Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings

by Amy Licence

  As her executors the duchess named a number of men with strong connections to her past and present life. There was Oliver King, Bishop of Bath and Wells, who had been clerk of the signet and then king’s secretary under Edward IV. Sir Reginald Bray is a surprising inclusion, as he had been a strong Lancastrian supporter, acting as the steward of Margaret Beaufort’s household and, traditionally, being the person to hand Richard III’s crown to Tudor at Bosworth Field. By 1495 he had been greatly advanced by Henry VII, rising to chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster. Also of surprise is Sir Thomas Lovell, who had fought against York at Bosworth and Stoke, serving the Tudors, who had previously been attainted by Richard III. It seems likely that, in all her years of witnessing conflict and the changing fortunes of her family, Cecily had come to recognise and perhaps even value the pragmatism of certain survivors, whom she could still entrust with such a task despite their history. Her other executors were William Pinkenham, Dean of the College of Stoke Clare, William Felde, Master of Fotheringhay College, and Richard Lessy, dean of her chapel. They were to be rewarded by ‘such things as shalbe delivered unto theme by my commaundement of the hondes of Sir Henry Haiden, knyght, stieward of my household and Master Richard Lessy’.

  Cecily made provision for her funeral by stating that all her plate that remained un-bequeathed should be sold in order to pay ‘for carrying of my body from the castell of Barkehampstead unto the colege of Fodringhey’. She signed her name by hand, her ‘signmanual’, and added the imprint of her seal on 31 May 1495. She died either that same day or very soon afterwards. She was indeed buried at Fotheringhay, in the tomb that her sons had built for Richard, Duke of York, in 1476, with a papal indulgence around her neck.

  1. Henry V. Henry inherited the throne from his father in 1413, as the second Lancastrian king. Descended from John of Gaunt, the third son of Edward III, the Lancastrians deposed Richard II and replaced his heirs. In the year of Cecily’s birth, 1415, Henry V led an English army to victory at Agincourt. The English sustained few losses but one of the notable dead was Edmund of York, uncle to Cecily’s future husband.

  2. Henry V and Catherine of Valois. Henry married the young French Princess Catherine in June 1420, as part of a peace treaty with England. Catherine delivered a son in December 1421 but, nine months later, was left a widow at the age of twenty, when Henry V died on campaign in France.

  3 & 4. Raby Castle, County Durham. Cecily was born at Raby in May 1415. The castle was fairly new then, having been built in the mid-fourteenth century on the site of an existing manor house.

  5. St Mary’s church, Staindrop. In 1408, Cecily’s father, Ralph, Earl of Westmorland, founded the collegiate church in the village of Staindrop, near Raby. When he died in 1425, he was laid to rest there, flanked by the effigies of both his wives, although neither of them are buried there.

  6. Effigy of Joan Beaufort in Staindrop church. Cecily’s mother Joan is depicted in alabaster beside her husband but she actually lies with her own mother in Lincoln Cathedral.

  7. Julian of Norwich, from the front of Norwich Cathedral. Cecily’s mother was interested in the lives of religious women. Julian of Norwich’s contemporary Margery Kempe also had visions but had chosen a secular path, being married and bearing children. Joan summoned Margery to visit her and later wrote exonerating her of any wrongdoing.

  8. Falcon and Fetterlock, the symbol of the House of York. The fetterlock was used by Edmund of Langley, 1st Duke of York and fourth surviving son of Edward III, the king who had used a falcon as his personal device. They were united by Cecily’s and Richard’s son Edward IV.

  9. Falcon and Fetterlock misericord. This carved wooden image, on the underside of the choir stalls in St Laurence’s church, Ludlow, is a lasting reminder of the associations of the Duke of York and his family with the town.

  10. Ruins of Fotheringhay. Cecily’s main residence after her marriage was at Fotheringhay Castle, in Northamptonshire. Little survives now of what must have been an imposing and well-defended castle, on the River Nene.

  11. St Mary and All Saints, Fotheringhay. Begun in 1434, the new church at Fotheringhay is all that remains of a larger, original collegiate church. It would prove to be a significant location for Cecily, as her husband and her second son, Edmund, would be reinterred there in 1476 and it would be the location of her own burial in 1495, in accordance with the terms of her will.

  12. Window, Fotheringhay. A modern stained-glass window in the church of St Mary and All Saints contains several of the heraldic devices of the House of York.

  13. Richard, Duke of York. Cecily and Richard were betrothed in 1424, when she was nine. Their wedding took place in 1429, probably soon after her fourteenth birthday. The marriage appears to have been a successful one, lasting for over thirty years and producing thirteen children.

  14. Rouen Cathedral. Cecily accompanied Richard to Rouen in 1441, when he was appointed Lieutenant of France. It was here, in Rouen Castle, that she gave birth to three children. Edward was baptised within the castle itself, suggesting that his survival may have been in doubt, but a year later, Edmund was christened in Rouen Cathedral.

  15 & 16. Medieval Rouen. Many of the streets around the marketplace in modern Rouen give a sense of the city Cecily must have known during her five-year residence.

