Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  The nineteenth-century visitors were conducted through well-disposed rooms, to admire expressive portraits described by the guidebook in a suitably Great Exhibition register: Panini, Vermeer and Vernet, Lely, Lorraine and Vandyke were all ‘worthy of notice’ or ‘as fresh as if but just finished’. New additions to the building ‘harmonise[d] perfectly’ and all were alliteratively appreciated, being ‘elaborate, exquisite and elegant’. Then, amid the draperies of lion’s skins and ‘chaste’ gold-and-white ceiling, the castle’s past, the ‘olden times’, according to F. M. L., began to emerge. The Baron’s Hall once entertained 700 knights plus their retainers and, below the Victorian lady’s Balmoral boot, lay the cellars, complete with huge oven. Once, the fires blazed, down in the bowels of the castle, roasting the meat turning on spits and heating the vats of wine, boiled with spices. Raby was self-sufficient, with all its provisions stored within the thick walls. This was, of course, ‘a very essential arrangement for the subsistence of those in feudal times when, at any time, they were subject to the attacks of their neighbours’.7

  It was during those ‘feudal times’ that Cecily Neville was born at Raby Castle. The location of her arrival, and the family into which she was born, immediately marked her above the majority of her fifteenth-century contemporaries. The impressive towers and setting of Raby, its very size and scale, were a suitable location for the birth of a woman who would come to consider herself ‘queen by rights’, whose family would come to conquer and rule the land. It was a bloodline that derived from Norman France, where significant years of Cecily’s life would be passed, as the duchess of the realm’s lieutenant. The connection went back at least six centuries.

  Cecily was the youngest child of a very significant dynasty. Her ancestors had been based at Neuville-sur-Touques, just over 100 miles to the immediate west of Paris,8 while other sources cite a village named Calle de Neu Ville as their home. They derived their surname from the place of their birth as far back as the ninth century.9 Nevilles were among those thousands of men who crossed the Channel to England in 1066, dressed in their chain-mail hauberks and now iconic helmets, with the bar descending to protect the nose. Occupying a heavily wooded site, with marshland surrounding them, they fought from morning until dusk until the English King Harold was killed. William the Conqueror rewarded his men; many received lands and titles, so they settled and married into local families. Cecily’s ancestors came from one such eleventh-century success story, starting with a Richard de Novavilla,10 whose mother was a cousin of the Conqueror and whose uncle, Foulk d’Anjou, provided forty ships for the fleet of 1066. Richard’s four sons are likely to have fought for him but only two of these, Ralph and Gilbert, may have survived. Ralph is recorded as fathering a son at Scotton, Lincolnshire, around 1072, while Gilbert went on to found the line from which Cecily was descended.

  Gilbert’s son, Geoffrey de Neville, arrived around 1080 at Walcot in Lincolnshire, and in turn fathered a son of his own in 1115. It was around this time that Neville connections to Raby Castle are recorded, with this generation’s heir possibly dying there in 1168.11 By this point the Nevilles were also in possession of Brancepeth Castle, a Norman fortification built by the Anglo-Saxon Bulmer family near Durham, which probably came to the family through the marriage of Geoffrey’s son to Emma de Bulmer. She bore two children, a son who died without issue and a daughter, Isabel de Neville, born around 1174. For a while it looked as if this branch of the Neville name might die out, but Isabel married into another local family with connections to the area dating back to pre-Conquest times. She and her husband were Cecily’s six-times-great-grandparents. Her son, Geoffrey, took his mother’s maiden name, and the direct Neville line continued.

  Isabel’s marriage brought fresh Anglo-Saxon blood into Cecily’s family tree. The Raby estate had existed long before the Nevilles arrived there, long before the Conquest, while her ancestors were still in Normandy. The local area, centred on Staindrop, or Stainthorp, ‘stony ground’ parish, was an important centre for smelting lead ore and there is also evidence for Roman activity in the area. The north-east coast of England was particularly vulnerable to Viking invasion and, by the early eleventh century, the Danes had the upper hand and were settling in the area. F. M. L.’s guidebook claims that Raby and the surrounding area belonged to King Canute, who built a ‘mansion’ on the site, part of which was incorporated into the present castle’s Bulmer’s Tower. Its name – Ra (boundary) and Bi or Bry (settlement) – derives from Old Norse and was probably coined around this time. While resident there, Canute returned the parish to the monastery of Durham, its previous owner, perhaps as a gesture of goodwill to the local people.

