Anne Neville: Richard III's Tragic Queen

by Licence, Amy

  For Margaret, it was a decisive victory. Now she needed to bring her troops south and convert it into the readeption of her husband and reinstatement of her seven-year-old son. However, one man in particular stood in her way: Anne’s father. With so many of his Yorkist allies wiped out in one stroke, Warwick became, in the words of Vergil, ‘thonely man upon whom all the weight of the war depended’. This was not strictly true, as the eighteen-year-old Edward, Earl of March, now took on his father’s role as head of the family and his claim to the throne. Between them, the future king and his kingmaker would continue to fight York’s battle; their fortunes had plummeted but there were more battles to come, which were still to bring them their greatest victory. Writing in January 1461, Coppini advised a fellow Italian, staying with Queen Margaret and Henry Beaufort, to warn his hosts not to ‘be arrogant because of the trifling victory they won, owing to the rash advance of their opponents’, otherwise they would bring ‘desolation upon the whole realm’ because the ‘feelings of the people are incredibly incensed against them’. Coppini’s advice would prove correct, as the Lancastrian triumph at Wakefield proved to be short-lived: soon they would be ejected from the English throne entirely. York’s death had made way for a new commander in the field, a soldier of experience and daring, who, for a while, appeared undefeatable. He was also a family man, a husband and father to two small girls. Warwick’s success would bring Anne back home.

  4

  Boy and Girl

  1461–1465

  Three glorious suns, each one a perfect sun;

  Not separated with the racking clouds,

  But sever’d in a pale clear-shining sky.

  See, see! they join, embrace, and seem to kiss,

  As if they vow’d some league inviolable:

  Now are they but one lamp, one light, one sun.

  In this the heaven figures some event.1

  Anne’s world, and that of her contemporaries, was changing. The fortunes of those four babies born in the 1450s had fluctuated as the rivalry between Lancaster and York deepened. Now aged four and a half, Anne was suddenly the daughter of the most powerful man in England, on whose shoulders rested the responsibility of defending the City of London and guarding King Henry VI, while the queen’s pillaging troops marched south. At a remove from the action in Calais, Anne would have been unaware just how critical the situation in London had become, although her mother’s sympathies must have been roused by the plight of York’s widow and children; perhaps their prayers were also extended to them in the castle chapel. In England, though, grieving for her husband and second son, with her eldest boy Edward, Earl of March, leading an army of his own, Cecily of York took steps to protect her babies. Following the defeat at Wakefield, she had been in the ‘custody’ of her sister Anne, Duchess of Buckingham, but now she sent her two youngest sons, Richard and George, to Utrecht under the protection of Philip the Good, whose son their sister Margaret would eventually marry. Aged eight and eleven, they arrived at the Burgundian household without any indication of the length of their stay, or whether they would even see their home again.

  On the other side, the fortunes of Edward of Westminster had improved with the death of York. As the newly reinstated heir to the throne, his early years had been spent in flight from the scene of battlefields and he was used to scenes of conflict and bloodshed. Legend has it that the boy himself pronounced the death sentence on those knights who had failed to prevent his father’s capture. Queen Margaret had used him as a rallying point in the North, relying on his presence to draw men to his cause and rewarding them with badges of loyalty. Early in 1461 it appeared that he was about to be fully restored to his former life, with only the Earl of Warwick remaining of the old enemy. However, his mother and Henry Beaufort had mismanaged their armies, unable to control the continual looting as they progressed south. This meant that Westminster, after which the seven-year-old was named, was now terrified of the boy’s approach.

