Authors: Sarah Gristwood
More has Elizabeth answering fluently and bravely. If the young King Edward needed company, why should not both her royal sons be placed in her care – the more so since the younger boy had been ill and needed his mother’s attention? It was, of course, the last thing to which the councillors were likely to agree. Why not find other peers’ sons for him to play with, rather than his still ailing brother? She replied that the law made her as his mother his guardian (‘as my learned counsel shows me’) in the absence of any other knightly ties. ‘You may not take hence my horse from me; and may you take my child from me?’ she asked. It was another telling point. She added that the imprisonment of her brother and Grey son Richard hardly inspired confidence; that protection for herself or her other children could not be assured in a time of ‘greedy’ men; and that yes, her son did have the right to claim sanctuary: Richard had come up with ‘a goodly glose’ – a clever misinterpretation – to claim that ‘a place that may defend a thief may not save an innocent’.
But the real point, of course, was the unspoken one: the fear that if Elizabeth refused to hand over her boy he would simply be snatched away. Sanctuary was a moral rather than a physical concept; this was the middle of Westminster, with the Protector himself waiting in another part of the palace only a few hundred yards away; and Mancini says that ‘with the consent of the council [Richard] surrounded the sanctuary with troops’.
As More tells it, the question of taking the boy by force was a matter of some dissent among the lords themselves, some of the lords spiritual holding back, but the majority agreeing to do whatever was necessary. In the end it was Thomas Bourchier, the Archbishop of Canterbury (and a relative of the York brothers through their father’s sister), who broke the deadlock, telling Elizabeth that if she sent the boy now he himself would guarantee the prince’s safety, but that if she refused he would have nothing more to do with a woman who seemed to think that ‘all others save herself lacked either wit or truth’. More adds: ‘The Queen with these words stood a good while in a great study.’
More’s pages need some decoding,
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for Elizabeth’s words were surely polished afterwards: ‘And at the last she took the young duke by the hand, and said to the lords, “my Lord”, quod she, “and all my lords, I am neither so unwise [as] to mistrust your wits, nor so suspicious to mistrust your troths.”’ It may have been More’s hindsight that makes her add: ‘We have also had experience that the desire of a kingdom knows no kindred. The brother has been the brother’s bane. And may the nephews be sure of their uncle?’ But these are considerations of which everyone must, in any case, have been aware.
As her son prepared to depart, ‘And therewithal she said to the child, “Farewell my own sweet son, God send you good keeping. Let me kiss you once yet before you go, for God knows when we shall kiss together again.” And therewith she kissed him, and blessed him, turned her back and wept and went her way, leaving the child weeping as fast.’ When the lords brought the little boy through the palace to his uncle, waiting in Star Chamber, Richard received him kindly, welcoming him ‘with all my very heart’. The Stonor letters report confidently that the child had gone with the archbishop to the Tower ‘where he is blessed be Jesu merry’. But his uncle’s hands were now free. Immediately, both coronation and parliament were deferred until November.
On 21 June Simon Stallworthe, who had previously urged Sir William Stonor to come to London, was writing: ‘I hold you happy that you are out of the press, for with us is much trouble and every man doubts other.’ The Archbishop of York and Morton, the Bishop of Ely, were in the Tower but he hoped ‘they shall come out nevertheless’; Mistress Shore was in prison and ‘what shall happen her I know not’; twenty thousand of Richard’s and Buckingham’s men were expected in the city, ‘to what intent I know not but to keep the peace’. Crowland too wrote of armed men ‘in frightening and unheard of numbers’. The detention of Edward V’s servants and relatives, he added, had been causing widespread concern, ‘besides the fact that the Protector did not, with a sufficient degree of considerateness, take measure for the preservation of the dignity and safety of the Queen’.
