Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  As the Croyland Chronicler related, ‘this proposal did not suit the plans of his brother the Duke of Clarence who therefore caused the girl to be concealed … since he feared a division of the earl’s inheritance’.2 This writer was also the source of the story that Anne was dressed as a kitchen maid and hidden in the kitchens, a romantic idea that is not corroborated by any other primary source. The exact details of Richard and Anne’s elopement are unclear, beyond the date of her departure from the Clarence household. On 16 February 1472, she left Coldharbour House and fled into sanctuary at the London church of St Martin-le-Grand. She and Richard were married that spring or summer in a ceremony that has left no historical record. As this was done with the support of the king, it may have been attended by Cecily and her daughters, or even taken place in the private chapel at one of their homes. St Martin’s may have provided the location, or Baynard’s Castle, or even Middleham, where the couple quickly established their permanent residence. For Cecily, it meant that the Neville wealth remained in the family, although the subsequent four years of legal wrangling set two of her sons against each other again.

  The year of 1472 also saw Edward remember those who had sheltered him during his recent exile. That autumn he invited Louis de Gruuthuse of Bruges to visit England and accept the gift of the earldom of Winchester. An account written by a Bluemantle Pursuivant, a junior officer of arms, depicts Edward’s splendid court and Cecily’s family in an informal moment. Queen Elizabeth was playing morteaulx (a game like bowls) with her ladies, while others played with nine pins of ivory, ‘divers other games’ and danced. They heard matins together in the morning, before Edward and his guest heard Our Lady’s Mass ‘melodiously sung’ in the king’s own chapel. Cecily may have been present at the ‘great banquet’ that the queen threw in de Gruuthuse’s honour, in her own chambers. Perhaps Cecily brought him a gift and offered her thanks for the role he had played in aiding her son’s return. Edward presented de Gruuthuse with a ‘cuppe of golde garnished with perle’ with a sapphire cover, set with a piece of ‘unicorn’ horn, which was thought to be a prevention against drunkenness.3 De Gruuthuse was lodged in splendid, carpeted chambers hung with white silk and linen, with a bed covered in gold counterpane and canopy of shining gold cloth. He also had access to a bath, covered in tents of white cloth, and a couch of feather beds inside a tent of netting. After bathing, ‘as long as was their pleasure’, they had ‘green ginger, divers syrups and comfits, and then they went to bed’.4 It was the influence of the Burgundian that initiated Edward’s restructuring of his household and the introduction of new codes of conduct, architecture, dress and literature that would mark the second half of Edward’s reign as culturally innovative.

  There was still business to be conducted, even by the king’s mother. In 1472, the manors of Southfrith, Tong and Swanscombe in Kent, which had been confiscated from York, were returned to Cecily by Sir George Brown.5 That November she was granted the patronage of the hospital of St John the Baptist by the bridge of Lechlade in Gloucestershire. She was given a licence to convert the house into a chantry in the name of St Mary, where three priests would celebrate divine service and offer prayers in the names of the royal family, Cecily and the Duke of York.6 Cecily was clearly still mobile enough to travel around the country. In 1472, she was at her property in Kennington, south of the Thames, to arrange for the building of a new chapel. On 10 May 1475, she was back at Kennington, from where she granted a property in Essex to a John Serle and his son. On the official documentation, she is described as ‘late wife to Richard, rightful King of England and France and lord of Ireland’.7 As she passed her sixtieth birthday, York was clearly still in Cecily’s thoughts. On 1 June 1475, her steward at Berkhamsted, Sir John Pilkington, obtained a grant to found a chantry chapel for perpetual prayer in the church of All Saints, Wakefield, with one chaplain, for the annual rent of 9 marks.8 The Pilkington chapel is referred to in a book of 1866, as being hung with a wooden tablet dated 20 December 1475.9 James Smethurst was appointed as the first chaplain, with successors appointed by the Abbot of Kirkstall.10