  Three more battles early in 1461 sealed the Lancastrian party’s fate. On 2 February Edward, Earl of March, won a decisive victory at Mortimer’s Cross in Herefordshire against Henry VI’s father-in-law, Owen Tudor. Following the death of Henry V, his widow, Catherine of Valois had contracted a secret match with her groom, Tudor, and borne him at least two sons, the now deceased Edmund, father of Henry VII, and Jasper, who fought at his father’s side. Now a widower aged about sixty, Owen Tudor appeared at the head of a Lancastrian army in order to defend his son-in-law’s right. The signs were not propitious though, with even the planetary forces seeming to support the Yorkists. Before the fighting began, Edward of March witnessed the phenomenon of a parhelion, or ‘sun-dog,’ which appeared as three suns in the sky, taken to be a sign of divine favour. Using Welsh recruits, he was able to prevent the different parts of his enemies’ forces from meeting up and captured Tudor, who was later beheaded. As the old man laid his head incredulously on the block, he commented that it had been used to ‘lie in Queen Catherine’s lap’. Jasper Tudor survived the encounter and escaped into exile, although his young ward, Henry Tudor, was left behind. The four-year-old boy was removed from his mother at the Tudor’s residence of Pembroke Castle and placed under the guardianship of the loyal Yorkist, William Herbert of Raglan Castle, who had fought for Edward’s victory.

  Elsewhere in the country, the Earl of Warwick had met with less success. He and Edward of March had intended to join forces to defeat Margaret but Edward had been forced to engage with the Tudors at Mortimer’s Cross before they could meet up. This left the earl outnumbered. Only two weeks later, with Henry VI in his custody, Warwick’s army met a Lancastian force at St Albans and the unfortunate town was again subjected to intense fighting and destruction. Six years had passed since the destruction of that terrible first battle, time enough for the physical damage to have been cleared away, with properties and gardens repaired and replanted. The memories, however, remained. Aware of Warwick’s technique of dividing his army into three and his north-facing positioning, the Lancastrians swung round to take him by surprise. Fighting was again concentrated within the town and in the domestic settings of back yards and houses, lasting several hours until Warwick’s troops were finally repelled. Henry VI had supposedly spent the duration of the battle singing and laughing under a tree; now he was reunited with his wife and son, knighting the young Edward, who then went on to knight thirty more Lancastrians himself. Nothing should have prevented their victorious army marching straight into London and reclaiming the throne. Except they didn’t. Their hesitation was fatal to their cause, allowing Edward, Earl of March, fresh from his triumph at Mortimer’s Cross, to enter the city himself and gain its support. London welcomed the handsome, strong, 6-foot-4 warrior, who went on to declare his hereditary right to the throne.

  Both sides thought they had won a decisive victory. March’s position in London gave him the advantage but a final encounter was needed to settle who was to emerge as the winners and claim the throne. The opposing armies met at Towton, on Palm Sunday, 29 March. Yorkist leaders Edward, Warwick and the earl’s uncle, Lord Fauconberg, faced a Lancastrian army headed by Henry Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, while Henry VI and Queen Margaret waited to hear the outcome at York. The Lancastrians also had Sir Andrew Trollope, who had served under Warwick at Calais before defecting to the other side, Henry Percy, 3rd Earl of Northumberland, with whom the Nevilles had long been in dispute, and Sir Henry Holland, who was married to Anne of York, March’s elder sister.

  What followed has been called the largest and bloodiest battle on English soil, after which Edward himself estimated that more than 28,000 soldiers lay dead on the snow-driven field. Modern scholars have put the number somewhere between 50,000 and 75,000. Trollope and Percy were killed and Holland fled north to join Henry VI and his family in their Scottish exile. His wife, Anne of York, received his lands and officially separated from him in 1464. At least three-quarters of the noble families of England had members who fought on that day and after the
battle, 113 attainders were issued. The fighting had lasted for hours but the Yorkists eventually emerged as the victors; Henry VI and his family fled to Scotland and Edward of March was crowned, as King Edward IV, at Westminster that June.

  It was around this time that Warwick’s family packed their bags and returned to England on a more permanent basis. Edward had rewarded his right-hand-man with the position of Admiral of England and King’s Lieutenant in the North, which required him to leave Calais behind. The transportation of a great household like the earl’s would have entailed much organisation and hard work before the piles of crates and boxes were finally loaded into the ships sitting waiting in Calais harbour. Anne and Isabel would have watched their mother overseeing the servants’ activities and perhaps helped to select which items they most wanted to take. Bulkier objects were likely to have been left behind although much of the furniture of the period was designed to be dismantled. Other chattels would follow on later ships; perhaps the family and their belongings required a small fleet, given the requisite numbers of dresses and accoutrements that society required a countess and her daughters to possess.

