Saturday 20 May 2017

Mythbusting, Part 4: Francis`s marital (in?)fidelity

It is extremely wide-spread in fiction to depict Francis`s marriage with Anne FitzHugh as a bad one, in which the spouses at best don`t have anything to say to each other and do not care about one another, at worst actively dislike each other. In consequence, such fiction usually portrays Francis as unfaithful to her, finding sexual gratification and often also genuine love with mistresses.

In non-fiction, naturally, the marriage between Francis and Anne is hardly ever addressed, given that so little evidence survives about it, so that the picture of the marriage as a bad one and Francis as a notoriously unfaithful husband stands largely unchallenged.

Naturally, it is always extremely hard to say what goes on in a marriage when one isn`t part of said marriage, and more so when both spouses have been dead for 500+ years and never openly said anything about it. However, even so, we do have some indications that suggest the version largely accepted in fiction and hardly to not at all challenged in non-fiction may not actually be truthful.

As I have mentioned in a recent article on Anne FitzHugh herself, there are indications of her being trusted or at least respected by her husband, and her favour being sought to secure his, which does not point to a relationship in which the two were completely indifferent if not downright hostile. We also know that Anne went to the trouble of putting herself in danger to find out what had happened to him after he had vanished, which also contradicts this picture.

None of this, of course, means that Francis could not have been unfaithful. There are many instances of apparently successful marriages in which the husband cheated on his wife, and if the wife ever protested, it is lost to history. The marriage between Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville is one example of such. It is perfectly possible that the union between Francis and Anne was another.

However, there is absolutely no evidence for it, so it is all up for speculation. What we do know, though, is that the lack of evidence of Francis ever cheating makes it unlikely that he flaunted a mistress and treated her almost like a wife as he often does in fiction. While any mentions of this during his time as a simple baron may have been lost, or no one have even cared to remark on it, it would doubtlessly have been remarked upon during his time as Richard III`s lord chamberlain. Richard made a point of condemning the supposed lechery and undoubted adultery at his brother Edward`s court, and spoke out against adultery itself. Had one of his closest men been openly and unrepentantly adulterous, this would have been noticed and commented on by contemporaries, suggesting that if Francis was unfaithful to his wife, he was very discreet about it.

It should also be noted that whatever his fidelity or lack thereof was, there is evidence - which I addressed in an article yesterday - that Anne`s family, most notably her mother Alice and oldest brother Richard, were at least on friendly terms with him. This is perfectly likely to have happened even if Francis was unfaithful to their daughter/sister, but unlikely had he flaunted a mistress and let her take Anne`s place in all but name.

What little we have suggests, therefore, that if Francis was unfaithful, he was discreet about it and did not have a single steady mistress he loved, favoured and gave much attention to, nor was he known to have a string of mistresses like for example William Hastings supposedly did. While there is nothing to contradict the possibility of him having flings or occasional mistresses, there is also no evidence to support it. There is no indication his marriage was a bad one, that he needed to or that he sought solace in the arm of mistresses because of that, as fiction so often presents.




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