Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  Luckily, York had found refuge in Ireland, where his first brief stint as lieutenant was still fresh in the memory of the people. Technically, he still held the role, as his term had been extended in December 1457. Following his attainder, James Butler, the Lancastrian Earl of Wiltshire and son-in-law to the dead Duke of Somerset, was appointed in his place, but never took up the position. York’s lands were parcelled out soon after Ludford Bridge, with Northumberland, his chief enemy in the Percy family, receiving a grant for life of Scarborough Castle and a number of other properties for ‘attendance about the King’s person against Richard, Duke of York, and other rebels’.5 John Middleton was rewarded in January 1460 for good service against the rebels, with the lordship of Multon and the ‘keeping of the conies’, or rabbits, there.6 William Browning was granted all his possessions in Dorset and Somerset ‘forefeit by his high treason’7 and John, Earl of Shrewsbury, was granted the lordship of Ludlow.8 His allies were also punished. The lordship of Cranborn, belonging to John Ausytn, ‘servant of Richard, Duke of York … with the Duke in the field against the King’, was awarded to a loyal Lancastrian.9 The Lancastrians also attempted to get their hands on York himself, with several demands being made for the Irish to relinquish the exiles. They refused to comply. Richard also had his sixteen-year-old son Edmund and a little band of loyal supporters with him, of whom twenty-one can be identified with certainty, many from the Neville estates. He remained fairly settled in Ireland until the summer, apparently without making any plans to return to England; according to Whethamsted he had been ‘hailed there as a messiah’. In Calais, though, his eldest son Edward and cousin Warwick were planning an invasion.

  At Tonbridge, news would have reached Cecily in the new year of the activities of her nephew and her son. Perhaps she smiled to herself as she learned that they had raided the Kent port of Sandwich in January, where the young Earl of Somerset was constructing a fleet to invade Calais. He had been made the new constable but, loyal to Warwick, the town had refused to admit him. This was the infamous occasion when Sir John Dynham surprised Lord Rivers, Jacquetta and their son Anthony asleep in their beds in Sandwich and carried them to Calais with the fleet, where they were berated by Warwick and Edward for their disloyalty and presumption. Events had placed Cecily’s son and his allies on the opposing side of their old friends from Rouen. Rivers and his wife had known Edward as an infant in Normandy; it must have grated on them to be accused of being social climbers. John Paston relates how the youth derided Rivers as a knave’s son, which appears such a great irony in hindsight, given that Edward would soon become his son-in-law. Perhaps it was the old connection that spared them the fate of the Captain of Sandwich, who was beheaded; Jacquetta was sent home but the two men remained prisoners for another six months.

  Again in March, Cecily would have heard that, just as Somerset had repaired the damage from the raid, Edward and Warwick had struck again and destroyed the fleet as it sat waiting to sail. That March, a general pardon was issued by Parliament ‘to any captains, patrons, merchants, pilots, galleymen, sailors and mariners of any carracks [sailing boats] and galleys arrested to serve on the sea against Richard, Earl of Warwick and his accomplices’.10 Parliament also offered payment of all loans and moneys owing to it that month, using the estates of the rebels in order to preserve their own funds and to better defeat them and ‘the king’s adversary in France’.11 That April, a commission was given to Robert Basele, Mayor of Winchelsea, to resist York, Warwick and Salisbury, whom, it was rumoured, planned to enter the town. Basele was ordered to ‘arrest and commit to prison or expel all suspected persons’. The same was extended to the Mayor of Southampton and those in other prominent ports. Men were put on watch around the coastline of Dorset, Devon and Cornwall.12 The Buckinghams were still very much in royal favour that summer, with Anne receiving the ‘wardship of all the possessions’ of Sir Robert Grey, until his son Humphrey came of age, as well as the right to arrange the boy’s marriage. Humphrey was then twelve and may have come to live at Tonbridge Castle; he would not be married until 1470.13 Along with other leading Lancastrians, including Cecily’s half-brother Ralph Neville and her son-in-law Exeter, Buckingham was given a commission to call together all men ‘able to labour … as soon as they hear that Richard, Duke of York, Edward, Earl of March’, and the others, were ready to ‘enter the realm or cause to be made any congregations, combinations or unlawful gatherings’.14