  The surviving household accounts made in the aftermath of the deaths of noble and aristocratic individuals makes clear the extent of their wardrobes. An inventory of Catherine of Aragon’s effects, made in 1536, when she was living in disgrace with a pared-down household, lists forty-eight separate hangings for walls and windows, seven sets of embroidered bed linen including counterpanes, testers, curtains and canopies, five cupboard cloths, nine carpets, fourteen cushions, twenty-one pillows, twenty-four sheets and eight blankets. This was before account was made of the finer linen in her ‘wardrobe stuff’ and that designated for use at her table. The general household and ‘kitchen stuff’ does not begin to list her own personal effects and items of clothing: comparable lists for the countess and her daughters would have been exhaustive even before the chests of clothes, gowns, kirtles, surcotes and all the layers of under-linen were loaded on board ship.2 Whenever they travelled and however long it took, Warwick’s family were back in residence at Middleham at some point in 1461.

  It seems logical to suppose the Nevilles’ arrival coincided with Edward IV’s Coronation, when other significant exiles returned to the country, including the young York brothers, now second and third in line to the throne. Finally, it was considered safe enough for Edward’s brothers, Richard and George, to leave their Burgundian exile, where their mother, Cecily, had sent them after the crushing defeat at Wakefield. They had fled from England as the sons of an attainted traitor and returned as part of the ruling royal family. That June they were made Knights of the Bath and given the titles by which they have come to be known in popular history and drama; the eleven-year-old George became Duke of Clarence while eight-year-old Richard was elevated to the Dukedom of Gloucester.

  Anne’s base for the next few years was to be Middleham Castle in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, an impressive twelfth-century bastion which had been acquired by the Nevilles through marriage in 1270. In its heyday, it would have had the appearance of a typical defensive stronghold, with its moat and drawbridge, huge walls, towers, gate and the three-story keep with 12-foot-thick walls encompassing the family’s living quarters. At 32 by 28 metres square, this keep was one of the largest in England, placed squarely within the castle’s solid walls. Early in the fifteenth century, Anne’s great-grandfather, the fourth Lord Neville, had undertaken a significant programme of rebuilding, improving the south and west ranges and making more modernisations to accommodate his large family. The new rooms were mostly given over to domestic use, with latrines, fireplaces and views over the countryside; wooden bridges were built on the first floor to connect the new range with the family’s original rooms in the keep. The family would thus be elevated above the squalor created by the castle’s catering arrangements, such as cooking, slaughter and provisioning, which took place on the ground floor. Most of the community’s activity centred around the Great Hall, which would serve as a local court and meeting place as well as for the usual feasting and entertainment that punctuated the daily and annual routine. At the back of the hall stood the chapel, added around 1300, as well as the entrance to the Great and Inner Chambers, which Anne would have known well. Divided by a wooden partition, each had a fireplace, cupboard, small side room or ‘closet’ and latrine.3 The fourth Lord Neville also converted a tower into a gatehouse, with stone seating on the inside; perhaps the young Anne sat here and watched the household traffic pass by as millers brought flour to be baked in the new ovens, animals were herded for slaughter, hops delivered to the brewhouse or horses led through to be shod in one of the many workshops that enabled the castle to be self-sufficient.

  The thick walls of Middleham Castle would have enclosed a large household, supporting around 200 people in a microcosm of the royal court and of wider medieval society. These would have included a variety of ranks, from those among the immediate family, to the dean of the chapel, almoner, cofferer, marshall, clerks, ushers and those waiting at table, washing laundry or cleaning. Anne’s father, Warwick, would have spent a lot of time engaged in acts of ‘good lordship’, overseeing the smooth running of the local area and investigating disputes: on a national level, he was also away more on diplomatic and government business. During the early 1460s, he fought alongside his brother John, Lord Montagu, to repel the Lancastrian attacks on the Scottish borders, where Queen Margaret was hoping to invade and reclaim the throne for her husband. Anne spent more time, therefore, with her mother, who was described by the family chronicler, John Rous, as a devout lady: decorous, generous and with a strict sense of etiquette; exactly what was expected of a great lady of her day. Rous notes that one of her particularly favoured duties was to attend the deliveries of children in the neighbourhood. Other duties expected of a lady included in the 1412–13 Household Accounts of Dame Alice de Bryene are overseeing her many staff and making purchases for the household, especially of luxury items such as spices, salt, wax and candles. The even earlier Manual for his Wife, written by the Householder of Paris in 1392, listed among her tasks the skill and cultivation of a garden, particularly grafting and the cultivation of roses in winter; she should also know how to order meals and give instructions to her butcher, poulterer and spicer and that she should be skilled in the preparation of soups, sauces and meat for the infirm and ill. The author also allowed his wife her pleasure in ‘rose trees and … violets’ and her desire to ‘make chaplets and dance and sing’. After all, she was only fifteen. Perhaps the young Anne Neville also took delight in such things.4

