JOHN TALBOT, 1st EARL of SHREWSBURY
by MARK DOBSON
“Here…is the terror of the French,
The scarecrow that affrights our children so”
(Henry VI part 1)
"Valiant Lord Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, Created, for his rare success in arms." ibid
John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury, is an important figure to Ricardians in general because he was the father Lady Eleanor Butler, the ‘Woman who put Richard III on the Throne’ as John Ashdown-Hill has described her. And to us of the North Mercia Group in particular, he is of interest because he was born and buried in our area.
Just north-east of Whitchurch is the locality of Blakemere or Blackmere. The ordnance survey map still shows a ‘moat’ close to the lake (‘mere’), which may have been the site of the manor house that Ankaret le Strange, 7th baroness Strange of Blackmere, brought to Richard Talbot on their marriage and where John was born sometime between 1384 and 1387. Richard died in 1396 and Ankaret then married Thomas Neville Lord Furnival. This was Thomas’s second wife and John was to marry Maud, Thomas’s eldest daughter and heir – who was also of course his step-sister. It is worth bearing these names in mind as some of them will crop up later.
John probably had four children with Maud, who died in 1422, by which time he had acquired the baronies of Talbot and Strange on the death of his niece. He then married Lady Margaret Beauchamp, eldest daughter of Richard de Beauchamp 13th earl of Warwick, and they had five more children, among them John 1st Viscount Lisle (of whom more later); Lady Eleanor Talbot, who married Sir Thomas Butler and was later mistress and possibly wife to Edward IV; and Lady Elizabeth Talbot who wed John de Mowbray 4th duke of Norfolk.
John’s early career in the service of his king and country involved him in the suppression of the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr between 1404 and 1413. For five years after that he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland where he seems to have spent a lot of time upsetting the locals, both high and low – a row with the earl of Ormonde and Reginald 3rd baron Grey de Ruthyn had to be sorted by the Privy Council so as not to compromise ongoing English rule in the province, and complaints were made against him for harsh government both there and in Herefordshire.
From 1420 he served in France, gaining the Order of the Garter at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. The next year he was briefly back in Ireland; in 1427 he was once more in France where he continued to fight with distinction in Maine and at the siege of Orléans. In 1429 he was captured by the French at the battle of Patay and held by them for four years until freed by exchange with their leader Jean Poton de Saintrailles. After a short stay in England he returned again to France and carried on harrying the enemy. On Whit-Sunday 1442 Henry VI conferred upon him the title of Comes Salopie (earl of Shropshire) but he was always popularly known as the earl of Shrewsbury, and it was about this time he met his six-year-old daughter Eleanor, probably for the first time. In 1449 he was once more taken prisoner, this time at Rouen, and it is said that the French forced him to promise ‘never to wear armour against the French king again’. If this was true, then it was clearly his undoing, because in 1453, released once more he led the English army at the battle of Castillon where both he and his son Lord Lisle lost their lives. This battle marked the end of the Hundred Years War: after the glorious victories of Creçy, Poitiers and Agincourt, and numerous others less remembered, England had lost nearly all its possessions in France, leaving us only with a foothold in Calais. So much bloodshed, so much destruction and so little to show for it. But it did give inspiration to a certain Mr William Shakespeare to turn it into a drama or two. Henry VI part 1 is largely the story of John Talbot’s exploits in France.
So Sir John Talbot died on the battlefield, together with his son John Lord Lisle (who incidentally was never found and is therefore presumed buried in a mass grave with the other dead) on July 7th 1453. He was at least 66, perhaps as much as 70 years old – a pretty good age for an old warhorse even these days, but almost unheard of in the 15th century. Despite that, some authorities have put him as old as 80, which is stretching credulity to its limit.
Contemporary accounts suggest that he was brought down by a shot from an arquebus, or a cannon ball on his leg which also felled his horse. This is on the face of it quite plausible, though it probably didn’t account for his subsequent death. Also, he may not have been wearing any armour – after being captured and ransomed at Rouen in 1449, he had promised ‘never to wear armour against the King of France again’. Such an oath, probably made before a priest at an altar and over holy relics, would be taken extremely seriously (and probably after much negotiation over the actual terms of the commitment), with a wary eye open to the consequences of being ‘found out’ on the Day of Judgment. And it should not be forgotten that the root cause of the Hundred Years War was not so much possession of land in France, as much as to whom the population there owed their allegiance – and such allegiance was sworn on oath.
