Lady Eleanor Talbot
After the death of Richard at the Battle of Bosworth Field, the new king Henry Tudor requested Parliament repeal the Titulus Regius and destroy all existing copies.
According to the French chronicler Philippe de Commines he acted with the support of Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells.
His fortune depending on the court, he did not discover it, and persuaded the lady likewise to conceal it, which she did, and the matter remained a secret.
The document states: And howe also, that at the tyme of contract of the same pretensed Mariage, and bifore and longe tyme after, the seid King Edward was and stode maryed and trouth plight to oone Dame Elianor Butteler, Doughter of the old Earl of Shrewesbury, with whom the same King Edward had made a precontracte of Matrimonie, longe tyyme bifore he made the said pretensed Mariage with the said Elizabeth Grey, in maner and fourme abovesaid.
It was suggested that Eleanor had given birth to a child, possibly fathered by King Edward IV, shortly before her death.
[4] Because Commines does not name the "beautiful young lady", and the official copy of Titulus Regius in parliament had been destroyed, Tudor historians confused Talbot with Edward's long-standing mistress Elizabeth Lucy (also known as Elizabeth Wayte), the probable mother of Edward IV's bastard son, Arthur Plantagenet, 1st Viscount Lisle.
[5] George Buck, who found the only surviving copy of Titulus Regius, was the first to identify Eleanor Talbot as the woman in question.
It is also commonly argued by Ricardians that Stillington was imprisoned by Edward IV in 1478 because he incautiously spoke of the precontract to George, Duke of Clarence.
John A. Wagner states that "most modern historians believe the precontract to be a fabrication devised to give Richard III's usurpation a veneer of legitimacy.
The betrothal cannot be documented beyond the account rehearsed in Titulus Regius, and Richard never attempted to have the precontract authenticated by a church court, the proper venue for such a case".
Since Edward was "not stupid enough" to have been unaware that any precontact would threaten his children's claim to the throne, if it had existed he could easily have applied to the Pope to free himself of it, which would have been the action of "any prudent king and his advisors".
According to Thomas More, Edward had three "concubines" to whom he referred as the "merriest", the "wiliest" and "the holiest harlot in the realm" (who was always in church when she wasn't in bed with the king).
