A group of some twenty lords and bishops were gathered in the centre of the great hall wearing long furred gowns against the stiff March breezes. Their cheeks and noses were rosy after the short walk from Blackfriars, where they had met earlier that morning. We paused in the arched entrance and I glanced briefly at Edward.
‘Do you want to go first?’ I asked him in a low voice.
He shook his head. ‘No, let us walk together, you, me and Meg. We will see what they have to say.’
As we approached the group I briefly caught the eye of my brother Will, tall at the back. I had not seen him for years and noticed that his beard was streaked with grey. Then the Archbishop of Canterbury stepped forward. Thomas Bourchier was the brother of Richard’s sister Isabel’s husband Viscount Bourchier and the random thought crossed my mind that probably everyone in this room was related to each other either directly or by marriage. Because, like the two branches of Nevilles, the Bourchiers and the Buckinghams had a common grandparent and so, like me, most of them were closely related to someone in the Lancastrian command. York and Lancaster were not factions. Sadly they were family.
The cross on the archbishop’s chest glittered with a pattern of diamonds and his mitre was slightly askew, as if he had donned it hastily. He held in his hand a rolled vellum scroll on which there was, as yet, no seal. He cleared his throat as he unrolled it and then began to read.
‘After much deliberation and consultation with the Commons, the peers of the Great Council of England have decided that Edward, Duke of York, three times great grandson of the puissant King Edward the Third, is by right of birth and descent their true king and on this day, the fourth of March fourteen hundred and sixty one, wish to offer to the said Edward, Duke of York, the crown and throne of England which, in due course, they entreat him to come to the Abbey of St Peter at Westminster to accept.’
The archbishop lowered the scroll and a profound silence fell as every eye in the hall focused on Edward. He took one step forward and I could feel my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I imagined the sound must reach the ears of everyone about me. Then Edward turned to me without speaking and dropped to his knees. I knew the reason. He had said to me once that I would make a wise and beautiful queen and that he and everyone else would kneel at my feet. Now he was about to accept the crown and afterwards, as the highest in the land, he would never kneel to me or to anyone.
He wore no hat and I reached out and put my hands on his golden head. ‘God bless you, Edward,’ I said. ‘My son. My king.’ Then I cupped his smooth, boyish chin in my palm and leaned down to kiss his cheek.
To my astonishment I tasted the salt of tears and knew intuitively that the boy who had so suddenly become a man was weeping for his father. Gently, with my thumb, I wiped the tear away and gave a slight shake of my head. He could grieve later, when the throne was secure. Now was not the time for tears.
Edward stood up and stepped forward, taller and lighter of foot than anyone else in the room. ‘My lords,’ he said and I was pleased to hear his voice emerge loud and firm, ‘I accept your offer and will come with you to Westminster to accept the crown and the throne of England.’
Later in the day, after Edward had been sworn in as England’s lawgiver and enthroned on the King’s Bench at Westminster Hall, Margaret and I sat together in the chancel at Westminster Abbey and watched as the abbot and monks brought out the crown and sceptre of Edward the Confessor and offered them to his namesake. Taking the crown, the new, young Edward placed it reverently on his own head and then sceptre in hand he walked to the throne, sat down and addressed the congregation loudly and clearly.
‘At the request of the Lords and Commons I have accepted the crown of England but this is not a coronation. Sixty-two years ago Henry of Lancaster usurped the throne of Richard the Second. I am the descendant of King Richard’s heir, Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, and as such I am your rightful king. I vow to you in this holy place that I will serve you diligently and faithfully. But I will not be crowned by the archbishop or receive the divine right of kingship by anointment with the holy chrism until I have driven the present usurper Henry and his wife out of the kingdom or else brought them to my royal justice charged with treason. May God bless our realm and all its worthy citizens!’
Because of the lump in my throat I could not cheer his speech as the congregation then did, loud and long. The peers present formed a queue to pay homage to their new king but the line was short. There were so many dukes, earls and barons who were not there and who were even now mustering their next army to throw their might against this untried eighteen-year-old monarch and commander. This was the beginning of a reign but it was not the end of the war.
