by Amy Licence
George, Duke of Clarence, had turned nineteen in October 1468 and was still unmarried. He had participated in the celebrations for his sister’s Burgundian match, waving her off from Margate, and could now reasonably expect to make a powerful European alliance of his own. However, as Edward’s next surviving brother, he was heir to the throne until such time as Queen Elizabeth produced a son. Both the successful pregnancies she underwent after the birth of Princess Elizabeth had produced girls and, if anything should befall Edward in the meantime, the crown would pass to George. This made the matter of his marriage more complex than that of Margaret, whose real importance had lain in the alliance she cemented outside the realm. Any wife of George could, potentially, become a Queen of England. As early as 1466, the Burgundians had rejected a bold proposal for Clarence to wed Margaret’s stepdaughter, the fabulously wealthy Mary of Burgundy, who would go on to become the wife of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor. The question of George’s marriage was left hanging, with Cecily now having little input in its conclusion. Yet she knew her son was ambitious. If he could marry Warwick’s eldest daughter Isabel, and father a son, he stood a good chance of supplanting his brother with the earl’s help. It was an attractive idea but it was dangerous.
As a mother, Cecily may have had some inkling that one of her sons was turning against the other. Knowing her dissatisfaction with Edward’s match, it is not impossible that George spoke to her about his plans, perhaps not so far as to suggest open rebellion, but to gain her support for his marriage to Isabel. However, Edward rejected the idea, giving rise to ‘secret displeasure between the king and the Earl of Warwick’.20 Cecily may have joined Edward and Elizabeth to pass the Christmas of 1467 at Coventry Abbey, where ‘for six days the Duke of Clarence behaved in a friendly way’.21 The following summer, George was still acting as the king’s judicial representative, hearing cases of treason at Westminster22 and receiving grants of land and property of, among other places, Queensborough Castle on the Isle of Sheppey, an important port for the wool trade. In spite of Edward forbidding the Warwick–Clarence union, the earl went ahead and secured the papal dispensation that, the Worcester Chronicle states, Edward had tried to block. Secret plans were put in place. By the summer of 1469, Cecily certainly knew about them. When George, Warwick and his party travelled down to Canterbury and then on to Sandwich, in order to take a ship to Calais for the clandestine wedding, Cecily was with them.23
Had Cecily really turned against her eldest son, her king? Historian Michael Jones suggests that she sided with George in retaliation against Edward’s relocation of her from Fotheringhay to Berkhamsted. It is possible that she saw part of the danger but not all, hoping that Edward would eventually accept the match and her sons would be reconciled. Given the role that she would play later, in attempting to make peace between them, it seems unlikely that she anticipated just how far the breach would widen. There is also the possibility that she travelled to Sandwich in an attempt to talk George out of going through with the potentially dangerous union. She must have been aware of his prospects on the European marriage market and his position as Yorkist heir, so may have not wanted to see him take a wife from among the English nobility, even from among her own family, as Isabel was her great-niece and god-daughter. Whatever her role, she returned to Berkhamsted to await news. When it came, in mid-July, it was to confirm that the pair had been married at Calais, in an elaborate public ceremony intended to highlight the contrast with the king’s marriage.
Warwick and George now planned their return. Cecily’s involvement is also suggested by the resurfacing of the allegations of Edward’s illegitimacy, which may have been suggested as a strategy before they left England. The implication is that this had acted as the trigger to rebel; did Cecily tell George the story in order to convince him of his right? It forms part of Warwick’s manifesto, as it suggested that George was in fact the rightful king, and justified invading and imprisoning Edward. As a woman and a widow, Cecily had few weapons to use against those in the political arena, even her own family. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that, in 1464, she concocted the illegitimacy story to discredit Edward and again, in 1469, she used them against the son she considered had humbled her and ejected her from her rightful home. If so, the rumours could only reflect badly on her; given her pride, it was really a case of cutting off her nose to spite her face. She may have felt powerless and frustrated, and resorted to the only means of defence within her power. If this were the case, she must have been aware of the damage she was causing.
