by Amy Licence
Since their return from France in 1445, Cecily’s and Richard’s lives had lost their direction somewhat. York was technically heir to the throne but, with the queen’s advisers effectively squeezing him out, he was unable to take the role at the heart of government that his birth should have ensured. Frequently occupied with the rigours of pregnancy and delivery, Cecily must have continually hoped to hear that he had been acknowledged and promoted, in order to provide her children with a secure place in the world they were soon to enter, a world in which their birth gave them a certain entitlement. With only Anne already matched, their marriages would be crucial in the coming years, forming alliances that would signal the family’s rise or decline. Edward and Edmund were established at Ludlow, and there were now two more girls who required dowries and husbands, and two little boys, still in the nursery. Finally, in 1453, an unexpected turn of events would put York at the heart of power.
8
The Lord Protector’s Wife
1453–1455
All women that in thys world art wrought
By me they may ensample take
ffor I that was brought up of noght
A prince me chese to be his make.1
Queen Margaret of Anjou was pregnant. Seven years had passed since Cecily had encountered the fifteen-year-old girl suffering from illness on her way through Rouen to her English marriage. Since then, national politics had put them on opposing sides but they still had many things in common. Having spent years wondering whether she would conceive, Cecily must have understood Margaret’s concerns over her own fertility in the intervening years. Whether this was down to infrequent relations with her husband or some medical condition, Margaret may well have asked Cecily for advice. The two certainly corresponded about pregnancy and birth, and the duchess would play a leading part in the queen’s churching ceremony the following year. It would have been a bittersweet friendship, not incompatible with promoting her family’s futures at court, but Cecily knew that the arrival of a royal heir would mean the relegation of her husband’s status as next in line to the throne.
Early in the new year, 1453, Margaret conceived and, once her condition was confirmed, around Easter time, she travelled to the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham to give thanks. It was part of a wider campaign to build support among the local gentry; Margaret Paston recorded that the queen spent three days in Norwich shortly before St George’s Day and tried to encourage the Pastons’ cousin Elizabeth to get married. On the queen’s return journey, she stayed with Cecily at Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, then an important town that served as the receivership for the whole county. It is not impossible that the two women travelled together to the Norfolk shrine, one to give thanks for a safe delivery and the other to ask for guidance through the coming birth. They would have stayed at the manor or mansion house attached to the priory at Hitchin, known as the Biggin. The small convent house there had been established in 1317 and dedicated to the Virgin; it still stands on the south side of the town and is currently used as a hotel, with one external flint wall dating from the early fifteenth century and internal stone walls and features. Built by Adam le Rous, it had once been in the possession of Edward III’s mistress, Alice Ferrers, but by the 1440s it was owned by Richard, Duke of York.2
Hitchin historian Reginald Hine describes the approach to the house, through the gatehouse, along a cobbled pathway and through a formal garden. Then, on the right, lay the L-shaped building, or four buildings under one roof, known as the ‘owlde halle’, which contained the chapter house along its ground floor, and upstairs in its western-facing section were the prior’s lodging and two little chambers. There was also a holy well, dedicated to St Winefride, the waters of which the queen and duchess may have drunk.3 It was common for pilgrims of all ranks to make the journey to Walsingham, staying along the way in establishments dedicated to Mary; Cecily and Margaret would have stayed in the prior’s lodgings and, perhaps, offered their thanks to the patron saints of motherhood at the nearby parish church of St Mary, which still shows the evidence of its fifteenth-century refurbishment. It seems, from details in a later letter, that Cecily used this opportunity to speak with Margaret on behalf of her husband, regarding his fall from favour, in the hope that he would be restored to his previous position of trust. Her plea may have been written, too, as she later refers to things that were ‘specified in the said supplication’.
That summer, Cecily wrote to Margaret continuing these themes by thanking the Virgin Mary for helping the queen to ‘fulfil your right honourable body of the most precious, most joyful and most comfortable earthly treasure that might come unto this land’. She then pressed Margaret further to consider Richard’s plight. The letter gives an indication of the effect the recent years had had upon the couple’s prospects and the closeness with which they shared their grievances. Cecily had recently been ill, her ‘sloth and discontinuance’ being caused by ‘the disease and infirmity that since my said being in your highness’ presence hath grown’. Written at least six months after she had given birth to Richard, and perhaps more, it is not clear if this illness relates to, or was a consequence of, pregnancy and delivery. It may have been a result of bearing another child, or a post-partum complication; it may not have been connected at all. Cecily’s use of the word ‘labour’ may mislead, as this was not necessarily the way she would refer to a delivery and more commonly denotes effort. In the letter, it may relate to the pain she took in supplicating the queen.
