Blood Sisters (45 page)

8
through the male line:
The question of inheritance through a female line would prove a recurrent issue in this century, despite the fact that it had long ago provided the basis for the Neville family’s power: after one Robert Fitz Meldred of Raby had married the daughter of Geoffrey de Neville, their son took the rich mother’s Neville name and founded this branch of the Neville family. See Young, Charles R.,
The Making of the Neville Family 1166–1400
, Boydell Press, 1996.

9
jointly to choose a confessor:
For what information exists on Cecily’s early married life, see Crawford,
Yorkists
, pp. 1, 3, 5.

10
Cecily’s expenditure:
For Cecily as a ‘late medieval big spender’ see Jones,
Bosworth 1485
, p. 59.

11
debate … about Edward’s birth:
These are the facts on which Michael K. Jones bases his argument that the suggestion Edward was not York’s son was in fact true. He points out (
Bosworth
, p. 67) that York was away from Rouen on campaign exactly nine months before Edward’s birth on 28 April 1442; has, indeed, found new documentation which shows the duke was away for longer than had been previously thought – from mid-July until after 20 August. But the baby would have had to be only a matter of weeks late or premature to put the argument in jeopardy, even disregarding the possibility of conjugal visits during a campaign fought only 50 miles away. See Crawford,
Yorkists
, pp. 173–8 for the facts that weigh against the theory. Jones also suggests that Cecily’s later piety was that of the reformed rake; but this theory, though fascinating, can only be speculative.

12
Edward took after his mother:
Edward’s different appearance would later be held up as evidence of his illegitimacy. But the same grounds would also be used by Richard III to infer the bastardy of Edward’s brother Clarence, who himself had been the first to accuse Edward of bastardy; and Clarence was born some years and several siblings down the line, and in a different country.

13
no sign of querying his son’s paternity:
and this as the all-important heir. As Horace Walpole put it (in
Historic Doubts
) in the eighteenth century – a time of notably lax aristocratic morality – ‘Ladies of the least disputable gallantry generally suffer their husbands to beget the heir’.

14
Mancini:
Dominic Mancini was an Italian visiting England for the first half of 1483 and writing a report on English affairs for his patron Angelo Cato, one of the advisers of the French king Louis. These comprised Richard III’s takeover of the country, as well as a certain amount of background. He left England in July 1483, though he seems to have tried to update his information right up until the point when he handed in his report at the beginning of December. It is unclear how good his sources were – though one may possibly have been John Argentine, physician to the boy king Edward V – or even how much English he spoke. None the less, because he was writing in the year the events he described took place his testimony is invaluable. It is perhaps worth noting that, though his report is usually known as the ‘Usurpation’ of Richard III, its Latin title actually referred to the ‘
Occupatio
’, i.e. occupation or seizure of the throne, rather than to its ‘
usurpatio
’.

15
relayed by … Charles of Burgundy:
When it reached Louis of France, so the report runs, he enjoyed it so much that he pretended deafness, so it might be repeated to him. But the sixteenth-century historian Pierre de Bourdeille, Seigneur de Brantome, reported in his
Memoirs
that Louis was a collector of ‘bawdy-tales of loose-living ladies … [He] had a very low opinion of women, and believed none to be chaste.’ A story concerning the notoriously pious Cecily, mother to Louis’ rival Edward, would surely have been a particularly effective passport to his favour. Pierre de Bourdeille,
The Lives of Gallant Ladies
, Pushkin Press, 1943, p. 325.

16
Jean de Waurin:
Jean or Jehan de Waurin (
c
.1398–
c
.1474) was born a Frenchman but wound up at the court of Burgundy, where he was commissioned to write a history of England, ending in 1471. A single copy of his
Recueil
survived in the library of Louis de Gruuthuyse, q.v.

17
Marguerite, whose father:
Although some said now that Marguerite was not even her father’s legitimate daughter, an accusation hurled against her by Edward in Shakespeare’s
Henry VI Part 3
, along with the charge that when he married her Henry VI ‘took a beggar to his bed’.

