The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III's Brother

by John Ashdown-Hill

  Officially, of course, the government was behind his appointment. ‘In April, 1449, the English Council gave orders for ships to be collected at Beaumaris for the conveyance of Richard and his suite, and finally on July 6 the Duke of York landed at Howth “with great pomp and glory”, accompanied by his wife and a number of troops.’5 Despite the fact that some might have viewed York’s new appointment as a demotion, the Irish seemed delighted to see him:

  The Duke of York arrived in Ireland, and was received with great honour; and the Earls of Ireland went into his house, as did also the Irish adjacent to Meath, and gave him as many beeves for the use of his kitchen as it pleased him to demand.6

  York himself seems to have taken his role in Ireland very seriously. Holinshed later ascribed to him the boast that ‘it shall never be chronicled … by the grace of God that Ireland was lost by my negligence’.7 If York did really say this, he may have been deliberately contrasting himself and his work with the completely disastrous command of his rival Somerset in France. At all events, he provided such effective and just rule in Ireland that he and his family were remembered there with affection.

  It is not certain how many members of the duke’s family accompanied him and his wife to Ireland. Since January 1445/6 his eldest daughter, Anne, had been married to her cousin, the young Henry Holland, 2nd (or 3rd) Duke of Exeter (1430–75).8 At his own request, since July 1447 the Duke of York had been the young man’s guardian. Thus, even if Anne had left her parents’ home on her marriage, she may subsequently have returned as a result of her father’s guardianship of her husband. However, Henry Holland was granted livery of his land on 23 July 1450, which suggests that he and his wife may then have been in England. As for York’s two eldest living sons, Edward and Edmund, they were residing at Ludlow Castle. Elizabeth of York may have been boarding in another noble household and it has been suggested that the infant Margaret may have remained in the nursery at Fotheringhay Castle, in the care of either the former nurse of the future Edward IV, called Anne of Caux, or the probable nurse of the future Richard III, called Joan Malpas.9 However, since the Duchess of York must have known that she was expecting another baby, maybe she had little Margaret (then aged 3) and her nurses accompany her to Ireland, to ensure that experienced women would be on hand when her next baby arrived.

  At the time of York’s appointment, the centre of English rule in Ireland still comprised most of Leinster and Meath,10 but its extent was gradually being reduced. By the end of the fifteenth century it would be restricted to Dublin and its Pale, ‘an area along the east coast stretching from Dalkey, south of Dublin, to the garrison town of Dundalk’.11 The seat of the English government in Ireland – and the residence of the English governor – was Dublin Castle. This was the principal abode of the Duchess of York from the summer of 1449 until after her baby was born. Dublin Castle was extensively reconstructed in later periods of its history, so that of the medieval building only one tower – the Record Tower (formerly the Wardrobe Tower) – now survives.

  Dublin Castle: the thirteenth-century Record Tower (formerly Wardrobe Tower).

  After a brief stay, the Duke of York left Dublin for Trim and then marched on through Ulster. He returned to Dublin by October, for a meeting of the Irish Parliament:

  It was with great apparent glory and triumph that Richard returned to Dublin, as it were the hero and hope of a united Ireland. We like to think that his beautiful wife, ‘the Rose of Raby’, had made an impression on the Irish heart, as when O’Byrne presented her with two hobbys. At least there can be no doubt that it was a highly popular event when on October 21, 1449, the viceroy’s third son was born in Dublin, George, the future ‘false, fleeting, perjured Clarence’. The bond already formed between the House of York and Ireland was doubly strengthened by this event. The young prince was looked upon as ‘one of ourselves’, an Irishman by birth as well as descent, and the devotion to his name was shown years later when Lambert Simnel was crowned king in Dublin in the belief that he was Clarence’s son, Edward of Warwick.12

  Towards the end of September – the eighth month of her pregnancy – Cecily must have withdrawn from public view, closeting herself in her own chambers at Dublin Castle. This was standard practice for an expectant mother, and a ritual with which the Duchess of York must already have been very familiar, given that this was her ninth experience of childbirth. Once the duchess had withdrawn into her chambers, the keyholes in her doors will have been blocked up. At the same time, all but one of her chamber windows will have been obscured in preparation for the coming birth. Thus, for the last three or four weeks of her pregnancy the duchess will have remained shut off from the rest of the world, surrounded only by her female attendants.

