by Licence, Amy
Handsome or not, Richard was clearly an impressive youth, being made Admiral of England at ten, Commissioner of Array for nine counties at the age of twelve and Constable of England a few years later. While Vergil paints a bleak picture of Richard during the reign of Henry VIII, one description he gives confirms the late king had been ‘slight in figure, in face short and compact like his father’. Taken in isolation, this is probably quite close to the truth. The earliest surviving portraits of Richard from 1516 onwards, based on lost originals, have shown signs of tampering and cannot be trusted. The famous ‘broken-sword’ picture, held at the Society of Antiquities, has been x-rayed to expose the crudely painted hump that was added by a later artist. Although the post-Tudor depictions of Richard have eclipsed those written during his lifetime, their dubious veracity and ulterior motives should not be allowed to distort less well-known portrayals of Richard as a young man. The thirteen-year-old boy whom Anne Neville came to know was probably short, strong and slender with dark hair.
When Richard’s body was discovered in a Leicester car park in September 2012, a number of scientific tests run by the University of Leicester were finally able to establish the truth about his appearance. According to the skeletal analysis, Richard was of ‘unusually slender’ build and had both arms of similar size, of which he would have had normal use, although they were almost ‘feminine’ in delicacy, confirming von Popplau’s description. He would have been above average height, at around 5 foot 8, except for the presence of spinal curvature, which would have significantly affected how tall he stood. The bones made it clear that Richard suffered from idiopathic adolescent onset scoliosis, a condition that caused his spine to bend into an ‘S’ shape. He was not born with this and the reason for its development is unclear; it would have begun some time after his tenth birthday and may have caused back pain and breathlessness, as a result of the additional pressure on his heart and lungs. It can result in uneven muscular development on the back and uneven limb length, rib prominence and slow nerve reaction, yet the young man was clearly to become a competent and strong soldier. As Richard was still a child at the onset of his condition and had not yet undergone his adolescent period of growth, he was likely to have experienced greater spinal curvature as he aged, although his life expectancy did not differ from that of his peers. Investigators at the University suggested that his spine would have had a ‘stiff’ and ‘abnormal’ curve and resulted in asymmetry to the chest wall. However, with this concealed under his clothing, he may still have looked and walked like anyone else, with perhaps one shoulder slightly higher. An examination of the end of his clavicles, the two bones that form the collar, showed the right-hand side to be larger than the left and may have resulted in one shoulder being held higher than the other. If this was a mild condition, diplomacy would probably have dictated that it went unmentioned during his lifetime. After his ignominious death, however, such apparent signs of divine displeasure would have been exaggerated.
Also, in February 2013 a facial reconstruction was completed, based on Richard’s skull. Rebuilt by Professor Caroline Wilkinson at the University of Dundee, a series of pegs were attached to the bones, allowing for the muscles and flesh to be laid over them. Gradually as the layers built up, a recognisable face emerged, not unlike the earliest portraits, dating from the 1520s. The face of Richard III had a strong nose and jaw but the reconstruction captured a pleasantness, a softness about the mouth and eyes, even a half smile. Dressed in dark wig and soft velvet cap with its dangling jewel, after the style of the portraits, it exudes a certain unexpected charisma. It was not difficult to see the man whom Anne Neville may have fallen in love with.