  On 26 June, Edward, Salisbury and Warwick landed at Sandwich. Relying on Kent’s reputation for rebellion, as well as the relationship Warwick had established with the sailors since his days as captain, they marched to Canterbury, where welcoming verses were pinned to the city gates:

  Send hom most gracious Jhesu, most benygne

  Send home thy trewe blode unto his proper veyne

  Richard, Duk of York, Job thy servant insygne …

  he may nat be slayne …

  Edwards, Erle of Marche, whos fame the erthe shall spread

  Richard, Erle of Salisbury, named prudence

  wythe that noble knyghte and floure of manhode

  Richard Earl of Warwick, sheelde of our defence.15

  It seems almost inconceivable that, as the rebels passed through Kent on their way to the capital, Edward would not try to contact his mother at Tonbridge, if he knew that she was there. It would also follow that, if he saw her in person, or visited her at the Buckingham’s home, he may attempt to bring about her release. However, Gregory’s Chronicle states that Cecily remained put ‘tylle the field was done at Northampton’, so it would seem that Edward may have sent words of encouragement to her but marched on in order to meet his opponents. By the time he and Warwick had reached London, on 2 July, they had raised an army of 10,000 men. A list of points, preserved in Harleian Manuscript 543, outlined the reasons why Kent was so keen to support the rebels’ attempt to remove Henry from his evil council. Their first statement asserted that ‘the king, by the insatiable covetousness, malicious purpose and false-brought-of-nought persons, daily and nightly about his Highness, is daily informed that good is evil and evil is good’. Their eighth point related specifically to the spread of slanders regarding the Duke of York, making the king ‘hate and destroy his friends’.16

  The Yorkist army clashed with the Lancastrians in the grounds of Delapré Abbey, at Northampton, on 26 June. It was an encounter that would turn the tables for Cecily and her sister. Her nephew Warwick and eighteen-year-old son Edward, now almost 6 feet 4 inches tall, were drawn up in opposition to her sister Anne’s husband, Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham. The weather was terrible, with the ground sodden from days of rain, rendering the gunpowder in the Lancastrian cannons worthless. Midway through, the defection of Lord Grey of Ruthin turned the tables and the battle was won in little under an hour. About 400 men lay dead. The poem ‘The Battle of Northampton’, preserved in Trinity College Dublin, uses heraldic devices and the extended metaphor of hunting to describe the action and its outcome. Warwick (the bear) and Edward (the bearward) kill the buck (Buckingham) and others (the dogs).

  The bereward asked no question why,

  But on the dogges he set full rounde …

  The game was done in a litel stounde

  The buk was slayne and borne away.17

  The same poem urged York to return from Ireland and protested his loyalty and innocence of all charges against him,

  … whom treson ne falshod meuer dyd shame

  But euer obedient to his sovereign.18

  Both women must have spent an anxious few days at Tonbridge, watching the road for signs of messengers. When they finally arrived, weary from the long ride south, they brought the news that both women dreaded and longed for at the same time. For Cecily it was a resounding victory, but for her sister Anne it was the terrible confirmation that her husband had been killed in battle. King Henry had been captured in his tent, at prayer on bended knee. The victors were marching him to London to establish a government in his name, while Qu
een Margaret and her son had fled to the protection of Jasper Tudor at Harlech Castle, after being robbed along the way. The Great Seal, the symbol of power, had been entrusted to the hands of Cecily’s nephew, George Neville.

  Once again Cecily’s personal and political life came into sharp contrast. While sympathising with her sister, her thoughts were turning to the future. Shortly after the battle was won, she would have heard news of the murder of an old friend, Thomas, Lord Scales. Scales had fought in Normandy under the Duke of Bedford and Fastolf; in 1442, at Rouen, he had been made Edward’s godfather. However, he had supported the Lancastrians against Cecily’s brother, the Earl of Salisbury. As Constable of the Tower, he had turned its guns on the city with disastrous results. In addition to the cannon, he was indiscriminate in the use of ‘wildfire’, a weapon developed to repel enemy ships, which burned when doused with water, and killed innocent bystanders in the streets. According to Wyrcester, he was dispatched while trying to escape from the Tower, possibly by seamen carrying him across the Thames to sanctuary, and his naked body was dumped in the cemetery of St Mary Overy in Southwark. The tide of support in London turned very decisively in favour of Edward and Warwick as a result of this, although they did give Scales a dignified funeral.