  A couple of surviving letters indicate that Cecily was still actively managing her estates. In 1474, some of her servants clashed with those of her son Richard, over a land dispute. The duke was ready to send in men-at-arms to resolve the situation but, once he understood that it was his mother’s retainers, the matter was resolved between them, in Cecily’s favour, through a series of letters. In 1476, she endorsed the lease of a wharf in London to a William Boureman and informed the Justices of the Peace in Essex that she and her son Richard had appointed John Prynce and Thomas Wethiale to act for them regarding the ‘land called Gregories’.11 The life of a duchess was still a busy one, even that of a widow, perhaps even more so. During York’s lifetime she had managed his household in his absence and this continued. As a widow, though, Cecily was more likely to have delegated administrative tasks and relied on her tenants to maintain her properties and land under the supervision of her deputies. This developed relationships, between a widow and her staff, of considerable trust. By spending the majority of her time based at Berkhamsted, she would have had the chance to establish close connections with men like her estate manager Sir John Pilkington, her auditor Thomas Aleyn and the supervisor of her lands, Richard Quartermains.

  During 1473, King Edward was occupied by an attempted uprising led by John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford. His father, the 12th Earl, had been well known to Cecily during the 1440s, sailing to France with her and York in 1441 and being a member of York’s council during the first protectorate. In Normandy, Countess Elizabeth would have been among Cecily’s circle of friends and was expecting the arrival of her son John, when Cecily had given birth to Edward. However, in 1459, Oxford had finally broken with York and united with Margaret of Anjou. He fought for the Lancastrians at Northampton but ill health led him to retire during the events of 1460–61. In 1462, he had been arrested and convicted of treason. His son John had been pardoned by Edward and, at Elizabeth’s coronation, had been created a Knight of the Bath and took the role of Lord Great Chamberlain. However, he had sided with Warwick and Clarence and fled to Scotland after the Battle of Barnet. He was not attainted but his lands were confiscated. In May 1473 he besieged St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall and was forced to surrender after having been wounded in the face by an arrow. He was imprisoned at Hammes Castle, near Calais, and the threat was temporarily contained again.

  Although such tensions in the kingdom kept Edward busy, he was still a regular visitor to his mother’s new home. A letter which Cecily wrote in 1474 suggests that her son Richard was there less often, although he would have been equally welcome:

  Son, we trusted you should have been at Berkhamsted with my lord my son [Edward] at his last being there with us, and if it had pleased you to come at that time, you should have been right heartily welcome. And so you shall be whensoever you shall do the same.12

  Richard’s absence may have been due to his increasing residence in the North, being primarily based at Middleham Castle with Anne and his young son, Edward, who arrived at some point between 1473 and 1476. George also fathered two children who were born at this time: Margaret, who was born in Somerset in 1473, and Edward, who entered the world at Warwick Castle in 1475. Queen Elizabeth continued to provide Cecily with new grandchildren, bearing some familiar names. The short-lived Margaret arrived in April 1472, followed by Richard of Shrewsbury in August 1473, Anne in November 1475 and George in March 1477. Cecily’s relationship with Edward was still close, and a meeting between them was recorded by Elizabeth Stonor in a letter of October 1476. Stonor had been in attendance upon Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, and travelled with her and Cecily to Greenwich where she ‘saw the meeting between the king and my lady his Mother. And truly me thought it was a very good sight.’13 Elizabeth also bore five more children during the 1470s, adding to Cecily’s increasing brood of grandchildren.

