Anne Neville

by Michael Hicks

  It was at this point that the royal couple were joined by their only son Prince Edward, Earl of Salisbury. He had remained in the North when they went south and had missed both the usurpation and their coronation. Since he was their heir, the assurance of a future to their dynasty, one wonders why. Now, however, they had come to him and the family group was complete. Moreover, he could now take pride of place: the highpoint of the forthcoming festivities was to be a splendid public ceremony at which he took centre stage – his formal creation and investiture as Prince of Wales. Not only were such investitures highly infrequent, but they occurred almost always in Westminster during parliamentary sessions: York was a unique venue. The great wardrobe supplied appropriately splendid clothes and horse-gear and the burghers of York laid on their best entertainment. Combined with King Richard’s own crown-wearing, this visit was designed to signal to northerners and Anne Neville’s traditional retainers the succession of a northern house and indeed of the Neville line to the English crown at last. To southerners, it demonstrated both Richard’s power and popularity in the North.

  King Richard, Queen Anne and Prince Edward, five bishops, three earls, six other peers and many gentry set off from Pontefract on 29 August. They were met outside the city walls by the mayor, aldermen and councillors and processed past three pageants to York Minster – it was the feast of the beheading of St John the Baptist. A splendid service featured the Te Deum before the royal couple proceeded to the adjacent palace of the archbishop. King and queen attended two banquets and a performance of the Creed play. The visit culminated on 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, when the royal party processed from the palace to the Minster for mass. Richard munificently presented twelve silver gilt figures of the apostles to York Minster. The Minster’s relics were displayed on the high altar. Immediately afterwards Prince Edward was knighted, created prince of Wales and invested with the insignia of the golden wand and wreath. His nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick and the king’s bastard John of Pontefract were also knighted. Following dinner, another banquet, the king, queen and prince sat crowned for four hours. So splendid was the occasion that Crowland called it a second coronation. Amongst a very large and sumptuous order to the great wardrobe were suits of armour, five heralds’ doublets, five banners of the Trinity, SS George, Cuthbert and Edward, and of the king’s arms, and 13,000 cushions embroidered with boars – that number again, somewhat greater than the population of York itself. King Richard also founded a chantry college for a hundred extra priests at the Minster. A foundation so unprecedented in size required large buildings, which were indeed commenced, and large endowments that were never transferred. Professor Dobson has suggested that at this stage Richard may even have been contemplating York Minster as his burial place.23 (If Barnard Castle was still an option, Middleham was no longer part of Anne and Richard’s hereditary estate, and neither college was really worthy of a sovereign.) Additionally Richard reduced the city’s fee farm and scattered benefits lavishly amongst other northern churches, communities and individuals. York had seen nothing like it since the enthronement of Archbishop Neville, which both Anne and Richard had attended, eighteen years before.

  Proceeding southwards to Pontefract on 21 September, they stayed for three weeks, before moving on to Lincoln on 11 October, where the royal party were greeted by news of Buckingham’s rebellion. Richard took on the task of suppression himself, whilst Anne, presumably, proceeded to London independently. However, the honeymoon period was over. Although the rebels were soon routed, there was never to be another time when Richard’s right to rule was unquestioned.

  THE QUALITY OF QUEENSHIP

  Warwick had hoped to make his daughters royal and at different points had schemed for each to become a queen. That had been Anne’s destiny during her brief first marriage. It was an expectation and aspiration that she surely abandoned when she married Duke Richard. No better than third in the male line to the throne, rather further away if Edward IV’s daughters were admitted, he was a youngest son and never scheduled for the crown. That he became king was unexpected and surely unplanned. Anne was carried with him to throne and crown. Given the weight attached at the usurpation to legitimacy and to the invalidation of Edward IV’s marriage, it was important that there was no question about the validity of the union of King Richard and Queen Anne: unlike that of Edward IV, Rows rather forcefully hinted.24 They lived their lie. If Richard had not been scheduled to be king, neither was Anne to be queen. After Edward of Lancaster’s death, she must have abandoned any such pretensions. As a mature Englishwoman, she brought to the throne much baggage – traditions, biases and connections – which were very much Richard’s as well. He used them to make himself king and found himself obliged to rely quite heavily on them once this was accomplished. However, Anne’s heritage was either to be submerged in Richard’s own royal line of succession or to follow a different course once their line faltered: its preservation, as we shall see, was no longer his concern.