  Soon, Cecily left Tonbridge with her children and headed for London. Edward may even have ridden down himself to inform them of his victory and liberate them. The nineteenth-century biographer Caroline Halsted suggests that Anne allowed Cecily to escape and that she travelled to London in secrecy, avoiding her own property of Baynard’s Castle and staying instead at John Paston’s law chambers at Temple Inn, before moving to Fastolf’s Southwark mansion.19 On 15 September, a delegation, including the harbinger of the Earl of March, had approached Paston’s servant Christopher Hausson ‘desyryng that my Lady of York might lye here untylle the coming of my Lord of York and hir tw sonnys, my Lorde George and my lorde Richard and my Lady Margarete hir dawztry, which I granted them … to lie here till Michaelmas [29 September]’.20 By this time, Cecily had received news that York had landed at Chester. Whethamsted claimed he had been summoned by an encouraging letter from the king. Shortly afterwards, he sent for her to come and meet him at Hereford, so they could make a triumphant entry into the capital together; possibly as early as 23 September.21 She departed London in a chair of blue velvet, pulled by four pairs of horses.22 According to Hausson’s letter, which is dated 12 October, the three children were left behind at Fastolf’s but were visited daily by Edward, Earl of March, who remained in the city.

  The cathedral city of Hereford lies around 130 miles to the west of London. There are a number of possible places where the long-anticipated reunion between York and Cecily could have occurred. Firstly, there was the impressive Hereford Castle, long since vanished. Built before the Norman Conquest, it was described by Leland as nearly as large as Windsor Castle and ‘the fairest and strongest in all England’. During the thirteenth century, an inventory listed the place as including great and small halls, royal apartments for the king and queen, a counting house and exchequer, stables, kitchen, bakery and two gaols.23 However, Leland also states that it was decaying from around the time of Edward III. York had owned a number of properties in the area at which he may have awaited Cecily’s arrival, not least the solid Wigmore Castle, which Edward would use as a base the following spring. Before the attainder, he had also held the manor of Marden, or Mawardine, a Mortimer inheritance, 7 miles to the north of the city. If Cecily arrived before Richard, she may have prayed for his safe arrival in the church of St Mary the Virgin and taken the waters from the holy well there, traditionally supposed to have sprung from the place where St Ethelbert was first buried. York paused briefly at Ludlow, perhaps to survey the damage and learn the whereabouts of his family and possessions. Halsted places his reunion with his wife there, based on the evidence of Wyrcester. York was received there by an assembly of local gentry, who encouraged him to assume the throne; if the idea had not already occurred to him, this seemed to confirm his next move. He went on to Shrewsbury and remained there for four days with Warwick before travelling to Hereford.

  The details of this reunion suggest the Yorks were close; surely before their departure, or during the long ride back to London, Richard would have confided his intentions to Cecily. As an attainted traitor, he had been forced into a corner. The king’s forces had been soundly defeated and Henry was little more than an ineffectual puppet in the Yorkists’ hands. It was time for Richard to claim the throne of England. Did Cecily approve of her husband’s scheme? Did she listen intently and advise him to act at once, or did she counsel caution, aware that such a decisive act would prove disastrous should it fail? Perhaps she had such confidence in York’s abilities and such conviction in the right of his claim that the possibility of failure did not appear realistic. After all, it had been his choice to leave Ludlow; it had been a desertion rather than a defeat. No doubt the couple discussed the sack of their home and the aftermath.