  In 1475, Edward declared war on France. His ex
pedition was fairly short-lived and bloodless, concluding in a beneficial treaty by which Louis XI was obliged to pay him an income, and his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was betrothed to the dauphin. Perhaps the most violent event of the whole episode occurred on the voyage home, when the Duke of Exeter fell, or was pushed, overboard and drowned. Cecily may not have regretted the loss of the man whom she and York had welcomed into the family, as their ward and son-in-law, who then fought against them with the Lancastrians. By this point, he and Anne had been divorced for three years and Anne was pregnant with the child of her second husband, Thomas St Leger. A clever arrangement made in the 1460s meant that this baby, conceived in April, would inherit all of Exeter’s lands. Perhaps when he learned of the news, he was inclined to object. Anne did not outlive her ex-husband long, though. In January 1476, she went into labour and delivered a healthy child but died from complications following the birth. She was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Her daughter Anne inherited the Exeter wealth on the same day.

  In 1476, Cecily’s sons organised the reinterment of Richard, Duke of York, and Edmund, Earl of Rutland, in Fotheringhay church. Tradition did not usually favour the attendance of spouses at funeral services and none of his family had been present at his first burial in Pontefract, immediately after his defeat at Wakefield. The bodies were exhumed in July and placed in coffins in the choir of the church at Pontefract Priory, which seems a likely location for their original burial. The hearses were large, three-dimensional structures, ornate with heraldic and dynastic symbols including the sun and the fetterlock, flags, pennants and candles. York’s coffin was draped with cloth of gold and topped with a life-sized effigy of him, as was the custom with the burial of royalty. It was dressed in dark blue, the colour of mourning, with an ermine trim; its hands were clasped in prayer and its eyes open toward heaven. It wore a purple cap furred with ermine and, above its carved wax head, an angel held a white crown, to symbolise Richard’s rightful position as an uncrowned king. The hearse would have been hung with epitaphs or verses about his deeds in life, and various personal ‘achievements’, such as his clothing, helmet or sword may have been displayed too. The following morning, led by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the procession began its journey, travelling in solemn pomp through Doncaster, Blyth, Newark, Grantham and Stamford, before reaching Fotheringhay on 29 July.14

  King Edward and George, Duke of Clarence, were waiting at the church door, along with other loyal supporters of the House of York. Inside, the queen and her daughters were waiting in the company of other family members. Richard’s coffin was draped in cloth of gold in the shape of a cross, and guarded overnight. The service was held the following day, with Masses and sermons, followed by the ritual offering of pieces of gold cloth. York’s black warhorse, still alive sixteen years after his death, was ridden into the church by Lord Ferrers, who carried an axe in his hands, with the blade facing down. Then the mourners paid their respects and offered pennies, before the coffins were lowered into the ground. York was buried in the choir, where Cecily would be laid beside him almost twenty years later, while Rutland was interred in the lady chapel.15 A huge feast followed, when up to 20,000 people may have been fed, according to one source. A large percentage of these were fed in temporary tents, while alms were distributed to others. Cooks and ingredients were brought up from London, and thousands of pots and bowls were needed in order to feed all those in attendance.16 It appears that Cecily was not present, even though Charles Ross17 describes the occasion as taking place ‘in the presence of the whole royal family’. As her relatives are specifically named, it would seem odd for Cecily’s presence to have been overlooked. Perhaps this was in line with late medieval protocol or it was sufficient for her that the honour was being paid to her dead husband.

  An illustration in the Luton Guild Book may depict Cecily at around this time. Manuscript images of her are few and far between, uncertainly attributed, and possibly generic. The frontispiece of the Guild Book, though, shows the most likely image of the duchess, on her knees with her hands clasped in prayer. She wears royal robes furred with ermine and bearing the arms of England and France, as well as a distinct plain black headdress, far more suitable for a pious widow that the elaborate ‘hennin’ she was depicted wearing as a girl in the Neville book of hours. Her face is simply drawn, with the standard regular features of contemporary portraits, although she does have the hooded eyes and high forehead that were considered beautiful. This is the best surviving likeness of Cecily, combining her beauty, regality and piety and projecting the image of restraint and contemplation she would have perfected as a lady of her rank. However, these years saw less restraint being practised by her sons.

