Anne and Isobel Neville – Pawns in the War of the Roses

Do you have a glamorous view of history? Do you think that the Anne and Isobel Neville lived exciting, dazzling lives or were controlled as pawns in a high risk political game? Much of how we perceive our past has been shaped by films, TV and historical novels where handsome knights romance beautiful ladies in gorgeous frocks. The reality, however, was somewhat different.  For most ordinary people, life consisted of hard work, little education, poor healthcare and hygiene and very few chances to get ahead in life. For women it was even harder, as they were viewed as possessions of their families and were married off as advantageously as possible.  Love was not considered to be a factor; even liking your future spouse was not taken into consideration in many cases.  The life of a poor woman consisted of hard work, marriage, bearing children and struggling to bring them up.  Infant mortality was high and women had large families, where sometimes very few of the children reached adulthood.

Richard III and Anne Neville, Rous Roll

But what if you were a princess or born into an aristocratic family like Anne and Isobel Neville?  Surely then your life would have been more like the Hollywood movie? Not really, is the answer.  Royal and noble women in medieval times were still controlled by their family.  They would have been reared with the skills to run a large household and be a mother, but they probably had been betrothed at a young age to someone they might not even have met.  Their lives would have been more comfortable and they would have the beautiful gowns and jewels, but their lives could still be cut cruelly short by disease or death in childbirth.

So let’s have a look at the lives of these two sisters in 15^th century England, who on the surface of things seemed to have had such romantic and exciting lives? Isobel and Anne Neville were both born at Warwick Castle; Isobel in 1451 and Anne in 1456.  Their parents were Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick and his wife Anne Beauchamp.  The couple were to have no further children and this would be a grievous blow to the Earl as it meant that he had no heir. Girls at that time could inherit property and estates, but not carry on the title. Both of the girls spent much of their childhood at Middleham Castle in Yorkshire in the company of Richard the young Duke of Gloucester, George Duke of Clarence and Francis Lovell.  Their childhood was played out against the violent backdrop of the War of the Roses and they were both to become pawns in the struggle for the throne.

The Earl of Warwick supported the claim of Edward of York and helped him onto the throne as King Edward IV.  Edward was the elder brother of George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester, and this is why Warwick took them into his household and was keen for them to become close to his daughters.  He was looking to consolidate his power by marrying them to the two royal princes, who at this time were still Edward’s heirs.  The Earl of Warwick became dissatisfied with his rewards for helping Edward IV gain the throne and was outraged when he married the widow Elizabeth Grey, humiliating him as he was negotiating an alliance for Edward with a French princess.  He was desperately unhappy with the amount of titles, lands and money that Edward lavished on his new wife’s family and what he regarded as the new Queen’s grasping, avaricious nature.

In 1469 Isobel was betrothed to George of Clarence.  This was against the king’s wishes as he believed that the union would bring too much power and influence to Warwick. Because of Edward’s disapproval, Warwick took the young couple to Calais where they were married on 11^th July 1469 by Warwick’s brother George Neville, Archbishop of York.  The Duke of Clarence turned traitor against his brother the King and threw his lot in with Warwick and the Lancastrians who were plotting to overthrow Edward IV and restore Henry VI to the throne.

 At this time the Lancastrian forces were led by Henry VI’s wife Marguerite of Anjou, and to cement their alliance the Earl of Warwick offered his 14 years old daughter Anne in marriage to the 17 year old Prince of Wales.  They were formally betrothed at the Chateau d’Amboise with the blessing of the French king.  The Earl of Warwick had Anne’s sister Isobel in his train along with her traitorous husband George, Duke of Clarence.

However, after Anne was married to Edward, Prince of Wales, Clarence perceived this to be a snub to him and his pretensions to power.  So he threw himself on his brother’s mercy and betrayed Warwick to return to his brother’s side with his large army.  Marguerite of Anjou had been suspicious of Warwick’s motives because of Clarence’s presence, but Warwick returned to England to fight to restore Henry VI to the throne.  He was initially successful but was eventually killed at the Battle of Barnet early in 1471.

