Richard III and the Murder in the Tower (7 page)

We do not have explicit information as to when Sir Thomas Butler died. We know that his death appears to have occurred before 15 January 1460 and it has been suggested that he died sometime in the latter part of 1459, perhaps in December, as a result of injuries sustained at the Battle of Blore Heath,
²⁸
which had taken place on 23 September of that year. His death left Eleanor a widow at the age of twenty-three. At around this same time, the manor of Grieve seems to have been returned to her father-in-law, and to have been directly exchanged for the controlling interest in Fenny Compton.
²⁹
Where would a young woman in the unenviable position that Eleanor now found herself turn but to her friends and relatives? We must examine the events of that fateful winter in order to understand what happened next and how it may have had a critical influence on the events of the summer twenty-three years later. Following the death of her husband, Eleanor had to appeal to the young king, Edward IV, then coming up to his nineteenth birthday on 28 April 1461, for the return of her various properties. Edward had confiscated them on the grounds that Lord Sudeley had given them to his son and daughter-in-law without the sanction of a royal licence. It is thus asserted that Eleanor had to seek an audience with the King to secure her lands.
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We do not know exactly where and when this fateful meeting between Eleanor Butler and King Edward IV took place. A survey of Edward’s itinerary for that period provides a number of candidate locations, ranging from London to East Anglia or perhaps the Warwickshire or Gloucestershire areas.
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Again, we are here into the realms of speculation as to location, but the fact that they actually did meet seems to be supported by the subsequent documented retention of the respective lands by Eleanor.
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One reasonable possibility that must be considered is the royal residence at Woodstock in Oxfordshire. The proximity between Woodstock and Great Dorsett is perhaps the most persuasive factor in favouring this location. There are only twenty-two miles between the two, and winter travel at the time cannot have been easy. However, the journey between Woodstock and Great Dorsett would have been along major thoroughfares, going through or close by large towns such as Banbury and Oxford and perhaps therefore a little less daunting. One fascinating alternative possibility is Grafton Regis. It is very tempting to speculate that Edward IV engaged in the same activity (marriage of a beautiful young widow) in the same place, but this symmetrical interpretation is belied by the fact that Grafton Regis (
see
Figure 12) was a home of the Woodvilles and this particular site of Edward’s later marriage to Elizabeth Woodville is most probably related to their occupancy there rather than any sentimental attachment on behalf of Edward himself. Wherever we seek to place the location of the pre-contract with Eleanor, we have to remember that the itineraries of the king, Eleanor and Robert Stillington, later Bishop of Bath & Wells, have to overlap spatially as well as temporally. That Stillington may have been attending on the king is a possibility, if not a probability, but again empirical efforts may help us to determine this site at some time in the future, and it is possible that advanced simulation and modelling can help decide these propositions.
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Of course, at present we cannot even rule out the possibility that the site of the pre-contract was Great Dorsett itself. Again, this is simply speculation at this stage. What seems quite well established was that only the king, Eleanor and Stillington were present at this ceremony.
³⁴

The most direct evidence of the pre-contract that we have is derived from the commentary in the
Titulus Regius
which reads:

We can confirm that this pattern of behaviour fits in with what we do know about Edward IV, especially during his younger years. We have evidence that Edward took such advantage on at least four occasions. Of course, the primary case in point is Edward’s subsequent liaison with Elizabeth Woodville (Lady Grey) herself at Grafton Regis, which is discussed in a later chapter.

In respect of this pre-contract it appears that, as far as canon law was concerned, the promise in exchange for sexual favours was sufficient to cement the contract. As we shall see, the French diplomat de Commines
³⁵
named Stillington as the source of the knowledge of this pre-contract. However, there is little corroborating evidence,
³⁶
and some have suggested that Stillington was not actually the source that revealed the pre-contract to Richard.
³⁷
This proposition will also be examined in further detail. The fact that Eleanor died in 1468, before the birth of Edward’s two sons by Elizabeth Woodville, raises some interesting points that would have had to be considered in the ecclesiastical courts (where the case for legitimacy would presumably have been heard). However, events of the summer of 1483 seem to have overtaken this issue.

We have relatively little information about Eleanor’s activities between the pre-contract and 1464, after the announcement of Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville,
³⁸
and so the next steps that I wish to take must also be labelled largely as speculation.
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Since she died possessed of her lands, we can assume that Eleanor was successful in her petition. But what was her state of mind, and what was the state of her body? Presumably, contraception would have been fairly rudimentary in such times. Again, we do not know how long the liaison between Edward and Eleanor persisted. Was it simply a ‘one-night stand,’ or was there more extensive activity? Presuming either of these conditions, could Eleanor have become pregnant, and given the death of her husband could such a pregnancy have been passed off as a legitimate birth? These are questions that arise but cannot at present be answered.
⁴⁰
One speculation does seem reasonable. As a young widow in such difficult circumstances, it does seem likely that she would have turned to her family for help, and most probably to an older female relative. Of course, my postulation is that Joan (Barre/de la Bere) Catesby fulfilled that role. There is circumstantial support that this might also be so because of the legal help rendered by Sir William to both her and her father, and perhaps also by the budding young lawyer in the family, Sir William’s son – William Catesby ‘the Cat.’ Where else would one take such a thorny question other than to a lawyer?
⁴¹