  The Orders and Rules of the Princess Cecill,5 written sometime after 1495, outlines the daily routine of Richard’s mother, Cecily Neville, later in life. It gives an impression of the lifestyle of those of similar rank, much of which would be relevant for the household of her future daughter-in-law. The day started when she rose at seven, dressed for the day and heard mass in her chamber before she proceeded into her private chapel for more devotions. After this she ate her first meal at eleven, called ‘dinner’, during which religious texts were read aloud, usually the lives of female saints such as Maude, Bridget or Katherine. After eating, she gave an hour’s audience to any who were waiting to see her, followed by a short nap. Rising after fifteen minutes, she spent the rest of the afternoon in prayer until roused by the ‘first peal of evensong’. Then, until the last peal of the bell, she ‘drinketh wyne or ale at her pleasure’, before attending chapel again. Supper followed at five, which was clearly a more social occasion, during which she recited the lessons heard during dinner to those assembled to eat with her. Finally, the time had come for recreation: now Cecily ‘disposeth herself to be famyliare with her gentlewomen’ to the season of ‘honest mirth’, then, an hour before bed, drank wine and retired to her private closet to pray, before laying down to sleep at eight.6

  However, this routine was not representative of the entire life of ‘proud Cis’, as the locals nicknamed her; perhaps the
later strictures of the widow were partly a penance for the throne room she created at her home of Fotheringhay Castle, where she received visitors with ‘the state of a queen’ or the thousands of pounds she and her husband spent on clothes and jewels. For aristocrats of their rank, though, second only to the king, this was expected, even desired as a necessary indicator of their status, as outlined by Sir John Fortescue in De Laudibus Legum Anglae. Cecily’s gold cup cost £54, one shopping trip to London acquired £606 worth of clothes and the duke’s ‘white rose’ collar cost £2,666.7 It may have been even more important for the Yorks to maintain their regal status in contrast with King Henry’s preference for a simple life and dislike of contemporary fashions and worldly goods, which had prompted Fortescue’s work. Richard and Cecily’s surviving sons, Edward, Edmund, George and Richard, would grow to adulthood with a strong sense of entitlement and the understanding of the need to physically project their majesty.

  The Orders and Rules for Cecily’s household lay out the terms of service for the castle’s large staff. Head officers and married ladies were assigned quantities of bread, ale, fire and candles; breakfast was not offered except to the officers resident at the castle, as some were housed in the town. Those who fell ill were permitted ‘all such thinges as may be to thaire care’ and those who became ‘impotent’ or unable to carry out their work were to have the same wages as long as Duchess Cecily lived. Three days a week, the family was served with roast beef or mutton; on fast and fish days they had salt fish and two fresh dishes; presumably the estate encompassed some ponds as its position inland would have made regular supplies difficult. The payments for fresh produce were made weekly on a Friday, and on Saturday they had butter and eggs. No mention is made of children, although Cecily and Richard of York had a large family. Compiled after her death, and most of theirs, it probably represents her routine as a widow, although her lifelong practices are likely to have influenced the habits of her sons, as Edward IV’s household reforms, the Liber Niger Domus Regus Angliae, may suggest. Conscious of her position, the surviving images of Cecily and her daughter Margaret, reared under this regime, speak of elegance and opulence.8 Life for the Countess of Warwick would have not been too dissimilar and, soon, one of Cecily’s sons was to come and live under her regime at Middleham.