  Sadly, it is impossible to know now what Cecily’s attitude was towards York’s plans. Her prompt obedience to his summons suggests support, and her long-standing belief in their joint royal lineage was perfectly consistent with his intentions. She may have welcomed the idea of him replacing Henry VI as King. Equally, she may have questioned it, or doubted it, as her eldest son would do. There was a general feeling of discontent brewing against Henry VI, whose illness and ineffectualness was being seen as leading the country into ruin, which was summarised well by the tenth statement of the men of Kent:

  That our Sovereign Lord may understand that he hath had false council; for his law is lost, his merchandise is lost, his commerce hath been destroyed, the sea is lost, France is lost, himself is made so poor that he may not pay for his meat nor drink; he oweth more and is greater in debt than ever was King in England.24

  Cecily and York were at Gloucester on 2 October, the day of their son Richard’s eighth birthday, before moving to Abingdon in Oxfordshire. The Paston Letters also place them at Leicester, Coventry ‘and other divers towns’, where York presided over the local courts ‘to punych them by fawtes to the Kyngs lawys’.25 The attainder that had been passed at Coventry the previous autumn was successfully revoked. On 10 October, Cecily and York rode into London and headed to Baynard’s Castle, where the family were reunited.26 Other sources have him travelling straight to Westminster from Barnet, marching into the royal palace and taking possession.27 If this was the case, Cecily may well have been with him and witnessed what followed.

  What followed was a terrible political miscalculation. York rode with a troop of 500 men to Westminster with his trumpets sounding and his sword carried before him. It was the third day that Parliament had been sitting; they were expecting him, as Warwick had announced his approach. He entered the king’s chamber and put Henry under his own guard. Approaching the throne, he laid his hand upon it and boldly declared his right to claim it. He waited for applause but was met by an awkward silence. The Earl of Worcester’s secretary wrote to him in Venice, describing the scene, assigning York 800 horsemen, ‘with his swerde born uppe right by for him thorowe the halle and parliament chamber. And there under the cloth of estate stondyng he gave them knowliche that he purposed nat to ley doaune his swerde but the challenge his right and so toke his loggyng in the qwenys chamber.’28

  Ireland’s ‘messiah’ had misjudged the political mood in London. His brother-in-law, Archbishop Thomas Bourchier, refused to sanction the deposition of Henry. It fell to Warwick to take him aside and attempt to negotiate a compromise, with the blunt news that ‘the lords and the people were ill-content against him because he thus wished to strip the king of his crown’.29 According to William Wyrcester, ‘few of the Lords countenanced him’ and ‘every state and grade, whatever age or sex, order or condition, began to whisper against him’.30 Unsure of what to do next, he wisely accepted a suggestion to withdraw and speak with the king. Henry’s response was, for once, decisive. Stating his desc
ent from Henry V, he reminded them ‘my father was king, his father was king; I have worn the crown forty years from my cradle, you have all sworn fealty to me as your sovereign and your fathers have done the same to my fathers. How can my right then be disputed?’31 Yet somehow, in spite of the embarrassment of his coup not being supported, the situation began to turn around. In the ensuing parliamentary debate, begun on 16 October, York’s claim was objected to on the grounds that he was descended from ‘females’ and that he did not bear the arms of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, Edward III’s third son, but those of Edmund of Langley, his fifth son. However, things were gradually going York’s way and on the night of 31 October, Gregory’s Chronicle relates that King Henry was removed from court, against his will, to the house of the Bishop of London. York visited him there and one historian speculates that he may have attempted to persuade him to abdicate.32

  On 9 November, the Act of Accord offered York the concession of being Henry’s heir, displacing the seven-year-old Edward, Prince of Wales. He was named as Lord Protector during the king’s lifetime, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall and Earl of Chester and awarded an annual income of £10,000; it was also considered treason to imagine or ‘encompass’ York’s death. It was a situation Margaret of Anjou would never accept. The Milanese ambassador even suggested that the queen had given Henry VI poison and planned to ‘unite with the Duke of Somerset’, Henry Beaufort, adding the tart little comment that ‘at least he knew how to die, if he did not know what to do else’. Cecily now found her old friend pitted against her husband. It was a fight for the rights of their children. She declined to return to London and place her son in the care of her enemies, taking him north instead. Even York’s own supporters believed he had gone too far according to William Wyrcester.