The appearance of the young Anne is even less certain. While Richard’s physical shape has occupied historians for centuries, hers has barely merited any attention. One depiction of her in the Beaufort Pageant gives a stylised glimpse of her head and shoulders only. Her long hair hangs down, while her sloping form and sketchy facial features are typical of fifteenth-century ideals of beauty, which give a mere representation and evoke little personality. The Rous Roll shows a young woman with hair down to the waist, while her face has the simplicity of a woodcut, with its wide forehead, high arched brows, straight nose, prim small mouth, strong chin and eyes cast down to the left. John Rous, the Chaplain of Guy’s Cliffe near Warwick, was born in 1411 and was therefore likely to have seen Anne in person, although his many images of her ancestors and family are too similar to be very helpful. The representation of queens in all forms was bound by conventions of beauty, loyalty and status. Rous’ illustration of a young woman conforms with these, depicting her with long, flowing hair brushed back off her face and the heavy-lidded eyes popularised by the legendary beauty of Elizabeth Wydeville. Other contemporary manuscript images and statuary depict young women with a recognisable set of aesthetic ideals; sloping shoulders and large forehead, the wide hips thrust forward and rounded belly suggestive of fertility. Rous’ pen portrait of Anne as ‘seemly amiable and beauteous and in conditions full commendable and right virtuous and according to the interpretation of her name, full gracious’ is similarly platitudinous.
It was also a consistent act of late medieval flattery to describe aristocratic beauties, especially queens, as golden-haired, with all its correlations to wealth and fecundity, even if this was obviously a departure from the truth. Writing about the cult of the Virgin Mary, Marina Warner identifies the association of fertility, innocence and purity with blonde hair, resonant of haloes.4 Other royal attributes included fair skin, sparkling eyes, fine features, curved brows, red lips and cheeks, blue or grey eyes and the sinuous, large-bellied body. On attaining regal status, women seem to have miraculously acquired these, with the notable exception of the foreign and therefore ‘dark’ Margaret of Anjou. As a literary conceit, this form of beauty is found in Chaucer, the Pearl poet, Boccaccio, Matthew of Vendôme, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Guy of Warwick and others; it is also the traditional depiction of many virginal saints such as those written by Osbern Bokenham in the 1440s. The Croyland Chronicler remarks that Anne was ‘alike in complexion’ to her niece, the blonde Elizabeth of York, ten years her junior, whose interchanged clothing also suggested Anne was slender as a teenager.
Her elder sister Isabel, now fourteen, was probably of similar appearance. Thirteen months older than Richard, it may have been she who developed a friendship with the young duke first. Anne was only nine years old, which is a significant remove from the sort of companionship two young teenagers would be able to offer each other. Hindsight has led the majority of historians and novelists to speculate whether the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester’s marriage was based in juvenile affection which developed during his time at Middleham. The other romantic possibility, though, was that Richard was actually drawn to Isabel, who was subsequently wed to his brother, although this has received little consideration and is pure speculation. Emotion aside, if Richard was considering one of the Neville girls as a suitable future wife, he may not necessarily have had a preference for one over the other. When early marriages were contracted, death sometimes intervened and the intended spouse was replaced by a sibling near in age, in order to preserve the settlement. When negotiations were being drawn up for the marriage of Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth of York, to Charles, the Dauphin of France, clauses were inserted to allow the young man to marry one of her sisters in the event of her premature death. This safeguard did prove necessary early in the following century, when the death of Prince Arthur led to the remarriage of his teenage widow, Catherine of Aragon, to her brother-in-law Henry VIII. By the time Richard was in a position to take a wife, and hoped to assume Warwick’s mantle, Isabel was unavailable.