 

Anne Neville returned to England with Marguerite and Edward, but their army was defeated at the Battle of Tewkesbury in May 1471.  Her young husband was killed and she was imprisoned along with Marguerite.   It has been argued that Richard of Gloucester was closely involved in the death of the young Prince of Wales, as he himself wanted to marry Anne. Again it has been argued that this was because he was in love with her or, more cynically perhaps, that it was because he wanted to get his hands on the estates and possessions of her late father and her mother’s vast Beauchamp inheritance. She was taken first to Coventry and then to the household of her sister and brother-in-law, the Duke of Clarence who was once more back in the Yorkist fold.

Richard of Gloucester asked his brother Edward IV for Anne’s hand in marriage, which outraged Clarence who believed that he should get the lion’s share of the Warwick estates and titles.   There is a story that Anne was either so scared of Clarence that she ran away and worked as a kitchen maid in a chophouse in the city or was put there by the Clarence to keep her out of Richard’s hands.  Richard supposedly tracked her down and placed her in sanctuary at Westminster Abbey until they could be married on 12^th July 1472, with the King’s blessing.  Richard was allocated much of Warwick’s former estates after his marriage. He was also appointed Governor of the North and the young ducal couple spent most of their time at Middleham Castle.  Their only child, a son called Edward, was born there some time in 1473.

Warwick Castle

The Clarence’s first child was stillborn, but in 1473 their daughter Margaret was born and in 1475 she was followed by their son Edward.  Tragically, Isobel died the following year at the very young age of 25, probably from consumption.  After Isobel’s death, Clarence continued to plot against his brother the King and was finally imprisoned in the Tower of London.  He was executed privately there in 1478 and there is a legend that he was killed by being drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.  Anne Neville, as their aunt, took his two young children into her care.  Isobel and George’s son Edward later became Earl of Warwick and Earl of Salisbury, but historians believe that he may have had learning difficulties.  After the Battle of Bosworth, Henry VII kept him in prison because of his claim to the throne and he was executed in 1499 supposedly because he had been plotting to escape with the pretender Perkin Warbeck.   Their daughter Margaret was married to Sir Richard Pole and had five children and she was allowed to take the title Countess of Salisbury.  When she was 67 year old she was charged with treason by Henry VIII and beheaded.  There is a story that she refused to lay her head on the block and that the inexperienced executioner had to strike her with his axe ten times before he managed to kill her.

Edward IV died prematurely in 1483, and after confronting the Woodville’s and declaring his two nephews illegitimate, Richard took the crown and Anne was crowned Queen and their son Edward created Prince of Wales.  Edward tragically died suddenly at Sheriff Hutton Castle in April 1484 at the age of 11.  His mother Anne was already suffering from consumption and seemed unlikely to bear another child.  Rumours apparently sprang up at the Court that Richard was planning to divorce Anne and marry his niece Elizabeth of York. When Anne Neville died in March 1485 at the young age of 28, more rumours arose that Richard had poisoned her so that he could marry a healthy young wife who could bear him an heir.  Anne Neville died in the Palace of Westminster during an eclipse of the sun. She was buried in an unmarked grave in Westminster Abbey, and there was no memorial for her until in 1960 the Richard III Society installed a bronze tablet.  Her husband, Richard III died a few months later during the Battle of Bosworth, ending the rule of Plantagenet kings in England.

So however entrancing the lives of these two women may seem to have seemed on the surface, in reality they both died tragically young, after suffering from consumption (tuberculosis).   In their short lives they had been used as political pawns first by their father, the Earl of Warwick and then by the two Plantagenet brothers they were married to.  They knew the heartache of losing children at a young age and had had to bear the grief of the deaths of many of their close relatives and companions on the battlefield or on the scaffold, including their own father and Anne’s youthful first husband. Their stories make a good historical tale, but did they have a happy, fulfilled life?