  17. Rouen’s Gros Horloge. Rouen’s great clock sits in an archway in the city’s Roman walls. Although the present clock face dates from the 1520s, a clock has been situated in this location since 1409. It is certainly a point of connection between the modern city and that which Cecily would have known.

  18. Dublin Castle. At Dublin Castle, in October 1449, Cecily gave birth to George, the future Duke of Clarence.

  19, 20, 21. Ludlow Castle. Part of the Mortimer inheritance, this twelfth-century castle became the main residence of Richard, Duke of York, and it was also the household for their sons Edward and Edmund in their youth.

  22. Henry VI. The son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, Henry inherited the throne in 1422 at the age of nine months, when his father died unexpectedly young from dysentery. The newly wed Cecily and Richard are likely to have attended his English coronation in 1429, while Richard certainly accompanied him to France for a second ceremony in 1431.

  23. Edward IV. Cecily’s third child and eldest surviving son, Edward was born in Rouen Castle on 28 April 1442. Edward became king after his victory at the Battle of Towton in 1461.

  24. Elizabeth Wydeville. The daughter of Jacquetta, Duchess of Bedford, and Richard Wydeville, Elizabeth was a widow with two sons when she went through a secret marriage ceremony with Edward in 1464. She and Edward were married for nineteen years and had ten children together.

  25. Millennium Bridge. Just to the right of the bridge, near the site of St Paul’s Cathedral, stood Cecily’s town house, Baynard’s Castle. Excavations conducted by the Department of Urban Archaeology in 1974 and 1981 uncovered the plan of the castle, which had four wings around a trapezoidal courtyard; tiled floors, part of a fireplace and a staircase were uncovered from the time when Cecily lived there.

  26. Caister Castle. Set on the beautiful Norfolk coastline, Caister was the fairy-tale dwelling of Sir John Fastolf, an associate of York’s from his service in Normandy. Cecily stayed in the castle in 1456 and was so enamoured of it that she attempted to persuade Fastolf to sell it to her, but with no success.

  27 & 28. Tonbridge Castle. One of the residences of Cecily’s sister Anne, Duchess of Buckingham, the Kent stronghold was the location where Cecily was dispatched after her surrender at Ludlow in 1459. It was the arrival of her son Edward and his victory at Northampton that finally secured her freedom.

  29. Tomb of Joan Neville, St. Nicholas’s church, Arundel, Sussex. Joan was Cecily’s niece, the daughter of her brother Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury. She married William FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, and bore him six children before her death in 1462.

  30 & 31. Site of the Paston House, Norwich. A significant amount of information about
the movements of the Duke of York and his wife can be gleaned from the letters written by the Paston family in the fifteenth century. Their Norwich house burned down in 1507 and another was built on the same site in Elm Hill by the city’s mayor.

  32. Sandwich, Kent. In 1469, Cecily travelled to the port of Sandwich in Kent with George and Warwick as they were about to depart for Calais, where George married Warwick’s daughter Isabel Neville. Did the duchess accompany them in order to celebrate the marriage, or to try and persuade them not to go through with it?

  33 & 34. Berkhamsted Castle, Hertfordshire. In 1469, Cecily left Fotheringhay Castle and spent the remainder of her life based at Berkhamsted. It represented a significant downscale for the duchess, but this may have been a reflection of her status as a widow.

  35. Windsor Castle. Edward IV established a Yorkist mausoleum at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. It was here that his body was carried and interred on his death in April 1483.

  36. Edward V. Cecily’s grandson was born in sanctuary in November 1470 and inherited the throne from his father in April 1483, when he was twelve.

  37. Princes in the Tower. Edward V and his younger brother, Richard, Duke of York, were last seen playing in the gardens of the Tower of London in the summer of 1483. Historical opinion is divided over whether they met with a violent end or survived and fled to freedom.

  38. Richard III. Cecily’s twelfth child, Richard was born in October 1452 at Fotheringhay Castle. Richard proved a loyal supporter of his brother Edward, accompanying him into exile in 1470, but on Edward’s death in 1483 it was Richard who became king, not Edward’s son. What role did Cecily play in this process?

  39. Anne Neville. Cecily’s daughter-in-law, Anne married Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in 1472. Cecily witnessed the entire span of Anne’s short life, including the arrival and death of her son, Edward of Middleham. Anne became Richard’s queen in 1483 and died of an unknown illness, possibly tuberculosis, in March 1485.

  40. Elizabeth of York. The eldest daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Wydeville, Elizabeth emerged from sanctuary with her mother early in 1484 and was present at her uncle Richard’s court.

  41. Tomb of Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, Canterbury Cathedral, Kent. Thomas Bourchier was related to Cecily through his brother’s marriage to Isabel, sister of Richard, Duke of York. He was sent to remove the younger of the Princes in the Tower from sanctuary and later officiated at the coronations of Richard III and Henry VII. Ten years older than Cecily, he lived a similarly long life, dying in 1486 at his Palace of Knole, in Kent.

