by way of the male line: The question of inheritance through a female line would prove a recurrent issue in this century, albeit one that had already long ago provided the basis for the Neville family’s power when one Robert Fitz Meldred of Raby married the daughter of Geoffrey de Neville and their son took the rich mother’s Neville name and founded this branch of the Neville family. See Charles R. Young, The Making of the Neville Family, 1166–1400 (Boydell Press, 1996).
jointly to choose a confessor: For what information exists on Cecily’s early married life, see Anne Crawford, Yorkists: The History of a Dynasty, 1, 3, 5.
Cecily’s expenditures: For Cecily as a “late medieval big spender,” see Michael K. Jones, Bosworth, 1485: Psychology of a Battle, 59.
debate about . . . Edward’s birth: These are the facts on which Michael K. Jones bases his argument that the suggestion Edward was not York’s son was in fact true: he points out (ibid., 67) that York was away from Rouen on campaign exactly nine months before Edward’s birth on April 28, 1442; he has, indeed, found new documentation that shows the duke was away for longer than had been previously thought—from mid-July until after August 20. But the baby would have had to be only a matter of weeks late or premature to put the argument in jeopardy, even disregarding the possibility of conjugal visits, during a campaign fought only fifty miles away. See Crawford, Yorkists, 173–178, for the facts that weigh against the theory. Jones also suggests that Cecily’s later piety was that of the reformed rake; this theory, though fascinating, can only be speculative.
Edward simply took after his mother, Cecily: Edward’s different appearance would later be held up as evidence of his illegitimacy—but the same grounds would also be used by Richard III to infer the bastardy of Edward’s brother Clarence, who himself had been the first to accuse Edward of bastardy, and Clarence was born some years and several siblings down the line, and in a different country.
no sign of querying his son’s paternity: This was the all-important heir. As Horace Walpole put it in the eighteenth century, a time of notably lax aristocratic morality, while writing his Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard III: “Ladies of the least disputable gallantry generally suffer their husbands to beget the heir.”
Mancini: Dominic Mancini was an Italian visiting England for the first half of 1483 and writing a report on English affairs for his patron, Angelo Cato, one of the advisers of King Louis of France. These comprised Richard III’s takeover of the country, as well as a certain amount of backstory. He left England in July 1483, though he seems to have tried to update his information right up to the point when he handed in his report at the beginning of December. It is unclear how good his sources were—though one may possibly have been John Argentine, physician to the boy king Edward V—or even how much English he spoke. Nonetheless, as a man writing in the year the events he described took place, his testimony is invaluable. It is perhaps worth noting that although his report is usually known as the “Usurpation” of Richard III, its Latin title actually referred to the “occupatio,” that is, occupation or seizure of the throne, rather than to its “usurpatio.”
Chapter 3: “A Woman’s Fear”
Jean de Waurin: Jean or Jehan de Waurin (ca. 1398–ca. 1474) was born a Frenchman, but wound up at the court of Burgundy, where he was commissioned to write a history of England, ending in 1471. A single copy of his Recueil survived in the library of Louis de Gruuthuyse.
Shakespeare has Marguerite pleading: Henry VI, Part 2, 3.2.
a high-spending queen: A. R. Myers in The Crown, Household, and Parliament in Fifteenth Century England (coedited with Cecil H. Clough) has studies on the household of Queen Margaret of Anjou, 1452–1453, and on “some household ordinances of Henry VI,” as well as on the household of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, 1466–1467.
Margaret Beaufort . . . had been raised at her own family seat: Another theory suggests that she was at least partly raised in Alice Chaucer’s household at Ewelme. Christina Hardyment, Malory: The Life and Times of King Arthur’s Chronicler, 244.
Chapter 4: “No Women’s Matters”
Cecily wrote to Marguerite: Anne Crawford, Letters of Medieval Women, 233–235. On the birth of her son Richard, Cecily writes of an “encumberous labour, to me full painful and uneasy, God knoweth.”
Thomas More: Sir Thomas More’s History of King Richard the Third brings into sharp focus many of the issues that bedevil the historical sources for the late fifteenth century—a focus all the sharper not only for More’s own later reputation as a figure of probity, but for the extremely attractive (and quotable) nature of his writing, full of lengthy reported speeches and the kind of human drama not always found in other sources of the day.