The dignity of Elizabeth Woodville was about to suffer a far worse insult. On Sunday, 22 June a Dr Ralph Shaa delivered at St Paul’s Cross a sermon to the effect that ‘Bastard Slips Shall Never Take Deep Root’. Other sermons on the same theme were preached around the city that day. The most serious – because more plausible – of the various allegations made was the spectre raised by Clarence during his rebellion: that Edward IV’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville had been invalid, because he was already contracted to another lady. The debate still runs today as to whether there was any truth in the accusation; or, indeed, whether invalidity in his parents’ marriage would necessarily have debarred Edward V from the throne.
On the 24th the Duke of Buckingham addressed a Guildhall convocation with a secular version of the story: the tale of a prior contract, along with the old slur that Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville was in any case ‘not well made’ since her blood ‘was full unmeetly to be match with his’ and a general deprecation of Edward’s sexual appetite. There was, More represents him as saying, no woman who caught Edward’s eye ‘but without fear of God, or respect of his honour, murmur or grudge of the world, he would importunately pursue his appetite’ so that ‘more suit was in his days to Shore’s wife, a vile and abominable strumpet, than to all the Lords in England’. Commynes declares it was Bishop Stillington who told Richard the truth about his brother’s marriage; it has been suggested, by those who believe the allegation, that he now displayed his proof.
There was another allegation in the air, too; one on which (More said) Buckingham touched only lightly, since Richard had asked him to avoid it because ‘nature requireth a filial reverence to the Duchess his mother’. The allegation was that other spectre Clarence had once raised: that Edward (and indeed, it was now hinted, also Clarence himself) were the bastard fruits of Cecily’s adultery.
More has the preacher Shaa declaring that neither Edward IV nor Clarence was ‘reckoned very surely’ as the Duke of York’s children, since they more closely resembled other men. Vergil says Shaa simply stated that their bastardy ‘was manifest enough, and that by apparent argument’. Both More and Vergil were writing some years later; and it has been suggested that the whole notion of Richard’s having raised the issue – of, as Vergil puts it, the ‘madness’ of his ‘wicked mind’ – was simply a Tudor slander. The Tudors, of course, did need to find alternative grounds for Richard’s complaint, since the allegation about Edward’s own marriage touched Elizabeth of York too nearly. But Mancini does say that ‘corrupted preachers’ declared Edward ‘was conceived in adultery’, no way resembling his supposed father, and Mancini was writing within months of the event.
On the question of the adultery itself, there is no real evidence from Cecily’s time at Rouen on which to judge. But a decade later, on the edge of eternity, she would declare herself in her will ‘wife unto the right noble prince Richard late Duke of York, father unto the most Christian prince my Lord and son King Edward the iiiith’. Cecily did not so boast of Richard of Gloucester; but then to do so in Henry VII’s reign would have lacked tact. But she made no bequests to Clarence’s children as she did to her other grandchildren, which possibly militates against the idea that she herself had originated the claim he had made.
Vergil states that Cecily, ‘being falsely accused of adultery, complained afterwards in sundry places to right many noble men, whereof some yet live, of that great injury which her son Richard had done her’. Another view,
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however, holds that she was entirely supportive of Richard’s takeover, if not actually the orchestrator of it – even to the extent of letting her reputation be sullied. But evidence is wanting.
Richard based himself at Baynard’s Castle, his mother’s house, for some of this time, but it is not known whether she was actually there. The Archbishop of Canterbury recorded that the first, early May, meeting, at which it was agreed to take possession of Edward’s seals, was held at the ‘
solite
’ (accustomed, wonted) residence of the duchess. But the London house was not Cecily’s only regular residence, and the list of those present at the meeting – senior clerics and officials, all male – does not mention her name.
It is conceivable that Cecily’s animosity towards Elizabeth Woodville extended to her sons – but there is no reason to assume that at the time it would have been clear beforehand that the deposition of the boys would be followed by their deaths. Arguably, the simple substitution of an adult for an under-aged male to ensure the York family maintained the power it had only recently attained might not have seemed so outrageous in an earlier era. The right of inheritance to the throne
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was not too clearly defined in the fifteenth century – witness the comparative flexibility in the matter of choice that had allowed one ruler to depose another with comparative impunity. In such a climate, to replace a juvenile member of the family by a more viable candidate from the same house might seem a simple matter of practicality when its status was seen as dependent not on the safety and welfare of its individual members but on the progress of the family as an entity. Moreover, if Cecily did indeed collaborate with Richard to any degree she may have seen her function as that of a mediator or intercessionary, since part of the duties of a medieval lady was to prevent the men in her family going far too far.
