Talk:Robert Waterton

Robert Waterton, his wives, and the danger of relying overmuch on one 89-year-old article

This article states that the subject, Robert Waterton who died 17 Jan 1425, was married only once, to Cecily Fleming, and that it was his son, also Robert Waterton, who married, first, Joan Everingham, and second, Margaret Clarell.

This is indeed the model put forth in J. W. Walker's 1931 article "The Burghs of Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire and the Watertons of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire," but it would no longer appear to be widely shared. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry on this Robert Waterton, most recently revised 25 May 2006, says that he had three wives: first, the Joan Everingham that this Wikipedia article ascribes to his son; second, Cecily Fleming; and third, the Margaret Clarell that this Wikipedia article also ascribes to his son. The ODNB article also says that Robert Waterton's son Robert Waterton "married Beatrice, daughter of John, Lord Clifford (d. 1422)", not Joan Everingham and Margaret Clarell.

Among the multiple references in this Wikipedia article's section covering Robert Waterton and the supposed two wives of his son are several footnotes to Douglas Richardson's 2011 Magna Carta Ancestry. I don't have this work, but a quick glance into it with Google Books's sample-pages view tells me that on page 478, Richardson says that Margaret Clarell married the Robert Waterton who died 17 Jan 1425, not his son. He also says that she was his third wife. In other words, a reference being multiply cited in this article says something entirely different from what this article claims it does. Additionally, Richardson's Royal Ancestry (2013), which I do have, in volume 5, page 333, refers to Cecily Fleming as Robert Waterton's second (rather than his only) wife.

In general J. W. Walker's 1931 article about the Burghs and the Watertons appears to be problematic in a number of ways. Among other issues, at different points in his article, Walker asserts two completely different and contradictory models of Robert Waterton's parentage. In 2005, Brice Clagett posted an overview of the several claims that have been made about the identity of Waterton's parents. It would appear that the strongest contemporary evidence we have is a royal pardon issued in 1398 which identifies his father as a Richard Waterton of Waterton. pnh (talk) 15:48, 7 September 2020 (UTC)