Pre Contract - Fabrication.

To b.eileen25, Yes precisely, but i'm sure you have considered that yourself; have you not.Richard needed a legitimate claim to the crown - There would be little a young boy of 12 had done wrong to use against him -The Pre Contract is a simple but effective device to achieve that ambition, particularly as Eleanor Butler was dead.The pre-contract is however BOGUS - as are the allegations within 'Titulus Regius' as none were tested or proven.These allegations should have gone First to a church court, and only then if approved to Parliament - this due process never took place.It is a requirement of common law that those making the allegations have the burden of proving their case, no case was ever tested or proven.Richards claims were unlawful and illegal.Titulus Regius was a lame attempt to give Richard's rule legitimacy.

The pre-contract was proven in JA-H's "Eleanor", particularly by the evidence of "system". It was submitted to the church courts, as "The Maligned King" demonstrates" - the results probably suppressed after Bosworth
----- Original Message -----
From: ringoandstar
To:
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 10:08 AM
Subject: Pre Contract - Fabrication.



To b.eileen25, Yes precisely, but i'm sure you have considered that yourself; have you not.Richard needed a legitimate claim to the crown - There would be little a young boy of 12 had done wrong to use against him -The Pre Contract is a simple but effective device to achieve that ambition, particularly as Eleanor Butler was dead.The pre-contract is however BOGUS - as are the allegations within 'Titulus Regius' as none were tested or proven.These allegations should have gone First to a church court, and only then if approved to Parliament - this due process never took place.It is a requirement of common law that those making the allegations have the burden of proving their case, no case was ever tested or proven.Richards claims were unlawful and illegal.Titulus Regius was a lame attempt to give Richard's rule legitimacy.

-"ringoandstar" wrote:
>
> To b.eileen25, Yes precisely, but i'm sure you have considered that yourself; have you not. Richard needed a legitimate claim to the crown - There would be little a young boy of 12 had done wrong to use against him -The Pre Contract is a simple but effective device to achieve that ambition, particularly as Eleanor Butler was dead.The pre-contract is however BOGUS - as are the allegations within 'Titulus Regius' as none were tested or proven.These allegations should have gone First to a church court, and only then if approved to Parliament - this due process never took place.It is a requirement of common law that those making the allegations have the burden of proving their case, no case was ever tested or proven.Richards claims were unlawful and illegal.Titulus Regius was a lame attempt to give Richard's rule legitimacy.
>
Carol responds:

You are, of course, entitled to that opinion, but please don't express it as fact. Clearly, the Three Estates, including the clergy, disagreed with you. If you haven't already read it, may I recommend this website, which clearly explains Titulus Regius:

http://home.cogeco.ca/~richardiii/Titulus%20Regius.htm

It seems highly unlikely that the Three Estates and later Parliament would have accepted Stillington's claim that Edward was "married and trothplight" to Eleanor Butler without evidence. It's also clear from the rest of Titulus Regius that they wanted Richard, a man of proven ability (as opposed to a Woodville-raised child) as king, and for that reason, they supplemented the trothplight with other evidence which, *from a fifteenth-century point of view*, proved him the rightful heir--another reason, besides the illegitimacy of his wife demonstrated in Titulus Regius, why Henry wanted Titulus Regius suppressed--Richard was no usurper but an *elected* king, a fact best put "forever out of remembrance and also forgot."

If Richard's claim had *not* been legitimate and Titulus Regius were "bogus," why not expose its fraudulence to all Englishmen and the world by publishing and refuting it? Instead, Henry ordered all copies of it burned (with severe penalities for failing to do so--the Croyland chronicler was taking a great risk by preserving a copy) so that people would forget Richard's election by Parliament, which made *Henry* a usurper and regicide.

At any rate, your view that the precontract (read marriage) was a fabrication is shared by some but not all traditionalist historians. Oddly, James Gairdner, the influential nineteenth-century biographer who used More and *Shakespeare* as sources when he couldn't find contemporary evidence, nevertheless states that "there are no sufficient grounds for regarding it [the precontract] as a mere political invention."

http://books.google.com/books?id=2ZUBAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=Gairdner+pre+contract&source=bl&ots=LTBp8fUM-5&sig=YWC1FOopc9GQtZQtZtjI-Gggwpc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=8ad-UcqtOMnxigKQ44DABg&sqi=2&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Gairdner%20pre%20contract&f=false

Tinyurl: http://tinyurl.com/c3vd9gr

Carol

No evidence that you're aware of. You have no idea what proofs were presented to Parliament so for you to claim that there was no proof at all is more than a little disingenuous. You don't know.

