Anne Neville (10 page)

Anne Neville’s marriage was essential to this remarkable bouleversement. Mutual advantage alone sufficed to achieve the rapid and complete agreement of Warwick and Margaret in principle, although the details as always took time and the right appearances also had to be preserved. Since Warwick had been the greatest foe of the Lancastrians, Queen Margaret had to appease her devoted, resentful and understandably vengeful followers by maintaining her moral ascendancy. Instead of applauding the discomfiture of their persecutor, they had to be convinced of the desirability and wisdom of alliance with him. Warwick must be perceived as a subject, not treated as an equal. He had to be presented as contrite for past faults, properly submissive, soliciting the queen’s forgiveness in formal ceremonial and on bended knee, whilst she graciously condescended to receive him back into her allegiance. As for the marriage alliance,

The queen would not in any wise consent there unto for any offer or any manner of request that the King of France might make her. [For] some time she said that she saw neither honour nor profit for her nor for son the prince. Another [argument] she alleged that, if she would, she should find a more profitable party and of a more advantage with the King of England. And indeed she showed unto the King of France a letter which she said was sent here out of England the last week by which was offered to her son my lady the princess [Elizabeth of York], and so the queen persevered fifteen days ere she would any thing attend to the said treaty of marriage.
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This, of course, was ridiculous. There is no other evidence that Edward IV was ever prepared to marry Princess Elizabeth to Prince Edward, an offer that might have brought the struggle of York and Lancaster to a peaceful conclusion, ostensibly promised the succession to the English crown to Margaret’s
son Edward of Lancaster, but would have certainly alienated the blameless John Neville. There is a superficial resemblance here to the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, which made Henry V the son-in-law and heir of Charles VI in preference to Charles’ own son. Similarly, Lady Margaret Beaufort somewhat later negotiated to repatriate her son Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII: Henry – like Edward of Lancaster – was not himself attainted and such obstacles could anyway be negotiated away. What was supposedly proposed here was the match of a three-year-old girl to a youth of seventeen that theoretically could have brought the latter to the English throne, but probably would not, since Edward IV intended to breed sons and the future Edward V was indeed born only three months later. Was Queen Margaret really so gullible as to overlook this intended eventuality? The match would moreover break the betrothal of Princess Elizabeth to Montagu’s son George Neville and untie the bonds by which Edward had just bound them. Was Edward IV really prepared to take that risk? There is nothing else to suggest that Margaret would have contented herself with anything else than the crown, for example with Anne Neville’s share of the Warwick inheritance, and much evidence that this was not so. If Margaret ever took this line, it was another bargaining counter to raise the stakes in negotiation with Warwick: it cannot have been based on an authentic or honest letter from Edward IV. Besides, there were not fifteen days available for them to negotiate.

That such poses were struck, that there was some such pantomime, emerges both through the strictly contemporary ambassador’s reports and the manifesto
The Manner and Guiding of the Earl of Warwick at Angers
. This was the manifesto that Warwick had had written for his supporters in England and that presumably he despatched to them: the only surviving version was apparently copied from one amongst the papers of a London alderman. From Warwick’s angle, this manifesto
showed that he did not admit any fault on his part or that of his followers in ousting the Lancastrian regime. ‘He had a righteous cause to labour their undoing and destruction’, he declared, ‘and that therein he had not done, but what a nobleman outraged and despaired ought to have done’. Furthermore, Warwick presented the agreement as of his own making.
The Manner
depicted him as persuading the queen to do his will whilst conceding to her only in essentials. It induced his committed followers in England to back him in this latest desperate enterprise. Warwick had conjured victory out of defeat, had secured the alliance of the Lancastrians at no material cost to his followers, and had moreover won the Lancastrian heir for his daughter. This was a triumph indeed. It must not appear too easy however, too unprincipled, too self-evidently the desperate grasping at the last available straw of two discredited exiles concerned only with their own advancement. Hence
The Manner
states that negotiations about the marriage took fifteen days,
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yet Edward and Anne were betrothed on 25 July, only three days after the beginning of the formal proceedings at Angers on 22nd, and indeed the ambassador reports all the essentials to be settled by 20 July, before the conference had even commenced.
³⁸

