Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  falsely and traitorously intended and purposed the destruction and disinheriting of the king and his issue … fully intending to exalt himself and his heirs to the regality and crown of England [has] falsely and untruly noised, published and said that the king our sovereign lord was a bastard and not born to reign over us …23

  Once again, the Rouen rumours had resurfaced. If these had been previously instigated by Cecily in anger, this latest manifestation must have cut her to the quick. There is a slim chance that George believed the claim, but it is more likely that it was a convenient slur which it suited him to employ again. This time, though, Edward was not inclined to be merciful.

  The king, by the advice and assent of his Lords spiritual and temporal, and the Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, ordains, enacts and establishes that the said George, Duke of Clarence, be convicted and attained of high treason.24

  There is also the chance that George had heard whisper of another family rumour. This new skeleton in the closet would have had the potential to topple Edward’s reign entirely, and cast aspersions on his marriage and the inheritance of his children, leaving the way clear for Clarence to become king. He appears to have shared part of his punishment with Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who was disgraced at the same time, likely as a result of his association with the duke. Stillington would later emerge as the origin of the story that Edward had been pre-contracted in marriage to another woman before going through with his secret ceremony with Elizabeth Wydeville in 1464. If the bishop was certain of this, as he later claimed, having officially tied the knot between Edward and Lady Eleanor Butler, née Talbot, he was in possession of information far more damaging to the House of York than Cecily’s reputed adultery. This might have been the tipping point in George’s case. He certainly resurrected the slurs against his mother but, if he questioned the legitimacy of his royal nephew, the future Edward V, there is no question why the king moved so decisively against him. The evidence for Edward’s bigamy is circumstantial. Whether or not George believed it, or whether it was true, is almost immaterial. Once it was made public, it could be exploited by those who wished to challenge the king and his heirs. It made Clarence dangerous. It sealed his fate.

  Amid this uneasy situation, the royal family gathered to celebrate a wedding. On 15 January 1478, with Clarence still languishing inside the Tower, Cecily attended the marriage of her four-year-old grandson, Richard of York, to the Norfolk heiress Anne de Mowbray. The ceremony took place in St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster, and was followed by jousting. Did Cecily take this opportunity to speak to Edward about his brother’s fate? No matter how much George had offended, she is likely to have made an attempt to save his life by appealing to Edward as her king and her son.

  But Edward was implacable. Cecily was probably back at Berkhamsted when Clarence was executed on 18 February. The traditional story, that he was permitted to choose his method of death, favouring drowning in a butt of malmsey wine, is not confirmed in contemporary records. It was Mancini, writing five years later, who mentioned that ‘the mode of execution preferred in this case was that he should die by being plunged into a jar of sweet wine’.25 One later historian has suggested that this detail was included as a coded reference to the queen, whose favourite wine was malmsey, and Mancini would firmly implicate Elizabeth in the process. However, the iconography in the portrait of his daughter Margaret Pole, who wears a tiny barrel attached to her wrist, may provide a visual clue to her father’s ignominious death. No doubt the news was a terrible blow to his mother, in the knowledge that it had been his own fault, as well as the fact that the instrument of justice had been his brother the king. It has also been suggested that it was Cecily’s pleading that gave George the choice of method by which he would meet his end but, while this sounds possible, it has no contemporary confirmation. Later suggestions that George was his mother’s favourite child have stemmed from this possibility, coupled with her presence with him in Sandwich before his first rebellion.