My thoughts turned to Richard, who had spent so much of his life fulfilling what he saw as his duty to serve and support a king who had failed so utterly to understand the process of government. If Richard had not died at Wakefield, would he now be sitting on the throne in Westminster Abbey taking the homage of his peers? Somehow I could not imagine it. Now more than ever I saw Edward as more Neville than Plantagenet. When I was born, my father had been older than Richard was when he died. I had never known him as a young man but my mother had adored him and told me that he was the kind of man who could turn black clouds into blue sky. Edward certainly had Ralph Neville’s imposing height, his fair hair and his dancing grey eyes and I believed he also had his charisma. It was as much his Neville blood as his Plantagenet breeding that had won him this place on the throne of England. Would the Neville blood with its fighting flair and its charismatic charm keep him alive and fit to reign? I offered a silent prayer that it be so.
Beside me Margaret bent her head to whisper her thoughts. ‘If our father had not died you might be queen now, lady mother. Do you regret that?’
Behind my clasped hands I gave her a sideways smile. ‘I am a Neville and I think, like Edward, that if a crown had come my way I would not have refused it.’
Outside the sun shone on Edward’s procession as he walked to the river to board the barge that would take him back to Baynard’s. ‘King Edward! King Edward! God save King Edward!’ The cheers and calls of the crowd echoing off the abbey walls told me that the people of London believed as I did, that after years of discord, disruption and war, surely with this golden king on the throne England could now look forward to peace and prosperity?
EPILOGUE
Berkhamstead Castle, Hertfordshire
June 24th 1580
Wearing a pristine white lace ruff, a blue pearl-buttoned doublet and puffed white breeches paned with bright blue silk, Sir Edward Carey, Keeper of the Queen’s Jewels, made his way to the rose garden of Berkhamstead Castle. In one hand he held a beribboned basket containing a white satin cushion and in the other a sharp pruning knife.
Having outlived all of her children except Elizabeth and Margaret, Cicely had caused the rose garden to be planted when she retired to Berkhamstead to live out her twilight years. It contained only red and white roses and had been carefully maintained, even after she died on May 31st 1495 at the age of eighty. Sadly, after her death, the rest of the castle was allowed to fall into disrepair, abandoned by its royal owners.
Nearly a hundred years later, Queen Elizabeth I granted the castle to Sir Edward, who was permitted to use stone from the crumbling walls to build himself a house in the hunting park. On that bright midsummer day he set down the basket, selected a rose and cut it from the bush with his knife. He trimmed its leaves and laid it on the white satin cushion before picking up the basket and setting off for the stables. The only rent required for the castle was that each year, on the feast day of St John the Baptist, Sir Edward should bring to court one perfect red rose, in memory of the queen’s great grandmother Cicely Neville, the Rose of Raby.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The civil disturbances during the fifteenth century in England were so many and varied that it would be foolish to try and tell a story that encompassed all the battles and family feuds
that constituted what we now call the Wars of the Roses. My decision to concentrate on the York/Neville connection was dictated by my fascination with Cicely Neville and the way the Wheel of Fortune turned so abruptly and violently for her and her family. And what an outstanding family it was – and a contentious one! Her father married twice and she was the youngest of his twenty one (or twenty-two, depending on which records you consult) legitimate children and not a day can have gone by without some sort of disagreement or difference of opinion and of course the oldest of them would have flown the nest and had their own children long before the youngest were even born. So definitely not a family such as we are used to today.
However, as soon as I started my research, I realized that the size of the family was the least of my problems. For although there is detailed Neville genealogy available, I discovered that the early records from Raby Castle had been entrusted to the county archive in Durham, which had gone up in flames in the nineteenth century. So I had to rely on aural history and family legend to construct a picture of Cicely’s early life, before she became a national figure. Incidentally there are differing opinions as to the spelling of her name. Some spell it Cecily and she signed herself Cecylle in a rather crabbed hand but I have chosen to employ the spelling Cicely, as used at Raby Castle in their guides and documents. Both Raby and Brancepeth castles are still in private hands and occupied by their owners. Raby is open to the public (www.rabycastle.com) and is the magnificent home of direct descendants of the Nevilles, and although it has been extensively developed and renovated through the centuries it still has the same footprint as it had in Cicely’s time. Brancepeth is smaller but equally well preserved and has changed hands a number of times over the years but remains in private ownership. The two Neville palaces in Yorkshire are now both ruins. Little remains of Sheriff Hutton Castle, but Middleham is a very atmospheric place to visit, particularly if you are a follower of the history of Richard III, who spent some of his teenage years there as well as much of his married life – a period not covered in Red Rose, White Rose.
Sir John Neville is quite a mysterious character in history but I have fleshed him out from the sketchy mentions to be found. The relationship I have given him with Cicely is fictitious but it is a fact that he did not marry until he was well over forty, which is late for medieval times, and he did marry his nephew’s twelve-year-old widow. Their son eventually inherited the earldom of Westmorland.