18
Shakespeare has Marguerite pleading:
Henry VI Part 2
, Act 3, Scene 2.

19
a high-spending queen:
Myers and Clough in
Crown, Household and Parliament in Fifteenth Century England
: studies on ‘The Household of Queen Margaret of Anjou, 1452–3’; ‘Some Household Ordinances of Henry VI’; as well as on ‘The Household of Queen Elizabeth Woodville, 1466–7’.

20
Margaret [Beaufort] had been raised at her own family seat:
Though another theory (see Hardyment,
Malory
, p. 244) suggests that she was at least partly raised in Alice Chaucer’s household at Ewelme.

21
Cecily … wrote to Marguerite:
Crawford,
Letters of Medieval Women
, pp. 233–5. On the birth of her son Richard Cecily writes of an ‘encumberous labour, to me full painful and uneasy, God knoweth’.

22
Thomas More:
More’s
History of King Richard the Third
brings into sharp focus many of the issues which bedevil the historical sources for the late fifteenth century. That focus is all the sharper not only for More’s own later reputation as a figure of probity, but for the extremely attractive (and quotable) nature of his writing – full of lengthy reported speeches and the kind of human drama not always found in other sources of the day.

The first question is whether More can be regarded as a contemporary, given that he – born in 1478 – is describing the events of 1483. (His mention of Richard’s birth, like his descriptions of Richard’s brother’s marriage, are all part of the back story to his main theme.) But this apart, the long impassioned speeches he gives to Elizabeth Woodville and her opponents over the surrendering of the younger of the Princes in the Tower could in any case not credibly have been relayed to him verbatim even by someone who was present. They give point to the observation that his
History
is as much a matter of literary creation as factual narrative – a conscious warning against the dangers of tyranny owing a good deal to classical models. (Unless – a suggestion mooted by R.S. Sylvester, editing the sixteen-volume Yale edition of More’s works – he was drawing on a now-lost piece of writing by someone, possibly John Morton, in whose household the youthful More spent some time.)

Morton (whose own experience would help account for More’s anti-Richard bias) has most often been suggested as More’s probable source of information: other theories, however, have been raised. Jones (
Bosworth
, pp. 63–4) postulates that ‘Jane’ Shore, whom More evidently knew, may have given him some information, though she would hardly have been privy to the speeches mentioned above; Weir (
The Princes in the Tower
, p. 170) points out that More was in close touch with a nun in the Minoresses’ convent of Aldgate, the inmates of which might have had important information to give him concerning the fate of the princes (the daughter of Sir Robert Brackenbury and two female relatives of Sir James Tyrell: see Part v, note 23 on p. 375 for Tyrell’s supposed confession). It is More’s testimony concerning the fate of the princes which has been more influential even than Vergil’s in blackening the reputation of Richard III: none the less, supporters of King Richard can choose between simply blaming him for calumny, and speculating that the reason he left his narrative unfinished, ending at the point of the murder, may have been that he had come to realise this version of events was a lie. Assuming, of course, that he did indeed abandon it at this point …
The History of King Richard III
was printed only two decades after his death, at which time it was described merely as having been found among More’s papers and was in his hand, so that even the authorship could – the crowning uncertainty – be seen as unclear.

23
honour or dishonour:
Helen Cooper writes in her introduction to the OUP edition of Malory’s
Morte d’Arthur
: ‘Malory’s Arthurian world operates by the principles of a shame culture, where worth is measured in terms of reputation, “worship”, rather than by the principles of a guilt culture.’

24
several of the early Norman queens:
The two Matildas – the Conqueror’s wife and daughter-in-law – exercised this kind of power, as did Eleanor of Aquitaine, while in 1253 Henry III had named his queen Eleanor of Provence regent during his absence.

