by Amy Licence
There was certainly plenty to keep Cecily busy. It has been estimated that in the 1420s, Richard’s estates brought in an annual income of over £4,000, spread across eighteen counties, in addition to the fact that he was the largest landowner in Wales.19 These were grouped into nineteen receiverships, administered in Ludlow and Fotheringhay. Even with the employment of trustworthy deputies, this was a task that required much energy and skill. Whenever Richard was obliged to attend Parliament, or to oversee court sessions, Cecily was the next in command, required to provide the public face of their partnership, whatever situation might arise. The surviving evidence suggests that Cecily was actively involved in legal affairs; apart from her correspondence, she appears in a 1462 grant to determine a wardship, a 1476 land dispute in Essex and in a 1480 Court of Common Appeals for Devon, in pursuit of an errant receiver. She would have learned how to instigate and submit such cases to the legal processes during her early years as a duchess.
In May 1433, Richard was summoned to attend Henry VI’s ninth parliament at Westminster. He travelled to London for the opening session on 8 July and was occupied there until it dissolved that December. Cecily probably went too. At this parliament, her mother Joan’s legal dispute was raised again. Her petitioner suggested that ‘if a judgement [was] rendered … against the … [new] earl’, she would ‘content the king’ with £800 raised from the family coffers.20 Richard and Cecily may have returned to Fotheringhay for a few months before the next summons came the following July. They had plenty of time to organise the move before travelling back to court for Henry’s tenth parliament, which sat from 10 October until 23 December 1434.21 Cecily was probably back at Fotheringhay in September 1435 when the news arrived of the death of the king’s uncle, John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford. He had been Governor of Normandy from 1422 to 1432 and his second wife, whom he married in 1433, was the young Jacquetta of Luxembourg. She would go on to become the mother of Elizabeth Wydeville, who would be Cecily’s daughter-in-law and her queen. It opened up an important vacancy in the king’s service overseas.
In 1436, Richard of York was still a comparatively young and inexperienced man. However, after much debate on the Royal Council, he was appointed Lieutenant General and Governor of France for a trial period of twelve months. The port of Winchelsea in East Sussex was chosen as the place of departure. Now it sits high on a landlocked promontory overlooking fields of sheep, but then the little town was a thriving port. A century before, it had grown prosperous on importing wines from Gascony, shipping in 737,000 gallons in a single year and providing passage for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, in ships of up to 200 tonnes. In 1434 alone, two years before Richard left the port, 2,433 people set off for the Spanish Way of St James.22 On 20 May, Parliament granted ‘our beloved Richard, Duke of York, in general our lieutenant’, power ‘to treat for perpetual peace or ill with France’.23 York’s party left the port days later, taking Cecily’s brothers Richard, Earl of Salisbury, and William, Lord Fauconberg, with him, as well as Sir John Fastolf and others. This time, Cecily must have been with him, as she fell pregnant for the first time during his term of office.
Their destination was Rouen, the capital of Normandy and seat of English rule. Until recently it had been governed by the Duke of Bedford, who continued the plans of his brother Henry V to conquer and defend the north of France. Bedford had overseen a number of sieges and operations since 1422, winning significant victories and territories. However, after 1431 the French had made significant gains and reconciled with their former enemies in Burgundy, humiliating the English in the Treaty of Arras in September 1435. Bedford’s death, a week before its conclusion, left a vacuum that remained unfilled for nine months. During that time, the French had recaptured Paris, and all the English there had been evacuated. Richard, Duke of York, knew he had a difficult task ahead.
On arrival, the Yorks moved into Rouen Castle. Only one tower now survives, but in the fifteenth century it was circular, with six towers and a demi-tower and two thick curtain walls; those of the surviving donjon are over 4 metres thick and 30 metres high.24 Inside were a set of royal apartments and those previously inhabited by Bedford, which York and Cecily would have occupied. There was also a robing room, three chapels and a large inner courtyard. It had been built by Philip II between 1204 and 1210, and stood slightly to the north of the medieval city, being the main seat of administrative power for the whole region until the sixteenth century. Bedford had also built his own manor house in Rouen, the Castle of Joyeux Repos, a 3- or 4-acre site in the east of the city on which he lavished money in the early 1430s, adding fish ponds, planting trees and making tennis courts. Later the possession of a Celestine priory, the site is presently occupied by the Hôpital Charles Nicolle in the Rue de Germont.25 It is more likely that this property went to his widow than that it remained in possession of the Crown and available to Richard and Cecily.
