Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  The main purpose of marriage was procreation. If Richard and Cecily managed to consummate their match in 1429, no surviving children would arrive for another nine years. This poses the historian a number of questions which, after the passage of five centuries, can only be answered with speculation. In the simplest scenario, Cecily did not conceive because they did not sleep together at all, or enough, for whatever reason. This is not impossible; it may have stemmed from some physical, emotional or psychological cause now lost to history; they may have tried and failed to connect or suffered from some illness. Perhaps it took two young, inexperienced people a while to get it right. Henry VI and his young queen, Margaret of Anjou, would take almost eight years to conceive their only child. Not all marriages were consummated at once. The Duke of Berry waited before consummating his marriage to the twelve-year-old Jeanne of Boulogne, stating to the king that he would ‘guard her for three or four years until she becomes a perfect woman’.2 There are many reasons why a physical connection can fail to produce children, still imperfectly understood by modern science. Fertility can be affected by the onset of menstruation, irregular ovulation, sperm count, the ratio of fat to body weight and any number of illnesses. Equally it can be triggered by changes in lifestyle, so Cecily’s lack of conception over the next eight years is a riddle; it may have resulted from a number of factors.

  Cecily’s prolific sisters had little trouble conceiving quickly after their marriages. Katherine had been married at the age of twelve and bore her first child three years later. Eleanor was left a widow in 1414 at the age of seventeen but soon remarried to Henry Percy, son of Henry ‘Hotspur’. The match may have coincided with his creation as Earl of Northumberland in 1416, for she was pregnant by the following autumn, delivering a short-lived son in July 1418. More recently, Anne’s marriage in October 1424 had borne at least one child in 1425. Their mother Joan had conceived within around a year of her first marriage, bearing her first daughter at fourteen. In February 1397, at eighteen, she had conceived soon after her marriage to Ralph Neville, with the birthdate of her daughter Eleanor often given as the same year. Equally, Joan’s mother, Katherine Swynford, began bearing children young, in her early to mid-teens. There do not appear to have been any hereditary fertility complications in Cecily’s maternal line to explain the delay in her conception.

  It is possible that Cecily did conceive and experienced miscarriages. If so, this would not have been recorded, especially if it was in the early stages, the first trimester or so. It may have been a purely personal matter, known only to the couple and Cecily’s ladies. Assuming they were sharing a bed, the pair must have begun to wonder whether there was a problem. They may have tried one of the medieval remedies for infertility, such as pine nuts and chestnuts boiled in wine and sugar, or various combinations of herbs and ‘sympathetic’ ingredients such as quail testicles, ewe’s or mare’s milk, sheep urine or rabbit’s blood. Women trying to conceive were given a drink made from powdered rabbit’s womb, or encouraged to recite certain charms or perform symbolic rituals, such as writing out prayers on cards to be worn around the neck.3 It is most likely that Cecily appealed for a child in her prayers, to the Virgin Mary and her favourite saints. Children were considered to be a sign of God’s blessing of the union. The thirteenth-century text on marriage Hali Meidenhad stated that ‘if she cannot breed, she is called barren. Her lord loveth and respects her less and she, as one that is very bad, weepeth at her fate, and calleth them glad and happy that breed a family.’4 Some couples simply had to accept, perhaps over the course of decades, that they would not produce a child; others remarried but conception still did not follow. Branches of certain families died out as a result of low fertility or infertility. The blame was usually attached to the woman but, in several cases, wives went on to remarry and conceive with different partners, like Catherine Parr a century later, who only fell pregnant by her fourth husband.

  In the early days of their marriage, the young couple appear to have remained in London after Henry VI’s coronation as, in January 1430, Richard acted as Constable of England at a duel in the king’s presence at Smithfield. The Greyfriars’ Chronicle describes that ‘there was a grete battelle in Smythfelde betwene Upton and John Downe; and whan they had fowth longe, the kynge toke up the matter and gave them grace’.5 One possible reason that Cecily did not conceive may be the simple fact that they were not together. In April 1430, Richard accompanied the young king to France. It is by no means certain that the fourteen-year-old Cecily went with him. Her presence is not recorded then, as it would be later, but it would go some way to explaining her lack of conception.