York’s lack of favour with the king had clearly affected his family deeply. Most remarkable about the letter is Cecily’s tone of humility, in such contrast to many popular depictions of her vanity and pride. The two are not incompatible, but this letter serves as a reminder of just how the late medieval social machinery worked, with its elaborate set phrases of devotion and loyalty, which appear nonetheless genuine as the duchess pleads for her husband’s fair treatment. It is difficult to doubt the ‘immeasurable sorrow and heaviness’ she expresses, which did ‘diminish and abridge’ her days as well as her ‘worldly joy and comfort’, that she felt in York’s estrangement from the Crown. Whether she was acting independently in writing this, trying to build on an existing female bond, or whether York was at her elbow, it demonstrates that Cecily could certainly be persuasive and humble. So few of her letters survive that it is worth reproducing in full, if only to get a sense of her voice:
Cecily, Duchess of York, to Queen Margaret of Anjou, 1453
Beseecheth with all humbleness and reverence possible your lowly obeisant servant and bedewoman, Cecily, Duchess of York that whereof the plenty of your good gand benign grace it pleased thereunto in your coming from that blessed, gracious and devout pilgrimage of our Lady of Walsingham to suffer to coming out of my simple person, replete with such immeasurable sorrow and heaviness as I doubt not will of the continuance thereof diminish and abridge my days, as it does my worldly joy and comfort, unto your most worthy and most high presence, whereunto that [you pleased] full benignly to receive my supplication to the same, made for your humble, true man and servant, my lord my husband, whose infinite sorrow, unrest of heart and of worldly comfort, caused of that that he heareth him to be estranged from the grace and benevolent favour of that most Christian, most gracious and most benevolent prince, the king of our sovereign lord, whose majesty royal my said lord and husband now as ever, God knoweth, during his life hath been as true, and as humble, and as obeisant liegeman and to the performing of his noble pleasure and commandment as ready, as well-disposed, and as diligent at his power, and over that as glad, as specified in the said supplication, I beseech your highness and good grace, at the mercy of our Creator now ready to send His grace to all Christian persons, and of that blessed Lady to whom you alte prayed, in whom aboundeth plenteously mercy and grace, by whose mediation it pleased our Lord to fulfil your right honourable body of the most precious, most joyful, and most comfortable earthly treasure that might come into this land and to the people thereof, the which I be
seech His abundant grace to prosper in you, and at such as it pleaseth Him to bring into this world, with all honour, gracious speed and felicity, with also of furthermore supplication of blessed and noble fruit of your said body, for the great trust and most comfortable surety and weal of this realm and of the king’s true liege people of the same, to call the good speed of the matters contained in this said supplication into the gracious and tender recommendation of your highness.
Whereunto I should for the same hath without sloth or discontinuance and with undelayed diligence have sued, nor had the disease and infirmity that since my said being in your highness presence hath grown and growth, upon me caused not only the encumberous labour, to me full painful and uneasy, God knoweth, that then I took upon me, but also the continuance and addition of such heaviness that I have taken, and take, for the consideration of the sorrow of my said Lord and husband; and if it please your good grace not to take to any displeasure of strangeness that I have not diligently continued the suit of my said supplication unto your said highness, caused of the same infirmity not hid upon my wretched body. Wherefore I report me to God; and in reverence of whom, and of his said grace and mercy to you showed, it pleases [eftsones] unto your high nobility to be a tender and gracious mean unto the highness of our sovereign lord for the favour and benevolence of his hand to be showed unto my lord and husband, so that through the gracious mean of you, sovereign lady, he may and effectually obtain to have the same. Wherein I beseech your said highness that my said labour and pain may not be taken frivolously nor unfruitfully, but the more agreeable for my said lord unto your good grace. Whereunto, notwithstanding my infirmity, I should not have spared to have recontinued my suit, if I could or might have done, that it should have pleased your nobility if that I should so have done the which, as it shall please thereunto I shall not let, not sparing pain that my body now suffice of any probability to bear, or suffer, with God’s grace, whom I shall pray to prosper your high estate in honour, joy and felicity.4
Margaret’s response to the letter is unknown. As the summer advanced and she prepared herself for her coming confinement, the court dispatched to Clarendon Palace. There, circumstances beyond the control of both women were to propel Cecily’s husband to the very pinnacle of government.
In August 1453, Henry VI was taken ill. The causes and nature of his affliction are still debated by historians today, but, whether he was suffering from hereditary ‘madness’ or a nervous breakdown, he fell into a catatonic and unresponsive state and could no longer even give the impression of ruling. For a while this was kept secret, as doctors attempted to remedy the situation, but Henry’s condition did not change. When Margaret went into labour that October, delivering a son on 13 October at Westminster, Henry was unable to recognise her or his heir. A witness, John Stodeley, described how the Duke of Buckingham took the baby in his arms ‘and presented him to the Kyng in godly wyse, beseeching the Kyng to blisse him; and the Kyng gave no maner answere’. The queen did the same ‘but alle their labour was in veyne for they departed thens without any answere or countenance savyng only that ones he loked on the Prince and caste doune his eyene ayen, without any more’.5 Somerset was the boy’s godfather.