Cecily must have given a measure of acquiescence, since she did not cut off contact with Richard (the next spring, the grant of her manors and lands,
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and of Berkhamsted, were confirmed); but possibly no more than that. If she were indeed by now living largely retired from the world, she may have taken refuge in her solitude and distance. And if she were anything less than totally committed to Richard’s plan, then Vergil’s report that she ‘complained afterwards’ about the slur on her virtue has a certain ring of probability. It would surely have been easier for Shaa to preach that sermon if Cecily and Cecily’s servants weren’t in London to hear it? By the time report of it spread it could be softened or explained slightly … And on one significant occasion at the end of these few weeks, we do have at least negative evidence as to Cecily’s movements. When her son Richard was crowned king Cecily would not be there. That is far from conclusive: the widow of a deceased monarch did not normally attend the coronation of his successor, and some such prohibition may have inhibited Cecily.
fn8
Margaret Beaufort would be recorded as observing, rather than playing an active part in, her son’s coronation ceremony. But Cecily is not mentioned at any point during the extensive records of Richard’s lengthy festivities.
Whatever Cecily’s role, on 25 June in the north of England, Anthony Woodville was executed, as was Elizabeth Woodville’s son Richard Grey. On the same day Buckingham, with a deputation of London officials, went to Baynard’s Castle to beg Richard to assume the throne.
Rest thy unrest on England’s lawful earth,
Unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.
Richard III
, 4.4
On 26 June Richard proceeded to Westminster Hall to take the royal seat in the court of the King’s Bench. It was from this day that he dated his accession. On 6 July he was crowned and Anne Neville, with whatever different expectation she may have arrived in London, was crowned as his queen in the first double coronation of an already-married king for almost two centuries.
There must have been a particular concern that in these most unusual circumstances everything should be done by the book – literally. A special document, the
Little Device
, laying down the formalities was drawn up in addition to the more generally applicable
Liber Regalis
. The list of accounts for, and goods provided by, the Great Wardrobe is in itself an extraordinary document:
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page after page records everything from the commissioning of silk fringe and buttons of Venice gold from two silkwomen, Alice Claver and Cecily Walcote, to ‘slops’ of Spanish leather, banners and saddlery.
Anne first takes centre stage in these records on 3 July, when she and Richard exchanged formal gifts. He gave her 24 yards of purple cloth of gold and seven of purple velvet; in return she offered 20 yards of purple velvet decorated with garters and roses. Next day they travelled to spend a night in the royal apartments at the Tower, as tradition dictated. The hurried nature of the proceedings, the briefness of the journey from Baynard’s Castle and the fact that Anne was not being crowned in a separate ceremony meant that she did not receive the usual pageants not only to honour her queenship and lay down her specific role but to acknowledge her ancestry and her own identity.
Richard, Mancini says, had summoned six thousand men from his estates and Buckingham’s, and now stationed them ‘at suitable points’ in case of ‘any uproar’. When they set out for the Abbey the new queen wore her hair loose under a jewelled circlet in the symbol of virginity which had become linked to the coronation ritual – however inappropriate it might be for the long-married Anne, as it had been for Elizabeth Woodville before her. Seated in a canopied litter of white damask and white cloth of gold, fringed and decorated with ribbon and bells, Anne and her procession followed Richard’s. She was dressed, too, in white cloth of gold, tasselled and furred (in July!) with ermine and miniver. Two of her gentleman ushers and her chamberlain preceded her; her henchmen, her horse of state and three carriages bearing twelve noblewomen came behind.