Richard III and the Murder in the Tower by Peter A. Hancock Read Free Book Online

actions. It is probable that Eleanor would have been brought up in one main location but would almost certainly have visited a number of the family residences, including the likes of Sheffield Castle. Although John Talbot’s favouritism toward Blakemere is suggested by his eventual nearby burial under the porch of St Alkmund’s church in Whitchurch, Shropshire, 8 Eleanor may have been bought up in Goodrich Castle, since on the monument which commemorated his first burial at Rouen in Normandy, her father is titled ‘Lord of Goodrich and Orchenfield’. 9
The Butler Marriage
     
    If we have the date of her birth correct, and we can be reasonably certain of the general period, then Eleanor’s subsequent marriage to Sir Thomas Butler (the son of Ralph Butler, Lord Sudeley), which occurred around late 1449 or early 1450, 10 would have seen Eleanor as a bride at the age of just thirteen or fourteen years of age. It has been speculated that Eleanor would have then lived in the house of her in-laws until the age of sixteen, when the marriage would have been consummated sometime in 1452, or possibly early 1453. 11 Indeed, in early May of 1453, Eleanor is mentioned in a document in which Ralph, Lord Sudeley presented a deed of gift to his son (Thomas) and his wife (referred to as Eleanor, daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury) and their legitimate heirs with the manors of Griff, Fenny Compton and Burton Dassett (sometimes noted as Great Dorsett or Chipping Dorsett after the market held there). All of these were in the county of Warwickshire, although Eleanor apparently held some other lands in Wiltshire also. 12 As we shall see, geographical issues play almost as crucial a role in the present proposition as those of history itself and so it is important to confirm here that the manors of Fenny Compton and Burton Dassett (or Great Dorsett) adjoin each other in south-west Warwickshire. While it has been a somewhat difficult search, the latter manor of Griff (or Grieve), lies approximately twenty miles north of Great Dorset in the vicinity of the suburbs of modern day Coventry, just south of Nuneaton. The map of the two adjacent properties of Fenny Compton and Burton Dassett is shown in Figure 8.
    Perhaps this gift followed on the consummation of the marriage? Although we do not know this for certain, it may very well have been around this time in 1453 that Eleanor and Thomas 13 set up their own household, most probably on the manor lands which they had been granted. At this time, Great Dorsett was a much more substantive gift than it might appear today. Earlier, Henry III had granted permission to hold a market there every Friday and an annual fair of three days from the eve of St James. Such was the prosperity of the town that in 1332 Great Dorsett had paid taxes to the king’s treasury of almost one-quarter of those paid by the whole of the city of Coventry. 14 We do not know what the equivalent revenues were at the time of Eleanor’s possession. However, it would appear that this was still a major centre and the manor of Great Dorsett most probably included all of the present-day settlements of Burton Dassett, Avon Dassett, Little Dassett, Temple Herdewyke and Northend. This being so, the gift of Lord Sudelely to his son and daughter-in-law certainly appears to have been an appropriately generous one. Parenthetically, this property was later broken up by the actions of Sir Edward Belknap who, at the very end of the fifteenth century, evicted sixty people in his conversion to pasture. Sir Edward’s actions, although purportedly logical at the time, seem to have spelled the end of Great Dorsett’s fame. The actual village of Burton Dassett is now only a few farms and farm buildings around All Saints’ church, and the most evident landmark of the settlement is the tower on the Dassett Hills (now a country park), which can be seen from the nearby motorway, the M40 ( see Figure 31).
    Around the time that Eleanor and her husband were