The New Murrey and Blue blog

Kathryn Warner‘s latest tome has arrived and soon raised memories of Ashdown-Hill’s Eleanor, as two of the daughters in question – Joan of Acre (twice) and Elizabeth of Rhuddlan – are among the ancestors of Lady Eleanor Talbot, Lucy Walter, “Mrs. Fitzherbert” (Maria Smythe) and Laura Culme-Seymour, as shown in Royal Marriage Secrets and replicated here.

Edward’s five daughters who survived childhood, together with the first of three such sons, were all born to Eleanor of Castile, his first wife, for whom the Eleanor Crosses are named (such as the one at Hardingstone, Northampton, above). Four of the daughters married and had offspring, whilst one (Mary, the fourth eldest) became a nun at Amesbury. Eleanor, Joan, Margaret and Elizabeth were the others, in birth order, all of whom were older than their surviving brothers. The future Edward I and Eleanor married at Burgos in autumn 1254, such that Edward II became England’s first half-Spanish monarch, Mary I being the only other. Chapter 16 shows that Edward considered his eldest daughter as a possible heir had all of his sons predeceased him without heir.

As Mary is a very part-time nun, the other sisters have children and then grandchildren, she and two others interact frequently with Edward of Caernarvon through their connections to Bannockburn and Boroughbridge, Edward’s “favourites” and his deposition. Two of them survived the end of his reign and may have outlived him but we cannot be sure.

This is a very interesting book and my sights are now set upon one with a green cover, with the events of the next generation, drilling down closer to the Talbots.