With Edward distracted by uprisings in the North, Warwick and George were able to return and take him by surprise. That July, a significant turning point was reached when they faced the king’s army at Edgecote Moor. Queen Elizabeth’s father, Lord Rivers, and her brother John had been specifically named in the manifesto as being the cause of mischievous rule, opinion and assent, which ‘have caused [our] sovereign lord and his realm to fall into great poverty and misery’.24 After the battle they were beheaded at Coventry and their heads placed on spikes in the city. Edward was not present but was captured by Warwick and imprisoned at Warwick Castle soon afterwards. When the news reached Cecily, she may have been surprised and dismayed at the sudden escalation of violence that had pitted her nephew and sons against each other. The executions were powerful reminders of the fate that had befallen York and Edmund at Wakefield. Did this soften Cecily’s resolve towards the new queen and her old friend Jacquetta? Or did she see it as a justified attack on a family she now considered to be her enemies? Sadly, it is not possible to know.
A strange period of waiting ensued. Edward was transferred to Warwick’s home of Middleham Castle, ‘in case his faithful subjects in the south might be about to revenge the great insult inflicted upon the king’.25 Cecily must have wondered, like everyone else, exactly what Warwick’s intentions were. With her son a prisoner of her nephew, she may have held out hope that they would reach a reconciliation; after all, they had been on the same side for years. At Berkhamsted, she could only wait and see how the situation would resolve itself. Then an uprising in the North forced Warwick’s hand. Unable to muster enough support to defeat the threat in his own name, he had to release Edward so that the king could appear in York as a free man, which ‘scattered’ the enemy. Edward then returned to London. Cecily may have travelled to the capital to see him that winter, taking her place at court for the Christmas celebrations, as she was certainly back there by the spring.
The following March, Cecily invited Edward and George to Baynard’s Castle in an attempt to reconcile them. She may have had apologies of her own to make, depending upon what role she had played in recent events. If she had previously attempted to undermine her eldest son in favour of George, she now had to humble herself sufficiently in order to ask for his forgiveness. For a woman of her status and pride, it seems unlikely that she would wish to see her sons in direct combat, as she knew all too well the personal, political and material losses she may suffer as a result. She now acted within her interests and those of the two men, to try to bring about a peace. It is not difficult to imagine her in her great hall, with the fire ablaze and servants bringing in dishes, using her powers of persuasion and diplomacy to smooth over the bruised feelings of each of her sons. But whatever passed under the roof of Baynard’s Castle that month did not have far-reaching effects. Within weeks, George and Warwick had embarked upon another attempt to oust Edward from power. This time, though, forgiveness would be harder to attain.
The same month, at York, Edward issued commissions of array against the ‘rebels’. Warwick and Clarence had refused to obey his summons to declare themselves innocent of the rumours that they were plotting against him. On 12 March, at Empingham in Rutland, Edward easily defeated the troops of Lord Welles, who were fighting in the name of Warwick but fled from the scene in the face of the royal army. The Chronicle of the Rebellion in Lincolnshire described how Wells ‘acknowledged and confessed the duke and earl to be [his]
partners and chief provokers of all [his] treasons’.26 According to his confession, printed in the chronicle, George’s servants urged him and his men to ‘call upon my lord of Clarence to be king, and to destroy the king who was thus about to destroy them all’.27 The rebels then fled to France and, in April, Edward issued commissions for men to raise the ‘armed force with which the king is preparing to resist George, Duke of Clarence and Richard, Earl of Warwick’.28 A day later, further instructions were issued for the seizure of their lands and properties.29 In France, Warwick made an unlikely alliance with the exiled Margaret of Anjou and betrothed his second daughter, Anne, to her son, Edward of Westminster. This effectively circumvented George’s claim to the throne and combined the earl’s forces with those who had been responsible for the death of the Duke of York. Cecily must have been horrified to learn of this development. Yet it did not deter George, who sailed back to England with Warwick and a sizeable force that took Edward by surprise.
