Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester - Trial and Imprisonment

Trial and Imprisonment

Eleanor consulted astrologers to try to divine the future. The astrologers, Thomas Southwell and Roger Bolingbroke predicted that Henry VI would suffer a life-threatening illness in July or August 1441. When rumours of the prediction reached the King's guardians, they also consulted astrologers who could find no such future illness in their astrological predictions, a comfort for the king who had been troubled by the rumours. They also followed the rumours to their source and interrogated Southwell, Bolingbroke and John Home (Eleanor's personal confessor) and then arrested Southwell and Bolingbroke on charges of treasonable necromancy. Bolingbroke named Eleanor as the instigator so she too was arrested and tried. The charges against her were possibly exaggerated to curb the ambitions of her husband.

Eleanor denied most of the charges but confessed to obtaining a potions from Margery Jourdemayne, "the Witch of Eye". Her explanation was that they were potions to help her conceive. Eleanor and her fellow conspirators were found guilty. Southwell died in the Tower of London, Bolingbroke was hanged, drawn and quartered, and Jourdemayne was burnt at the stake. Eleanor had to do public penance in London, divorce her husband and was condemned to life imprisonment. In 1442, Eleanor was imprisoned at Chester Castle, then in 1443 moved to Kenilworth Castle. In July 1446 she was moved to the Isle of Man, and finally in March 1449 to Beaumaris Castle in Anglesey, where she died on 7 July 1452.