by Amy Licence
By 1464, Edward had reigned for three years. At twenty-two, he was still the handsome young king, with a proven military record and the good looks that had earned him an early reputation for womanising, according to some chroniclers. It was essential for him to marry a foreign princess and provide a string of Yorkist heirs to guarantee the continuance of the dynasty that the family had fought so hard to establish. Several possible candidates were put forward, including Margaret, sister of the King of Scots, and Isabella of Castile, but both were considered too young, being nine and thirteen respectively. Warwick may even have suggested the Scottish regent, Mary of Guelders, who was reputed to have been the lover of the Duke of Somerset, although this may have been more of a diplomatic gesture than a real possibility. As early as October 1461, a niece of Philip of Burgundy, a Mademoiselle de Bourbon, was suggested as a possible wife. This may have been Margaret, Catharine or Joanna, all of whom were unmarried at the time and of suitable age. However, Philip proved unwilling to commit to a dynasty still in its infancy, so a future English queen was sought elsewhere.
Cecily had not forgotten the French match that York had tried to negotiate for Edward in the mid-1440s, but the political scene had changed since then. Charles VII had died soon after Edward’s succession, to be replaced by his son Louis XI. Charles’s infant daughters, once proposed as Yorkist wives, had grown up and were no longer on the marriage market. Joan had already been the wife of the Duke of Bourbon since 1447 and Edward had missed out on his original intended, Madeleine, as she had been married to a Prince of Navarre on 7 March, midway between Mortimer’s Cross and Towton. Perhaps Cecily now lent her voice to the quest for a new French princess. If a match had been considered back in 1445, it was eminently more suitable now that Edward was actually king. However, there was a problem of supply. The new king, Louis, had only two surviving daughters: Anne, born in 1461 and Joan, born in 1464. He did, however, have a suitable sister-in-law. Bona of Savoy was fifteen in 1464 and, although she was connected to the throne of France through marriage, not blood, her age and connections made her the most likely candidate.
Edward seemed pleased with the choice. He sent Warwick to the French court, where Bona was then staying, in order to make the necessary negotiations. There seems little reason to doubt that Cecily encouraged the match, given her previous hopes in that direction. Negotiations for peace with France had been ongoing since 1463, with Warwick and Lord Wenlock given a commission in March to bring about a truce with France. As late as 12 April 1464 Wenlock was asked to cross the Channel, and by early summer he had been introduced to Bona in person.40 Louis was expecting Warwick to arrive in October 1464, to further the treaty for a marriage that would unite France and England, but events would render the trip unnecessary. The king’s marriage had been on the cards since the summer of 1461, yet Edward was a young man of sensual appetite, ‘prompted by the ardour of youth’,41 whom many feared ‘had not been chaste in his living’.42 Those fears proved well founded. In the interim, the king had fallen in love. That September, when Parliament sat at Reading, the question of a queen was raised again. As Gregory’s Chronicle records, the lords ‘would have sent into some strange land to enquire for a queen of good birth, according to his dignity’.43 But then Edward made a shocking announcement. He was already married. He had been married for about five months, from early May, even before Wenlock’s visit to Louis’ court.
It is not clear whether Cecily had any warning that the news was coming. Edward might have hinted his intention or openly confessed or, perhaps, left her to learn of it following his announcement at the Reading parliament. The only accounts that refer to the secret marriage suggest that Cecily was devastated. On a personal level, it represented a considerable betrayal; that her eldest son had not confided his intentions and had chosen a wife without consulting her. In dynastic terms, Cecily and York had arranged all their other children’s marriages, but their recent changes in status, with her as a widow and Edward as a king, may provide one reason for his actions. Politically and nationally, it denied the country an opportunity to make a lucrative foreign alliance but, given the recent role taken by Margaret of Anjou, a French bride may not have proved popular. Additionally, a peace treaty had been concluded on 23 April, rendering Bona superfluous.44 Then, there was the choice of bride. Edward’s new wife came from a family Cecily had known for over three decades.