--- In , "ringoandstar" <ringoandstar@...> wrote:
>
> To b.eileen25, Yes precisely, but i'm sure you have considered that yourself; have you not.Richard needed a legitimate claim to the crown - There would be little a young boy of 12 had done wrong to use against him -The Pre Contract is a simple but effective device to achieve that ambition, particularly as Eleanor Butler was dead.The pre-contract is however BOGUS - as are the allegations within 'Titulus Regius' as none were tested or proven.These allegations should have gone First to a church court, and only then if approved to Parliament - this due process never took place.It is a requirement of common law that those making the allegations have the burden of proving their case, no case was ever tested or proven.Richards claims were unlawful and illegal.Titulus Regius was a lame attempt to give Richard's rule legitimacy.
>

The church court doesn't seem to have happened, if you mean the convocation that had been called - it had almost certainly been called originally for financial reasons, and it kept being put off.

I don't think JAH has proven the precontract was real, not to my satisfaction, but he has demonstrated that if real it would have made it impossible for Edward and Elizabeth ever to have validly married.

Crowland does indeed protest that a church court should have decided the matter, but this isn't the only place where Crowland's pronouncements on canon law are wobbly. There were two separate issues here. Had Eleanor been living and had wished to get her marriage to Edward recognised and enforced, she would have gone to a church court to try to persuade them that she really had entered into a valid form of marriage with Edward, and if she had been successful Edward would have been ordered to put Elizabeth aside and live with Eleanor. But that never happened.
The question now was merely one of inheritance, and that was a matter for the secular authorities alone. It's anachronistic to suggest there should have been a common law trial about the validity of the marriage because there was no secular marriage law. But nor did the Church involve itself in questions of inheritance rights.
Parliament was indeed legally empowered to pronounce Edward IV's issue to be bastards unfit to inherit the crown even though the precontract had not been tested in a church court, just as parliament had been entitled to declare the Beauforts legitimate. There certainly does seem to have been evidence produced at the time, but we no longer have this.
Marie

--- In , "Stephen Lark" <stephenmlark@...> wrote:
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> The pre-contract was proven in JA-H's "Eleanor", particularly by the evidence of "system". It was submitted to the church courts, as "The Maligned King" demonstrates" - the results probably suppressed after Bosworth
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: ringoandstar
> To:
> Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 10:08 AM
> Subject: Pre Contract - Fabrication.
>
>
>
> To b.eileen25, Yes precisely, but i'm sure you have considered that yourself; have you not.Richard needed a legitimate claim to the crown - There would be little a young boy of 12 had done wrong to use against him -The Pre Contract is a simple but effective device to achieve that ambition, particularly as Eleanor Butler was dead.The pre-contract is however BOGUS - as are the allegations within 'Titulus Regius' as none were tested or proven.These allegations should have gone First to a church court, and only then if approved to Parliament - this due process never took place.It is a requirement of common law that those making the allegations have the burden of proving their case, no case was ever tested or proven.Richards claims were unlawful and illegal.Titulus Regius was a lame attempt to give Richard's rule legitimacy.
>
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>
>
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What evidence do you have that they did not go to a Church Court? Don't forget that Robert Morton destroyed records for Henry Tudor. Also I believe it was discussed on here a while back that Edward and Elizabeth's clandestine "marriage" would also have made their children illegitimate.

Why would Richard besmirch the reputaion of someone of Eleanor Talbot's standing when he could have said , as More did, that it was Elizabeth Lucy?

--- In , "ringoandstar" <ringoandstar@...> wrote:
>
> To b.eileen25, Yes precisely, but i'm sure you have considered that yourself; have you not.Richard needed a legitimate claim to the crown - There would be little a young boy of 12 had done wrong to use against him -The Pre Contract is a simple but effective device to achieve that ambition, particularly as Eleanor Butler was dead.The pre-contract is however BOGUS - as are the allegations within 'Titulus Regius' as none were tested or proven.These allegations should have gone First to a church court, and only then if approved to Parliament - this due process never took place.It is a requirement of common law that those making the allegations have the burden of proving their case, no case was ever tested or proven.Richards claims were unlawful and illegal.Titulus Regius was a lame attempt to give Richard's rule legitimacy.
>