Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  Hatfield has long been a site with royal connections. The present Hatfield House, built by James I’s minister Robert Cecil, stood on the site of an earlier palace, constructed at the end of the fifteenth century by Archbishop Morton. Originally a quadrangle of buildings around a courtyard surrounded by gardens, the banqueting hall still survives as testimony to the wealth of its traditional owners, the bishops of Ely. However, this was probably an extension of an even earlier building called the manor of Bishop’s Hatfield, used as an episcopal palace in convenient proximity to London. Between 1437 and 1443, the manor was in the possession of Lewis de Luxembourg, Archbishop of Rouen and Bishop of Ely in commendum, that is, in custody while the position was vacant. He is not known to have visited the house but may have lent it to the duke and duchess as a result of their Rouen connections.

  It is interesting to speculate as to why Cecily lay in at Hatfield. It has associations with the delivery of the late Queen Katherine’s son Jasper, but none of Cecily’s other children were born there. Was it an actual choice, or perhaps just the location where she found herself at the salient moment? Given that Cecily would follow Richard throughout his career and deliver children in France and Ireland, they may have been en route to or from London when it became necessary to stop. Perhaps Cecily was leaving the capital to travel home to Fotheringhay, where she had borne Anne and, presumably, where Anne’s household and nurses were, when she went into labour. It was not always possible to predict exactly when a child was expected; there were no reliable pregnancy tests, and indicators such as belly size or foetal movement could be misleading. There is a chance that Cecily thought she had more time, or else her next baby decided to arrive early. Another possibility is that she became ill or began the process of miscarriage while travelling nearby and was taken to the manor.

  The child she bore on 10 February 1441 did not survive long. At Westminster, four days later, he was believed to be alive, so he may have lived long enough to be christened. They had planned to name him Henry, in honour of the king; in the weeks before his birth, this news had been imparted to Henry VI himself, who was delighted.7 The subsequent loss must have been a crushing personal blow for the duke and duchess. Perhaps Cecily needed a change of location – on 16 March, Richard petitioned the Crown for ‘various manors in the counties of Dorset, Essex, Gloucester, Suffolk and Surrey, to the use of the said Duke and Cecilia his wife, and the heirs of their bodies’.8 Out of these, Richard granted Cecily nine properties in East Anglia, Marshwood in Dorset, and Bisley and Pirbright in Surrey. It was convenient for Cecily to have various bases around the country, especially on occasions when she was travelling to visit York as he went about his business; those in Surrey were of particular use as stopping posts between London and the South Coast. It is not certain how often Cecily visited these places, or even that she did at all; the property was useful to her alone for the revenue it brought in. Of the three, Cecily may have most desired to visit Bisley in order to visit the nearby holy well of St John the Baptist, whose waters were said to have healing powers.

  Cecily was busy again soon after her lying-in. While she underwent the purification ceremony that saw her progress solemnly and veiled to give thanks and receive forgiveness in church, arrangements were being made for her departure with Richard. Commissions for raising troops had been issued as early as 8 February, with the intent that York should muster on the south coast on 1 April. The timescale of Cecily’s delivery seems to underpin the failure of this plan. In April, York’s retinue was mustered at Portsdown in Hampshire, a long chalk hill overlooking Portsmouth and the Solent. The duke himself, with Cecily, did not leave London until 16 May. When they arrived on the coast, they would have stayed either in a specially erected tent or, more likely, in the old town itself, spread along the seafront. A constant victim of French raids, its recent defences included the Round Tower, begun by Henry V and finished in 1428. Almost a century after Cecily’s stay, her great-grandson, Henry VIII, would watch as his famous flagship the Mary Rose disappeared beneath the waves there. Parliamentary papers for early May recorded a payment of £10 to a John Yerde, who had mustered 200 lances ‘and the proportionate number of archers’ for the duke, followed by further similar payments advanced to him. Elsewhere, £50 was also paid to a Sir Lewis John, who was travelling with York into Normandy ‘to be of the King’s Council there’.9 On 23 May, the minutes of the council recorded that a letter was sent to York, ‘informing him that sufficient shipping was in residence to carry him and his whole army over the sea at one time, and urging his speedy departure in consequence of the progress of the French’.10 They must have sailed soon after this, arriving back in Rouen that June.11 Prayers were issued for their success on 25 June, suggesting a possible date of departure.

  It was in Rouen Castle, in 1441, that Cecily’s later reputation for opulence was first recorded. The accounts of their officer of the household listed items such as jewelled dresses and a cushioned privy seat;12 according to historian Michael Jones, York himself had to keep a watchful eye on the purse strings of this ‘late medieval big spender’.13 On one occasion, her shopping list included 60 yards of crimson silk lined with ermine, set with over 8 oz of gold, thirty pearls costing £6 each and another 300 smaller pearls. York’s financier, John Wigmore, settled one clothing bill of hers that cost around £608 and paid £45 for a gold cup she ordered from a London goldsmith.14 Other records that survive from the households of duchesses contemporary with Cecily indicate the standard of living to which she was entitled; these highlight, in particular, the upper-class privileges at mealtimes. The Duchess of Brittany’s accounts show that she was regularly the recipient of unusual, luxurious birds such as swans, herons and larks, which replaced the usual domestic fowl on her table. She also feasted on fresh fish, including porpoise, sturgeon and whale meat, rather than the usual dried or salted fare.15 Given that a piece of porpoise cost 3s 4d when the daily wage for a labourer as late as 1450 was 4d, such foods were part of the hierarchy of social difference, significant as symbols to the duchess. Soon after her arrival in 1441, Cecily was called upon to act as hostess to the representatives of the dukes of Brittany and Alençon.