Edward’s new wife was none other than the eldest daughter of Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, and Richard Wydeville, Earl Rivers. Since their shared days in Rouen, around the time their children were born, the political drama had cast Cecily and Jacquetta on opposing sides, with Wydeville fighting for the Lancastrians and Jacquetta as a lady in Margaret of Anjou’s retinue. This culminated in their humiliating capture by Edward in Sandwich. Elizabeth was about five years older than Edward and had already been married to Sir John Grey of Groby, bearing him two sons before he was killed at the Second Battle of St Albans. Edward would have known Elizabeth for a considerable time before being reunited, when, as legend has it, she waited under an oak tree in Whittlesbury Forest to petition him over the return of her sons’ inheritance.
The secret marriage took place sometime in the spring of 1464. Tradition places it around 1 May, at the bride’s family home of Grafton Regis, in Northamptonshire. According to Fabyan, the ceremony was witnessed by Jacquetta, two gentlewomen, a singing boy and a priest.45 Many informal matches of the era were made this way, with few people present to mark the occasion, but this was hardly suitable for the King of England. After consummating the union, which made it legal, Edward returned to his court and explained his absence as a hunting trip. The details and legality of this match have given rise to centuries of speculation, mainly for the significance they would later have for the couple’s children. It is also interesting to consider Edward’s intentions; whether this was simply a ruse in order to bed a woman who had otherwise refused him, or a genuine love match that he intended to formalise. It was an odd way for a woman to become queen. Edward may have acted as he did simply because he knew Parliament was not likely to approve if he were to propose the match. Presented to them as a fait accompli, there was little anyone could do, no matter how unsuitable a Lancastrian widow with a large family was considered to be. It was the rash act of a young man in love. As a king, Edward had been impulsive and irresponsible. As a son, he had been insensitive and ungrateful. Yet neither Edward nor Elizabeth, nor anyone else in 1464, could have predicted the impact it would have on the course of English history.
Warkworth’s Chronicles describe that Warwick was ‘greatly displeased’ with the match, after which ‘rose great dissension ever more and more between the king and him’. Croyland related the ‘great disagreement’ that arose, which the ‘nobility and chief men of the kingdom took amiss, seeing that he had with such immoderate haste promoted a person sprung from a comparatively humble lineage to share the throne with him’.46 Waurin confirmed she was ‘not his match … nor a woman of the kind who ought to belong to such a prince’,47 which Vergil later explained as being caused by ‘blind affection and not by rule of reason’.48 Newsletters written at the time to recipients in the city of Bruges confirm that the marriage ‘greatly offended the people of England’ and that the nobility were ‘holding great consultations in the town of Reading, where the king is … for the sake of finding the means to annul it’.49 It seems fairly straightforward to deduce that, if Warwick and the English nobility objected to the match on a number of grounds, then Edward’s mother did too. When exactly did she learn that it had taken place? Perhaps the king broke the news to his family before Parliament met that September; if she learned about it as a result of his announcement, she would be understandably insulted. It was Dominic Mancini, though, an Italian visitor to England in 1482–83, who first included Cecily’s reactions in his commentary. Writing twenty years after the event, he gives a hint of the illegitimacy rumours that historical fiction would fester into fact over the ensuing centuries
:
He [Edward] also offended most bitterly the members of his own house. Even his mother fell into such a frenzy that she offered to submit to a public enquiry and asserted that Edward was not the offspring of her husband the Duke of York but was conceived in adultery and therefore in no way worthy of the honour of kingship.50
It is unclear exactly how Mancini got hold of this information, unless it was the version that resurfaced in 1483, with the very different context of that occasion. He clearly places the origin of the rumour with Cecily. What rings true in his account is the depth of her anger, her ‘frenzy’ and its resulting strike back at her son as ‘in no way worthy of the honour of kingship’. After the lengths that York had gone to in order to secure his royal claim, and the losses Cecily had suffered, it is entirely within character for her to be incensed by Edward’s marriage, to the extent of considering it an insult to the throne. Cecily did not consider that she and York had worked for years to achieve Edward’s status, only for him to marry so far beneath him and cast their lineage into disrepute. In the heat of her anger, she may well have cast about for any weapon she could find, even if it hurt her in the process. She was prepared to make any sacrifice for her family, even that of her own reputation, if the Yorks were impugned.