  On 20 February, an order was issued at Westminster for the king’s uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to summon the barons of the Cinque Ports ‘to be with ships and seamen in sufficient array’6 at the Kent port of Sandwich before 1 May. Fifty-seven ships, each containing twenty men and a master, were to be ready to set sail at forty days’ notice. The master would receive 6d a day and the men 3d, in service of the king’s ‘expedition against his enemies’.7 Henry had more than 300 people in his retinue, including 8 dukes and earls, 182 servants and 5 surgeons; for the year 1430–31, this cost £22,000, mostly spent in France.8 Richard had a personal retinue of nineteen, plus twelve lancers and thirty-six archers, and was awarded £400 to pay for his expenses.9 No wife is mentioned. The king’s fleet was assembled at Sandwich but he set sail from Dover. When the crossing was made, in April, Cecily may have accompanied Richard into Kent and waved him goodbye from the castle overlooking the port. They disembarked at Calais at ten in the morning on St George’s Day, 23 April.

  Why Cecily should accompany Richard in 1440 and not 1430 might be explained by the change in his role. By the time Cecily can be definitely placed in Rouen, in 1440, she had already borne two children and been married for eleven years; her husband was now Lieutenant of France, which would have required his residency. If Richard left her behind in 1430, it may have been because, as a minor, his role was not yet fixed and his family was not yet established. He went to France in attendance on Henry, not as the head of his own establishment, as he later would. Married couples were often separated, with the husband leaving his wife behind at home for long periods away, as was the case with John and Margaret Paston, who married in 1440. Perhaps the duke and duchess also wrote to each other, like the Pastons did, with such phrases as ‘I recommend me unto you, desiring heartily to hear of your welfare’ and praying ‘you heartily that ye will vouchsafe to send me a letter as hastily as ye may’; Margaret urges John to wear the ring with the image of St Margaret that she sent him ‘for a remembrance till ye come home’.10 Perhaps Cecily also gave Richard some token for good luck.

  It seems reasonable to assume that Cecily awaited Richard’s return at court with her mother. As members of the royal family, with Joan being the granddaughter of Edward III, they may have found positions in the queen’s household. The widowed Catherine of Valois was still in her twenties and had played an active part in the upbringing of her young son. During his absence in France, she was living at Windsor Castle, so Joan and Cecily may well have been among her household at the solid Norman castle on the Thames in Berkshire. Windsor had played a central role during Henry V’s reign, hosting the Holy Roman Emperor in 1417 and being the location for the birth of Henry VI four years later. In 1428, it had been assigned as a summer residence for the king, where he was attended by young men, making it an ‘academy for the young nobility’.11 It also had romantic family associations, as the location where King James, King of Scotland, had fallen in love with Joan’s namesake. Perhaps Cecily and her mother now witnessed another love affair unfolding.

  Born around 1401, Catherine had been only twenty when Henry V died. Now, in the seclusion of Windsor, and perhaps also at other royal residences like Berkhamsted Castle, she drew close to her Welsh Keeper of the Wardrobe, Owen Tudor. Tradition has him falling in her lap during a dance. A Bill drawn up in 1428 had forbidden her from remarryin
g without the approval of the council, on the pain of her husband’s lands being forfeited. The pair may have entered into a clandestine marriage, as her first two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were born during this time, in secrecy at Much Hadham and Hatfield. If Countess Joan and her daughter were trusted members of her inner circle, they might have been present, even assisting on these occasions. This is also suggested by Cecily’s own choice to lie in at Hatfield when she bore a daughter in 1441.