Richard III family image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Warwick Castle Image Roland Turner Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Mystery People of History – Francis Lovell

Francis Lovell was born in 1454 in a country that was riven by civil war; a conflict that was known as the War of the Roses.  He was the son of Joan Beaumont and John, the 8^th Baron Lovell of Titchmarsh, who had sided with the Lancastrians and King Henry VI.

In 1465 Lord Lovell died leaving Francis as his heir.  He became a ward of the Yorkist King Edward IV who put him in the guardianship of Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, who was known as the ‘Kingmaker’.  The Earl of Warwick had massive holdings in the north of England and Francis was sent to his household at Middleham Castle in Wensleydale.  

It has widely been supposed that this is where he first met the young Richard Plantagenet, youngest brother of the new Yorkist king, with whom he would strike up a strike up an enduring friendship and fight alongside in Scotland and at the Battle of Bosworth. But this is by no means certain as Richard could have already left Middleham by the time Francis arrived.

Ruins of Minster Lovell

All the noble young boys of the Earl of Warwick’s household would have had extensive training and practice in hunting, riding and the use of arms.  They would also have been instructed in religion, mathematics, Latin and in the art of chivalry and etiquette. Evenings would be taken up in practising dance, singing and playing musical instruments. 

Francis had inherited huge estates that included holdings all across England, including Upton Lovell in Wiltshire, Acton Burnell in Shropshire, Rotherfield and Bainton in Yorkshire and his full title at the end of his life was Francis Viscount Lovell, Lord Holland, Deincourt, Burnell and Grey of Rotherfield. 

He was to married Anne Fitzhugh, a cousin of the Neville sisters, and the daughter of Henry Fitzhugh of Ravensworth and Alice Neville. The world of the Yorkist elite was a tightly-knit one, and Anne Neville would go on to marry Richard Plantagenet who became the Duke of Gloucester and Isabel married his brother George, the traitorous Duke of Clarence.

At some point Francis joined the service of Richard, Duke of Gloucester and was knighted by him while they were on an expeditionary force in Scotland in 1480. By 1483 he had been created a Viscount. The events of 1483 were to prove tumultuous as Richard’s brother Edward IV died prematurely, leaving a young son to inherit the crown as Edward V. 

This created a battle for power between the factions of the Duke of Gloucester and the new King’s mother, the Woodvilles. Although initially appearing to support his nephew and making arrangements for his coronation, Richard dramatically seized the throne for himself, being crowned King Richard III in Westminster Abbey.
Ever loyal and rising to prominence in the new administration, Francis Lovell bore the third sword at his coronation.

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Further honours were showered on him during Richard’s brief reign; he became Chief Butler of All England, Privy Councillor and Lord Chancellor of the Kings Household.  He was also created a Knight of the Garter, the premier order of chivalry in the realm.  

The important position he held is illustrated by his inclusion in the Collingbourne couplet ‘The cat, the rat and Lovell our dog rule all England under a Hog’.  The cat is William Catesby, the Rat is Richard Ratcliffe, the Hog is King Richard himself whose cognizance was the White Boar and the dog refers to a dog on the Lovell heraldic crest.

Richard III’s reign was, as was stated earlier, destined to be a short one.  Early on Francis was active in the suppression of the rebellion the Duke of Buckingham raised in favour of Henry Tudor, the Earl of Richmond.  Henry Tudor was the last surviving Lancastrian claimant to the throne and was a permanent black cloud hovering over Richard III's rule.  

Exiled in the Court of Brittany, he was aided by his mother, the formidable Margaret Beaufort, and the wily Archbishop Morton.  In 1485 he set sail and gave the fleet that Francis had charge of the slip, landing on British soil at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire.

The opposing forces eventually met in battle at Bosworth Field on August 22^nd 1485, and at first Richard III’s army prevailed. However, treachery was afoot and the tide of battle turned in favour of Henry Tudor and Richard III was hacked down and killed, the last monarch of England to be killed on a battlefield.  

Francis Lovell managed to escape the battlefield alive and fled to sanctuary at St John’s Abbey in Colchester.  In 1486 he escaped the abbey to lead a badly organised revolt against the new King Henry VII.  When this revolt was put down, he managed to escape to the court of Margaret of Burgundy in the Netherlands.