  In 1479–80, a terrible outbreak of pestilence, or bubonic plague, spread through the country. On such occasions, it was wisest to leave the capital and Edward retreated to Sheen and his new palace at Eltham. To the medieval mind, plague was a sign of divine displeasure, a punishment for earthly sins. Various medieval tracts blamed the corruption of the clergy, sexual vices and the development of new, immodest fashions! However, medical men did believe that infection could be passed in the air and that seclusion was the best form of escape. Edward also obtained a papal dispensation in order to break the strict rules of Lent, in an attempt to manage his health through the diet of balanced humours his doctors would recommend. Cecily remained shut in at Berkhamsted, safe from the danger, but, sadly, it did cost the life of her youngest grandson, George, who was aged around two. He was buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle. Queen Elizabeth was four months pregnant at the time and delivered another daughter, Catherine, at Eltham that August. She would bear one more child, Bridget, in November 1480, also at Eltham. At the age of seventy five, Cecily made the journey to north Kent to be present at her christening the next day, as the new baby’s godmother. Her daughter Elizabeth also bore her final child in this year, a boy called Richard de la Pole, who would later bear the nickname of the ‘White Rose’. Cecily would also suffer the loss of another of her granddaughters, the fourteen-year-old Mary of York, who passed away at Greenwich in May 1482.

  Increasingly, Cecily stayed away from court, at Berkhamsted, Baynard’s or Merton Priory. She was still conducting official business, issuing licences and joining petitions, but these were mostly in support of religious establishments. However, there was one important occasion that would draw her out of her seclusion. In 1480, her daughter Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, visited England for the first time since her marriage. Margaret had sailed from Margate twelve years before as a young woman of twenty-two and now returned as a childless widow. Edward chose his brother-in-law, Sir Edward Wydeville, to accompany Margaret on her journey. They arrived at Gravesend in Kent and reached London in a royal barge in the Yorkist livery of murrey and blue embroidered with white roses.26 Margaret was lodged at Coldharbour House, near Baynard’s, and at Greenwich Palace. All the family reassembled; Edward and his queen and children gave Margaret a formal welcome and Richard travelled south despite being occupied by the increasing threats from the Scots. Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk, also attended and Cecily travelled from Berkhamsted to Greenwich, to be reunited with her family. There, Edward made a gesture of unity and deference by hosting a state banquet in his mother’s honour. As pious as her mother, Margaret visited the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral before sailing from Dover.

  The next few years saw Cecily’s sons increasingly occupied with foreign policy. Edward had reached an alliance with Burgundy in the summer of 1480 but the fragile peace had broken down with Scotland. While Burgundy pushed for English involvement in an invasion of France, Edward sent Richard north to deal with the threat at Berwick. Having repelled a number of attacks and marched into Edinburgh, peace was concluded in the North, as well as in the South, with Edward coming to an agreement with Louis of France, who then also came to terms with Burgundy. By the Christmas of 1482, it seemed that the major questions of foreign policy had temporarily been resolved. This was timely, as the serious danger to the kingdom that would arise in the new year would come from within. Specifically, it came from within Cecily’s own family and, perhaps, as a result of her actions.

  14

  Slanders

  1483–1485

  My life was lent

  Me to one intent

  It is not spent

  Welcome Fortune1

  As the dramatic events of 1483 approached, Cecily was passing her days in quiet contemplation in the Hertfordshire countryside. The ordinances2 that outline her daily life show long hours spent in prayer, religious readings and quiet contemplation. After the hiatus of the l
ate 1470s, it must have seemed that a semblance of peace and stability had returned to her family. However, this was only an illusion. The dramatic sequence of events that followed would turn the brief national peace on its head.

  While it is fairly straightforward to describe what happened in England in the spring and summer of 1483, it is far more difficult to explain the motivations and intentions of those involved. A lack of contemporary primary sources further complicates the interpretation and understanding of these events and can only produce theories rather than certainties. As a result, the extent of Cecily’s involvement is debatable; some historians have allocated her a distant role of observer and this is a fairly understandable position given her age and the lack of evidence to confirm her reactions. Yet the strong, proud Cecily we glimpse in reaction to Edward’s marriage, or riding to meet York on his return from exile, or in dealing with Richard in a land dispute, paints a picture of an influential and powerful matriarch, unwilling to take passive role. Her engagement with the events that tore her family apart may well have been more direct. Richard was the primary mover in these developments but Cecily may have played a significant part by acting as his advisor. There is even a possibility that she helped him initiate them.

