Botetourt Redux

[Henry Sutliff]

Just when we thought this topic had been put to rest, along comes the
new volume XIV of The Complete Peerage (Addenda and Corrigenda). For
Botetourt (John de Botetourt) it reads:

page 233, line 13 for "whose parenatge is unknown" read "bastard s. of
Edward I"

(Hailes Chron. in BM Cott. MS. Cleopatra, D III, f. 51, ex inform A. R.
Wagner)

Has anyone seen these sources to show why CP has jumped on the Edward I
bandwagon as opposed to the other candidates proposed? Opinions?

Henry Sutliff

[John Carmi Parsons]

The Cotton MS Cleopatra D III noted below is (as frequently noted in the
earlier thread/s on Botetourt) the only extant source attributing John
Botetourt's (probably *rectius* "Botecourt") to Edward I. The claim rests
upon Botetourt's inclusion in a genealogical half-page vignette that
purports to show the names of Edward I's children by both wives. I have
examined the manuscript and noted at once that throughout, its genealogical
information is deeply flawed: King John, for example, is provided with a
son named William and Henry III has a daughter Matilda, neither of whom is
known from any other extant source. Edward I's children, moreover, have
been numbered--in the wrong order--with Arabic numerals above the roundels
in which their names are written. As it stands the vignette was probably
originally created sometime between the birth 1301 of Edmund of Woodstock,
later earl of Kent, Edward I's second son by his second wife, and 1306 when
that lady gave birth to her third and last child, Eleanor. As has been noted
elsewhere, however, John Botetourt's name is written in an isolated roundel
(not connected to Edwar I's large roundel) and was clearly added over an
erasure, though identified as "nothus" (bastard).

No other contemporary evidence that has ever been brought to light has
confirmed the allegation. Noel Denholm-Young's _History and Heraldry, 1254 to
1310_ appears to imply that the golden lion on Botetourt's arms points to
royal parentage, but this ignores the well-attested fact that there was not
yet a fixed system of differencing arms in the 13th and early 14th centuries
when John Botetourt lived. We know the names of several of John's brothers,
who bore the same arms although the lion was differently colored by each of
them. A gold lion signifies nothing in and of itself, certainly not a claim
to royal parentage; it appears purely and simply to be the metal John chose to
distinguish his lion from his brothers'.

The earlier comments on the matter can be resurrected from deja.news. I am
unable to account for this lapse in the editors' acquaintance with up to date
scholarship. This appears to be a likely first entry in CP vol. XV.

John Parsons