  It was in the third week of October that the Duchess of York’s latest pregnancy reached its term. At about noon on Tuesday 21 October 1449 she gave birth to her ninth child and sixth son.13 After her safe delivery, Cecily will have continued for some weeks in seclusion. Indeed, at first she would have been expected to remain in bed. Then, little by little, she would have started to get up. Initially, she would have spent her time mostly sitting in her chamber, taking a little exercise every now and then by walking around her rooms. Finally, she would have emerged from her chamber to appear in the rest of the castle, but even then she would not, at first, have gone outside, since it was popularly believed that, until she had been ‘churched’, a new mother was in danger of attack by evil forces if she ventured out of doors.

  Meanwhile, her new-born baby would have been handed over almost at once to a wet nurse. Noble ladies did not normally breast-feed their own children, since this might have reduced their capacity to reproduce – one of their principal raisons d’être. Probably the baby would have been removed from his mother’s chambers and shown to his father. Since the survival of a new-born child was not guaranteed, and the death of an un-baptised child might place the infant’s soul in jeopardy, baptism was seen as a priority. This ceremony was therefore usually performed immediately – or at least within a few days of the birth – at a time when the child’s mother was still enclosed in her chambers and therefore unable to attend her infant’s christening.

  Normally the father (if available), together with the godparents, the midwife and attendants, would carry the baby to the church. In this instance the Duke of York was present in Dublin, where he had been attending Parliament. According to Worcester’s Annals, the new-born York baby was baptised in Dublin’s Dominican (‘Blackfriars’) Priory Church, dedicated to St Saviour.14 This priory church was situated approximately half a kilometre to the northwest of the castle gate, just across the River Liffey. If they walked there, the christening party would most likely have covered the distance in about ten minutes.

  A priest – perhaps in this instance the prior in person – would have met the party at the church door. First the priest would have checked that the baby had not already been baptised. Then he would have blessed the infant and put a few grains of salt, symbol of wisdom (sal sapientiae), into his mouth. After that, he would have led the party through the church door, to the baptismal font. There the sponsors would have made a profession of faith on the baby’s behalf and one of the sponsors will have held the naked baby over the font while the priest poured holy water over his head, uttering for the first time the baby’s name: Georgi, ego te baptizo in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. One of the godparents would then have received the baby and wrapped him in his white chrysom robe. When the short ritual was completed, they would all have made their way back to Dublin Castle, where the adults would have shared a christening feast while the baby was probably returned to his cradle and went to sleep.

  There is still a Dominican Priory dedicated to St Saviour in Dublin today. However, the present church is a nineteenth-century building. Owing to the vicissitudes of Ireland’s religious history from the sixteenth century onwards, it does not stand on the same site as its medieval predecessor – the church in which the York baby
was baptised. That church and priory had stood just to the north of what was then the only bridge across the River Liffey. It occupied the modern ‘Four Courts’ site, which is situated on the eastern side of Church Street, at the point where the road approaches the river.15