  At Easter 1483, King Edward fell ill. In spite of comments from Croyland that he had lived a life of overindulgence – ‘vanities, debauchery, extravagance and sensual enjoyments’3 – he had been fairly active until that point, summoning Parliament on 20 January and negotiating a Scottish treaty. In spring he was at Windsor Castle, travelling back to Westminster by Lady Day, 25 March. At some point between then and 2 April, he became ill, possibly as the result of taking a trip on the Thames, as suggested by Mancini. The French chronicler Thomas Basin gave a different cause, stating that the king had upset his digestive system by eating a surfeit of fruits and vegetables. Commines suggests he suffered a stroke, Vergil described the illness as an ‘unknown disease’ and Dr John Rae, in 1913, suggested pneumonia because contemporaries say that Edward lay on his left side.4 There appears to have been some warning that he was dying, lasting as long as several days, as false reports of his demise reached York on 6 April. In the following days, Edward attempted to reconcile the Wydevilles with his friend William Hastings. There would have been enough time for Cecily to travel to Westminster, if she had wished to do so, before he died on 9 April. She may have attended his funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, ten days later, where Edward was ‘interred with all honour in due ecclesiastical form’.5

  Richard was in the North at the time. He had only left London a couple of weeks before, having fulfilled his parliamentary duties. At Middleham Castle, around the middle of April, he received a letter from William, Lord Hastings, summoning him to London with a large force. This was the first indication of the coming hostilities. It is interesting to consider whether Cecily also may have written to her son at this time. Little of her correspondence survives but her interactions with Richard that date from the 1470s suggest a relationship of warmth and respect. It would seem a fairly logical supposition that she would have contacted her other children on the death of their sibling and king, if only in condolence. In the second half of April, with Edward IV already laid to rest, the future path of the York line still seemed relatively clear. Cecily’s grandson, the twelve-year-old Edward V, would automatically assume the throne, by the terms of his father’s will, and his direct inheritance. Having received the news at Ludlow on 14 April, the boy made his way to London under the guidance of his uncle and tutor, Anthony Wydeville. Different sources estimated the size of his escort at between 500 and 2,000 men but the numbers were downplayed. His mother had made a request to Parliament for a large force but this had been disregarded as creating too much suspicion. Queen Elizabeth understood this point and, according to Croyland, wrote to the boy ‘to extinguish every spark of murmuring or disturbance’.6 If one concerned royal mother wrote to her son during these weeks, would Cecily not also have done so? Richard travelled south to intercept his nephew and accompany him to London. The boy’s coronation had been set for 4 May and, in theory, it should have been a relatively smooth transition of power from father to son. At this point, in late April, Cecily was probably making preparations to travel to Baynard’s Castle, to be in position for the day, where there would be family celebrations for the anointing of a new Yorkist king. However, before Richard or Edward could reach the capital, something happened which totally disrupted these plans and derailed the course of their lives.

  As she waited at Baynard’s at the end of April, reports reached Cecily about Richard’s actions at Stony Stratford. Having met with Edward’s party and his ally, the Duke of Buckingham, he had taken command of the young king and arrested Wydeville, along with Sir Richard Grey, the king’s half-brother, and Sir Thomas Vaughan. This development has continued to puzzle historians, with some identifying it as the first step in a planned assault on the throne and others casting it as a precautionary measure, in response to some real or perceived threat. Even if Cecily had not been in touch directly with her son, she may have had some understanding of his decision, which could have been born out of the unresolved ill feeling resulting from Edward’s marriage into the Wydeville family. She is less likely to have been in the dark than Wydeville himself, for whom the arrest came as a surprise, after having passed an apparently straightforward evening dining with the duke. Richard’s explanation to his nephew was that the Wydevilles intended to remove him from power and kill him,7 a claim he would repeat in the summer.