After the battle the field was strewn with bodies, stripped bare of anything of value including clothing, and awaiting burial in pits. Fortunately Talbot’s herald found him in time, but so disfigured and injured that he could only be identified by his ‘lack of hinder teeth’ – surely the first time a dental record was ever used in identifying a dead body!
At the battle of Patay Talbot, fearing that he had been mortally wounded, charged his faithful guard of Whitchurch retainers that ‘in memory of their courage and devotion his body should be buried in the Porch of their Church, that as they had fought and strode over it while living so should they and their children for ever pass over it and guard it when dead’. In the event it must have been impossible to carry out this instruction immediately, and his body was taken to Rouen Cathedral and buried there. His heart was removed, embalmed and kept separately, being ultimately buried in the church porch.
Sometime between 1493 and 1516 his grandson Gilbert, 3rd earl of Shrewsbury, disinterred the body from Rouen and brought it back to
Whitchurch, where it was re-buried in the chancel of the St Alkmund’s church in a suitably splendid tomb. Around 1660 a drawing of the tomb was made by Thomas Dingley, and in 1663 Elias Ashmole made a written description of it. This was fortuitous, as on July 31st 1711 the church tower suddenly collapsed into the church, leaving most of the interior a mess of rubble, including all of Talbot’s tomb except for his stone effigy, which was probably protected from further damage by its stone canopy.
By 1723 the church had been rebuilt and remains as we see it today. During the rebuilding work the porch area was dug up and Talbot’s embalmed heart was found, inside a velvet bag in an urn. These were reverently re-buried, but the original granite paving stone was not replaced; instead, another marble stone was inscribed and placed outside the porch in 1873. Also found inside the urn was a velvet purse containing two ‘beads’, curious relics of horn edged with silver, with images of the blessed virgin Mary and the Saviour stamped on them. These were not returned to the burying place in the porch but kept by a churchwarden who had them assayed by at least two learned bodies, including the British Museum and the Society of Antiquaries. Both of these authorities independently came to the same opinion: that the beads could not be older than the beginning of the 16th century. This would imply that Talbot’s heart and body were removed from Rouen and brought to Whitchurch at about the same time for reburial.
In 1873 a decision was made to re-instate Talbot’s tomb to how it looked before the tower collapsed. They still had the drawing and description from the 1660s, and with a generous donation from the daughter of the 18th earl a new canopy and a stone sepulchre were ordered and made. As it was also decided to move the tomb from the chancel to the south aisle the opportunity was taken of looking at John Talbot’s remains, assuming that they were still intact. And in this they came up trumps: on removing the stone lid of the sarcophagus, they found ‘a wooden box 3 feet by 9½ inches, which soon crumbled to dust on exposure to the air’, inside which was a collection of bones, each and every one of them carefully wrapped in cere cloth (a sort of waxed bandage as might have been found in a mediaeval ‘first aid kit’). These were carefully unwrapped and laid out on a table where they were inspected by many people, from medical experts and antiquarians to ordinary townspeople. It was now easy to see just what had brought the old warrior down: a severe gash in the back of his skull, about 2¾ inches long and 5/8 inch across, inflicted with a battleaxe or a heavy sword. Interestingly, no mention was made of any other injuries, including possible damage to his leg from a shot, nor of broken ribs as might have been caused when his heart was removed, presumably not long after his death. Some details about his teeth were noted: ‘a molar in the lower jaw [which] was perfect but almost worn down by use, as were three incisors; there were apparently no teeth in the upper jaw’. (In 1918 a later descendant of Talbot was told about ‘a prominent Dentist in Shrewsbury [who] keeps in his surgery… a double tooth of the Great Earl: it was taken out of the body by a Whitchurch Doctor, who was present when the Tomb was opened, and given to the Dentist. He has shown it to me twice, but I felt sorry that the skeleton was robbed even of a tooth.) Another observer saw ‘evidence which went to prove the bones to be actually those of John Talbot… the fact that the little finger had a stiff first joint, a peculiarity of the family which I understand exists to this day’.
Also found with the earl’s bones were those of a mouse, and further investigation revealed the mummified remains of another with her young within his cranium. This led to a furious discussion: were these mice perhaps French and therefore Roman Catholic? Or were they good Church (of England) mice? The argument was resolved when some paper found in the skull and brought into it to make a nest turned out to be pages from an Anglican prayer book.
John Talbot’s bones lie in his tomb, under the original stone effigy and surmounted by an exact copy of the crocketed canopy it was originally furnished with. And his heart continues to lay undisturbed under the floor of the porch, just as he desired. RIP