A castle book of hours, dating from the fifteenth century and from Rouen, is now in the possession of Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania. It features Latin prayers, the Gospels and eight miniature illustrations of the life of the Virgin along with other devotional scenes, beautifully illuminated with gold and floral decoration. There is no indication of ownership through the inclusion of heraldic devices but, given her wealth and piety, it is not too difficult to imagine this book, or one like it, being used by Cecily during her stay in the castle. Bedford is one possible candidate for the commissioning of the manuscript, as he was a well-known collector of early books, and ordered the creation of the Bedford book of hours in 1423 as a gift for his first wife. There was another candidate, too, active in Rouen between around 1420 and 1450. Known as the ‘Fastolf Master’, he worked on a number of manuscripts commissioned by the Hundred Years’ War veteran, Sir John Fastolf, completing the Livre de Quatre Vertues around 1450. Both Fastolf and Bedford had Rouen connections with the Yorks, so Cecily may have had access to the libraries or works by the scribes and illuminators they employed. They may even have made recommendations for the Yorks to commission their own works.
It was during this period that another significant marriage took place. Bedford’s widow was the beautiful Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Cecily’s exact contemporary, descended from the Count of St Pol and, further back, from Henry III. She had been granted her dower settlement by Parliament on 6 February 1436, on condition that she did not marry again without a special licence. It is likely that she remained in Rouen after Bedford’s death, probably at his castle of Joyeux Repos, as Henry VI ordered the loyal Lancastrian knight Sir Richard Wydeville to bring her back to England. It was a decision that would have huge future implications for the monarchy. Wydeville had previously been Bedford’s chamberlain and would have been known to Jacquetta during these years in Rouen. The couple may already have been in love or else the circumstances threw them more closely together. They were married in secret sometime before 23 March 1437. Perhaps Jacquetta was already pregnant with their first child, Elizabeth, the ‘White Queen’ of popular fiction, whose birthdate is also given as 1437. They travelled back to England and confessed to the match. Henry VI imposed a fine of £1,000 for the violation of her dower terms, but officially forgave the couple that October.
An account of July 1439, written by English ambassadors negotiating a treaty in Normandy, gives a flavour of the sort of diplomatic engagements in which Richard and Cecily would have been engaged. As guests of Cardinal Beaufort and the Duchess of Burgundy in Calais, they dined at the home of the Archbishop of York and supped with the Duke of Stafford. The following morning, oaths of loyalty were sworn on the altar in the cardinal’s oratory. On St Swithin’s Day, ‘pavilions or tents were erected on the spot selected for the meeting’ and the cardinal gave ‘a solemn entertainment to all the ambassadors and others of high rank’. A description of the cardinal’s tent shows the impressive formality of these temporary structures and the lifestyle they offered:
Built of timber, covered with new canvas, [it] was upwards of o
ne hundred feet in length, and contained almost all necessary offices, as a pantry, butlery, wine cellar and two chambers; in the centre was a hall, covered and lined in scarlet tapestry, sufficiently large for 300 persons to sit at table and kitchens at the end.
In one tent belonging to the duchess was a ‘seat covered in cloth and cushions of gold’. Long conferences were punctuated by dinners where Masses were preached to guests wearing cloth of gold, and diplomatic negotiations were fuelled by wine and sweetmeats.26
During the winter months at Rouen, news arrived from London that the king’s mother, Catherine of Valois, had died at the age of thirty-five. Having borne Owen Tudor several children, her death on 3 January was probably the result of complications following childbirth. Given the secrecy surrounding her liaison, this may not have been common knowledge, although if Cecily and her mother had spent time in the queen’s household, the duchess may at least have suspected the cause. It would have served as a reminder of just how dangerous the business of bearing children could be, although this would have been of little consequence to the young couple who were hoping to continue their dynastic line. Then, in the late spring, after eight years of marriage, Cecily may have finally conceived. Richard was relieved of his duty and replaced by the more experienced Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, that July, so the duke and duchess could anticipate returning to England.