Like her son’s marriage, it was a rash act. Assuming that she did say such a thing, the implications for Edward, if it had been believed in 1464, could have been far reaching. His right to rule would have been questioned and there may, possibly, have been calls for him to step aside. At the very least, it would have given ammunition to the Lancastrian cause. Surely Cecily did not wish to see Edward challenged as king? Not unless she was prepared to offer her next son, the fifteen-year-old George, as a potential monarch, with the divisions within the family that this would cause.
Interestingly, a poem preserved in a manuscript at Trinity College Dublin, hitherto overlooked by historians, contains a telling detail. In 1461, on Edward’s succession, the anonymous acrostic verses ‘Twelve Letters Save England’ made reference to his legitimate conception in order to stress his descent from Richard, Duke of York. In 1461 there was no doubt about Edward’s paternity, suggesting that the rumours were a political tool that was later employed at times of need.
Y is for York that is manly and mightful
That be grace of God and great revelation
Reynyng with rules resonable and right-full
The which for our sakes hath suffered vexation
E is for Edward whos fame the earth shal spred
Be-cause of his wisdom named prudence
Shal save all Enland by his manly hede
Wherfore we owe to do hym reverence
M is for Marche, trewe in every tryall
Drawn by discrecion that worthy and wise is
Conseived in wedlock and comyn of blode ryall
Joynyng unto vertu, excluding all vyces.51
Similar verses written in 1461, such as the Lambeth Palace manuscript ‘Edward, Dei Gracia’, also stress Edward’s pure lineage, describing him as a ‘springing flower, a rose so white’. The 1462 ‘A Political Retrospect’ used the common literary metaphor of likening England to an overgrown garden, into which came Edward of Rouen to clear away the weeds. It seems that Edward was legitimate when he was required to be and a bastard when it suited his opponents.52
Then there was the issue that Edward had won the throne by right of conquest and could not be so easily removed. It may have been a mark of Cecily’s belief in the solidity of her son’s position by 1464 that she was prepared to make such a statement in the belief that he would not actually be challenged. In which case, why did she make it? She may have hoped that it would deter Elizabeth Wydeville and her family, who might then be bought off, or persuaded to agree to an annulment or divorce. More likely, it has the feel of an emotional truth; a betrayed mother lashing out to try to hurt her son in the only way she could. By saying Edward was not worthy of being his father’s son, his heir, inheritor of his title, Cecily could not have caused him more pain if she tried. That appears to have been the point.
Of course, there is also the possibility that she said no such thing. She probably did object to the marriage, but her dislike may have been moulded into certain emotive phrases by writers over the ages. This was certainly the case with Sir Thomas More’s quasi-historical fiction of 1513, which includes a long account of the conversation between Edward and Cecily regarding his choice of wife. It is an invention of More’s, designed to lend colour and emotional impact to the narrative but, while not an accurate representation of a real event, it does capture many of the potential objections Cecily may have felt. More has Cecily ‘sore moved’ by the match and trying to persuade her son that it was ‘his honour, profit and surety also, to marry in a noble progeny out of his realm’. She tells him ‘it was not princely to marry his own subject … but only as it were a rich man who would marry his maid only for a little wanton dotage upon her person, in which marriage, many more commend the maiden’s fortune than the master’s wisdom’. Into Cecily’s mouth, More put the words that marriage to a widow of Elizabeth’s station was ‘an unfitting thing, and a very blemish and high disparagement to the sacred majesty of a prince, who ought as nigh to approach priesthood in cleanness as he doth in dignity, to be befouled in bigamy in his first marriage’.53
Edward’s possible bigamy is another question entirely. More may have intended Cecily to refer to the fact that Elizabeth had previously been another man’s wife, when English custom tended to prefer the marriage of a king to a maiden. However, by the time he was writing, in the second decade of the sixteenth century, the controversies surrounding Edward’s early love affairs were well known. The issue had also been given more attention in recent years, with the examination of the claims that surfaced in 1483 that Edward had been pre-contracted to an Eleanor Butler, née Talbot. If this was the case, Cecily is unlikely to have heard about it, although she could have been well aware that Edward was not living the pious and chaste life her religious convictions would have led her to prefer. More gives Edward an unusual answer to his mother. He defines marriage as a man, rather than a king, as ‘a spiritual thing [which] ought rather to be made for the respect of God where his grace inclineth the parties to love together … than for the regard of any temporal advantage’.54 This ideal of the York–Wydeville marriage taking place for love would have been popular in the reign of their grandchildren, with Henry VIII’s fixation on chivalry and courtly love. It was hardly an answer that would satisfy Cecily in 1464. If she had snapped and lashed out at her son with allegations of illegitimacy, it was a moment of anger that would come back to haunt her.