  Was Anne a good queen? Ricardians today wish to establish whether Richard was a good king. Because his reign was so brief, it is an impossible question to answer, besides being anachronistic. Richard’s age did not judge their rulers by the standards – such as reforms and legislative activity – that we do today. What are kings for? When assessing Anne as queen, moreover, we need to consider what queens were for. They had neither the power nor the responsibility of their husbands as rulers. To be queen, in Anne’s case, was not fundamentally different from being the wife, mother and duchess that she had been before. That is why late medieval theorists found it unnecessary to say anything more about queens.25 As queen, her rank was simply higher, her establishment, income and following all larger.

  Her prime function, of course, was as breeding stock. It was her duty to supply the necessary son and heir, and this Anne had already fulfilled. This, however, was the barest requisite. It was desirable to have not just an heir, but also a spare, as Prince Harry is today. To ensure the succession and facilitate diplomatic alliances, a whole litter of princes and princesses was the ideal. Unfortunately Prince Edward was all she had delivered and all, moreover, that she could produce. That was to prove a fatal flaw that came to outweigh every other use and service.

  A queen was also expected to preside over her husband’s court, to appear at, participate with the king in, and to lead major ceremonies, all of which (as we have seen) Anne appears to have performed satisfactorily. To Faunger she was ‘the social companion of the king in the ritual performance of the regal rites’. Laynesmith waxes lyrical here:

  A woman was required in this context not just as an ornament to the king’s court but to complement the king’s masculine qualities with perceived feminine virtues of mercy and peacemaking… The ideal queen thus consummated her husband’s kingship by beauty, chastity and noble character that were an inspiration to good deeds, by mercy and emotion which complemented his judgement and logic, by an inclination to peace that tempered his courage, and by the flesh of the most human that complemented his spirit approaching the divine.26

  One hopes that Anne was up to this role, but once again, regrettably, we cannot know.

  We cannot even tell how often she was with the king. They were on progress together from Warwick to Lincoln in 1483, for both Christmases at Westminster and in 1484 at Nottingham. Cohabitation is also implied by Richard’s repeated visits to Greenwich, his adolescent home but probably the queen’s residence. Yet Anne may have shared little of his restless itinerary through England’s provinces, dictated as it was by political and military considerations to which she had little to contribute.

  A bachelor court like that of Edward IV, which had however been morally disreputable, was conceivable. That King Edward in the 1480s and King Richard were married did not guarantee respectability. It was kings, not their queens, who set the tone. If there was a role as patroness of the arts and literature, there are indications that Anne fulfilled it. Perhaps Anne as queen was e
xpected to intercede with the king, to induce his exercise of his prerogative of mercy. We cannot tell. Certainly it was desirable that she should not represent any particular interest or become involved in court factions, whether actively or passively, as her predecessor Elizabeth Wydeville had done. It was one of the dangers of a queen who was English that she brought with her to office kinsfolk and dependants who expected patronage and influence on affairs. Anne, at least, was not like that, both because she had few kin of her own – and because those she possessed, like the Beauchamp and Despenser heirs, were not her supporters – and because those she might have advanced, her Neville retainers, were of the utmost value to her husband and more generously rewarded by him than she could have achieved. It is hard, indeed, to show that she exercised any influence on Richard’s patronage or clemency. However Sir William Knyvet thought it worth paying her to escape the penalties of treason.27

  Anne’s Warwick inheritance and the Neville connection derived from it had been crucial in creating Richard’s hegemony in the North as Duke of Gloucester, assisted him in securing the throne and was to be an important source of reliable manpower as king. We have already seen the propaganda value of Anne’s Beauchamp and Salisbury antecedents and perhaps also how much they still meant to the queen. To Richard, however, they were superseded by his accession. What he wanted to pass on to his son was the crown, not merely his estates as duke, and the Warwick inheritance had ceased to be material. One clear indication of this is that he felt free to dispose of it as he wished and, in the interests of winning friends, to acknowledge claims that he had hitherto resisted. Whether Anne shared his changed perceptions must be doubted.