In October, the news arrived at Berkhamsted. Edward and his younger brother Richard had fled across the North Sea to the Netherlands, leaving a heavily pregnant Queen Elizabeth to flee into sanctuary. Warwick had released Henry VI from the Tower and reinstated him as king. In a proclamation made that September, Cecily would have heard George refer to his elder brother as a ‘usurper, oppressor and destroyer of our sovereign lord [Henry VI] and of the noble blood of the realm … by his mischievous and inordinate new-found laws and profitless ordinances’.30 It then presented George and his allies as having ‘come into this realm for the reformation thereof and in especial for the common weal of all the realm [and to] deliver our sovereign lord out of his great captivity’. All men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were to be ready, ‘defensible in their best array, to attend and wait upon the duke and earls and assist them’.31 This rhetoric was reminiscent of the attempts York had made to rid Henry VI of councillors like Suffolk and Somerset back in the 1450s. Edward had won the day at Towton but it was York who had asserted his right to rule in the autumn of 1460, so this proclamation aligned the rebels with the Lancastrian stance of the time of Wakefield, against the late duke’s attempt to take the throne. Surely this was a step too far for Cecily. Even if the words of the proclamation never reached her, the alliance of her nephew and son with Margaret of Anjou must have been a shocking betrayal. The autumn of 1470 must have passed in seclusion and confusion for her. She may have learned that Elizabeth Wydeville had successfully borne her a grandson in confinement that November, and her former adversary may have suddenly seemed more like her friend than her own family.
Yet the wheel of fortune had not finished turning. Edward was temporarily beaten but he was not defeated and, in March 1471, Cecily learned that he had returned to England and landed in the North. Days passed and the news from France was worrying: Queen Margaret was returning with her son Edward, newly married to Warwick’s younger daughter, Anne Neville. With the Lancastrians reunited, and Margaret once again the driving force behind the throne, it signalled a return to the problems of the 1450s. Prince Edward would succeed his father and the old conflicts would be resumed by the next generation. However, on 11 April, Maundy Thursday, Cecily’s son Edward was ‘very joyfully received’ in London32 and reunited with his wife, daughters and newborn son. It is an interesting mark of Cecily’s developing relationship with Edward and Elizabeth that he removed his family from sanctuary to the safety of his mother at Baynard’s Castle. Richard was there too, now aged eighteen, having arrived safely back from exile. Soon, the prodigal also returned.
Until Good Friday, George had still been at St Albans, plotting with Warwick, Exeter and the Earl of Oxford. The Great Chronicle of London relates that Clarence stole away at night – ‘contrary to his honour and oath before made, departed secretly from the Earl of Warwick and the other lords … to King Edward his brother’.33 With the assistance of Cecily and her daughters Margaret and Elizabeth, George was reconciled with his mother and brothers. According to Croyland, ‘the former, from outside the kingdom, had been encouraging the King, and the latter, from within, the duke, to make peace’.34 This may have happened at Baynard’s Castle before the departure north35 or as late as the night before the battle.36 They must have passed an uncomfortable few hours, as there was much to discuss and bridges to be rebuilt. Eventually, the explanations and recriminations must have given way to apologies and acceptance, before moving on to planning and preparation. On Good Friday, Edward moved his family to the Tower. Cecily’s sons had to unite to prevent the country from returning to the Lancastrian regime that would push Edward out into the cold, in the same way that his father had been. Cecily must have had a vision of England in the future being plunged back into the trials of the past; did she stay up with them at Baynard’s, reminding them of the past and urging them to act in accordance with their father’s wishes? Edward marched out of the capital and, on Easter Day, his army met the Earl of Warwick at Barnet, north of London.
Now Cecily’s sons faced her nephew. From having been allies in the Yorkist cause, united by their shared grief after Wakefield, the family had been rent by ambition and dissatisfaction. Her daughter Anne’s husband, Henry, Duke of Exeter, was also fighting against them in the Lancastrian cause, as was her other nephew, John, Marquess of Montagu. The duchess retreated into her chapel to pray for the best possible outcome but it must have seemed inevitable that she would soon lose another loved one. Warkworth’s Chronicles describe the terrible mist that descended across the southern counties on the morning of 14 April, plunging Warwick and the Earl of Oxford into confusion. The armies fought from before first light, from four until ten. John Paston took part; his brother wrote to describe how he was ‘in no peril of death’ but was ‘hurt with an arrow on his right arm beneath the elbow’. John had ‘sent him a surgeon, who has dressed him, and tells me that he trusts he shall be all whole within a right short time’.37 Others were less fortunate. The battle left Warwick and his brother Montagu dead. Cecily must have thought of her brother Salisbury, executed at Pontefract after having bravely fought beside the Duke of York. Now two of his sons lay dead, killed by her own boys.