What I am suggesting here is that the familial and dependent relationship between Eleanor (Talbot) Butler and the Catesby family meant that the young, twenty-one-year-old William Catesby learned around this time of the pre-contract from his second cousin Eleanor at a family meeting to decide what best to do under the circumstances. We must remember that Eleanor had no witness other than Robert Stillington and certainly no pushing mother such as Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford
⁴²
to advance her case. It appears that the decision was taken not to press the young king on this issue.
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I have little doubt that an able lawyer of Catesby’s acumen would have put this information aside for use at a later and more advantageous time. I am suggesting that he used this information to advance himself somewhat with William, Lord Hastings, and later in that fateful summer of 1483 in his critical switch of masters to Richard III. Thus it is to an assessment of Catesby and his actions before, during and after the ‘long weekend’ in June 1483 that I now turn.

a man well learned in the laws of this land

William ‘the Cat’ Catesby was the first-born child of Sir William Catesby, a well-to-do member of the Northamptonshire gentry.
¹
Although we do not have his precise date of birth, it appears from evidence in respect of his father’s first marriage that William was born sometime around 1440.
²
This would have made him about forty-five at the time of his execution in Leicester immediately following the fateful Battle of Bosworth Field.
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It has been a point of dispute as to whether William himself was a knight, as was his father. Indeed, in the
Testamenta Vetusta
⁴
we read the entry ‘Sir William Catesby, Knt’, followed by ‘William Catesby, Knight, 1485. My body to be buried at Ashby Ledgers; Margaret, my wife.’ However, a more detailed source, the
Dictionary of National Biography
⁵
is emphatic that, although he was an esquire of the royal body, William, unlike his father, was not a knight.
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As a result of this established difference in status, in what follows I shall refer to the father as Sir William, while I shall call his son ‘the Cat’
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just William.

Our knowledge about the latter part of William’s life is much more extensive than that of his earliest years. It will help set the context for his childhood and early youth by understanding the career of his father, Sir William, and the strides that he had made in his own life by the time William was born. Sir William’s grandfather, John Catesby, had acquired what was to become the family home at Ashby St Ledgers through marriage to Emma Cranford. It was at this time that the Catesbys moved the short distance from their former home of Ladbroke
⁸
in Warwickshire and took up residence in their new home (
see
Figure 13).
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Much of our contemporary information about the family comes from their actions in and around the village of Ashby St Ledgers and their memorial brasses in the local church
¹⁰
(
see
Figure 15).

The legal profession certainly appears to have run in the Catesby family. Emma Cranford’s husband, John Catesby, was apparently a lawyer, as was his son (also John). Sir William himself, the latter’s son, was also a lawyer, and we know from Thomas More’s essay on Richard III that William ‘the Cat’ Catesby also followed this family tradition.
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Sir William’s own father died in 1437 when, according to a family tradition, Sir William himself was just short of the age of majority. Like the lawyer that he was, Sir William’s father John had, just before his death, placed a portion of his lands in feoffment in order to avoid Sir William being adjudged a royal ward and having the spoilage of his inheritance that often accompanied this latter status. In this, he was not successful. However, for Sir William, the status of ward turned out to be a very profitable turn of events. He was committed to the keeping of a relative by marriage, a courtier named John Norris, who Payling
¹²
speculates helped find the young Sir William a very advantageous marriage. If he was yet to reach his majority in 1437 and we know that he was married by May of 1442 and, further, we know that his first wife died in 1446, having already produced three children,
¹³
then some time around 1440 seems a reasonable estimate for the birth date of his son, William ‘the Cat’ (
see
Figure 14).

John Norris seems to have been a good mentor to his young ward. Sir William followed the family tradition and spent time at the Inner Temple, but also established a link with the royal court and was given an annuity of ten pounds in 1442. Around this same time he and his new wife received a papal indult for a portable altar.
¹⁴
This was clearly a young man now making his way in the world. From a series of records we know that Sir William began to assume a significant position in his now-home county of Northamptonshire. However, there also exist records to show that he was active on the wider stage of events and it is here that a number of the crucial linkages in respect of the present story begin to become evident. As well as giving gifts to leading local personages, in 1447–1448 Sir William is recorded as having sent gifts of fish from his fishpond at Ashby to Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, and, even more importantly, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury.
¹⁵
In respect of our present search for the truth of Richard III, we should be aware that Humphrey Stafford was succeeded as Duke of Buckingham by his grandson Henry Stafford, and, critically, Eleanor Butler (née Talbot) was the daughter of John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. Thus, we have direct evidence that these respective families were in some degree of contact. At this time, Eleanor herself would have been about ten years of age and presumably, still living at home with her family. We should not be overly surprised, however, by such linkages. As an active lawyer and aspiring member of the land-owning gentry, it is unsurprising that Sir William would have made efforts to ingratiate himself with the rich and powerful. The gift of fish may well have been by the way of some form of introduction. Regardless of whether this was an introduction or something less formal, the interaction with John Talbot was to prove rather important to Sir William’s future and, as I propose here, that of his son.