The crown of England was the objective for both parties. The Lancastrians wanted to re-assert their title to the kingdom, to restore King Henry VI and Queen Margaret to their thrones, to make Edward of Lancaster once again heir apparent, prince of Wales, duke of Cornwall, and earl of Chester, and in due course king of England. His consort, already a titular princess, was destined to become first Edward’s princess and then his queen. That role was marked out for Anne Neville. Edward and Anne’s progeny would be royal – princes, princesses, further generations of Lancastrian kings, and grandchildren of the earl of Warwick himself. That was the plan. It sufficed. We possess no evidence that the earl thought about any further
ramifications from the marriage, yet surely he did, such as young Edward’s claims to the rest of the Angevin inheritance of Margaret’s father King René. Although apparently secure, the rapid deaths of René himself, his brother Charles, Count of Maine, his son Duke John and his grandson Nicholas of Taranto were rapidly to make Margaret into the residuary heir. Such a chain of mortality uncompensated by issue was unexpected in 1470, but it was not unusual for the time and cannot have escaped Warwick’s calculations, nor indeed those of King René, who took part in these negotiations. Even if the worst befell and Henry VI could not be restored to his throne, on which Warwick staked everything including his life, yet his daughter Anne as consort of Prince Edward and their issue might nevertheless have succeeded on Margaret’s death to the duchies of Anjou and Bar, the marquisate of Provence, the county of Maine and claims to the kingdoms of Jerusalem and Sicily. Was there any airy speculation on the union of this greater Angevin inheritance with the crown of England by King Louis, Margaret or Warwick? What implication might this have had on longer-term Anglo-French relations? It cannot have been desired by the prince, who did not intend the extinction of his kindred, nor by Anne herself. Nor indeed can Anne’s heritage – accessible only if the Lancastrian line was restored and scarcely princely – have been of much interest to Prince Edward or Queen Margaret.

For the roles of the bride and groom were surely completely passive. Anne herself was only fourteen years of age. Not too young for an English lady to be married, she was older than either of her parents when they were wed. Indeed, she was already past the female age of majority. Yet she was only a child in terms of making choices and decisions. Aristocratic daughters like Anne were used to being bestowed in marriage by their fathers. Marriage contracts did assure them of their futures – security and wealth for life come what may – but
the motive for such matches was commonly advantages perceived by their menfolk. Daughters could decline the proffered match, at least in theory. To refuse an eligible spouse, however, was eccentric and apparently rare. The objections that occur to us today – that Anne did not know the bridegroom, may not have liked the bridegroom, nor loved him – would have been thought unreasonable at this time. There is no evidence that any of these objections occurred to Anne. If she had met Edward before the summer of 1459, their last possible encounter, when she was three and he was six, it was too long ago for either to remember anything significant. Presumably they did meet momentarily in July 1470 before they were betrothed, but we cannot know whether there was instant attraction, mutual liking, or mere compatibility. Anne’s father negotiated as though the decision was his alone, as aristocratic marriages normally were. His daughter was bestowed on Prince Edward. Anne must certainly have been aware that she was expected to marry well and at her father’s command. Very obviously, it was her duty in the disastrous circumstances of 1470 to accept this particular match, which was to be the salvation of her whole family. Now aged fourteen, Anne was fully able to consent. She did. There is nothing in any of the surviving correspondence to suggest that her consent – or that of Prince Edward – could not be taken for granted. So, too, in the absence of her kingly spouse, Queen Margaret decided on her son’s behalf. He could not doubt her commitment to his interests, which had shaped all her actions for the past ten years. Margaret may have needed to persuade the prince that the sacrifice of his hand in matrimony to a mere commoner was worthwhile and indeed a necessary price to pay. The very little we perceive of Edward of Lancaster, however threadbare the reality of his life in exile, is of a boy who had been brought up to think of himself as a prince and who was keen to have his opponents’ heads off
³⁹
– a sharp contrast to his father Henry VI. Yet, at seventeen, he
was old enough to make the calculations and to contribute to any debate in his own right. Too much hung on the marriage, for Anne at least, the fortunes of her whole family – father, mother, sister and brother[-in-law] Clarence – for her to pull back even if she had wished.

What Anne should have gained from her marriage was the status and wealth of a princess and the spouse of the heiress of the throne. Her husband should have recovered his principality in west Wales, his county palatine of Chester, and his duchy of Cornwall, with its swathe of estates from Cornwall in the far west to the modern Kennington Oval. Anne should have had her own establishment, her own obsequious attendants, extensive apartments and numerous household. She should have lived in a series of royal palaces and castles, attired herself in the most luxurious fabrics and jewels, and played a central role in court ceremonial of all kinds. We cannot tell whether Anne looked forward to this, all of which she had already experienced in a smaller way and for which she was trained, nor even whether married life suited her, because it did not happen. Neither she nor her husband secured any of the material wealth or shared in the rule of her father-in-law Henry VI: only the marital rights, the status and respect materialised. Neither was to reach England until it was too late.