In May 1487 he travelled to Ireland to join forces with John de la Pole, Earl of Lincoln and a band of German mercenaries whose aim was to topple the new Tudor monarch Henry VII off his throne in favour of a young pretender called Lambert Simnel. 

Lambert Simnel was the teenage son of a baker, who bore a striking resemblance to Richard, Duke of York, one of the Princes in the Tower and the second son of Edward IV.  The plans were later changed and it was decided that Lambert Simnel would impersonate Edward, Earl of Warwick instead, after a rumour circulated that the Earl of Warwick had escaped his confinement in the Tower of London.  Although they managed to reach English soil they were defeated at the Battle of Stoke in Nottinghamshire in June 1487.

Now you may be wondering what makes Francis Lovell one of the ‘Mystery People of History’? He certainly endured a disruptive childhood, with his father dying while he was young and he had also lived most of his life in the uncertainties of a civil war.  Many of his closest companions such as the two Neville sisters and Richard III had died young and in tragic circumstances.  But it was to be his ending that was to provide the mystery, for none of us really know when he died.

It was speculated at the time that he was slain during the course of the Battle of Stoke and his body was never found, but some observers saw him fleeing the fighting by swimming on horseback across the River Trent and scrambling to safety on the far side.  But he was never heard of again so where did he go after that?

Site of the Battle of Stoke 1487

Officially, after the Battle of Stoke a court was held that decided that in the absence of any firm evidence or a body, he must have fled the country and died abroad. He was declared a traitor and his lands were confiscated and handed to Sir William Stanley, who had betrayed Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth.

Francis Lovell’s ancestral home was Minster Lovell which had been built beside the Windrush River in Oxfordshire in 1440 by the seventh Lord Lovell and which survived until 1747 when it was torn down. Mysteriously, during building work at Minster Lovell carried out in 1708, workmen discovered a secret underground vault.  When they opened it they were astonished to find that it contained the skeleton of a man seated at a table with the skeleton of his dog at his feet surrounded by writing materials and a book. Unfortunately, the remains of the skeleton and the papers crumbled in to dust when the air was let in.

Was the skeleton that of Francis Lovell?  Did he escape the battlefield with his enemies in hot pursuit and manage to slip into his ancestral home under the cover of darkness?  Once there, not even trusting his own retainers, did he make his way to the secret chamber to wait for a time when he could make his stealthy escape and flee the country?  Or did he take one trusted servant into his secret and managed to survive for a couple of years in the hidden vault, until one day the servant no longer came to bring him food, water and fuel? 

If either tale is true, his decision to hide away cost him his life.  At what point did he realise that he was sealed in the chamber and could not escape? That lack of water and food would surely kill him?  Perhaps that is why he was at the table surrounded by writing materials; maybe he was writing down his story so that future generations would know the truth? 

Minster Lovell is said to be haunted by the ghost of a knight clad in gleaming armour and riding on a snowy white horse. Is this the phantom of the tragic young Sir Francis Lovell eternally riding back to find refuge in his ancestral home? 

Francis’s is not the only mysterious story from Minster Lovell, as legend has it that some time during the 16^th century a youthful couple were joined in marriage.  After the wedding ceremony the bride and groom suggested a game of ‘hide and seek and the young bride was chosen to hide.  

However, when the wedding party scoured the mansion to find her, no trace could be found.  The hours ticked by but there was no sign of the young bride.  The families fell to arguing between themselves and accusations of foul play started to be flung around, causing the two families to fall out.  It was not until the family were moving house some time later that a supposedly empty large box felt too heavy when it was lifted.  

When the box was opened they discovered the skeleton of the poor unfortunate bride.  She had obviously crawled into it and had been unable to open the lid and climb out again.  This tragic, romantic story was used by the Victorian Thomas Haynes Bayley as the basis of his ballad ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ written in 1884.

So what do you think?  Did Francis Lovell manage to flee abroad and die there?  Did he manage to get away from the battlefield only to die in some lonely forest or cave, with his body never being found?  Or was it even his skeleton in that secret vault?