25
process was completed:
Maurer in
Margaret of Anjou
states on p. 78: ‘There has been a tendency among historians to acknowledge Margaret’s [
sic
] emergence as a political actor but then to shy away from looking at it too closely. A part of the problem lies in the traditional habit of regarding the Wars of the Roses from the perspective of its male protagonists.’ See also Maurer, pp. 81–2.

26
two sides of the same unnatural coin:
This is the theory by which Richard, in
Henry VI P
art 3, 5.5 accused her of having usurped her husband’s breeches, i.e. his masculinity.

27
Anne Neville:
Another aspect of Neville power was that it was northern. Anne Neville was, of course, great-niece as well, eventually, as daughter-in-law to Cecily.

28
perhaps physically:
The famous thirteenth-century tract
Holy Maidenhead
paints a horrifying picture of maternity: ‘a swelling in your womb which bulges you out like a water-skin, discomfort in your bowels and stitches in your side … the dragging weight of your two breasts, and the streams of milk that run from them… . Worry about your labour pains keeps you awake at night. Then when it comes to it, that cruel distressing anguish, that incessant misery, that torment upon torment, that wailing outcry; while you are suffering from this, and from your fear of death, shame [is] added to that suffering… .’ (Leyser,
Medieval Women
, p. 123). The same tract paints an equally damning picture of a wife’s lot – the child screaming, ‘the cat at the flitch and the dog at the hide, her loaf burning on the hearth and her calf sucking, the pot boiling over into the fire – and her husband complaining.’ (Leyser, p. 146). But at least that is a position with which Margaret Beaufort would not have to cope. The tract may have been written specifically for an audience of enclosed religious women: later in life Margaret Beaufort would be recorded as fitting out a cell for at least one anchoress, at Stamford in Lincolnshire, and making her gifts of wine and apples.

29
Bernard André:
Also known as Andreus, 1450–1522, French Augustinian friar who was appointed Poet Laureate in the first few years of Henry VII’s reign; became his official ‘historiographer’ (and inevitably apologist); and played a role in the education of his sons.
Vita Henrici Septimi
in
Memorials of King Henry VII,
ed. J. Gairdner, Rolls Series, London, 1858.

30
a new marriage had to be arranged for her:
Or perhaps – since she did, after all, ride out to be present at the negotiations – her modern biographers are right to suggest she took a hand in arranging it herself. Earlier biographers of Margaret Beaufort preferred to stress her piety and resignation.

31
unmanly and cruelly was entreated:
English Chronicle of the Reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and Henry VI
, p. 83.

32
‘submitted her unto his grace’:
Gregory’s Chronicle
, p. 206.

33
relief of [Cecily] and her infants:
Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry VI, 1452–61
, p. 542.

34
the Countess of Salisbury was personally attainted:
a comparatively novel procedure where a woman was concerned. From the parliamentary rolls of 1442: ‘Also pray the commons … that it may please you, by the advice and assent of the lords spiritual and temporal in this present parliament assembled, to declare that such ladies (duchesses, countesses, or baronesses) thus indicted … of any treason or felony … whether they are married or single, should be held to reply and set for judgement before such judges and peers of the realm as are other peers of the realm… .’

35
chair of blue velvet:
Weightman,
Margaret of York
, p. 45;
Paston Letters
, iii, p. 233.

36
Hall and Holinshed:
For
The Union of the Two Noble Families of Lancaster and York
Hall (
c
.1498–1547) drew heavily on Vergil and on More; in fact, when More’s
History
was first printed, it was described as having appeared earlier in Hall but ‘very much corrupt … altered in words and whole sentences’. Raphael Holinshed (?–1580) first published the
Chronicles
containing his
History of England
in 1577; his work, more directly even than Hall’s, which in large parts it reproduces (a modern age would say plagiarises), is the major source for Shakespeare’s history plays. John Stow (1525–1605, mentioned subsequently in text), who contributed to a later edition of Holinshed’s work, was also an antiquary who transcribed a number of manuscripts.