The first question must be to what degree More can be regarded as a contemporary at all, given that he—born in 1478—is describing the events of 1483. (His mention of Richard’s birth, like his descriptions of Richard’s brother’s marriage, are all part of the backstory to his main theme.) But this apart, the long, impassioned speeches he gives to Elizabeth Woodville and her opponents over the surrendering of the younger of the Princes in the Tower could in any case not credibly have been relayed to him verbatim even by someone who was present and reinforce the observation that his History is in fact as much a matter of literary creation as factual narrative, a conscious warning against the dangers of tyranny owing a good deal to classical models (unless—a suggestion mooted by R. S. Sylvester, editing the sixteen-volume Yale edition of More’s works—he was drawing on a now-lost piece of writing by that someone, possibly John Morton, in whose household the youthful More spent some time).
Morton (whose own experience would help account for More’s anti-Richard bias) is most often suggested as More’s probable source of information; other theories, however, have also been raised. Michael K. Jones (Bosworth, 1485: Psychology of a Battle, 63–64) postulates that “Jane” Shore, whom More evidently knew, may have given him some information, though she would hardly have been privy to the speeches mentioned above. Alison Weir (The Princes in the Tower, 170) points out that More was in close touch with a nun in the Minoresses’ convent of Aldgate, the inmates of which included several women who might have had important information to give him concerning the fate of the Princes in the Tower (including the daughter of Sir Robert Brackenbury and two female relatives of Sir James Tyrell; see note in Chapter XXIV for Tyrell’s supposed confession). It is More’s testimony concerning the fate of the Princes that has been more influential even than Vergil’s in blackening the reputation of Richard III; nonetheless, supporters of King Richard can choose between simply blaming him for calumny and speculating that the reason he left his narrative unfinished, ending at the point of the murder, may have been because he had come to realize this version of events was a lie, assuming, of course, that he did indeed abandon it at this point. The History of King Richard III was printed only two decades after his death, at which time it was described merely as having been found among More’s papers and in his hand, so that even the authorship could—the crowning uncertainty—be seen as unclear.
“honour or dishonour”: Helen Cooper writes in her introduction to Malory’s Morte Darthur: “Malory’s Arthurian world operates by the principles of a shame culture, where worth is measured in terms of reputation, ‘worship,’ rather than by the principles of a guilt culture.”
several of the early Norman queens: The two Matildas—the Conqueror’s wife and daughter-in-law—exercised this kind of power, as of course did Eleanor of Aquitaine, while in 1253 Henry III had named his queen, Eleanor of Provence, regent during his absence.
process was completed: “There has been a tendency among historians to acknowledge Margaret’s [sic] emergence as a political actor but then to shy away from looking at it too closely. A part of the problem lies in the traditional habit of regarding the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of its male protagonists.” Helen Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England,
78; see also 81–82.
two sides of the same unnatural coin: This is the trope by which Richard, in Henry VI, Part 3, 5.5, accused her of having usurped her husband’s breeches, that is, his masculinity.
Anne Neville: Another aspect of Neville power was northern: Anne Neville was, of course, great-niece as well as, eventually, daughter-in-law to Cecily.
Chapter 5: “Captain Margaret”
Bernard André: André, a.k.a. Andreus (1450–1522), was a French Augustinian friar who was appointed poet laureate in the first few years of Henry VII’s reign, became his official “historiographer” (and inevitably apologist), and played a role in the education of his sons. See André, Vita Henrici Septimi, in Memorials of King Henry VII.
held maidenhood . . . virginity to be the most perfect time: The famous thirteenth-century tract Holy Maidenhead paints a horrifying picture of maternity: “a swelling in your womb which bulges you out like a water-skin, discomfort in your bowels and stitches in your side . . . the dragging weight of your two breasts, and the streams of milk that run from them. . . . Worry about your labour pains keeps you awake at night. Then when it comes to it, that cruel distressing anguish, that incessant misery, that torment upon torment, that wailing outcry; while you are suffering from this, and from your fear of death, shame [is] added to that suffering.” Henrietta Leyser, Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England, 123. The same tract paints an equally damning picture of a wife’s lot—the child screaming, “the cat at the flitch and the dog at the hide, her loaf burning on the hearth and her calf sucking, the pot boiling over into the fire—and her husband complaining.” Ibid., 146. But at least that is a position with which Margaret Beaufort would not have to cope. The tract may have been written specifically for an audience of enclosed religious women; later in life, Margaret Beaufort would be recorded as fitting out a cell for at least one anchoress, at Stamford in Lincolnshire, and making her gifts of wine and apples.