  After Canute, but before the Norman Nevilles made their way north, Raby was inhabited by the descendants of Scottish royalty. The connection goes back to King Duncan I of Scotland, immortalised by Shakespeare for having been slain in his bed by ambitious Macbeth. He was in fact not killed in his sleep, but the idea of treason and treachery was accurate enough – he was slain in battle, betrayed by his own men when leading an army into the lands traditionally associated with Macbeth. Duncan’s brother Maldred became King of Cumberland and his son, Uchtred FitzMaldred, was born at Raby in 1120. His son Dolfin, or Dolphin, was granted the Staindrop and Raby estate by the Prior of Durham in 1131. Two generations later it belonged to Dolfin’s grandson, Robert FitzMaldred, who married Isabel de Neville and fathered the Geoffrey who adopted his mother’s surname.

  Through the next six generations, the Nevilles lived at Raby. They governed castles, heard pleas, gathered taxes, kept the peace, fought against the Welsh and Scots and became sheriffs, barons and, ultimately, earls. Along the way they married into some of the leading families of northern England, including the Bertrams, FitzRanulfs, Claverings, Audleys, Percys, Latimers and Staffords. By the mid-fourteenth century the family was multiplying, with Cecily’s grandfather John fathering nine children by two wives, in between serving in Scotland and France, acting as Admiral of the North, Steward of the King’s Household and Knight of the Garter. His eldest son, Ralph, was born in 1364. He had begun his career under Richard II and served in Brittany during the Hundred Years’ War. On the death of his father, Ralph inherited the title of 4th Baron of Raby and then, for his defence of the king in 1397, was awarded the earldom of Westmorland. The political scene was set to change, though. Dissent was brewing between royal cousins. Challenges were made to Richard’s rule by the eldest son of John of Gaunt, Henry Bolingbroke, with whom Ralph was now allied by marriage. When Bolingbroke was banished in 1398 and his estates confiscated following his father’s death the next year, Ralph switched sides. He was among those who received Richard’s abdication in the Tower of London and then bore a sceptre when Bolingbroke was crowned as Henry IV. The earl was well compensated for supporting the regime, receiving grants and wardships and becoming Earl Marshall and a Knight of the Garter. Most of his children were born under the first Lancastrian king but, by the time Cecily arrived, Henry IV’s son was on the throne.

  Cecily’s father, Ralph Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland, appears in a colourful miniature by Pol de Limbourg in the book of hours of the Neville family, kneeling in prayer, dressed in long blue-and-gold robes, his hair fashionably cropped. Behind him are twelve of his children, eight of whom were borne by his first wife, Margaret Stafford, who died in 1396. Within six months Ralph had married again and a second panel in the book of hours depicts his next bride, the widowed Joan Beaufort, the legitimised daughter of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III. Behind her stand six daughters, dressed in elaborate gowns of gold, pink and green, with their hair caught up under the U-shaped ‘hennins’ (headdresses), studded with jewels and draped with white veils. One of them is Cecily, although it is not clear which. She might be at the back, being the youngest, or at the front, being the most senior in terms of marriage; it scarcely matters, though, as all the young women are depicted with interchangeable features – the high foreheads, pale complexions and regular fe
atures of conventional medieval beauties.