  Take, for instance, Richard’s changed attitude to the Neville inheritance, which, as we have seen, was the core of his estates, power-base and plans for the future in the north of England. Under the 1475 act, he had held this for as long as there were male heirs of the Marquis Montagu living. Before his accession, Richard had been striving to protect his tenure of these properties by minimising the dangers posed by George Neville, by degrading him and securing his wardship himself, and to acquire the reversionary rights of the next heir Richard Lord Latimer, by seeking his wardship also. Once of age, he needed the boys to release their rights to him or, at the very least, to marry them off to safe and powerless ladies. He secured custody of George but had yet to marry him off, so that his line continued, and had failed to wrest control of Richard from his uncle Cardinal Bourchier. Duke Richard’s plans were thwarted, however, when George died on 4 May 1483, still unmarried and childless. Gloucester’s title was reduced to that of a life-tenant: he could keep the Neville inheritance for life, but could not pass it on his son.28 His dominance of the North was limited to his own lifetime. Once king, he did secure custody of Latimer, but no longer was he interested in extending his estate in the Neville lands beyond his own days and in barring Latimer from his Neville inheritance. Almost at once, instead, Richard sold Latimer’s marriage to Humphrey Stafford of Grafton, who married him to his daughter Anne. Stafford certainly expected Latimer to succeed in due course not merely to his modest barony, but to Middleham, Sheriff Hutton, Penrith and potentially Gloucester’s dominance in the North and the West March. A great future had been purchased for Anne Stafford and her heirs.29

  Another part of the great Warwick inheritance had been inherited from the Despensers. The lordship of Glamorgan in the marches of South Wales had been allotted to Anne and most of the rest, including Tewkesbury and Hanley, to Isabel and hence her son Edward, Earl of Warwick. The underlying title derived from the Countess Anne was debatable, however: she should have divided the lands with the son of her half-sister George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, whose title had been recognised to no avail both in 1449 and in 1470.30 The two royal dukes of Clarence and Gloucester had firmly rebutted his claims. Now, however, Richard acknowledged them and granted livery of at least some of the lands to Lord Abergavenny.31 It was a signal favour to him deserving of the most committed service. If applied to the whole inheritance, it could have transformed Abergavenny from a middle-ranking noble in Kent and Sussex to one of the greatest Welsh marcher lords of his day. Whilst it cannot be demonstrated that Richard’s award was implemented and that many Despenser lands actually changed hands – indeed T.B. Pugh demonstrated that Richard kept his grip on Glamorgan32 – the grant indicates that Richard no longer cared particularly about keeping the estate intact or honouring the act of 1474. He was giving away his nephew Warwick’s lands as well as Anne’s own;moreover, once Prince Edward had died, it would all be at Warwick’s long-term expense.

