Arthur Plantagenet

What is the evidence that Arthur Plantagenet was born in 1462-64? If
it is simply an assumption, based on the suggestion that Elizabeth
Lucy was his mother, then it can safely be set aside.

If born in 1462-64 he would have been a young adult in the final
years of Edward IV's reign, and we could expect him to be appearing
at court or in some great household (perhaps his uncle Richard's?).
Again, we could expect to hear of him during his uncle's reign -
after all, an adult acknowledged bastard of Edward IV would be a
prominent figure. Instead, as far as I'm aware, there is silence,
and on the basis of his known activity it would be more sensible to
put his birth around 1480-83.

If there is firm evidence of the birth of an Arthur Plantagenet in
1462-64, is it possible that there were two, that the first one died
early and it is the younger that we hear about under the Tudors? A
suggestion, no more.

Ann

--- In , aelyon2001
<no_reply@y...> wrote:
> What is the evidence that Arthur Plantagenet was born in 1462-64?
If
> it is simply an assumption, based on the suggestion that Elizabeth
> Lucy was his mother, then it can safely be set aside.

I don't know. Peter Hammond's article just says "The date of Lisle's
birth is not known, it was possibbl6bin the early 1460s, between 1462
and 1464, certainly before 1470" then there is a footnote referencing
an article on Lady Lucy by John Ashdown-Hill in The Ricardian (vol
XI, no 145). Quick scurry downstairs to find. Well, this is all very
tenuous. The dob seems to be based on the fact that:

a) It has been asserted that Edward's illegitimate daughter (pborably
based Elizabeth, Lady Lumley, was also Lady Lucy's child - and she
seems to have been born 1462/3
b) Scofield suggests Edward IV's liaison with Lady Lucy began in
1461. I imagine this conjecture is based partly on above and partly
on the fact that Tudor sources name her as the Precontract lady.
c) A Sir William Lucy was killed at the battle of Northampton by a
man "who loved that knight's wife and hated him". However, I suggest
this Sir William Lucy may have been the one married to the Duke of
Exeter's setpsister Margaret Hankeford; also I think the unnamed
lover is unlikely to have been someone as unobscure as the Earl of
March.

Lady Lucy is surmised to have died before 1487, when her stepmother
made her will, since she does not mention Elizabeth but does mention
an illegitimate stepdaughter, Alice Wayte. She had no brother, but
her uncle was named as her father's heir on his death in 1482.
Ashdown-Hill suggests this may also be an indication she was already
dead, but it is hard to say.
>
> If born in 1462-64 he would have been a young adult in the final
> years of Edward IV's reign, and we could expect him to be appearing
> at court or in some great household (perhaps his uncle Richard's?).
> Again, we could expect to hear of him during his uncle's reign -
> after all, an adult acknowledged bastard of Edward IV would be a
> prominent figure. Instead, as far as I'm aware, there is silence,
> and on the basis of his known activity it would be more sensible to
> put his birth around 1480-83.

I tend to agree with you. Arthur's whole life history would make far
more sense if he were born towards the end of Edward's reign rather
than the beginning; and it seems that, after all, there is no real
proof to the contrary. Also, the fact that he grew up as 'Wayte',
apparently therefore raised by his mother's family, perhaps supports
this view. Is it even possible that Lady Lucy died giving birth to
Arthur? It is, of course, not impossible that Edward's liaison with
Elizabeth Lucy may have continued on and off for twenty years. This
would perhaps explain how she could be plausibly put forward by the
Tudors as the woman Richard claimed was his real wife.
Marie

Marie

It is indeed rather tenuous. We have an assumption that Elizabeth
Lucy was Arthur's mother, and an assumption as to the date of his
birth from the possibility that another of Edward IV's illegitimate
children, whose birth is more certainly dated to 1462-63, was (also)
the child of Elizabeth Lucy. As far as I can see, even if the two had
the same mother there is nothing to prove that Arthur was the elder.
He could easily have been the younger, even quite a lot
younger,though 20 years between them would have been pushing it a bit
for biological reasons (although a gap of that length between
offspring of the same mother is not impossible - there were 22 years
between my father and his maternal half-brother).

Ann

--- In , aelyon2001
<no_reply@y...> wrote:
> Marie
>
> It is indeed rather tenuous. We have an assumption that Elizabeth
> Lucy was Arthur's mother, and an assumption as to the date of his
> birth from the possibility that another of Edward IV's illegitimate
> children, whose birth is more certainly dated to 1462-63, was
(also)
> the child of Elizabeth Lucy. As far as I can see, even if the two
had
> the same mother there is nothing to prove that Arthur was the
elder.
> He could easily have been the younger, even quite a lot
> younger,though 20 years between them would have been pushing it a
bit
> for biological reasons (although a gap of that length between
> offspring of the same mother is not impossible - there were 22
years
> between my father and his maternal half-brother).
>
> Ann

Yes, personally I'd be inclined to suspect that Elizabeth Lumley had
a different mother, although 20 years was in fact the average age
spread of a family in the days before contraception. Women on the
whole didn't stop childbearing until into their forties. There is
certainly more than 20 years between Elizabeth Woodville's eldest and
youngest child.
Again, all we know regarding Elizabeth Lumley's age, apparently, is
that she married a man born in 1458!
Ashdown-Hill suggests that Elizabeth was 'apparently' a widow when
she met the King, and that this was early in his reign. However, a
lot of his informartion comes from a pedigree written in the 1620s by
a member of a branch of the Wayte family whose evident aim was to
glorify the family link with Edward IV. He calls Lady Lucy "first
concubine to Edward the 4th", which may also be contributing to
assumptions about dates. My feeling is that he was trying to suggest
her importance in the pecking order of Edward's mistresses, and also
perhaps to make the liaison slightly more respectable by suggesting
that it was between a young widow and a bachelor. There doesn't,
however, seem to be documentation to prove any of this (in fact, we
don't even know which Lucy Elizabeth was married to, never mind when
he died!) and I'm prersonally scepital. All we know is that Eliz.
came from a Hampshire merchant family, and her father was supposedly
the Thomas Wayte who died in 1482 with a none-too-youthful-looking
image on his tomb. His birth date is unknown, as are the details of
his first marriage. In 1465 he married for the second time, a widow
who may have been past childbearing age as they had no children. The
birthdate of 1445 for Elizabeth seems to be another wild guess.
The main branch of the Lucys belonged to Charlcote near Warwick, and
I wonder if a marriage between the Hampshire Waytes and the
Warwickshire Lucys is not more likely to have taken place AFTER
Elizabeth had become Edward's mistress, as a result of royal
patronage.

I tend to feel if Arthur had been married before 1510 we'd probably
know, given that he was Edward IV's son, and that is far too late for
a first marriage if he was born 1462/4.