  One surviving book of French cookery, dating from the 1420s, gives a fairly accurate idea of the fare that would have graced Cecily’s table in Rouen Castle. Du Fait de Cuisine was written for a similar ducal household, and lists the methods of preparing food as well as organising the cooks and the provisions of linen for the table. Its set menus for meat and fish days are generous and varied, including beef in lamprey sauce, fried fish with verjuice and gilded boar’s heads, followed by a four-coloured blancmange, almond milk flans and an ‘entremet’ of a castle. It also has a section on food for invalids, with the type of fare that French cooks in the kitchens at Rouen may have prepared for Cecily during her pregnancy or in the period of recovery. ‘Food for the sick’ was bland fare – cooked pears and apples, green purée, blancmange, semolina, oatmeal and barley – although Cecily might have been tempted by some quince pastries or stuffed crayfish.16

  When archaeologists at Leicester University were analysing the remains of Cecily’s son, Richard III, in 2012/13, the high concentration of marine fish in his diet meant a readjustment of the usual parameters concerning the dating of his bones. The upper classes were used to the very best lifestyle and, given that Cecily was Edward III’s granddaughter, she maintained this and more in her attire and at her table. It also had an important political dimension, widening the gap between the rulers and the ruled, providing a visual code for the Yorks’ status in a city and region that had seen much conflict. Given the description in the anonymous poem ‘The Siege of Rouen’, which shows that its starving inhabitants were forced by their English adversaries to eat domestic animals as they ‘lacke[d] mete and brede’, the English, ensconced within Rouen Castle, must have been the focus of considerable resentment. Cecily’s ostentation was in marked contrast to the city’s recent experiences and the Yorks must have been co
nscious of potential threats to their regime. Rouen would actually fall to the French in 1449 and York was frequently engaged in repelling attacks and incursions, such as that at Pontoise in 1441.17

  The display of wealth was consistent with the expectations of late medieval aristocracy. Eating, dressing and living well were expected of the Yorks; in fact, when figures in authority did not do so, it incited comment, such as with Henry VI’s more pious lifestyle. If anyone during this period was going to have a padded toilet seat, in a draughty and ancient castle, it would be the Yorks. Visual signifiers were a common part of fifteenth-century lifestyles, found in clothing and sumptuary laws, personal devices, heraldry and symbols, decorated items such as manuscripts and jewellery, window glass and wall paintings. In May 1449, the Parliamentary Rolls list that a page named John Dowty was pardoned for stealing an item of Richard’s, a silken sword girdle garnished with gold, which was symbolic beyond its monetary value. It is difficult to locate many contemporary examples that accuse Cecily of being unduly extravagant, yet the idea of her pride persists into popular culture and novels. She may have later styled herself ‘queen by rights’, which appears on her documents and letters from 1464,18 but she did indeed have a claim to this title. Still, in modern works of non-fiction, Cecily is described as ‘acting imperiously, as a queen-in-waiting [and having] an innate sense of pride in her own lineage’, and ‘receiving guests with all the state and dignity of a reigning monarch’ in her own ‘throne room’.19 This does not necessarily denote vanity; it was considered an essential part of the demonstration of status and Cecily would have emphasised her and York’s royal descent in this way, as well as giving a powerful message about York’s status as Henry VI’s heir. Henry himself was actively criticised when he failed to conform to expectations of royal appearance; Cecily and Richard were reinforcing their own claim by presenting what had all the hallmarks of an alternative court.

  According to the religious texts to which Cecily would devote herself in later life, vanity was a mortal sin. The author Christine de Pisan, writers of saints’ Lives, and others offering models of behaviour, such as in the childrearing manuals of the day, were united in rejecting wealth for wealth’s sake. Yet the Yorks clearly revelled in their position and the trappings it brought, fulfilling expectations that they would set the standard in fashions of the day. A surviving portrait of Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort’s family, in the Neville book of hours, depicts the young daughters dressed in the popular forked headdresses, or ‘hennins’, of the day. It is often the case that only one half of this image is shown, captioned as representing Ralph and his twelve children, with Cecily at the back among the three girls. However, Ralph had twenty-two children across his two marriages, of which eleven were girls. Six more are depicted in a partner image, standing behind Joan. As the youngest, Cecily is likely to have been placed towards the back, if not the actual last figure itself. Typical of contemporary family depictions in manuscripts, glass and stone, the girls look very similar and are all dressed in the impressive two-coned or butterfly ‘hennins’, draped with veils. Writing in the 1420s to 1440s, poet John Lydgate wrote a satire on the wearing of such headgear, repeating the refrain that ‘bewte will shewe, thouh hornys were away’. He continues,

  Clerkys recorde by gret auctorite

  Hornys wer yove to beestys for diffence

  A thyng contrary to femynyte

  To be maad sturdy of resistance

  But arche wyves egre in their violence

  Fers as tygre for to make affay

  They have despyt ageyn conscience

  Lyst nat of pryde, ther hornys cast away.