On 25 July 1470 Anne and Edward were formally betrothed in the cathedral of St Mary at Angers, perhaps by proxy.
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Richard, Earl of Warwick and Queen Margaret swore oaths of assurance to one another on fragments of the true cross. Betrothal, the free exchange of vows of a man and a woman – two consenting adults in modern parlance – was as binding a tie and as unbreakable in the fifteenth century as the formal marriage ceremony in church. This was so in theory at least, for there were actually many instances involving royalty where diplomatic engagements were broken as international alignments changed: Edward IV’s daughter Elizabeth is the
classic victim. Hence Warwick was not content with mere betrothal. He insisted at once on the next step, the formal marriage ceremony, and actually made it a precondition of the departure of his invading force. Accordingly, on 31 July, Queen Margaret, the earl and countess, and the engaged couple set off for Normandy, where they were to marry.
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Probably Warwick had also prescribed the immediate consummation of the union to ensure that it could not be invalidated.

Yet the marriage was delayed. By 7 August, it was Warwick who could wait no longer and had returned to the fleet. ‘He did not wish to lose time in waiting for his daughter’s marriage’, the ambassador reported, which would, he understood, be celebrated before King Louis back at Amboise.
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There was a hitch. Genealogical investigation had revealed that Edward and Anne were related by blood in the fourth degree. Distant though their relationship was, it nevertheless fell within the prohibited degrees. No valid marriage could be contracted without a dispensation. A dispensation would take time and time could not be spared. The restoration of Henry VI could not be postponed. Warwick had to trust in Margaret’s good faith after all. He realised of course that she needed to be as assured of his fidelity as she of his. Hence the passage inserted as explanation at this point in
The Manner
that Anne was to remain in Margaret’s hands and ‘that the said marriage shall not be perfected [consummated] until the Earl of Warwick had been with an army over the sea to England’ and had conquered the kingdom.
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There was no point in committing Prince Edward to the marriage until the intended fruit was guaranteed!
The Manner
thus explained Anne’s continued single state, blamed the delay on Margaret, and, crucially, concealed the existence of an impediment to the marriage itself. Warwick’s followers were reassured that the crucial match would happen. Meanwhile, Anne ‘shall be put and remain in the hands and keeping of Queen Margaret’.
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The bride and groom had been found to share a common great-great-grandfather in John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and son of Edward III, father both to Edward’s greatgrandfather Henry IV (d.1413) and Anne’s great-grandmother Joan Beaufort (d.1441). Their consanguinity was slight enough for a dispensation normally to be a formality, but so much hung upon this match that in the interests of both parties it was necessary to be quite sure. Hence King Louis despatched Matthew Fontenailles to the ambassadors of the Pope at Lyons to seek a dispensation. Fontenailles’ journey took place not later than 24 July, when payment of his expenses was ordered, possibly even after his return. King Louis himself was quite willing for Edward and Anne to marry ahead of any dispensation, even though to do so was itself sinful and required absolution and a payment to the apostolic datary. Actually, three dispensations were granted to cover all eventualities: first, for them to marry (if they hadn’t yet done so), second, if they had married, whether aware of the impediment or not, for them to remain married and to be absolved, and third, for any resultant offspring to be legitimate. As approval was given on 17 August at Rome, the whole process was very quick, but it was nevertheless too slow for the timetable of the intended invasion. Warwick had probably embarked for England before the dispensations reached the king. Hence alternative options also had to be pursued. For such a remote connection, it was hoped that a dispensation could be secured from closer to hand. King Louis therefore wrote to the bishop of Beauvais ‘to know of him if he had power to dispense for the marriage of the Prince of Wales and the daughter of the Earl of Warwick’. Apparently the answer was no. Again, on 2 August, King Louis wrote also to the archbishop of Rheims and the Bishop of Laon, evidently receiving the same negative response.
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To Louis XI and his court, the dispensation was a technicality,
for Anne was accepted – and paid for – as ‘wife of the said prince’ in August, September and October 1470.