Anne Neville (11 page)

By October, the dispensations had surely arrived from Rome. That the search for a dispensation continued afterwards indicates that, unfortunately, all were deficient. All three dispensed Edward and Anne for the fourth degree of consanguinity, which appears to be correct. The two that presumed the couple had already married were obviously redundant. The problem evidently arose with the other one. This authorised the marriage of two nobles, Edward of England, layman of the diocese of London, and Anna de Warwyk, damsel of Salisbury diocese (
domicella Sarisberiensis diocesis
).
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It is in these descriptions that the problem most likely lay. Whereas Edward of Lancaster was indeed born at Westminster in the diocese of London, though not resident there for the past decade, Anne Neville had never lived in the diocese of Salisbury: that her father was, incidentally, earl of Salisbury was immaterial. Louis’ dispensation failed on this technical point. Another dispensation was required. Further investigation revealed that the patriarch of Jerusalem, who in his capacity as bishop of Bayeux lacked the power to dispense the original impediment, could remove the remaining obstacle. On 28 November, at last, his representative, the grand vicar of Bayeux, granted the necessary dispensation. On Thursday 13 December 1470, Anne Neville and Edward of Lancaster were at last married at Amboise.
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If it was a quieter occasion than had been intended – neither the bride’s father Warwick nor her brother-in-law Clarence nor the bridegroom’s father Henry VI could attend as they were all absent in England – yet Anne was surely reassured that the invasion had succeeded and that she really was marrying the Prince of Wales. Queen Margaret was present in person. So too were Anne’s mother the countess of Warwick and her sister Isabel, Duchess of Clarence.
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Next, presumably, Edward and Anne went to bed and consummated their union: sexual
intercourse was the seal that rendered the union unbreakable. No longer merely a great heiress and future countess, Anne was now Princess Anne and was destined in due course to become Anne, queen both of England and France.

For the fourteen-year-old princess, no doubt, this was one of the defining moments of her life, no less important for the fact that it has passed into history almost wholly unrecorded. Nothing came of it. No pregnancy ensued. It should not have mattered: there should have been plenty of time. Had Anne become pregnant and borne the house of Lancaster a further heir, one wonders what might have befallen. Perhaps she would have remained in France. Regrettably, this eventuality did not materialise.

WIDOWING A PRINCESS

From November 1470 the arrival of the royal party in England was often predicted, yet they did not come. On 15 December Queen Margaret, the new princess of Wales, the duchess of Clarence and countess of Warwick set off for Paris, where a splendid reception was laid on at King Louis’ command.
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Even after solemnisation and consummation, they strangely languished in France, perhaps whilst the French embassy to England concluded its treaties with the new regime. Warwick was assured of the free hand that he promised in
The Manner
without the more consensual and conciliar regulations under the aegis of Prince Edward proposed in the model constitution of Sir John Fortescue.
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It was not in fact until 24 March that the queen, princess, countess and duchess returned to Harfleur.
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They had then to endure seventeen days of contrary winds.

Waiting to get married had delayed the departure to England not only of Anne and her mother, who did not matter much politically, and of Edward of Lancaster, who did, but also
crucially of his mother Queen Margaret of Anjou. The absence of Margaret and Edward may have been fatal for the success of Henry VI’s second reign, commonly known as the Readeption. Warwick, Clarence and his supporters worked well with Somerset and the other Lancastrians in the invasion and in restoring Henry VI to the throne. They could unite against a common enemy. It was afterwards that co-operation was more difficult. There is nothing to suggest that Henry VI was much more than a figurehead. He was allowed to take some actions in areas that interested him, such as clerical appointments,
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but on issues that mattered, he was not. Even the Lancastrians, prior to their return, had no intention of allowing that. A memorandum composed by Chief Justice Fortescue, Queen Margaret’s chancellor, envisaged a government largely run by a royal council and presided over by Prince Edward as the king’s lieutenant or protector.
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Although now seventeen and hence regarded as of age, Edward would surely have been guided in his actions by, as Margaret must have hoped, his mother or, as Warwick probably hoped, by his father-in-law. But neither Margaret nor Edward was accessible. Indeed, Prince Edward does not crop up on the patent roll until 27 March 1471,
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almost the very end of the Readeption. He was never formally granted the titles, estates and offices that went with his position: he may, of course, have been regarded as having resumed them after a decade’s interruption. In the absence of Margaret and Edward, the lead in government was taken by Warwick, who was the king’s lieutenant: if Clarence, his other son-in-law, was joint lieutenant as several sources suggest, he was very much the junior partner.
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Some Lancastrians, such as the duke of Exeter and earl of Oxford, valued Warwick’s qualities and followed his lead.

