Tea at Trianon: Lady Eleanor Butler

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Lady Eleanor Butler

From A Medieval Potpourri:

Eleanor was named in the Titulus Regius as the woman who was the first and legal wife of Edward IV, making his later clandestine ‘marriage’ to Elizabeth Wydeville in May 1464 bigamous and the children from that marriage illegitimate and thus unable to take the throne. It was de Commynes who stated that Edward and Eleanor’s marriage was witnessed by Robert Stillington who was not, at that point, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, but certainly a royal counsellor. Quidquid at whatever point Stillington discovered the truth is not crucial to our story. But find out he did for around the time of Clarence’s execution in 1478 the Bishop found himself swiftly incarcerated in the Tower of London as well as heavily fined. I’ll return to this point later.

Eleanor seemed for a long time just a mere footnote in 15th century history although she was at the epicentre of one of the most disruptive episodes from those times and indeed, it could be said, the catalyst for the fall of the House of York. Who was she exactly, this widowed lady some of the chroniclers from the period and even modern historians have tried to brush under the carpet? Thanks to the late historian John Ashdown-Hill we actually now know quite a bit about her. (Read more.)