  Her mother Joan, Countess of Westmorland, appears to have been a religious woman who makes an appearance in one of the most controversial texts of her times. The Book of Margery Kempe, perhaps the first autobiography in the English language, detailed the life and mystical experiences of an extraordinary woman who was Joan’s contemporary. Sometime between 1408 and 1413, at Easter, Joan summoned Margery to visit her, as she was interested to hear her talk: ‘My Lady herself was well pleased with you and liked your talk.’12 In 1413, after fourteen pregnancies, Margery had asked her husband to live a celibate life. It was later claimed that, during her visit to the countess, she tried to persuade Joan’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, Lady Greystoke, to leave her husband. This was a radical move for the wife of a baron, who had already borne three children by 1412 and clearly did not heed Kempe’s advice as she went on to have several more. Kempe was later cross-questioned about this, as it was ‘enough to be burned for’ but she claimed she had merely told them ‘a good tale of a lady who was damned because she would not love her enemies’.13 It was decided that Kempe would be imprisoned while a letter was sent to the countess to ascertain the truth. Joan must have written favourably about Margery, as she was not burned, but went on to live until after 1438.

  When Cecily was born on 3 May 1415, her mother, Joan, was thirty-six. Married for the first time at the age of twelve, she had borne her first child two years later and gone on to deliver fifteen more over the next twenty-two years. She spent over half of her adult life carrying children, pregnant for the equivalent of twelve years in addition to the months spent in post-partum recovery. This was a fairly punishing regime, even for a medieval aristocratic mother, when any pregnancy ran the risk of maternal and infant mortality. Yet it was also her social, marital and religious duty, the defining act of a medieval woman; to the Nevilles and their contemporaries, Joan’s high rate of fertility implied a divine blessing on the match and the clan. By the time she was expecting her final daughter, she knew what to expect. As an experienced mother, she was likely to have had a swifter labour but this was by no means guaranteed. Any complications that occurred during the birth, or infections that set in afterwards, could prove fatal in an era where the intercessions of unregulated midwives could prove equally as harmful as they were helpful. It took just one unwashed pair of hands or a single injury inflicted on the mother during birth for fatalities to occur. Each successive pregnancy intensified the risk but Joan must have been strong. She was lucky to survive and to lose only four babies during the process.

  Joan Beaufort’s high fertility rate was probably as much a function of her genetic make-up as any benefits her status could confer. Large families were the norm among her class. She was one of seven children born out of wedlock by her mother, Katherine Swynford, four of whom survived. Katherine also had at least three others as a result of her first marriage, and her second husband fathered at least ten more by three other women. Cecily’s father, Ralph, was aged around fifty at the time of his youngest child’s conception, which took place in the summer of 1414. He was one of nine children and his father had been one of thirteen. While some noble families experienced unexplained difficulties producing heirs, or lost them as a result of illness, Cecily’s ancestors through the Neville, Beaufort, Gaunt, Percy, Clifford and de Clare lines had been more than successful in multiplying their numbers.

  The baby girl arrived into a sprawling family, a network of children multiplied by second marriages. She had ten half-brothers and sisters, eight of whom were Nevilles and two Ferrers. All of these were married by 1415 and had produced offspring of their own, except one, Elizabeth, who became a nun. In addition, Cecily had nine surviving full siblings. The eldest girls, Eleanor and Katherine, were seventeen and fifteen years her senior and had already been married, Eleanor to Richard le Despenser and Katherine for three years to John Mowbray, 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Katherine was five months pregnant at the time of her youngest sister’s arrival and would deliver Cecily’s nephew, John, that September. The infant Cecily may briefly have had the company of one sister in the Raby nursery, Anne, closest to her in age, although Anne was married in 1424 and bore a child in 1425, and may have been as many as a couple of years her elder. Her brothers George and Edward also appear to be close to her in age, as their marriages did not take place until the 1430s. A governess and wet nurse would have been appointed to care for the younger children while their mother recovered and returned to her duties as lady of the manor.