But what was intended to be temporary, a matter of a few weeks, continued for six months – six months of crucial decisions and policy-making. First one session of parliament, then
a second, and a full round of negotiations for a set of treaties with France passed under Warwick’s aegis. John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, apart, there was not the blood-letting against the Yorkists that Lancastrian vengeance demanded and, so far as we know, no new forfeitures. The Lancastrian leadership, whether returned magnates like the royal dukes of Exeter and Somerset or lesser men, recovered their forfeited properties and received some patronage, but they did not secure the rewards or the decisive say in affairs that their loyal sufferings deserved, or so they thought. No doubt they considered that too much had been conceded at Angers to Warwick, their erstwhile foe. It even appears that Clarence was made Henry VI’s heir in reversion after the prince if he died childless rather than the junior Lancastrian lines. Clarence resisted surrendering lands to the Lancastrians which they, in contrast, thought the absolute minimum that they should recover.
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An alliance between former victims and victors inevitably meant that there was too little to share out.

Had Margaret and Edward arrived, it could have been very different. Whether Fortescue’s plan of government could have materialised is unlikely, since his academic theorising, however cloaked in concrete detail, was ill-suited for critical circumstances that demanded decisions and leadership. However much Fortescue may have deplored the dominance of magnates over functionaries, the Readeption was certainly a time when it was the powerful who counted. The leadership of Margaret and Edward gave that legitimacy to the actions of the regime that it lacked to some Lancastrian eyes. Margaret and Warwick might have smoothed over differences between the unwilling allies: though neither feature amongst history’s great conciliators. Warwick surely did not welcome any reduction in power or any of the transfers of Lancastrian forfeitures from himself to their original owners that could be expected to ensue, although he, at least, could understand the necessity.
Certainly the authority of the queen and prince was more acceptable to former Lancastrians than was Warwick’s. One would like to think that a note of caution might have tempered the commitment to an aggressive alliance with Louis XI against Duke Charles of Burgundy, which disastrously caused the duke to resource Edward IV’s return, to which originally he was adamantly opposed. That, however, is unlikely, for Margaret’s obligation to Louis was particularly strong. By the time Edward and Anne arrived in England, sadly, all these opportunities were past.

Isabel, Duchess of Clarence did cross over ahead of the main party to join her husband the duke.
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She was therefore in England for the heart-searching that the duke underwent, although perhaps neither in his company nor in his confidence. Probably she failed to influence a man, who proved particularly susceptible to the blandishments of other kinswomen. Clarence was urged to resume his allegiance to his own house of York rather than that of Lancaster by his mother Cecily, Duchess of York, his uncles the earl of Essex and Cardinal Bourchier, his sisters the duchesses of Exeter, Suffolk and ‘most specially, my Lady of Burgundy’, and Bishop Stillington,
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who surely played his part when the duke was recruiting from his episcopal palace at Wells. That was en route to join Warwick against Edward IV, who had landed in Yorkshire and marched southwards to Warwickshire. Clarence succumbed. Actually the duke carried his troops into his brother’s camp. Clarence was not much concerned about breaking faith with the Lancastrians, it appears, but he did not wish to part company with his father-in-law Warwick – one or the other must lose the forthcoming battle – and persuaded King Edward to offer forgiveness to the earl. Warwick refused, in honour certainly, since nobody would ever accept his word again if he was to turn his coat once more, but also, one would like to suppose, in faith to his daughter Anne, now the Lancastrian princess of Wales, and his countess,
also still with the Lancastrians in France. Their fates did not apparently weigh heavily on Clarence’s mind. At Barnet on Easter Sunday it was Anne’s father who was slain, her sister’s husband Clarence – her brother[-in-law] – who survived. Anne, too, was no party to these changes, but merely found, on arrival in England, that the alignments she had expected were no more.