The three children would have come to know each other well during the 1460s. However, on one occasion, the relationship between the king and Warwick was to foreshadow their later opposition. In 1465, Richard would have attended a significant event at which the girls may not have been present: the Coronation of Edwar
d IV’s queen. Through the early 1460s, Warwick had been working towards a French alliance, cemented by a marriage between the king and Bona of Savoy, the teenage sister of Queen Charlotte, wife of Louis XI. At the last minute, just as the arrangements were on the verge of being concluded, Edward made the startling admission that he was already married. His bride of five months was the widowed Lancastrian Elizabeth Grey, née Wydeville, a beautiful blonde from a large and aspirational family. The ceremony had been conducted in secret on May Day 1464, at the Wydeville seat of Grafton Regis, where Edward had arrived on the pretext of hunting. The unexpected news came as a personal blow to Warwick, who had previously worked in harmony with Edward, whose secrecy and encouragement of the French marriage made the Kingmaker look a fool. He already had cause to quarrel with the family, as Elizabeth’s brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers, had been responsible for amassing a fleet at Sandwich with the intention of invading Calais in 1460. The plot had failed, resulting in the capture of Scales and his parents as they lay in bed in Sandwich town. They were then brought to Calais as Warwick’s prisoners, where he had berated them as traitors and the ‘sons of knaves’ in Edward’s presence. Now Scales was made a Knight of the Garter and his sister was England’s queen. The family were also pro-Burgundian and resented the influence Warwick had previously exerted over the king. Warwick himself was not present at her splendid Westminster Coronation at Whitsun 1465, having been sent on an embassy to Burgundy, so it is unlikely that the countess and her daughters may have attended. There is the chance that Anne’s mother may have had some ceremonial role to fulfil as the wife of the most powerful magnate in the country, but no record remains of her duties. One fact suggesting this is her absence from Middleham for most of that year, when she may have been occupied with the new queen’s establishment or else visiting her other properties at Warwick, Hanley Castle in Worcestershire, Tewkesbury or Cardiff.
Elizabeth and Edward had met, according to local legend, in the forest near her family home of Grafton. She was the daughter of the aristocratic Jacquetta of Luxemburg, whose first marriage to John of Lancaster had made her the first lady in the land after Queen Margaret and a staunch Lancastrian. Her second union with Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers, was a forbidden love match, which produced fourteen children, the eldest of whom was Elizabeth. The blonde beauty, variously described as ‘icy’ and ‘haughty’ by her enemies, had been married to Sir John Grey and bore him two sons before his death at the Second Battle of St Albans in 1461. The late medieval and early Tudor chroniclers agree that the amorous Edward was struck by her beauty upon seeing her and determined to have her, as he had many other women on whom his fancy had fallen. Elizabeth held out for more, though. Refusing to become his mistress, she became, instead, his queen. It was an unpopular match among the king’s family and Parliament from the start.
Besides Warwick’s existing dislike of the Wydevilles and the humiliation over his attempts to conclude a French alliance, the rise of Elizabeth’s relatives upset many of the old established figures at court who were bypassed in favour of the parvenus. The Great Chronicle of London commented on the increasing hostility and Warwick’s annoyance that Edward ‘maketh more honourable account of new upstart gentlemen than the ancient houses of nobility’. Rivers held the position of Lord Treasurer, and, wealthy through a profitable marriage himself, was also Governor of the Isle of Wight and Elizabeth’s other siblings were matched above their previous station. Warwick was particularly incensed by the match between Katherine Wydeville and Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, the queen’s ten-year-old ward, suggesting that he had intended Buckingham as a husband for one of his daughters. According to Mancini, Edward’s second brother, George, Duke of Clarence, did not try to conceal his personal dislike of the new queen, nor did their mother, Duchess Cecily, who attempted unsuccessfully to persuade her eldest son to abandon the marriage. Edward, however, would not be influenced and Richard, at the age of twelve, was more diplomatic. If he was shocked or displeased by the secret marriage, he did not show it. Unsurprisingly, it was from this marriage that the seeds of discord were sown among the brothers and their cousins. Later historians have even gone as far as to trace back the fall of the House of York to this rash, romantic act which propelled the Wydevilles into the centre of national politics. By the middle of 1465, though, it was clear that the queen and her relatives were staying put; that summer, Elizabeth conceived a child and by the autumn, her growing belly advertised her success.