  Queen Catherine would have been among the first to receive news of the king’s progress. In July, Henry VI arrived in Rouen, a city where the memories of the terrible siege of 1418–19, inflicted upon them by Henry V, were still fresh. The poem which survives in Gregory’s Chronicle, ‘The Siege of Rouen’, describes how the vulnerable residents – the ill, old and young – had been forced out of the city walls to starve in ditches while those inside resorted to eating rats, cats, dogs and horses. Richard would have witnessed the trial of the French peasant girl Jeanne d’Arc, which began in Rouen on 9 January 1431, and her burning for heresy in the marketplace that May. He then attended the French coronation of Henry VI in the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame in December, where he is listed among the attendant lords by the French chronicler Monstrelet as ‘the rich duke of York’. He describes Henry walking under an azure canopy, sprinkled with fleurs-de-lys, presented with three crimson hearts containing violets and white doves. Before the church of the Innocents, a pageant had taken over the street, making it into a sort of forest where a living stag was hunted by dogs and horsemen, finally finding refuge at Henry’s feet. At the ceremony itself, York was among the lords who assisted ‘according to their various offices’. No mention was made of York’s duchess, and the reference to ladies applauding the tournament held on the following day is too vague to confirm her presence. York was among the party who returned home with the English king the following January.

  Henry VI was triumphantly received in London. Cecily may well have been there in order to meet Richard, on the occasion recorded in a poem by John Lydgate called ‘The Comynge of the Kynge out of Fraunce to London’. It was a Thursday, towards the end of a windy February, according to Lydgate, making it 21 February by the reckoning of Victorian editor Nicholas Nicolas. She would have been among the citizens who ‘hallowed’ the day with ‘great solemnity’ and enjoyed the sun’s beams, shining on London, making them all ‘glad and light’, welcoming their ‘sovereign lord’ with ‘pure and clene intente’ before the ‘noble devyses’ prepared in his honour. The pageants, featuring towers, champions, heraldic beasts and abstract virtues, with beautiful women and the sun god Phoebus, must have reminded some witnesses of the return of Henry V in 1415. The young married couple would have been reunited after an absence of twenty-two months. They must have changed; he was now twenty and she was sixteen. It was time to set up home together.

  On 12 May 1432, Richard was granted ‘livery of his estates’. This meant his uncle’s full inheritance was put in his hands, as his ‘heir of entail’ who was found ‘now of age’. During his minority, ‘grievous waste’ had been done to his lands and estates, and he was owed recompense for ‘the good and unpaid service which by command of the King he had performed in France and in England at his great cost and charges’.12 For Cecily, this marked a significant rite of passage in the eyes of medieval society – she and York were finally able to act as an independent, autonomous couple, taking on the reins of their estates, as well as dealing with the many challenges that such a large inheritance would bring. The lands were divided between two administrative centres, Ludlow and Fotheringhay, but they owned many other castles and manors around the country, and their existence during these early years of marriage must have been fairly peripatetic.

  York’s earldom of March had brought him significant lands and responsibilities in Wales. In May 1433, he was bound to pay Queen Catherine £53 6s 8d every year for the castle and lordship of Montgomery, in Powys, Mid Wales.13 This might suggest that Richard and Cecily were resident there during part of this time, or that they used the castle on a regular basis. Now in ruins, Montgomery Castle was situated on the border, or Marcher lands, between England and Wales. According to the 1433 order, it had been given by Edmund, Earl of March, to Catherine for the duration of her life.14 The castle had been refurbished around 1360. It had rectangular towers and an eastern range, accessible from the courtyard, and contained a chapel and three upper floors of private rooms. There was also a brewhouse and bakehouse with a large bread oven. The records between this time and the 1538 refurbishments are lacking and it has often been assumed that the castle went into decline or was used as a prison.

  Standing high on a promontory, surrounded by ruins, Montgomery Castle must have been bleak. The surrounding market town had been razed during a siege of 1402 but the castle had held firm. Richard may well have been paying Queen Catherine an annual rent for the property because he and Cecily were using it as one of their residences, perhaps a temporary one. Richard’s duties on inheriting the title of Earl of March would have involved regular visits to the borders, and Montgomery Castle was perfectly placed to facilitate this. Interestingly, in July 1433, Richard was asked to surrender a prisoner in his care, a Maurice ap Madoc ap Eyngnoun, or Eynoun, into the care of Richard de Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, his kinsman through his marriage to Cecily’s niece.15 In September, Eynoun was transferred to imprisonment in Windsor Castle. This may have been the same person as Maurice ap Evan Lloyd ap Maurice ap Madoc ap Einion, who was vicar of St Michael’s church in Kerry, Powys, Wales, in the 1440s. Kerry is less than 10 miles from Montgomery, suggesting that Richard, or his agents, were active in the area.