  42. Richard and Anne, Cecily’s son and daughter-in-law, as portrayed by Edward Austin Abbey in 1896. Cecily outlived both Richard and Anne, long enough to see the Tudor regime established and a considerable degree of negative reaction against her son’s brief rule. She is described in her household ordinances as the mother of Edward IV but Richard is not mentioned, perhaps reflecting the mood of the times.

  43. Madonna and Child. Piety and devotion to the saints was a particularly significant part of medieval life, but even by those standards Cecily was pious and devoted, ending her life as a vowess, something similar to living in holy orders.

  44. Margaret Beaufort. Margaret’s third husband, Sir Thomas Stanley, played a significant role in supporting the 1485 invasion of her son, Henry Tudor, which ended the life and reign of Richard III.

  45. Henry VII and Henry VIII. In 1486, Cecily’s granddaughter, Elizabeth of York, married Henry VII, the victor of Bosworth Field.

  46. Raby Castle. A romantic view of Cecily’s birthplace, from a 1930s postcard.

  47. Fotheringhay memorial. The tomb erected in St Mary and All Saints’ church, Fotheringhay, Northampton, to Richard and Cecily. The originals were in a poor state when their great-granddaughter Elizabeth I visited and she commissioned this new memorial in the 1570s.

  Epilogue

  ffarewell London, and hafe good day

  At the I take my leve thys tyde

  ffarewell Grenewyche, for euer and ay

  ffarewell fayre place upon temys side!

  ffarewell, all welth in world so wyde

  I am [re]sygned where I shall be.1

  What exactly was Cecily’s contribution to history? On a purely dynastic level, she bore two kings of England and was grandmother to another. Her granddaughter became Queen of England and established a line that went on to rule in England and Scotland. She was the matriarch of the York family, a fitting partner for Richard, Duke of York, to uphold and fight for his overruled claim to the English throne. Her position was significant and ceremonial too. At York’s side for decades, she was the female face of English rule in France and Ireland, following the twists and turns of his turbulent career, and mourning his violent and controversial death. She certainly acted as advisor to her son Edward in the early years of his reign, and probably to George and Richard too, exerting a formidable influence behind the scenes that directly influenced royal policy and certain challenges to it. As a woman, she had little choice but to operate within the confines of medieval society, and her gender determined that she adopt certain courses of action instead of others. Cecily was one of the most powerful ladies in the land; in fact, between 1461 and 1464, as the king’s mother, she had no superior. Still, her life illuminates just how greatly she was prey to the whims of fortune and how powerless she often was in real terms. Prohibited from entering the masculine fields of combat or debate, she resorted to the tools of rumour and gossip, yet she was prepared to sacrifice her own good name in the process, if this achieved the desired result. Ultimately, she appears to have valued her regal claim above all, even when it necessitated the transcending of certain family ties. This may have contributed to situations that escalated beyond her control, with devastating consequences. Above all, Cecily was a woman of her times. But she was also far more than a typical woman of her times; she came within a hair’s breadth of sitting on the throne, on the verge of realising her long-cherished ambition, before fate cruelly snatched away her opportunity to rule. Most likely she was as ruthless, determined and impulsive as she was regal, beautiful and proud. This would have made her typical of the House of York, her raison d’être. It should come as no surprise that she was just as committed to her cause as her husband and sons, the Yorkist answer to the Lancastrian Margaret of Anjou. Cecily was the most formidable queen that England never had.

  At the time of Cecily’s death in 1495, she was survived by thirteen legitimate grandchildren. Her eldest daughter, Anne, had died in 1476 while giving birth to her second child, a girl named Anne St Leger. She inherited the huge Exeter estates, and Elizabeth Wydeville took an interest in her future, planning a match between her and Thomas Grey, Lord Ferrers of Groby, who had previously been married to her half-sister, who had died before Anne was born. In 1483, an Act of Parliament settled all the Exeter lands on Anne but, following the death of her uncle, Edward IV, Anne’s father supported a rebellion against Richard III and was executed. Anne was disinherited and did not marry until around the time of Cecily’s death. Her husband was George Manners, Baron de Ros, who was a supporter of Henry VII. She bore him eleven children and died in 1526, being buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. In the twenty-first century, it was Anne’s genealogical line, through her daughter Catherine, that provided the mitochondrial DNA to identify the remains of Richard III.

  Five of Cecily’s grandchildren from her son Edward outlived her. She had witnessed his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, become queen on her marriage to Henry VII in 1486, and since then she had borne four children, including princes Arthur and Henry, who were remembered in their grandmother’s will. After 1495, Elizabeth bore three, possibly four, more children, and died unexpectedly in childbirth in 1503. She was buried in the splendid new Lady Chapel that Henry VII had built for her, and he joined her there in 1509. Their eldest son, Arthur, was eight at the time of Cecily’s death, a studious young man whom his father was schooling carefully for kingship. His grandmother would hav
e considered him to be the future king, but she also knew that fate could cheat children of their inheritances and there was no guarantee of succession. It was a devastating blow for Arthur’s parents and the country when he died in April 1502, shortly after his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. It left his ebullient young brother Henry to inherit the throne. He became Henry VIII in 1509. His sisters, Margaret and Mary, became queens of Scotland and France.