Conjurations and Eleanor Cobham in Tudor History, Poetry, and Drama

Eleanor Cobham, the spouse of King Henry VI's uncle, participated in what historian Francis Young calls "the most famous case of magical treason" in the fifteenth century (35). This article examines Tudor representations of this incident in three genres: Edward Hall's chronicle, The Union of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York (1548), William Baldwin's versified histories, A Mirror for Magistrates (1578), and William Shakespeare's history play, Henry VI, Part 2 (1591). Problems originate from arrogant or contentious individuals in "The XX Yere" of Henry's reign in Union; fortune plays a diminished role for Eleanor in Baldwin's poetry, considering works in the de casibus tradition. Conspiracy, Queen Margaret's antagonism, and the summoning of a spirit in Henry VI, Part 2, absent from previous histories, illustrate how factions target Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and consequently increase disputes during the Wars of the Roses. Furthermore, authorities in the sixteenth century would have been wary of ambiguous prophecies that had the potential to provoke insurrection. In Shakespeare's histories rivals conspire to consolidate power under a childless king; therefore, Elizabethan audiences saw the threats to their own monarch foreshadowed in the earlier reign.