The death of another English queen that year was to delay their departure. On 10 June, Henry IV’s second wife, Joan of Navarre, passed away at her home at Havering-atte-Bower in London. She had proved a controversial figure, being convicted of attempting to poison Henry V in 1419 and spending four years in prison as a result. Now, though, she was given a state funeral and interred next to her husband in Canterbury Cathedral. Warwick’s attendance delayed his departure for France slightly but then his plan to sail at the end of August was ruined by bad weather. In the end, he arrived in Rouen on 6 November. York and Cecily departed a few days later.27 They would have been back at Fotheringhay in time to celebrate Christmas.
5
Becoming a Mother
1438–1442
And the froyt [fruit] that coms hom betwene,
Hit schal have grace to thryve and the;
Ther other schal have turment and tene,
Fore covetyse unlaufully1
Cecily Neville is particularly remembered today for her motherhood and her piety. These were the defining features of women’s lives in the fifteenth century, the standards to which they aspired in order to establish their worth in the eyes of society and the Church. After a slow start, Cecily would more than prove her fertility. Over the next seventeen years, she would bear at least twelve children, perhaps more. They arrived at different locations, in England, France and Ireland, suggesting that she remained at her husband’s side throughout this time, and with a regularity and speed that implies their relationship was close. The piety may have come later.
As with so many issues concerning women’s health, suggestions that Cecily first gave birth in 1438 can be neither confirmed nor refuted. Such events were rarely written down in any sort of reliable way, even in the cases of important families. Those records that have survived have done so almost against the odds. The national parish register system of births, marriages and deaths, which revolutionised the way in which people’s lives were recorded, was still a century away in 1438. When births were recorded, it was often in family Bibles or retrospectively, in dynastic histories. For example, Edward’s own commission, the Edward IV Roll, or the Chronicle of the History of the World from Creation to Woden only lists five of the king’s siblings. The fullest list is found in a poem in the Clare Roll, which records Cecily’s surviving children and those who died at birth or in their infancy, making twelve in total, but there is no mention of this reputed first child. The poem does not include any who were lost before the full term of a pregnancy; miscarriages and short-lived children frequently went unrecorded, particularly if the loss had occurred before baptism had taken place. It was written in May 1460, when the Yorks were a large, established family. The author is unlikely to have known of any premature losses Cecily suffered as a young woman or to have seen any reason to include them. The only thing that can be stated without question is that if she bore a child in 1438, it did not survive.
The next time that Cecily can be identified at a specific time and place is 10 August 1439. On that day she was at Fotheringhay Castle, where she was preparing to give birth. This meant she had conceived early the previous November, which is not incompatible with another pregnancy in the same year. The prospect could be terrifying for a first-time mother, given the potential for injury and loss, in spite of the rudimentary pain relief offered by herbs and pseudo-religious rituals. Cecily would have withdrawn into a chamber at the castle with her womenfolk, perhaps with the assistance of her mother Joan and her married sisters. It was usually a group affair, allowing for the women to share their experience, with the assistance of a local midwife and female servants to ensure the room was kept well stocked with refreshments, firewood and clean linen.
Cecily could have afforded icons of her favourite saints, a rosary and a cross, and may even have borrowed some of the relics that religious houses regularly loaned out to high-status women during labour. Less than 10 miles away from Fotheringhay was the city of Peterborough, with its impressive Norman cathedral. The records of twelfth-century monk Hugh Candidus list in the reliquary such fantastical items as a piece of Aaron’s rod, sections of Jesus’s swaddling clothes, part of the original manger in which the baby Jesus lay and pieces of the five loaves that had fed the 5,000! More significantly, though, it claimed to house an item of clothing belonging to St Mary. Saints’ clothing, in particular those such as shifts and girdles, were favoured by medieval mothers as offering some protection against the dangers of childbirth. Later, Cecily’s granddaughter, Elizabeth of York, would rely on the girdle of St Mary from Westminster Abbey. There was no pain relief, but the regular chants and prayers, in addition to the belief in the goodwill and guidance of the saints, may have provided Cecily some relief in what frequently proved to be a terrifying and fatal ordeal for medieval women. Eventually, a baby girl was born. She was named Anne, perhaps in honour of Richard’s mother.