The inevitable rumours about the boy’s paternity redoubled as Henry stared at his son without acknowledgement. Cecily and York were in London at the time, having arrived with a ‘modest retinue’ on 12 November, according to Benet’s Chronicle. Richard had been summoned to attend a session of Parliament and Cecily was listed among those attending the queen at her churching ceremony in November. With childbirth as a female preserve and only high-ranking women allowed to touch the queen’s body, it is highly likely that the experienced Cecily was present at the prince’s birth, along with the duchesses of Suffolk and Somerset, who accompanied her at the purification. Her experience would have made her a valuable addition, and her rank made her an ideal choice, in accordance with contemporary practice. Although history had written their menfolk into the roles of enemies, it is important to remember the close family ties that bound this tiny segment of the aristocracy and frequently facilitated their physical proximity. Their rivalries and conflicts are one small part of a much wider blood connection, which flared up as the result of disagreements precipitated by this proximity. In 1453, the wives of York and Lancaster were still on terms of sufficient familiarity that Cecily may well have been one of Margaret’s ‘gossips’ in the birth chamber.
As winter approached, it became clear that the king was not improving. Although Henry now had a son, who had superseded York in the succession, the reins of government now fell to him. One of his first acts in this transitional autumn was to order Somerset’s arrest; the duke was committed to the Tower on 23 November, probably while his trial was being planned. It must have seemed to York and Cecily that all the obstacles of the past years were melting away. In December 1453, Richard stood before the council and declared himself a true ‘liegeman’ and subject of King Henry, who would work for the ‘welfare of the king and his subjects’. However, ‘divers persones’ had withdrawn their counsel from him, causing ‘greet hurte’ and he now required them to ‘freely without any impediment resort unto him’. All the lords ‘condescended and agreed as to that thing that was thought unto theim juste and resounable’.6 He and Cecily left London for Christmas, probably returning to Ludlow, as was their custom, but York took the opportunity to gather his support for the return to Parliament. This included his son Edward, Norfolk, Warwick and, surprisingly, the king’s half-brothers Jasper and Edmund Tudor, who at this stage supported York over Somerset.
Then there was a surprising development. Until this point Margaret of Anjou had played little active part in politics, but, early in 1454, she submitted a Bill of five articles requesting the full rights of a regent. They were recorded in a newsletter written by John Stodeley on 19 January. She desired to have ‘the hole reule of this land’ and the right to appoint ‘the Chauncellor, the Tresorere, Privy Seelle and alle other officers of this land’. She wished to have all the bishoprics and benefices under her control as well as having sufficient ‘livelihoods’ for herself, the king and her son. Stodeley also wrote that Somerset ‘hathe espies goyng in every Lordes hous of this land’ and that every man was of ‘th’opynion’ that he ‘maketh hym redy to be as strong as he kan make hym’.7 If the queen’s articles were passed, it would prove a disaster for York’s cause.
York returned to London promptly, being welcomed into the city by an official delegation led by the mayor and aldermen, and, according to the Paston Letters, established in ‘his household meynee, clenly beseen and likely men’, including Warwick, the Tudor brothers Richmond and Pembroke and his eldest son, Edward, Earl of March.8 Travelling with them and waiting to see how the future would unfold, Cecily must have been impatient as she re-established herself in the capital. With Henry incapacitated and his heir still an infant, someone was required to run the country. Given his status and descent, her husband looked like the best candidate for the job. He would be king in all but name, making her something very like a queen.
Soon, York brought good news. Margaret’s proposals were not popular. In March, the council assented to give York power to hold a parliament at Westminster in the king’s name.9 Then, on 3 April, he was officially named as Lord Protector ‘in consideration of the King’s infirmity whereby his attendance to the protection of the realm and church of England would be tedious and prejudicial to his swift recovery’. No one knew how long Henry’s illness would last, or if he would ever recover, so Richard’s authority was established until ‘Edward, the king’s first-born son, arrive at years of discretion, if he shall then wish to take upon himself the charge of protector and defender’.10 With his enemy Somerset in the Tower and Cecily’s brother the Earl of Salisbury as his chancellor, York’s future had dramatically altered for the better. Richard was as good as king and this put Cecily in the position of almost being a queen. However, there was someone else close to home who thou
ght they had a better claim.
Cecily’s sons were back in their establishment at Ludlow. A letter sent from Edward and Edmund to their father probably dates to around this time and shows that they were aware of the developments in his career, that the twists and turns of recent events were shared among the family. They gave thanks for their father’s ‘honourable conduct and good speed in all your matters and business, and of [York’s] gracious prevail against the intent and malice of your evil-willers’. The letter was written during Easter week. In 1454, Easter Sunday fell on 21 April, so it was probably written soon after York’s appointment as Lord Protector, allowing for enough time for the news to travel north. A later composition seems unlikely, as this would place it in the weeks preceding battle, when the duke’s ‘evil-willers’ were once more in the ascendant. The letter also speaks of green gowns and fine bonnets, as well as the ‘odious rule and demeaning’11 of the Croft brothers, their tutors at Ludlow, which tends towards an earlier interpretation of the boys’ ages at the time of composition. At Easter 1454, Edward was about to turn twelve and Edmund was ten. Sir Richard Croft was the second husband of their lady governess, Eleanor Cornwall, who had previously married into the Mortimer family. It has been suggested that Croft was too young to have been the boys’ tutor but a possible birthdate of 1427 would put him in his late twenties and may reflect the confusion caused by the fact that he had a younger brother who was also named Richard.