  The name bestowed upon this boy at his baptism, George, was that of England’s patron saint. It was not at all a common name in the English royal family at that period, but the cult of St George is said to have been fashionable amongst the nobility of England, France and Burgundy, so perhaps it was chosen for that reason. Medieval children were often named after their godparents. We know that two of this baby’s godparents – both of whom were actually present at his baptism – were rival Irish aristocrats: James Fitzgerald, 6th Earl of Desmond and James Butler, 4th Earl of Ormonde.16 The Duke of York was using the occasion of his son’s baptism to bring together the Butlers and Fitzgeralds. Why, then, was the baby not christened James? Maybe George was chosen in honour of his mother’s nephew (and his own elder cousin) Canon George Neville (later Archbishop of York). George Neville had been born in 1432, and was only 17 years old when his little cousin was born in Dublin. However, he had been a canon of Salisbury Cathedral since he was 9 years old, and in 1449 he was already well advanced on his way to a bishopric, which he attained in 1454–6, with the support of his uncle, the Duke of York. At the time of both George Neville’s episcopal elevation and his appointment to the bishopric of Exeter, Richard, Duke of York was Protector of the realm, owing to the insanity of King Henry VI (see below, chapter 3). At the time of the baptism of York’s son in Dublin, George Neville is thought to have been a student at Balliol College, Oxford. He was later to prove an ally of his young cousin – then Duke of Clarence – when the latter opposed his own brother, King Edward IV.17

  The baptism of a baby boy (fifteenth-century woodcut).

  As for the baby’s mother, the final episode of the childbirth from her point of view was the ceremony of her churching. This was a short rite of purification and thanksgiving that marked a mother’s final return to normal life. It was normally performed forty days after the birth, and until it was accomplished it was considered unsafe for the mother to venture out of doors. If Cecily Neville observed the usual timing, her churching probably took place on Sunday 30 November 1449 – the first Sunday of Advent. Accompanied by her midwives and female attendants, the Duchess of York will have made her way to church bearing a lighted candle. There she was sprinkled with holy water, to cleanse her following George’s birth, and make it safe for her to resume her normal life. Once Cecily had re-emerged from her apartments at Dublin Castle, she and those of her children who were resident in Ireland settled at the Castle of Trim. This was part of her husband’s personal property – an inheritance from his Mortimer ancestors, and one he seems to have liked, for he spent time and money on its restoration.18

  According to a traditional rhyme, ‘Tuesday’s child is full of grace’. Since the grace in question is apparently neither social nor religious but refers to agility, and possibly to an ability to wield weapons effectively, Tuesday may have been an appropriate birth day for this particular princeling.19 On the internet one can find a published horoscope for the baby, based on his birth date of 21 October. This assumes that his sun sign was Libra – a sign whose personality traits have been characterised as ‘balance, justice, truth, beauty, perfection’.20 Unfortunately, this particular horoscope fails to take account of the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. George of York was indeed born on 21 October 1449 according to the old (Julian) calendar, then in use throughout Western Europe. But at the time of his birth that old calendar was nine days behind the modern (Gregorian) calendar. Our modern system would make George’s birth date 30 October. Therefore, he was not born under the balanced sign of Libra, but under Scorpio, a sun sign said to engender a ‘transient, self-willed, purposeful, unyielding’ personality!21

  The baby George of York spent almost the entire first year of his life in Dublin and Trim castles. The Duke of York was carrying out his office of Lieutenant of Ireland diligently. At the same time, he was also keeping a careful watch on the course of events in England. In January 1450 his faithful servant, Sir William Oldhall of Narford, Bodney and East Dereham, Norfolk, who had been serving with York in Dublin, was sent back to England to gather news, returning to Dublin with his report in the summer.22

  As we shall see in more detail in the next chapter, it was in September 1450 – when the baby George was 11 months old – that his father suddenly decided to return to England. Two basic motives underpinned this decision. First, York was trying hard to consolidate the English position in Ireland. For this he needed troops – and funds to pay them – but despite repeated requests to London, from the spring of 1450, no money had been forthcoming. Second, York, who was escorted on his return journey by between 4,000 and 5,000 men at arms, was incensed by the increasing power and influence in government circles of his arch-rival, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.

  While York had been winning the love of the Irish in Dublin, Somerset had been presiding over the collapse of the English cause in France. As a descendant (in a legitimised bastard line) of Edward III’s son John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, Somerset was a cousin both of King Henry VI and of the Duke of York. Earlier, he had been closely and amorously involved with Henry VI’s widowed mother, Catherine of France, by whom he may well have fathered the so-called Edmund ‘Tudor’ – who in turn engendered the future Henry VII and the so-called Tudor dynasty.23 And when York decided to leave his post in Ireland and return to England, Beaufort was probably amorously involved with Henry VI’s wife, Queen Margaret – a relationship which produced further important consequences, as we shall see.