12
A Family at Love and War
1465–1471
What kingdom werreth hym-self with-ynne
Distroyeth him-self and no mo.
With-oute, here enemys begynne
On eche a syde assayle hem so.
The comons, they will rob and slo
Make fyere and kyndel stress.
Whan ryches and manhode is wastede and go
Then drede dryeth to trete pes.1
Greenwich Palace sat on the south bank of the River Thames, about 6 miles to the east of Westminster. It was an idyllic retreat, where the boats sailed steadily past swathes of green fields, and twists of smoke rose from tall red chimneys. The palace was built of brick and timber around two courtyards, with the queen’s range including a great chamber, parlour and gallery overlooking the private, hedged gardens. Built by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, it had been shaped by his refined European tastes, and boasted an important library of which forty-six manuscripts survive today, including works by Gower, Boccaccio, William of Ockham, and works of Arthurian legends and the Italian humanists.2 Its spacious rooms were served by a sophisticated system of water carrying, using a new aqueduct and underground conduits. An extensive deer park was enclosed and the grounds stretched upwards to Shooter’s Hill and Humphrey’s Tower. It was a country residen
ce fit for royalty.
After the duke’s fall, the palace quickly became a favourite residence of Margaret of Anjou. She employed Robert Kettlewell between 1447 and 1452 to develop it for her use, and retreated there with her husband and young son when political conflicts had raged in Westminster. Renaming it the Palace of Pleasaunce or Placentia, she ordered the place to be filled with carved stone daisies, or marguerites, as a pun on her name. The windows were glazed and the reed floor mats replaced with monogrammed tiles. There was a vestry for the Crown Jewels, and a pier for embarkation on the river; the garden was developed, with arbours and a gallery.3 Yet none of these ornamentations, this crystallisation of her identity in stone, could prevent her world from unravelling. At Greenwich, she had tried to encourage Henry VI to recover his wits during the dark days of 1453 and 1454 but, as the years progressed and the tide of popular opinion moved in favour of York, she had preferred to make her home in the North, leaving the halls and corridors of her pleasure palace quiet.
After Edward’s succession in 1461, Greenwich provided a new retreat for Cecily’s family. Margaret, George and Richard were quickly established there and, although Cecily retained Baynard’s Castle, she would have attended frequently, representing the Yorkist line during the visits of ambassadors, ceremonial occasions and family events. George, Duke of Clarence, now in his early teens, had his own household established at Greenwich, where he began the process of chivalric training that was essential for a young aristocrat. In 1465, Richard would undertake similar supervision under the eye of the Earl of Warwick at Middleham Castle. In October 1466, the palace was the venue for the marriage of Cecily’s eldest granddaughter, Anne. The only child of Anne of York and Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, young Anne was now eleven years old. Her union with Thomas Grey, the queen’s son by her first marriage, transferred her considerable inheritance back into the control of the royal family. A couple of years her senior, Thomas had lost his father at the Second Battle of St Albans, before witnessing the dramatic transformation of his mother’s fortunes. Queen Elizabeth clearly valued the bride greatly, because she paid Anne of York 4,000 marks for this marriage, as Anne had previously been betrothed to Warwick’s nephew, George Neville.4 In these early years, Greenwich, along with Sheen, formed the new heart of York family life. Baynard’s Castle had powerful associations with Richard, Duke of York, but these new locations were symbolic of the future, of the success and status they had achieved. It must have been an unpleasant surprise, then, when Edward granted these properties to his new wife, Elizabeth. Given the other indicators of her dislike of the marriage, it is likely that this provoked Cecily to retreat to Baynard’s. It may have been for this reason that the Royal Wardrobe, further along from Thames Street, at the junction of Puddle Dock and Carter Lane, was refurbished for the use of the royal family and their guests.
