Eleanor Cobham: The Magic Was Meant to Help Her Have a Child

Eleanor said the magic was meant to help her have a child. The bishops took away her marriage. They spared her life, but she would spend the rest of it in custody.

On 9 November 1441, Eleanor Cobham received judgment for sorcery and witchcraft. She had been Duchess of Gloucester, married to Humphrey, the uncle of Henry VI and heir to his throne. Now she faced public penance through the streets of London, followed by imprisonment for life. The case against her had included an accusation of treason. That prosecution was abandoned. The punishment that remained was enough to dismantle her life.

Eleanor had risen from a gentry family into a royal household, becoming Humphrey's mistress and then his wife. Her husband was a son of Henry IV and brother of Henry V. His rank placed her among the foremost women in England, and his place in the succession gave their marriage a significance beyond the two people in it. Henry VI was unmarried and had no child. If he died without an heir, Humphrey stood to become king.

In June 1431, Eleanor was admitted to the confraternity of St Albans Abbey, to which Humphrey already belonged. The abbey's book of benefactors pictures them side by side, among the people the monks undertook to remember in prayer. A duke and duchess had been received by an institution that knew exactly what they could give.

Ten years later, other churchmen wanted to know what she had been asking for.

Among the people drawn into the investigation were Roger Bolingbroke, a learned cleric in the Gloucester household, and Thomas Southwell, a priest and physician. They had used astrology to predict danger to the king's life. A forecast of Henry's death was dangerous information in the household of the man who might succeed him. The authorities treated it as something worse: an attempt to bring that death about.

In July, Bolingbroke was displayed at St Paul's Cross during sermon time, seated on a painted chair, with the objects associated with his magical practices around him. He publicly renounced those practices. He also implicated Eleanor, saying that she had encouraged his inquiries into her future.

Eleanor sought sanctuary at Westminster Abbey. It did not put her beyond the reach of the ecclesiastical proceedings. She was summoned before church authorities at St Stephen's Chapel, questioned, and eventually confined at Leeds Castle in Kent. In the autumn she was brought back to Westminster to face further examination.

Another woman had become part of the case. Margery Jourdemayne, known as the Witch of Eye, was accused of selling Eleanor potions. The investigation set a woman who dealt in remedies beside the university men of the duchess's household. Both could now be presented as parts of the same threat to the king.

Eleanor admitted five of the twenty-eight articles against her and denied the rest. She said the potions she had bought from Margery were meant to help her bear Humphrey a child. She denied that she had sought the king's death.

A child for her husband was the explanation she gave. The proceedings ended with the law declaring that she was no longer his wife.

The annulment belonged to the same sequence of hearings and judgments. An allegation that she had used sorcery to make Humphrey marry her helped turn the relationship itself into something the Church could undo. Whatever protection had come with being Humphrey's duchess, it had not preserved their household. She was to live, but separately, under the custody of men appointed to keep her.

Margery did not survive. She was burned at Smithfield on 27 October, before Eleanor received her November judgment. Southwell died in the Tower. Bolingbroke would be executed. The people who had supplied knowledge, predictions and remedies were being punished, and Eleanor's own punishment was to be made visible to London.

On Monday, 13 November, she travelled by water from Westminster and landed at the Temple. From there she walked along Fleet Street towards St Paul's, carrying a burning wax taper. Her hood was gone; a kerchief covered her head. Many of those who watched her pass were moved to pity.

At St Paul's she offered the taper at the high altar.

On Wednesday she made another journey through the city to Christchurch, near Aldgate. On Friday she went to St Michael's in Cornhill. Three walks, on three market days, brought her before the Londoners among whom she had once moved as a royal duchess. Each journey ended at a church. None ended at home.

Afterwards she passed into the custody of Sir Thomas Stanley. Money was assigned for her maintenance, and her later imprisonment included attendants and a priest. Rank still determined the arrangements of her daily life. It did not allow her to leave. She was held at Chester and later Kenilworth, moved by orders she had no power to refuse. Humphrey died in February 1447 at Bury St Edmunds, days after his own arrest. Eleanor was still a prisoner. She was moved again, to Beaumaris Castle on Anglesey, and died there in July 1452.

In the St Albans book of benefactors, Eleanor is still beside Humphrey, among the people the monks were to remember in prayer. He had died without a lawful heir. The marriage had been annulled, the three tapers offered, the penance done. None of it had brought her home.