If the precontract were true, why didn’t Eleanor come forward when Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth was made public in September 1464? When a young woman addressed this question through the Ricardian newsletter, one member’s smug response was that Eleanor was a lady who would rather hide her secret and seek refuge in the Church than challenge the King’s marriage publicly. This is a specious argument for many reasons. First of all, we know nothing of Eleanor’s character, so it cannot be said for certain that she would by nature rather retreat than fight. It would be no small thing for which she was fighting, but for the title of Queen itself. Ricardians cannot respond that it would be dangerous for her to do so. After all, the Ricardians claim that Bishop Stillington had knowledge of the precontract, and he still managed, during the time of Edward’s and Elizabeth’s marriage, to serve as Chancellor of England. Further, when George of Clarence was madly rushing from one treason to another in 1476 and 77, Stillington was one of those arrested and imprisoned in the Tower for words “prejudicial to the King.” Ricardians assume that prejudicial words were regarding the precontract. But Edward IV eventually released Stillington from the Tower. Would he have done so if the “prejudicial” words involved the royal marriage and the succession itself? And if the precontract were true, why should Eleanor fear for her life if Stillington managed to keep his? The fact that Stillington was a bishop would not prevent him from suffering an unfortunate “accident.” His offense to the King was even greater than that which eventually led to Thomas Becket’s assassination over 3 centuries earlier. And Edward IV was not a man to provoke concerning the succession. Furthermore, even if Eleanor were a retreater and not a fighter, would the same be said of her male kin? Eleanor Butler was related to the Talbots, who held the earldom of Shrewsbury. Are we to suppose that she couldn’t have gone to her male relatives to redress the matter?
How Could Such a Thing Stay Secret?
There is even more reason to doubt the truth of the alleged precontract between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler. When Edward IV publicly announced his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville in September 1464, Eleanor would have found plenty of people who would have loved to hear her story. Most importantly, Richard Neville, the earl of Warwick, and George of Clarence. Warwick in particular had reason to hate the marriage between Edward and Elizabeth, which had been done behind his back while he was in France negotiating a marriage between Edward and the French princess. Richard’s defenders point to the secrecy of Edward’s and Elizabeth’s marriage as further proof that the precontract was true, but Edward’s secrecy is just as well explained as the actions of a young man who knows that he is going against the wishes of his mentor. Edward at 22 was no different than Richard II had been at the same age when he tried to squeeze out from under the thumbs of his own power-hungry and controlling relatives. Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth was just as contrary to Warwick’s wishes as Edward’s desire to form an alliance with Burgundy instead of France. Having been thwarted in his objectives to form an alliance with France through a marriage between Edward IV and a French princess, Warwick likewise understood that Edward had embarrassed him before the whole world, which had thought that Warwick had the King under his control. From Warwick’s perspective, Elizabeth was also objectionable because her family had been Lancastrian adherents and because, although her mother was of noble blood, her father was a mere English gentleman. Marriage to Elizabeth would bring England no diplomatic gain nor a sizable dowry. As relations between Edward IV and Warwick grew more strained, Warwick would have had even more reason to repudiate the marriage he hated, so Eleanor and the Talbots would indeed have had his ear if they had told him the story of the precontract. Further, since Warwick was in negotiations with the French regarding a marriage between Edward IV and a French princess in 1464, and since even Isabella of Spain was once considered as a consort for Edward, we might conclude that the entire world, including Edward’s mentor Warwick and his intimates, considered Edward a bachelor prior to his marriage to Elizabeth Woodville on May 1, 1464. Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, was alleged to have produced the story of the precontract between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler. He produced it on or around June 22, 1483, when the supporters of Edward V had been defeated and both boys were in the Tower. Unlike what Rosemary Jarman would suggest in her novel We Speak NoT reason, Stillington was not an obscure church mouse, but a former Chancellor and a member of the King’s Council.
A Problem with Timing
One of the arguments that Alan Sheppard presents in his study guide “The Princes in the Tower” is that the alleged precontract between Edward IV and Eleanor Butler is made more believable because the important Robert Stillington, former Chancellor and the bishop of Bath and Wells, rather than an anonymous country priest, informed Richard of it. I think the opposite. The alleged precontract would have had much more credibility if a simple priest had informed Richard of it. Stillington was a public and worldly figure who had a political past. He had been imprisoned in the Tower by Edward IV. If he was the source of the story, the precontract can only be viewed with the greatest suspicion, especially because the allegations regarding Edward V’s legitimacy were not made public until June 22, 1483, when Edward’s friends had been destroyed, the boys were secured in the Tower, London was filled with Richard’s soldiers, more were coming from the north, and a crowd was on hand, expecting the coronation of Edward V. If Stillington had been sincere, he would have presented his story regarding the precontract immediately after Edward IV’s death, when Hastings and Edward V’s other loyal subjects were alive, free, and unintimidated, and before Richard had a death grip on the government and his opposition.
It is not by accident that Rosemary Jarman’s Stillington in the historical novel We Speak No Treason comes out from nowhere, tears in his eyes, imparting a tale that is painful to tell. In this manner, readers are misled to think that Stillington was a simple, unworldly man whose motives were unsullied. The very idea that Ricardians expect us to reject Thomas More’s History because he served in John Morton’s household when he was a boy but do not apply the same standard to Stillington, rejecting the words of a man martyred for a principle but accepting another’s without examination because they like what he says, is a perfect example of special pleading and typical of the fallacious reasoning by which Ricardians argue.