  As the highest-ranking Englishwoman in Rouen, Cecily would have set the tone in terms of fashion and protocol. In the city there were a number of other wives of king’s administrators, some of whom were her relations, and others who would prove to be powerful players in her future and those of her children. She would have known John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, whom Richard would trust with several missions to England seeking royal funds to offset the thousands of pounds he was owed for his outlay in France. His first wife had been Cecily’s cousin, Maud Neville, the daughter of her uncle Thomas. She bore four children who were close to Cecily in age. After that, he had married Margaret Beauchamp, daughter of the Earl of Warwick. The future would connect Margaret and Cecily’s families through marriage; the countess’s niece Anne would marry Cecily’s son Richard and her two daughters, Eleanor and Elizabeth Talbot, would further shape the course of English history – Eleanor through a possible secret marriage with Cecily’s son Edward and Elizabeth by being the grandmother of Anne de Mowbray, wife of Cecily’s grandson. The close nature of a small number of aristocratic families meant that many of the seeds of the future royal court were together in Rouen in the mid-1440s.

  Also present in the city at some point was the Duchess of Bedford, Jacquetta of Luxembourg. Her husband, Sir Richard Wydeville, is recorded in Gregory’s Chronicle as accompanying Richard from Portsmouth in 1441 and Professor Griffiths states that the duchess accompanied him.20 This may have created an uneasy dynamic, as Jacquetta’s previous status had been that of wife of the heir to the throne, a position which Cecily now held. Although the dates are unclear, Jacquetta had already borne two or three surviving children at their Northamptonshire home of Grafton Regis. She may have delivered Anthony already, or else borne him in 1442. As her childbearing did not resume until 1444, there is a chance she accompanied her husband to Normandy in the summer of 1441; he was also charged to accompany Margaret of Anjou back to England in 1445. It is interesting to speculate whether Jacquetta took her young children, Elizabeth and Anne, with her; Anthony may even have been born or conceived there. If so, the five-year-old Elizabeth would have been present in the city when Cecily gave birth to her future husband, Edward, the following year. As with Anne of York, it is equally likely that like the children remained in England.

  The duke and duchess’s quarters in the castle also contained a nursery. It is unclear whether the young Anne, then aged three, went with her parents to Rouen. There are arguments for and against; Weightman believes she was boarded out. Traditionally, daughters were left behind to be educated in convents while their aristocratic parents travelled. When Margaret Holland, Duchess of Clarence, travelled to Normandy to be with her husband in November 1419, her sons, who were then in their mid-teens, accompanied her but her two daughters, aged ten and thirteen, stayed with the Prioress of Dartford.21 Yet the Yorks’ absence in Rouen was planned to be of five years’ duration, so perhaps they took their only surviving child with them. Also among the party was John de Vere, 12th Earl of Oxford, a loyal Lancastrian, and his wife of fifteen years, Elizabeth Howard. They would be in the city when Cecily gave birth to her next child, who would end up ordering de Vere’s beheading twenty years later, when they found themselves on opposing sides.

  Soon after they had arrived in Rouen, dramatic news reached them from England. That summer, a national scandal broke that directly affected Richard’s position as heir to the throne. Since the death of Henry VI’s uncle John, Duke of Bedford, his younger uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, upheld his right to remain as regent to the teenage king. His second wife, Eleanor Cobham, was keen to conceive a child, as the marriage was reputedly childless. If she was successful, her offspring would be the nephew of Henry V, cousin to Henry VI and, as such, would take the place of Richard of York in the line of succession. Many women who wished to conceive employed a number of superstitious methods, from herbs and charms to pseudo-religious rituals and chants; Eleanor obtained powders from Margery Jourdayne, known as the ‘witch of Eye’. In order to assist conception, Eleanor also consulted astrologers, which was also common; however, in Eleanor’s case, they predicted that Henry VI would suffer a life-threatening illness in 1441. This was classed as imagining the king’s death, which was a heinous crime. These rumours reached the court and were investigated. The royal astrologers found no such illness in the king’s chart
and Eleanor, along with all her assistants and her confessor, was arrested on charges of treasonable necromancy. Eleanor denied all the charges except that of seeking assistance to fall pregnant; she was imprisoned for life and her marriage to Gloucester was terminated. Her ‘accomplices’ met with violent deaths. It was a stark reminder of just how vulnerable women could be when it came to their fertility and ambitions, even the most powerful ones. Cecily’s experiences of conceiving and delivering a child would also give rise to scandal in her lifetime.

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