  The quarrel between George and Richard over their wives’ inheritances had rumbled on until 1476. The Paston Letters record their discontent and Edward’s attempts to reconcile them; no doubt, given her earlier efforts, Cecily also interceded to try to resolve their dispute. In 1472, John Paston recorded how ‘the king entreats my lord of Clarence for my lord of Gloucester’ but ‘what will result I cannot say’.18 In 1473, he captured what was clearly a difficult situation:

  The world seems queasy here … it is said for certain that the Duke of Clarence makes him big in that he can, showing that he would but deal with the Duke of Gloucester. But the king intercedes, eschewing all inconvenience, to be as big as both, and a stifler between them.19

  Late in 1476, this estrangement entered a new phase. That December, George’s wife Isabel Neville died two months after childbirth. The cause is likely to have been some delayed effect of the delivery or a long-term illness, but Clarence believed she had been poisoned. Acting in haste, he arrested, tried and had executed Ankarette Twynyho, one of her ladies-in-waiting. This appears to have been the beginning of George experiencing some sort of severe breakdown. As Croyland relates, George was ‘more and more withdrawing from the king’s presence, hardly uttering a word in council, not eating or drinking in the king’s residence’. The reason given for this was George’s loss of certain titles and estates but it was probably a resurgence of the ambition and entitlement he had previously felt, which had provoked his first rebellion in 1469. In 1477, he proposed that he should marry Mary, the stepdaughter of Margaret of Burgundy, and was angered when Edward considered this to be an inappropriate match for him. When several members of George’s household were convicted and executed for necromancy, Clarence snapped. Again, Cecily’s family was turning against itself. Perhaps, like the Croyland commentator, she thought her sons could be their own worst enemies:

  Indeed, these three brothers, the king and the dukes, possessed such outstanding talents that, if they had been able to avoid discord, such a triple bond could only have been broken by the utmost difficulty.

  Storming into the council chamber at Westminster, George read out a declaration of the innocence of his men before the astonished peers. Edward was then at Windsor but, on hearing the news, summoned his brother to appear before him. George’s track record of disloyalty must have been an influential factor, as Edward became convinced that he was, once again, aspiring to the throne. For Cecily, this would have been the latest in a line of fraternal conflicts, a further disruption to family harmony. But what happened next must have shocked her. At the Westminster parliament, Edward rebuked the duke before the assembly, accused him of treason and ordered his arrest and immediate removal to the Tower. His younger brother had pushed him too far, too often.

  Surely, if Cecily did not leave Berkhamsted to plead with Edward in person late in 1477, she must at least have written him letters that no longer survive. If so, her words had little effect. Early in 1478, George was put on trial. An Act of Attainder was passed against him and he was sentenced to death. The surviving document starts with a reminder of the past:

  The Kyng, our Sovereign Lord, hath called to his Remembraunce the manifold grete Conspiraucies, malicious and heinous Tresons that … have been made here within this his Royaulme for entent and purpose
to have destroyed his moost Roiall person.20

  He had forgiven much, but it had lately come to his attention that against himself, his queen and children

  hath been conspired, compassed and purposed a moch higher, moch more malicious, more unaturall and lothely Treason, than ate eny tyme heretoforn hath been compassed, purposed and conspired from the Kings first Reigne … for that not oonly it hath proceded of the moost extreme malice … but also for that it hath been contrived, imagined and conspired, by the persone that of all erthely creatures, beside the dutie of liegaunce, by nature, by benefeite, by gratitude and by geftes and grants of Goodes and Possessions, hath been moost bounden and beholden to have dradde, loved, honoured and evere thanked the Kyng … all this had been entendeth by his Brother, George Duke of Clarence.21

  Delivering the accusation alone, Edward reminded his brother that he had ‘evere loved and cherished hym as tenderly and as kynderly, as eny creature myght’,22 even in spite of George’s past conduct. Clearly he believed he was burdened by an ungrateful brother. However, the trigger appears to have been George’s recent reopening of the rumours regarding Edward’s paternity. Now he