I would love to have met Cicely’s father, Ralph Neville, the first Earl of Westmorland, and I see Sir John Neville as a slightly flawed version of him. Since he was clearly very fertile, Ralph probably did have illegitimate children although there is no record of them but there is a son called Cuthbert listed as ‘died young’ among the children of his marriage to Joan Beaufort. I have simply chosen to give him a different mother and use him as the co-narrator of the novel in order to bring another voice into story and enable me to take the narrative onto the battlefield, where obviously Cicely would not have gone. Hilda Copley is an entirely fictitious character, as is her obnoxious brother Gerald and Hilda’s first husband, Master Simon Exeley.
Cicely’s eldest full brother was baptised Richard but for convenience I have concocted a family name of Hal in order to reduce the number of Richards in the novel which I considered would be too confusing for the reader. For the same reason the Earl of Warwick is called Dick and Cicely’s youngest son is known as Dickon. But it is entirely possible that the name Richard would have been an embarrassment at court during the early years of King Henry IV’s reign.
There was a Neville manor called Aycliffe which was eventually held by Sir Thomas Neville but that is all I know about it. I made it a tower in a bog because the modern town of School Aycliffe does stand on the edge of a ‘wetland’ which has been drained and turned into a nature reserve.
The breakdown of relations between the Duke of York and King Henry VI is well documented, as are their characters and that of Queen Margaret of Anjou. I hope I have not taken any ‘liberties’ with them, or with the battles I have described which took place as a result.
The characters of Cicely’s children are from my imagination but based on their documented adult actions. I have absorbed recent opinions about the legitimacy of King Edward IV but take the view that ‘my’ Cicely would have been far too proud to have an affair with a mere archer! Also there seems to me to be no proof that the Duke of York could not have been his father and every reason to believe that he was. Edward just happened to inherit the looks, height and character of his grandparent, which plenty of people do.
The marriage of Anne of York and Henry (Harry) Holland definitely took place and was reported to be acrimonious, just as he was described by contemporaries as ill-tempered, violent and erratic. Anne eventually achieved an annulment from him, which was unusual in those times, and when he died she was granted wardship of their daughter and all his lands and revenues. So she was far from stupid and I’m happy to say made a second marriage (probably a love match) to a mere knight, which produced another daughter, one of whose descendants was used to supply the DNA that finally identified the ‘body in the car-park’ as definitely being that of Anne’s brother, King Richard III.
I could find no record of Edward of York’s knighting, which is surprising as it is a documented rite of passage for most high-ranking noblemen. So it is my own imagination which gave the honour to his cousin, the Earl of Warwick and made it the subject of a bitter row between Cicely and her husband. The fact remains that despite being only eighteen, he must have been knighted before taking a command at the Battle of Northampton and then going on to lead his army into the Battle of Mortimer’s Cross, which were the defining conflicts that won him the offer of the crown. I have chosen to end this account of Cicely’s early life at this stage because after this the historical focus turns to Edward’s choice of a wife. Elizabeth Woodville and her family take centre stage in history during the next stage of the Wars of the Roses and there are many battles and turns of fortune to come.
I hope I have answered the historical questions readers may have after reading Red Rose, White Rose but if there are any I have overlooked I would love to hear from you on Twitter (@joannahickson) or Facebook (Joanna Hickson) where I will readily attempt to answer them.
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About the Author
Joanna Hickson spent twenty five years at the BBC writing and presenting for radio and television. Her first book, Rebellion at Orford Castle, was a children’s historical novel set in East Anglia. This was later followed by Island Games and Dubious Assets, contemporary romances set in her then adopted homeland of Scotland and published under the name of Joanna McDonald.
Medieval history has always been her passion however and her sequential novels The Agincourt Bride and The Tudor Bride followed the life of Catherine de Valois, Queen Consort to the conquering King Henry V and, with the Welsh squire Owen Tudor, founder of the Tudor dynasty. In Red Rose, White Rose Joanna focuses on a time of great turbulence in England and the eventful life of one of the fifteenth century’s most powerful women, Cicely Neville, mother of Edward IV and Richard III.
Joanna is married and now living in Wiltshire, with an extended family and a wayward Irish terrier. She welcomes contact on Facebook (Joanna Hickson) or Twitter (@joannahickson).
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Red Rose, White Rose Page 45