Warwick had despatched his Lord Treasurer Sir John Langstrother, Prior of St John, with the veteran John, Lord Wenlock to fetch the queen, countess of Warwick, prince and princess. They had embarked from Harfleur on 24 March. Unfortunately, however, nature intervened: contrary winds prevented their voyage until 13 April, Easter Saturday. Anne’s mother the countess of Warwick landed at Portsmouth; the queen and the others, including Princess Anne, at Weymouth.
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This was the day before Easter and the battle of Barnet, at which Warwick and his brother Montagu were defeated and slain. London and Henry VI were already in Yorkist hands. To aggravate the situation, Clarence was now on the other side. With her husband dead and her elder daughter a Yorkist once more, the Countess Anne was not inclined to repose her trust in Warwick’s new Lancastrian allies. Instead she deserted them and (in the process) her younger daughter Anne Neville. Nearer to the capital and proceeding westwards, it was she at Southampton who first heard of her husband’s demise and chose not to proceed to Weymouth, but instead to take sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey, a Cistercian abbey of royal foundation in the New Forest,
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whence she could not be removed by her enemies. Actually Edward IV would probably have consigned her to a nunnery anyway had she come into his hands. He required the abbot to keep her safe.
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The countess may have feared that, now that Warwick was dead, his foes would wreak revenge on her. Perhaps she also feared that she was personally so deeply implicated in her late husband’s plots that she might
suffer attainder just as her mother-in-law Alice, Countess of Salisbury had done in 1459. In consequence her younger daughter Anne, still aged only fourteen, now fatherless, was also deprived of her mother’s company, support and advice for the next two years – two crucial years in her life.

‘The Queen Margaret and her son’ and obviously also Princess Anne, although always unmentioned, landed at Weymouth in Dorset and proceeded thence to Cerne Abbey, which they made their base. There they were joined by the rest of their entourage and by a reception party from London made up of the Beaufort brothers, Edmund, Duke of Somerset and John, Marquis of Dorset, and also John Courtenay, the earl of Devon. There on 15 April, only one day after the battle, they heard of the disaster at Barnet. Not surprisingly, Margaret ‘was therefore right heavy and sorry’.
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The reaction of her daughter-in-law Anne to the loss of her father is again unrecorded but easily imagined. How distressed she was depends on the nature of their relationship, which we cannot divine, but certainly shock, sorrow, alarm and anxiety for the future must have been ingredients. Unlike her mother, Anne had no choice what to do. Her future was irrevocably tied to her new-found husband, to her mother-in-law Queen Margaret, and to the Lancastrians, as they embarked on their final cast of the dice, carrying Anne with them. If Anne had heard what the Yorkist
Arrival
reports was said within the Lancastrian camp, that the Beauforts at least thought their cause not weakened by her father’s death but rather strengthened,
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she was surely yet more distressed. Now that Warwick’s Neville allies were defeated, was the unfortunate girl herself branded an encumbrance by her Lancastrian in-laws? It was fortunate that her marriage was legally watertight.

In 1470 Warwick had swept through the West Country to Coventry, where his army was reported as 60,000 strong. Whilst doubtless an exaggeration – could any English army
of these dimensions supply itself in the field? – it is obvious that the invaders had benefited from popular enthusiasm for Henry VI and that Edward IV in contrast had been left bereft. The support was more than Warwick had enjoyed earlier in the year and doubtless more also than the Lancastrians could have raised without his aid. Now the Lancastrians sought to repeat the exercise. They lacked Warwick’s leadership and probably also his adherents. Never strong in the far west, the Neville connection may have been defused, just possibly transferred to Warwick’s son-in-law Clarence, but surely not to the earl’s other daughter the Princess Anne. Evidently some hoped that potential Lancastrians put off by Warwick, formerly their greatest foe, would now enrol. We cannot tell whether they did. What we can be sure of, nevertheless, is that they did not reproduce the outflow of popular enthusiasm of the previous year or consequently that vast army. They did exploit the talismanic names of Beaufort and Courtenay, ‘old inheritors of that country’, still strong after ten years of exile, but not powerful enough. The noblemen, the queen and the prince strove to mobilise their supporters in Cornwall, Devon, Somerset and Wiltshire.
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The army they raised was substantial, but not huge. In March, Clarence, on his march northwards via Wells to the Midlands, had raised 4,000 men in support of Henry VI from their particular pool.
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