  The Yorks were also in possession of Wigmore Castle, which had been granted to Richard in 1424. It had long been a Mortimer property and, although some sources have claimed it was in disrepair by this time, recent archaeological excavations by English Heritage have indicated that it underwent some ‘extensive work’ in the fifteenth century. The report also found good evidence of an upper-class diet being consumed, with cattle as the main food source, along with game and wildfowl, cod and herring. There were also suggestions that the castle had fish ponds for freshwater fish and that oats were used for hop making, rather than the traditional barley. There was also a garden within the castle walls. Stone and ceramic roof tiles were found, along with floor tiles, painted plaster and painted window glass, indicative of high-quality living. Also found were pieces of plate armour and other military objects.16 No doubt Cecily spent some time in this beautiful location, high on a promontory south of Ludlow, overlooking the Welsh Marches.

  In spite of their many properties, the young couple’s main home was at Fotheringhay Castle, in Northamptonshire. Richard had inherited it in 1415 and it probably came into his full possession in September 1432, with the death of his aunt Anne, widow of the Earl of March. Although little of the castle remains, even less than at Montgomery, it was once a significant place, more than suitable for the residence of the Duke of York. It had been rebuilt and enlarged by Edmund of Langley, Richard’s grandfather, and further improvements were made during the early fifteenth century, which may have been instigated by Richard and Cecily. In early July 1433, Richard was granted the right to raise £200 in Yorkshire, on condition that he pay £100 annually towards the completion of the collegiate church at Fotheringhay, according to the will of his grandfather, Edward of Langley.17

  A mid-fourteenth-century description of the castle when occupied by Marie de St Pol described it as having a tower and being built of stone, ‘walled in, embattled and encompassed with a good moat. Within are one large hall, two chambers, two chapels, a kitchen and bakehouse … a porter’s lodge with chambers over it and a drawbridge beneath.’ Within the walls there was also a modern manor house, which contained offices and chambers ‘and an outer gate with a room over it. The site of the whole contains ten acres.’ An outer bailey was added in the 1430s and it was suggested, in a work of 1821, that this was deliberately creat
ed in the shape of a fetterlock, one of the heraldic devices of the House of York. The same book, Bonney’s Fotheringhay, explains that in the early nineteenth century you could still see a staircase leading to ‘fine lodgings’, as well as a ‘wonderful, spacious hall’ and ‘goodly and fair court’. It lists a buttery, brewhouse, bakehouse and yard, along with offices, a great house, barn, orchard or garden and another ruined house within the outer wall. Work began in 1434 on the new parish church of St Mary and All Saints, where Richard and Cecily now lie at rest. For seventeen months, in 1432 and 1433, Richard’s duties indicate that he had the opportunity to live with Cecily as man and wife. Yet still there was no child.

  Life for Cecily as a medieval duchess in the 1430s would have been quiet enough. Dividing her daily routine between acts of religious piety and managing her household, she was, in many ways, typical of many women of the aristocracy. Their lives were shaped by obligation; to their king, husbands, family and those dependent upon them for their livelihood. The ordinances survive from Cecily’s household late in her life, after 1483, and, while her status then as a widow was significantly different from that which she held early in her marriage, some of her preoccupations would not have changed. In both cases, she was conscious of what was due to her status; the ordinances open with the recognition that it was ‘requisite to understand the order of her own person, concerning God and the world’.18 She would also have accompanied Richard to court, especially when he was required to attend council meetings. As his duchess, she would have had some ceremonial roles to play as well as receiving petitions on his behalf. Letters surviving from her widowhood in the 1460s and 1470s show she was actively involved in disputes concerning the land, wardships and property of her tenants; in the earlier years, she probably had some involvement in such events on a smaller scale.