The Croyland Chronicler relates the York brothers’ show of unity that afternoon: ‘Edward returned in triumph to London, accompanied by his two brothers, the Dukes of Clarence and Gloucester.’ As they marched back into the capital, Cecily’s relief to see them still alive may have masked a deeper sense of the futility of the losses, of cousin turning against cousin, those who had once stood shoulder to shoulder in battle. There was little time for the victors to catch their breath, as word had reached London by 18 April38 that Queen Margaret, Prince Edward and Princess Anne had landed in the west. Once again, there were goodbyes and prayers to be said. Once again, Cecily’s sons marched off to battle and left her to await the outcome. On 4 May, Edward led the Yorkist forces including George, Richard and Lord Hastings against the Lancastrians under Prince Edward, the Duke of Somerset, Baron Wenlock and the Earl of Devon. Ten years had passed since the decisive battle at Towton. Edward was now twenty-eight, with greater experience and a decade as king behind him. The encounter at Tewkesbury Abbey that May proved to be just as decisive as Towton, but it was more strategically important in furthering the cause of the House of York. The teenage prince, hope of the Lancastrians, was executed on the battlefield and his allies slain. Somerset killed Wenlock before seeking sanctuary in the abbey. He was later removed and executed. After two years of conflict, Edward needed to ensure there were no enemies left to mount future challenges to his throne. The brothers returned to London on 21 May. That night, King Henry VI died in the Tower. In the words of Henry’s biographer R. A. Griffiths, ‘there can be no reasonable doubt that he died violently’.39 To Cecily, who had attended the unfortunate king’s coronation feast as a new wife, over forty years before, it was the end of an era.
13
The King’s Mother
1472–1483
Was never mother had so dear a loss!
In November 1472, visiting Italian Pietro Aliprando was not impressed by the English. He wrote to the Duke of Milan that ‘in the morning they are devout as angels but after dinner they are like devils … The king is indeed a most handsome, worthy and royal prince, the country is good, the people bad and perverse.’ Aliprando had been unfortunate. Mistaken for an envoy of the Pope, he was arrested for supposedly working on behalf of George Neville, Archbishop of York, one of Warwick’s surviving brothers. This unfortunate event indicates the family tensions that still ran deep after the victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury. Cecily’s nephew had experienced a hiatus in what had appeared to be a promising career. His inauguration as archbishop, at Cawood Castle in 1465, has been remembered by history as a showpiece for Yorkist extravagant consumption and ceremony but, after a brief reconciliation with Edward, he had been arrested on a charge of treason and imprisoned in France. While Edward’s defeat of the joint Warwick–Lancastrian threat had been a success, there would be still more consequences of the events of 1471 for Cecily’s family.
The death of Henry VI’s son, Prince Edward of Westminster, left the fourteen-year-old Anne Neville a widow. The younger of Warwick’s two daughters, she had accompanied him into exile in France in 1470, and soon became an integral part of his plans for the Lancastrian restoration. With the help of King Louis, the earl had made an unexpected alliance with his old enemy, Margaret of Anjou. Anne and Edward were betrothed in July that year and married in December. This made her Princess of Wales and, with her young husband, a viable alternative to the unsuccessful union of Henry VI and Margaret. In time, she may have become Queen of England. The bloodshed at Tewkesbury put an end to those hopes and, like Cecily after Wakefield, Anne was released into the custody of her sister Isabel, Duchess of Clarence. It was under George’s roof at Coldharbour House that she and Richard, Duke of Gloucester, formed the plan to be married. She had already written to Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, and to Queen Elizabeth asking for assistance; perhaps she also appealed to her great-aunt Cecily to help her out of a predicament. The union was advantageous for both parties, as it gave Anne the security and status she lacked as a widow while bringing Richard half of the Warwick legacy, which was then entirely in George’s hands. King Edward approved of the match, so it is likely that Cecily was also aware of it and did not object. However, George did not want to relinquish Anne’s inheritance, and this led to the development of a bitter quarrel.