard dined with Cecily in her London residence at Bayard's Castle on
the evening of the day Richard's partisans had first advanced the claim of
Edward's illegitimacy. Many historians have expressed the wish they had
been a fly on the wall in the dining room that night. Whatever happened,
the story was withdrawn the next day and the Eleanor Butler claim was then
substituted for it.
It is odd that given the clandestine circumstances of Edward IV's real
marriage, to Elizabeth Woodville, Richard never tried to establish that it
was unlawful, except to claim that it was doubtful because Edward had not
consulted his barons about it, as a king should do. The only attempt to
undermine the Woodville marriage was made through the claim that Edward
had previously agreed to marry Lady Eleanor Butler, a daughter of the earl
of Ormond in Ireland.
There were plenty of Eleanor Butlers in the Ormond family, but nobody has
ever succeeded in pointing to one of them as the woman to whom Edward was
supposedly contracted. Nor has the text of such a marriage contract ever
been discovered. When, in 1483, people began to ask if she couldn't be
questioned about the matter, Richard's partisans explained that she had
taken the veil after Edward abandoned her, and had subsequently died--very
convenient, one must say. It's significant that no members of the Butler
family were ever interrogated on the matter, nor did the Church ever issue
any declaration that the Woodville marriage was invalid.
John Parsons
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