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From: John Carmi Parsons< >
Subject: Re: Botetourte
Date: 9 Sep 1998 10:46:31 -0700


Neither Given-Wilson/Curteis nor Edward I's magisterial biographer,
Michael Prestwich (_Edward I_, Berkeley CA/London 1988) accept the
allegation that John Botetourt was a natural son of Edward I. The
evidence is extremely slim: a single MS of the Hayles abbey chronicle
carries Botetourt's name in an isolated roundel in the vignette pedigree
of Edward's children. I have examined this MS in the British library and
found its genealogies riddled with errors--King John is credited with a
son William, for example, and Henry III with a daughter Matilda, neither
of whom is known to have existed. No other contemporary source vouches
for Botetourt's supposed royal filiation. There are many references to him in
royal wardrobe accounts, none of which indicates he was the king's bastard. We
possess a roll of the letters sent out in 1304-05 by Edward of Caernarfon, the
future Edward II; throughout this roll the letters addresses as young Edward's
cousins the descendants of the bastard children of his granduncle Richard of
Cornwall, but significantly the letters never address John Botetourt as
Edward's brother. (See comments in my _Eleanor of Castile_, chapter one, note
149, which actually appears on p. 274).

Noel Denholm-Young's _History and Heraldry_ also refers to Botetourt, and
somewhat confuses the issue by trying to localize him in East Anglia via the
manor of Mendelsham in Suffolk, referring to that estate as if it were the
locus of the Botetourt family proper. In fact it was of the inheritance of
John Botetourt's wife, so it had nothing to do with him or his family before
his marriage.

John Parsons

On 9 Sep 1998, William L. Stone wrote:

> John Botetourte, the natural son of Edward I, was summoned to parliament
> from 1308 until 1324, when he died. He married Maud, daughter of Thomas
> Fitz Otho and had a son Thomas Botetourte, whose line is followed in the
> Complete Peerage, vol. 2, p. 234. This line also appears in Weis,
> Ancestral Roots, 6th Ed., line 216.
>
> Another John Botetourt of Mendlesham, Suffolk, had a daughter Joan who
> married John Knyvet, Esq. M.P. for Huntingfield, 1397/8, who died in 1418.
> (AR6, line 238)
>
> Burke's Dormant and Extinct Peerage, p. 63, makes this second John
> Botetourt the son of Otho Botetourt of Mendlesham, and Otho is the brother
> of the above Thomas and son of the first John Botetourte. Burke does not
> name a wife for Otho, but he states that the second John married Catherine,
> daughter of Sir William Wayland, Knt.
>
> All these folks are ancestors of Margaret Knyvet, ancestress of Anne
> Marbury.
>
> So my question is: Can anyone confirm the parentage of the second John
> Botetourt from a reference more reputable than Burke?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bill Stone
>
>
>

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