  Soon after her birth, Cecily was baptised, either in the castle chapel or perhaps in St Mary’s church, Staindrop, where the bones of her ancestors lay. With the site used for worship since the eighth century, the present church is first recorded as being given by King Canute to the newly founded Priory of Durham. The church had initially been dedicated to St Gregory, referred to by a 1343 grant made by Cecily’s great-grandfather, but in 1408 her father founded a collegiate church in nearby Staindrop village in honour of the Virgin Mary. Countess Joan may have also had a hand in the work, or completed it after her husband’s death a decade later, as Leland claimed that ‘Johan erected the very house self of the college’.14 It was a considerable establishment, with provision made for dozens of men, and revenue recorded at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s of over £170. In 1412, William Horne was appointed as the church’s first vicar and may well have been responsible for the baptism of Cecily.15 Joan was certainly a pious lady, receiving permission from the Pope in 1422 to ‘enter, with eight honest women, any monasteries of nuns, even enclosed, and stay there with the nuns, eating, drinking and talking with them, and stay the night’.16

  At Raby, Joan’s women would have prepared her newborn by dressing her in a white linen shift or chrisom. Carried by her godparents, the infant Cecily would have been met at the church door by a priest who placed salt in her mouth to drive away demons and represent the absorption of wisdom. Inside the church, she was anointed at the font and named, before prayers and promises were made at the altar. Some sort of feast would have followed at Raby to honour the occasion, before the earl’s youngest daughter was returned to her mother.

  With the Raby nursery run as part of the countess’s household, the family came together on key occasions such as feast days, or for ceremonies and entertainment. Cecily and her siblings would have been familiar with the Great Hall, or Baron’s Hall, described by the Victorian guidebook writer F. M. L. as ‘noble’. By the nineteenth century it was much smaller than in its medieval heyday, as the author reminds us, citing Leland’s comment that ‘long before his age it was fals-rofid’.17 The hall was lit by a three-sectioned window at the south and five along the western flank. A stone minstrel’s galley was located on the north side. Off this was situated the private chapel that Cecily knew, perhaps, as a small child, gazing up at the stained glass ‘of very early date’, which the Victorian author claimed was brought from the Continent and depicted ‘ecclesiastics in all the pomp of their most elaborate costume’.18

  Otherwise, the younger children’s lives would have been fairly sequestered and regimented. Surviving accounts from the household of the Percy family, great rivals of the Nevilles, described the nursery (‘nurcy’) as comprising a lady ‘chamberer’ and two rockers, plus the ‘child of the nurcy’. On fasting or ‘scamlynge’ days in Lent, which the ordinance lists as Monday and Saturday, they were to receive white manchet bread and beer, plus four white herring, a piece of fried salt fish and a dish of fresh ling or a salt turbot. On non-fasting days their menu varied to include butter. Their entitlement to three dishes placed them above the gentlemen and yeomen ushers of the chamber, who received two, and below their brothers, who were allowed four, and their parents, who had six. Those children who were employed in the household, in the wardrobe, bakehouse and scullery, had the standard bread and beer plus only one dish of either herring or stockfish. The Percy accounts also reveal that the rocker of the cradle received wages of 20s and that the nur
sery was allocated two ‘peks’ of coal, the same as the master of grammar in the ‘scolehous’.19 The author F. M. L. describes the kitchen at Raby Castle, with a parallel gallery concealed within the wall, accessed by five windows. Blocked up by the nineteenth century, it was probably a service tunnel, a reminder of the constant movement between hall and kitchen, as armies of liveried servants hurried food to the table before it could cool.20

  Soon after the birth of his last daughter, national conflict drew Ralph away from Raby Castle. Yet this was not at Agincourt, the most famous battle recorded by history for that year. In Henry V’s absence, a fresh threat in the north had arisen. The Scots had crossed the border and were heading south, hoping to take advantage of a kingdom without its king. Since the 1380s, the earl had been involved in Scottish affairs, surveying the English defences, negotiating peace and receiving ransom money. He had experience as a Warden of the Marches, responsible for defending the Scottish border against attacks, a position that had been conferred upon his grandfather and held in the family ever since. Furthermore, that April, he had also been appointed a member of the Council of Regency under the king’s brother, John of Lancaster, deputised to defend the northern borders of the realm while Henry fought across the channel. On 22 July 1415, Cecily’s father headed an army that met the invaders at the Battle of Yeavering. At the head of a small force of around 450 English archers, he repelled almost 4,000 Scots at a site near the small Northumberland hamlet, today marked by an ancient stone. His tiny newborn daughter would have been unaware of the danger and his success.