  Another sign that such issues scarcely concerned him any more is that on 1 July 1484 the countess of Warwick was allocated £80 a year to support herself. Most probably this indicates that she was released from custody and allowed to set up house herself. The revenues arose not from her own inheritance, but from the estate in Yorkshire of Richard’s former chamberlain in the minority of his son at the hands of the custodians Sir Thomas and Lady Jane Wortley.33 Perhaps Richard no longer feared any threat that she posed to his tenure of her estates. Now in her sixties, she did not remarry. Richard also allowed a Beauchamp rival, Edward Grey Lord Lisle, whom he himself raised to viscount, to secure Chaddesley Corbett in Worcestershire, a part of the Beauchamp trust that first the kingmaker and then Clarence had treated as their own.34 Richard granted away parts of Anne’s inheritance, the London house of le Erber, which he gave to the new college of heralds as their headquarters.35 There was also a further grant to Queens’ College, Cambridge, this time of lands in the East Midlands of Beauchamp and Despenser origin. The king was already committed to endowing Queens’ College by 16 March 1484, when it was licensed to acquire property in mortmain to the value of 700 marks (£466 13s 4d) a year, of which the king granted ‘at the request of my dearest consort’ lands valued at £329 3s 8d a year, in capital value worth over £6,000. Including lands of Anne’s inheritance in East Anglia, they constituted both a major endowment for the college and a substantial alienation of the family estate, a breach once again of the 1474 act, and ultimately a loss to Isabel Neville’s son and Anne’s nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick. Richard was giving away his wife’s inheritance. The souls of both king and queen were to be prayed for, of course. The original warrant appears in Richard’s signet letter book and was therefore authenticated by him. However, the college’s petition was addressed to him, initialled by him, and recalled how ‘of late it pleased your said highness of your grace especial to grant’. The grant of course was to Queens’ College, not King’s: the apostrophe in the title Queens’ reminds us that it was Anne who was patroness alongside Elizabeth Wydeville and Margaret of Anjou rather than King Richard. It may therefore be that this lavish benefaction should really be credited to the intercession of ‘the most serene Queen Anne’ rather than King Richard himself.36

  The principal source for the study of a fifteenth-century queen ought to be the records of her estates and her household. For late medieval queens lived even more separate lives from their consorts than ladies did from their lords. Many royal palaces like Westminster had separate apartments for the king and queen. Queens had their own estates – in particular, the ancient queen’s lands across southern England – and their own residences. In 1467–8 these had been worth approximately £4,500; those of Queen Margaret of Anjou had been even more extensive. The principal charge on these revenues was the queen’s household, an elaborate establishment that mirrored that of the king, with carvers, knights and gentlemen above stairs, serving departments below, smaller only than that of the king, but larger than that of the greatest other subject in the realm. That was what ought to have happened to Queen Anne. Most probably it did, but there is no conclusive evidence of it.

  We know more of royal patronage during Richard III’s brief reign than of either Edward IV before him or Henry VII afterwards because we possess the king’s signet letter book, but strangely Anne herself is almost completely absent. Both Margaret of Anj
ou and Elizabeth Wydeville feature frequently in the patent rolls as recipients of a whole series of grants of the particular estates that comprised their dower. For Anne, there are neither any such grants nor any record of signet warrants to the estate officials implementing such decisions. Whereas her son Prince Edward was formally created Prince of Wales by charter dated 24 August 1483,37 there are no grants or parliamentary ratifications conveying to him his principality of Wales, duchy of Cornwall and county of Chester like those for Edward IV’s heir in 1471–2. In neither case need this mean that the queen and prince went unendowed: it is unlikely, but we cannot be sure. Richard III may have argued that Edward IV, as a bastard, was never king and therefore he himself was. He certainly asserted that Edward IV had never been married to Elizabeth Wydeville and therefore she had never been queen and her son never prince nor King Edward V. The ex-queen and ex-king therefore did not need to be dispossessed of that to which they had no title. In similar vein, as queen to the king and eldest son to the king, it could be asserted that Anne and Edward automatically succeeded to the queens’ lands and to the appanage of the princes of Wales. There was no need therefore for any formal grants. Whilst possibly correct, this is still very odd. Medieval officers wanted assurance and authorisation for their actions – by what warrant did you act? – and the issue of legal title, if not to the lands themselves then to appurtenant rights of way etc., were surely bound to arise. Not only were no grants enrolled, but none of these properties feature in the lists in Richard’s signet letter book, nor were the estate officers included in his lists. That a grant was made after Anne’s death from Higham Ferrers (Northants.) suggests that it had just become available.38 Probably, therefore, Queen Anne succeeded to the whole dower formerly held by Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately, however, there are no estate accounts or other archives indicating Anne’s tenure or what she did with these lands in the National Archives. We really cannot tell. On the evidence cited above of Richard’s alienations, it seems unlikely that Anne secured control of her own inheritance.