  Since the Duke of Somerset seems to have been favoured by Henry VI over York himself as a potential heir to the throne of England, and since his elder brother, John (1st Duke of Somerset, d. 1444), had previously been York’s rival in France, York and Somerset were inevitably rivals and enemies. In 1450, York – aware of some of Edmund Beaufort’s pretensions – was anxious to secure his own status as heir to the then still childless King Henry VI, in order to stave off any possibility of future dynastic competition from the Beaufort family.24

  NOTES

  1. Johnson, Duke Richard of York, p.70, citing three fifteenth-century sources.

  2. 1448.

  3. The fourth earl was killed, the fifth earl died of the plague.

  4. P. M. Kendall, Richard the Third (London, 1955), p.20.

  5. Curtis, ‘York as Viceroy’, p.165.

  6. J. O’Donovan, ed. and trans., The Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Masters [Annála Ríoghachta Éireann] vol. 4 (Dublin, 1848–51), p.965. Available at http://www.ucc.ie/celt/published/T100005D/index.html (consulted May 2013).

  7. H. Ellis, ed., Holinshed’s Chronicles (London: Johnson, 1807–8), vi, pp.267–8.

  8. Henry’s father and grandfather had both been dukes of Exeter, but his grandfather had been attainted and the ducal title, which had meanwhile been granted to Thomas Beaufort, was therefore re-created for Henry’s father in 1444.

  9. C. Weightman, Margaret of York Duchess of Burgundy 1446–1503 (Gloucester, 1989), p.13. Weightman suggests that Anne of Caux nursed all the York children. However, she seems not to have nursed the future Richard III for in 1484 he referred to her simply as Edward IV’s nurse (CPR 1476–85, p.411). Moreover, in 1483 Joan Malpas (Peysmersh) was granted an annuity by Richard III for her service to him and his mother in his youth (CPR 1476–85, p.374). There seems to be a widespread assumption that Fotheringhay Castle was the principal York family residence.

  10. Curtis, ‘York as Viceroy’, p.163.

  11. The word ‘pale’ is derived from the Latin palus = stake. The meaning in this context is a fence or boundary, and the area it encloses. The Dublin ‘Pale’ was an area encircled by a ditch with ramparts for fortification, and in the fifteenth century this ‘Pale’ was the only part of Ireland
under the direct control of the English crown. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pale (consulted November 2012).

  12. Curtis, ‘York as Viceroy’, p.172.

  13. William Worcester’s Annals, as edited by J. Warkworth and J. A, Giles, in The Chronicles of the White Rose of York (London, 1843), p.301.

  14. The Worcester annals state: ‘Natus est Dominus Georgius, sextus filius praedicti principis, XXI die Octobris, apud castrum Debline in Hibernia, anno Domini MoCCCCXLIX, in meridie diei antedicti, & baptizatus in ecclesia Sancti Salvatoris.’ See: T. Hearne, Liber Niger Scaccarii nec non Wilhelmi Worcestrii Annales Rerum Anglicarum vol. 2 (London, 1774), p.526; see also Warkworth and Giles, The Chronicles of the White Rose of York, p.301.

  15. No trace now remains of Dublin’s medieval Dominican priory, which had been founded in the thirteenth century. The greater part of the priory church was demolished in 1540, though one small chapel was restored briefly to the Blackfriars in the late seventeenth century by James II. Dublin’s present (nineteenth-century) Dominican priory bears the same dedication as its medieval precursor, but it stands upon a different site. The original seal of the medieval priory is said to be preserved in the Royal Irish Academy. See http://www.dominicans.ie/friars/communities/dublin/history.html?showall=1 (consulted November 2012).