A precontract is a legal contract that precedes another; in particular it can refer to an existing promise of marriage with another. Such a precontract would legally nullify any later marriages into which either party entered. The practice was common in the Middle Ages, and the allegation of a precontract was the most common means of dissolving a marriage by the medieval

ecclesiastical court An ecclesiastical court, also called court Christian or court spiritual, is any of certain courts having jurisdiction mainly in spiritual or religious matters. In the Middle Ages, these courts had much wider powers in many areas of Europe than be ...

Richard III of England Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Battl ...

claimed his brother

Edward IV Edward IV (28 April 1442 – 9 April 1483) was King of England from 4 March 1461 to 3 October 1470, then again from 11 April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a central figure in the Wars of the Roses, a series of civil wars in England ...

had entered into a marriage precontract with Lady Eleanor Talbot prior to Edward's later marriage to

Elizabeth Woodville Elizabeth Woodville (also spelt Wydville, Wydeville, or Widvile;Although spelling of the family name is usually modernised to "Woodville", it was spelt "Wydeville" in contemporary publications by Caxton, but her tomb at St. George's Chapel, Wind ...

. The claim is now largely, though not universally, regarded to be false; if true, it would have meant that Edward's sons by Elizabeth, the ' Princes in the Tower', would have been illegitimate and Richard, rather than they, would have inherited the throne upon Edward IV's death. This claim was the basis on which Richard III displaced and replaced his nephew

Edward V Edward V (2 November 1470 – mid-1483)R. F. Walker, "Princes in the Tower", in S. H. Steinberg et al, ''A New Dictionary of British History'', St. Martin's Press, New York, 1963, p. 286. was ''de jure'' King of England and Lord of Ireland fro ...

as king, and the boy king and his brother disappeared in the Tower of London, missing presumed murdered.

References

{{reflist, 1 Contract law