Cecily recovered at Fotheringhay. Her infant daughter was baptised soon after her birth, which would have been arranged by her godparents, perhaps in a chapel inside the castle itself, or in the new parish church of St Mary and All Saints, which had been completed in 1430. It was customary for new mothers to lie in for up to a month following the delivery, to allow themselves a full chance of recovery. After that, in early September, Cecily would have been led, veiled, to the church, to undergo the ceremony of purification, later known as churching. A nursery would have been established for the baby at Fotheringhay, with wet nurses and rockers, overseen by a trusted lady governess. After the years of waiting, Cecily had proved she could produce a healthy child. Her next duty was to bear a son.
Richard, though, may not have been in England to greet the new arrival. His future had been in question since Warwick had taken over as Lieutenant in Rouen. On 7 April 1437, he had been formally thanked for his services, and directed to ‘remain in France until other chieftains should be appointed to go there’.2 Later in April, more of York’s old powers were transferred to Warwick by royal command, so he was sitting idly in Rouen with little to do but watch and help keep the peace.3 Some sources suggest he travelled back and forth between France and England over the next two years and, on this occasion, did not return until November 1439. By then, he was less than happy with the way he had been treated by Henry’s parliament; apart from wasted time, his activities in France had left him seriously out of pocket and the Crown owed him around £18,000.4 The situation soon changed again. Warwick had died in Rouen on 30 April 1439 and so, once more, the opportunity arose for York to return there in a permanent capacity. Less experienced than both Bedford and Warwick, York’s appointment had
something of a second-best feel to it but, finally, he was given a more secure role. On 2 July 1440 he was appointed to the position on a five-year commission, and that October he was granted protection for his servants, goods and properties in his forthcoming absence. However, he would not travel back across the Channel for another year. This may have been because, nine months after the birth of her daughter, Cecily had fallen pregnant again. Perhaps it was as a gift for her, in reward for this conception, that Richard spent a huge £23 15s buying crimson damask cloth from Italian merchant brothers Andrea and Federico Corner.5
Something kept Richard in England while Normandy was in a volatile state. It is quite likely that he was ensuring he was leaving his affairs in the hands of men he could trust, such as Bishop Brown of Norwich, Bishop Aiscough of Salisbury, Alnwick of Lincoln and Lord Sudeley, who, with many others, had made the transition from the household of the Duke of Bedford into that of York. On 19 November, the council encouraged Richard to leave for France, ‘as his welbeloved cousin Richard Duc of Yorke shall mowe ye better do hym service in his royalme of France and duchie of Normandy … to encorage to said Duk … to be the redyer forthward so as for tareying of him none inconveniens follow’.6 Another reason for remaining was the death of his mother-in-law. Joan Beaufort passed away at the age of sixty-one, on 13 November, at Howden in Yorkshire. In an interesting move that stressed her royal lineage, she chose to be buried with her mother at Lincoln Cathedral, rather than with either of her husbands. After all, it was the location where her father, John of Gaunt, had married her mother, Katherine Swynford, legitimising a union that had lasted for years. The double tomb, now positioned one after another, head to foot, stands under a stone canopy in the sanctuary at Lincoln, decorated with brass plates and shields. Originally, the pair had been side by side, as indicated in a seventeenth-century sketch, before being damaged during the Civil War. Cecily may have travelled the 50 miles from Fotheringhay to attend the funeral, but at this point she was six months pregnant. Within a few weeks, she would have gone into retirement, awaiting the birth. When this came, in February 1441, she was around 120 miles from Lincoln, in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.