a new marriage had to be arranged for her: Perhaps—since she did, after all, ride out to be present at the negotiations—her modern biographers are right to suggest she took a hand in arranging it herself. Earlier biographers of Margaret Beaufort preferred to stress her piety and resignation.
“entreated and [de]spoiled”: An English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, and Henry VI, 83.
submitted herself: Gregory’s Chronicle, 206.
“relief of her and her infants”: Calendar of Patent Rolls: Henry VI, 1452–61, 542.
the Countess of Salisbury was personally attainted: This was a comparatively novel procedure, where a woman was concerned. From the parliamentary rolls of 1442: “Also pray the commons . . . that it may please you, by the advice and assent of the lords spiritual and temporal in this present parliament assembled, to declare that such ladies (duchesses, countesses, or baronesses) thus indicted . . . of any treason or felony . . . whether they are married or single, should be held to reply and set for judgement before such judges and peers of the realm as are other peers of the realm.”
Chapter 6: “Mightiness Meets Misery”
chair of blue velvet: Christine Weightman, Margaret of York: The Diabolical Duchess, 45; The Paston Letters, 3:233.
Hall and Holinshed: Edward Hall, The Union of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York, originally published in 1548. Hall (ca. 1498–1547) drew heavily on Vergil and on More; in fact, when Thomas More’s History was first printed, it was described as having appeared earlier in Hall but “very much corrupt . . . altered in words and whole sentences.” Raphael Holinshed (?–1580) first published the Chronicles containing his History of England in 1577; his work, more directly even than Hall’s, which in large parts it reproduces (a modern age would say plagiarizes), is the major source for Shakespeare’s history plays. John Stow (1525–1605, mentioned subsequently in text), who contributed to a later edition of Holinshed’s work, was also an antiquarian who transcribed a number of manuscripts.
The pillaging did much: There is, of course, a theory that the whole saga of Marguerite’s indifference and her soldiers’ outrage itself originated as Yorkist propaganda. See B. M. Cron, “Margaret of Anjou and the Lancastrian March on London, 1461.”
The ladies were Ismanie, Lady Scales: That, at least, is the consensus view, though Cron’s article demonstrates how this is in fact a good example of how information has often to be pieced together from diverging sources: The Great Chronicle mentions Jacquetta and Lady Scales but not Anne; the Annales, once attributed to the antiquarian William Worcester, and the Milanese State Papers mention Anne and Jacquetta but not Lady Scales; another source, the so-called English Chronicle, edited by J. S. Davies, has Anne alone.
her eldest daughter, Elizabeth: The name of Domina Isabella (the Latin “Elizabeth”) Grey occurs among the ladies attending Queen Marguerite, at a point when (insofar as the records allow us to guess the dates) the young Elizabeth Woodville had probably recently been married to the Lancastrian John Grey. This reference may well describe another lady; nonetheless, Thomas More would mention Elizabeth’s service with Marguerite as a fact. The nineteenth-century writer Prévost d’Exiles relates a romantic story that Elizabeth had accompanied her husband on the campaign and was, before St. Albans, persuaded by Marguerite to visit Warwick’s camp as the queen’s spy.
The Bishop of Elphin: Calendar of State Papers: Venetian, 1:103. See also Calendar of State Papers: Milan, 1:65–66.