  Whatever Richard’s motives in late April, the course of events that followed was by no means guaranteed. However, reactions at court to the arrests only escalated the mistrust and lack of communication that followed. The dowager queen, Elizabeth Wydeville, fled into sanctuary with her children, which demonstrated the degree of danger that she felt she and her family were facing. By the time Richard arrived in London, parading wagons that he claimed were full of Wydeville weapons,8 there was a mood of increasing uncertainty. This only got worse through the following weeks, with the appointment of Richard as Lord Protector on 27 May, the sudden execution of Lord Hastings on 13 June, and the postponement of the coronation. One letter, written early that month, stated that ‘there is a great business against the coronation which shall be this day fortnight’.9 By mid-June, merchant George Cely was writing about ‘great rumour in the realm’10 and Simon Stallworth wrote to Sir William Stoner that it was better to be ‘out of the press, for with us is much trouble and every man doubts another’. He added that 20,000 of Richard and Buckingham’s men had arrived ‘to what intent I know not, but to keep the peace’.11 This number is probably vastly exaggerated but helps reflect the degree of uncertainty that seized the city at the time, contributing to the escalating scale of fear. At the end of June, Sir Ralph Shaa or Shaw preached a sermon at St Paul’s, stating that Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville had been invalid and his children were illegitimate. This meant the throne would pass directly to Richard, as the next adult representative of the House of York. So what actually happened, and how much did Cecily know?

  The evidence suggests that she may have been directly involved. On 7 May, a meeting of the executors of Edward IV’s will had convened at Cecily’s London home, Baynard’s Castle. Among those present were Richard and Buckingham, Lord Hastings, Lord Stanley and Bishop Morton of Ely. The original will, written in 1475, was rejected, and Edward’s seals and jewels were confiscated. This may have been a prudent measure designed to incorporate Edward’s last-minute deathbed wishes or a means of buying more time. There may have been another reason, though, which would explain the location of this event. Why did Richard call this meeting at his mother’s house? If this business was all above board, it could have been conducted at Westminster or, if Richard perceived dangers there, he may have relocated to his own property, Crosby House. In fact, the majority of his meetings during May and June did take place in this town house. Baynard’s Castle was to prove an i
nstrumental location on two significant occasions: the meeting of the executors on 7 May, and the offering of the crown to Richard at the end of June. Why would he deliberately choose his mother’s house as the theatre for these dramas, unless Cecily herself was complicit in them?

  The removal of Edward V from the throne, and the accession of Richard III, turned on two rumours. On 22 June, the day that had been fixed for the delayed coronation, the sermon preached at St Paul’s Cross resurrected the old story about Edward’s paternity. The closest commentator to these events was Mancini, an Italian diplomat on a short visit to England. While there are some problems with his evidence, in the words of Professor Charles Ross, ‘unless the modern historian is to take an unjustifiably benevolent view of Richard’s character, he [sic] must, of necessity, pay some credence to these primary authorities’.12 So, according to the closest source,

  Edward said they, was conceived in adultery and in every way was unlike the late Duke of York, whose son he was falsely said to be, but Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who altogether resembled his father, was to come to the throne as his legitimate successor.13

  Tudor writers interpreted this as an attack upon Cecily and assumed she must have resented it. Vergil’s account includes the detail that she complained bitterly ‘in sundry places to many right noble men’. He gives the impression of having spoken to these witnesses, by adding ‘whereof some yet live’. However, Mancini does not take this line. In relation to the accusations of 1464, he states that Cecily ‘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’.14 So was Cecily really the passive victim here, slandered by her son? As this rumour had already been in circulation, used as a political weapon by herself in 1464, by her nephew Warwick in the late 1460s and son George in 1477–78, perhaps she may have seen it as causing her little additional personal harm if it could be deployed to place Richard on the throne. Earlier that month, he had already made an appeal to her family for help.