The earl, countess and their daughters were certainly present at the christening of Edward’s eldest child, Elizabeth of York, born in February 1466. The visiting Bohemian Gabriel Tetzel recorded that there were eight duchesses and thirty countesses in attendance, standing in silence as the queen was seated on a golden chair.5 As the girl’s godfather, Warwick fulfilled a ceremonial role and probably remained in London to witness the queen’s churching that March. The family would have stayed in their town house of the Erber, where, rumour had it, the household was so large that six oxen were consumed at breakfast each day. From its location on Stowe’s map, between Newgate and old St Paul’s, the family could access Westminster by road via Charing Cross along the Strand, or else take a boat upstream from Blackfriars or Puddle Wharf. Perhaps Anne and Richard were reunited for the three-hour feast that followed, or else enjoyed the music and festivities that night, where Edward’s sister Margaret was recorded as dancing with two dukes, who were quite possibly her brothers George and Richard. They may also have been at court during the process of negotiations that led to the foreign alliance Edward had long sought. While Warwick continued to push for closer Franco–English relations, his rival Anthony Wydeville, Earl Rivers, had led a party that visited Bruges in the spring of 1467, following the signing of a peace and trade treaty with Philip of Burgundy.
That June, Anthony, Comte de la Roche, the ‘Grand Bastard of Burgundy’, son of Philip and half-brother of Charles the Bold, arrived in England for an extended visit. An impressive figure, with an international reputation for jousting, a crusader against the Moors and holder of the Order of the Golden Fleece, he took part in a magnificent tournament held at Smithfield as the guest of Edward and Earl Rivers. In Rivers’ own words, the purpose of the joust was to avoid slothfulness ‘and to obeye and please my feire lady’. The event may have been designed to entertain such fair young ladies as Warwick’s daughters but it could also be brutal. According to Gregory’s Chronicle, de la Roche’s horse ‘was so brusyd that he dyde a whyle aftyr’. The chronicler recorded how, whether by ‘fortune, crafte or cunnynge’, the Bastard ‘lay out’ all men and horses in the field. Seated prominently in the specially erected scaffolding, Anne would no doubt have witnessed, with interest, everything that took place. Smithfield itself was a large grassy space or ‘smoothfield’, long used for livestock markets, public gatherings, executions and drying laundry. It was situated on the eastern side of the Tower, accessible by the Postern Gate, which for the Warwicks would have required a journey home through the heart of the city itself, along one of its major thoroughfares such as Thames Street, taking them as far west as they needed to go before turning north at Blackfriars.
There was a long precedent of tournaments held at Smithfield, with the impressive spectacle of 1442 still in recent memory, when Henry VI acted as umpire between Sir John Astley and the Chevalier Philip Boyle of Aragon. This encounter was depicted in the Hastings Manuscript, written around 1475, where the complicated dress of the combatants was described, from their woollen hose and thick cordwain shoes to the satin-lined doublet, mail gussets and full metal armour. Another contemporary manuscript, How a Man Schall be Armyd, provides the only surviving image of a knight being dressed for combat on foot, as his valet ties on his mail skirt before beginning to assemble the complex jigsaw of body pieces, with the traditional weapon of the poleaxe and more unusual ahlspiess, a four-sided spike, depicted at the side.6 Quadrangular lists were erected, in which the combatants faced each other wearing embroidered armour a
nd wielding axes.7 The arena was immediately beside the west doors of St Bartholomew’s church, where trials by combat had been held since the 1350s. The most defining encounter was that organised by Richard II in 1390, when sixty knights, accompanied by sixty ladies from around Europe, descended on the capital, where preparations had been made by Chaucer in his capacity as the king’s clerk and records of the event were made by the French chronicler Froissart. Etiquette for such events was set by Margaret of Anjou’s father René, in his 1406 vividly detailed tournament book, which lists that ‘noble and rich prizes should be given by ladies and damsel’. It would not have been a passive experience for Anne: the ladies are constantly referred to by René as visiting and observing coats of arms, attending suppers, making complaints, exercising compassion and the most beautiful and noble of them leading processions.8 Among the ritualised responses, the knights were bound to promise their patronesses:
I humbly thank my ladies and damsels for the honour it has pleased them to do to me: and although they could easily have found others who could do this better, and who merit this honour more than I, nevertheless I obey the ladies freely and will do my loyal duty, asking always that they forgive my mistakes.9