PART II: 1460–1471
Chapter 7: “To Love a King”
the lands held by his father: See Calendar of Patent Rolls: Edward IV, 1461–67, 131 (June 1, 1461), an extremely extensive list of properties (with their “advowsons, wards, marriages, escheats . . . warrens, chases, fairs, markets, fisheries, liberties, wrecks of sea”) granted to Cecily for life “in full recompense of her jointure.” A later grant describes her holding properties, which carried with them the right to hold a regular court, “as fully as the king’s father had them.” See also Calendar of the Close Rolls: Edward IV, 1:73.
it may have been . . . bigamous: See Chapter 8. The possibility of Edward’s having been already married is explored at length in John Ashdown-Hill’s Eleanor: The Secret Queen. See also Anne Crawford, Yorkists: The History of a Dynasty, 178–179.
The only Englishwoman to become queen consort: The closest comparisons would probably be with Matilda of Scotland, wife to Henry I, whose mother came from a Saxon royal house, and Joan of Kent, who made a controversial marriage with the Black Prince, son of Edward III. It could not, however, be said against Matilda that she was not of royal stock, while the Black Prince died before he became king or Joan queen.
Cecily elaborated her title: Joanna L. Chamberlayne, “A Paper Crown: The Titles and Seals of Cecily Duchess of York.” See also Crawford, Yorkists, 175–176.
Chapter 8: “Fortune’s Pageant”
until de Brézé found her: Nor were her dramatic adventures over. When she and her son, with de Brézé, had ridden back into Scotland, they fell into the hands of an English spy named Cook, who planned to take her to Edward IV. Cook’s confederates overpowered the men, dragged them all into a rowing boat, and put out to sea where, as dawn light came up, Marguerite was able surreptitiously to loosen de Brézé’s bonds, so that he overpowered Cook and they got away.
to exercise influence: Men, of course, exercised influence as well, but they also had more formalized rules, which meant that the dangerous, mistrusted interaction of the political and the personal was one step further away.
instructions from Marguerite: Malory biographer Christina Hardyment postulates (Malory: The Life and Times of King Arthur’s Chronicler, 419ff.) that he may have been employed as a go- between.
Chapter 9: “Domestic Broils”
John Rous: John Rous, Rows, or Roos (d. 1491) was a Warwickshire cleric and antiquarian, the chronicler of Anne Neville’s family. His Rous Roll, a history of the Earls of Warwick, warmly praised Anne’s husband, then on the throne as Richard III; later
, however, his History of the Kings of England vilified the dead king just as ardently. It was this work that first saw the portrait, seized upon by Shakespeare, of a Richard who spent two years in his mother’s womb, emerging complete with teeth and long hair.
Worcester: The chronicler once mistakenly identified as the fifteenth-century antiquarian William of Worcester, now often known as “pseudo-Worcester.”
Clarence’s mother, Cecily, had recently told him: Michael K. Jones, Bosworth, 1485: Psychology of a Battle, 73. Militating against the theory that Cecily here fell out with Edward is (as Joanna Laynesmith points out in “The Kings’ Mother”) the fact that in a time of danger soon afterward—a time when he had, however, been reconciled with Clarence—Edward took his family for safety to his mother’s house, and Cecily was recorded as taking part in several family ceremonies in the years ahead. As several writers have also reflected, however, within the context of a family, irritation is not the same thing as total alienation—now or in the fifteenth century.
Cecily and her daughters were surely working: Like so much concerning Cecily’s role in the Clarence saga, this seems to be, as Jane Austen put it, “a truth universally acknowledged” rather than one for which it is possible to produce actual proof. For discussion of that role, see Laynesmith, “The Kings’ Mother.” See also Jones, Bosworth, chap. 3, for his theory as to Cecily’s motives in traveling to Sandwich to see Clarence as he set off for Calais and marriage with Warwick’s daughter.
Marguerite held out for fifteen days: Shakespeare (Henry VI, Part 3, 3.3) takes full dramatic license to have Warwick change his allegiance, and Marguerite accept it, in a half-dozen lines, or the blink of an eye.
Chapter 10: “That Was a Queen”
Philippe de Commynes: Philippe de Commynes or Commines (1447–ca. 1511) made the opposite journey to that of Jean de Waurin: born in Flanders, he eloped into the service of King Louis of France (at which court he may have met the exiled Henry Tudor). His Mémoires reflects the insider’s view of international relations he gained in his career as a diplomat, while his analytical style has seen him dubbed “the first truly modern writer.”
Blood Sisters: The Women Behind the Wars of the Roses Page 38