Minster Lovell image Robin Drayton Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Battle of Stoke Image Peter Mattock Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 2.0 Generic

Sources: http://monikasimon.eu/lovell.html, http://www.r3ne.org/articles/speculations-on-francis-lovel-richards-shadowy-friend/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Lovell,_1st_Viscount_Lovell, http://www.tameside.gov.uk/blueplaque/francislovell

Have They Found the Lost Burial of King Richard III?

You would expect to find a medieval king of England buried in an elaborate marble tomb in an important ecclesiastical building such as Westminster Abbey or St George’s Chapel in Windsor. But for the last Plantagenet King of England, Richard III, there was no such impressive memorial to commemorate his life and reign and the location of his grave was an unsolved mystery for hundreds of years.  So you can imagine the excitement when a team from the University of Leicester started to search for the grave of the lost king, especially as the king in question was the notorious and controversial Richard III.  For he is the infamous English monarch who was accused of murdering his own nephews to gain his crown and was portrayed by the famous bard William Shakespeare as an evil, deformed hunchback with a withered arm.

King Richard III

However, it must be remembered that history is written by the victors and descriptions of Richard’s appearance penned by the likes of Shakespeare, Thomas Moore and Raphael Holinshed were Tudor propaganda designed to shore up the legitimacy and power of the new royal dynasty and smear the Yorkist king’s reputation in order to justify leading a rebellion against him and usurping his throne. Inconveniently for Henry Tudor’s supporters, until the unexpected death of his elder brother King Edward IV, Richard’s reputation had been blameless.  Unusually in the chaos that was the War of the Roses, Richard had remained totally loyal to his older brother, even when his other brother George, Duke of Clarence sided with the Earl of Warwick and joined with the Lancastrian forces headed by Margaret of Anjou.  He was richly rewarded by a grateful Edward IV, who gave him the title of Duke of Gloucester and allowed his marriage to the traitorous Warwick’s daughter Anne Neville.  Richard spent little time at the court in London, and based himself mainly in the north, where he led several successful campaigns against the Scots and recaptured Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1482.

After Edward’s unexpected death in 1483, Richard was named Lord Protector and marched down from Yorkshire to meet up with his nephew the twelve year old new King Edward V.  Edward V was travelling to London in the company of his maternal uncle, Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, who Richard arrested and subsequently executed along with Richard Grey and Thomas Vaughan in Pontefract Castle. Once he arrived in London with the new King, Richard lodged him in the Tower of London, which was the traditional place where English monarchs stayed before their coronation and persuaded Edward’s mother, Elizabeth Woodville, to allow his younger brother Richard, Duke of York to join him.  The arrangements for Edward’s coronation were going ahead when Richard suddenly changed tack and seized the crown for himself, citing as the reason that his nephews were illegitimate because his brother Edward IV has already made a contract to marry another woman, Lady Eleanor Butler, before he secretly married Elizabeth Woodville.

After Richard’s coronation sightings of the two young princes playing in the grounds of the Tower of London dwindled and rumours started to fly that the boys had been murdered by their uncle. However, there is still no real evidence that King Richard murdered his nephews and what really happened to the Princes in the Tower is still just conjecture.  His short reign held much personal tragedy for the new English king, as his only son and heir Edward of Middleham died tragically in 1484 and his wife Anne Neville also died of tuberculosis a few short months later in March 1485.  But during his reign Richard proved to be a popular monarch with his people and he introduced laws that allowed poorer people to have their grievances heard and he also stopped restrictions being placed on the printing and sale of books.

Richard III was the last English king to be killed in battle, and he was slain at the Battle of Bosworth on 22^nd August 1485 defending his kingdom against the forces of Henry Tudor.  This decisive battle brought the War of the Roses into its final stages, placing the Lancastrian Henry Tudor onto the throne of England as King Henry VII and bringing to an end the rule of the Yorkist dynasty and the Plantagenets.  We don’t really know the details of how King Richard was killed during the battle, but legend has it that after he was slain his mangled corpse was ignominiously slung over the back of a horse and taken into the nearby town of Leicester and left on display for the public to come and view for three days.  However distasteful this may seem to our modern minds, it was a politically astute move from the new King Henry VII, as it would stop any rumours being put around that Richard hadn’t really been killed during the battle and thus preventing a potential focus for rebellion against the new dynasty . The king’s body was then said to have been thrown into the River Soar that runs through the town and one of the bridges is known as ‘King Richard’s Bridge’.

However, a contemporary chronicler Sir Thomas Frowyk made a reference to King Richard being buried in the church of the Newarke in Leicester and chroniclers later in the reign of Henry VII spoke of money being set aside by the new Tudor king to build a tomb for him and of Richard’s burial being in the Greyfriars Church which was part of the Franciscan Friary. Greyfriars was destroyed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries instigated by HenryVIII in 1536, and it would seem that it was at this time that the location of the royal burial became uncertain, as the bones could either have been removed from the tomb when the building was razed and either moved or discarded, or the royal skeleton was buried under the ground and was undisturbed but covered by more recent building work.  The Mayor of Leicester, Robert Herrick, constructed a mansion over the remains of the friary church and when Christopher Wren visited him in 1612 he reported seeing a stone pillar inscribed as a memorial to Richard III in the garden.  Around the same time in 1611, a map maker called John Speedie was recording local landmarks in Leicester and it is thought that he may have been the one who started the story that Richard III’s body had been thrown in the river. It is said that he did this to cover up his embarrassment at not being able to find the King’s grave, and that he had not searched in the right place, as he had been looking at Blackfriars rather than Greyfriars.

The archaeologists from Leicester University located the site of the lost Greyfriars church by examining historical maps and comparing them to modern ones. They started their excavations on 25^th August 2012 in a car park belonging to the local council.  The mansion built by Robert Herrick had been demolished in the 1870s and replaced with public buildings, although the gardens were not paved over until the middle of the 20^th century, and the excavations soon uncovered paving stones that are thought to be from the mansion’s gardens. Medieval finds included inlaid floor tiles, fragments of tracery from the church windows, and part of a stone frieze believed to be from the choir stalls and the locations of the eastern cloister walk and the chapter house were established.  But the most exciting find of all was the discovery of an intact skeleton of an adult male buried in the Choir area of the Friary Church.  The remains had not been interred in a coffin, but seemed to have been laid to rest in a shroud that has subsequently disintegrated, and there was nothing buried with the body to indicate the skeleton’s identity. So what clues are there that this could be the body of King Richard III?

The skeleton is that of an adult male who had been strong and in good health when he had died.  The remains also display injuries that could have been sustained during a medieval battle as there is a blade wound to the back of the head and an iron barbed arrowhead was found lodged between the vertebrae of the upper back.  The skeleton also has a curvature of the spine, known as scoliosis, that would have meant that during life the man’s right shoulder would have seemed to have been higher than his left.  This fits in with contemporary description’s of Richard’s appearance which speak of a raised shoulder and could have been the basis of Shakespeare’s exaggerated depiction of the monarch as an ugly, short hunchback who had a withered arm.  The experts are hoping to extract DNA samples for analysis from a few of the teeth and femur of the skeleton, which they are hoping will match with that of Michael Ibsen, a Canadian descendant of Richard III’s elder sister Anne of York to prove the identity of the remains.

This DNA testing will take about twelve weeks and during this time it will have to be decided where the remains will be reinterred if the testing proves that the skeleton is that of the King.  There are no plans for the excavation to be kept open for the public, so it is unlikely that the body will be returned to its original grave. A memorial stone already lies in Leicester Cathedral, so perhaps this could be Richard’s final resting place? Or could he be buried in York Minster as he himself had planned? Whatever eventually happens to the remains our last Plantagenet King, if it is proved that this really is Richard’s body it will offer historians and archaeologists much valuable evidence that will help them piece together what really happened to him at the Battle of Bosworth and how he was killed.