Anne Neville (16 page)

THAT DISPENSATION

Duke Richard had taken Anne into his custody by 16 February 1472 when, as we have seen, Clarence reluctantly conceded that they could marry. At that point, therefore, Anne and Richard were definitely not married. Apparently they were still unmarried on 18 March. They are first unambiguously recorded as married on 6 June 1474.
⁵¹
Within this twenty-seven-month timeframe the precise date of their marriage is unresolved. No wedding is recorded. Since it used to be supposed that their son Edward was born in 1473, some past historians located the wedding in 1472. Pauli in 1858 plumped boldly for 12 July 1472, the third anniversary of Isabel’s marriage to Clarence, but gave no reason and none has been uncovered since.
The Complete Peerage
agreed.
⁵²
The ceremony has often been located in the spring of 1472 although, actually, canon law forbade marriage during Lent. Since actually Edward’s birth was probably some years later,
⁵³
such speculation is unfounded. That the Warwick inheritance dispute still raged in November 1473 does not mean, as Peter Hammond wrongly supposed, that Anne and Richard were still unmarried then and that the marriage took place in 1474.
⁵⁴
Where was Anne in the interim? Did she remain in sanctuary throughout, which Crowland’s chronology did not exclude? Did she cohabit with the duke or reside under his protection, scarcely less morally dubious? Sheer convenience points to marriage as soon after the March
council as possible. Allowing for the dispensation of 22 April 1472 and its transmission from Rome, it is likely that, as Clarke has deduced, the wedding took place in the late spring or early summer of 1472.
⁵⁵
Certainly it was concluded ahead of the comprehensive dispensation, since the act of June 1474, which settled Anne’s inheritance, made provision for their divorce.
⁵⁶
For divorce, read nullity. The act tells us that Anne and Richard had not yet secured a papal dispensation adequate to remove the impediments to marriage that was necessary for first cousins and siblings in law. It also foresees that if a dispensation was not granted, they might yet be put asunder. Richard protected himself against that eventuality.

Richard’s brother Clarence and Anne’s sister Isabel had required a papal dispensation for their marriage because they were closely related several times over. Clarence’s mother Cecily, Duchess of York and Isabel’s grandfather Richard, Earl of Salisbury were sister and brother. Both of them and Clarence’s father Richard were descended from Edward III. They were related once in the second degree and twice in the fourth degree of consanguinity. There was moreover a spiritual tie, because the Duchess Cecily had been George’s godmother. The necessary dispensation had required hard negotiation: it was not at all to be taken for granted and indeed Edward IV thought that he had stopped it.
⁵⁷
Anne and Richard, also first cousins once removed, were also related in the second degree of consanguinity. Moreover, Richard was third cousin of Anne’s first husband Edward of Lancaster, who had been Anne’s third cousin: two further impediments in the fourth degree to add to those that Clarence and Isabel had to overcome. Numerous though these impediments were, none of them was proscribed by divine law –
Leviticus
– but only by the human laws, which popes routinely dispensed for people of their rank. Yet this was not all, because their siblings George and Isabel had also married. On this
account Anne and Richard were related in the first degree of affinity. From 1469 to 1472 Anne and Richard must have been accustomed to regard one another, albeit briefly and intermittently, as brother and sister. Certainly
Leviticus
barred marriage to a blood sister and to a wife’s sister and such unions were to be specifically forbidden by statute in 1540.
⁵⁸
Canon lawyers were not agreed whether cases covered by
Leviticus
or similar to those in
Leviticus
could be dispensed by the Pope. There could be no certainty what would result from an application for a full dispensation that removed all the impediments. Perhaps that was why Richard applied initially for a dispensation that would enable him to marry Anne, but which he must have known did not address all the impediments. Surely here he was cynically manipulating the rules? Moreover, these impediments were exacerbated by blatant cohabitation when aware that the previous dispensation was insufficient. Perhaps the proximity of kinship and this multiplicity of impediments meant that no such dispensation could be forthcoming. Certainly another dispensation was absolutely necessary to validate such a union. Apparently no such dispensation was ever secured. Perhaps none was ever sought.

The absence of an adequate dispensation is implied by the 1474 act that settled the countess of Warwick’s lands on the two dukes. This is a public document; however, it does not appear to have become public knowledge. It may well be that it was Clarence who, having established the details of the 1472 dispensation, secured the provision in the 1474 act that if no valid marriage was contracted his own children – strictly Isabel’s children – would secure Anne’s share of the inheritance on Duke Richard’s death. If so, Clarence was gambling, calculating, perhaps even expecting, that no dispensation would be forthcoming. If not hitherto aware of the defects in his dispensation, Gloucester certainly knew about them afterwards.
Alternatively, it may have been the duke himself who here was ensuring his continued tenure of Anne’s estates. Because officially the countess was dead, both dukes stood to gain from the clauses allowing them to keep the estates for life should their spouses predecease them: in Clarence’s case the clause corresponded to the normal convention of courtesy of England because he had a child by Isabel, but in Gloucester’s case no child was yet born to them. If he were to retain Anne’s lands after her death, it would be at the expense of the Clarences or their heirs.

John Rows states that Richard was the product of ‘true matrimony without discontinuance or any defiling in the law’.
⁵⁹
Richard was thus distinguished, by implication, from Edward V, who had just been dethroned on the grounds that his parents were not properly married and whose father’s legitimacy had also been impugned. Rows had no doubts that Anne and Richard were properly married, that Edward of Middleham was their ‘son and heir’, and ‘inheritor to both royal possessions’
⁶⁰
– that is, to both his parents’ possessions. Anne and Richard were accepted as such. Maybe there had been a public wedding of which we know nothing conducted by a priest conned by the papal letter declaratory, unaware of or unconcerned by the extent of their relationship. The undispensed impediments were not publicly known, neither to Rows, nor even (as we shall see) to Crowland. Evidently, Anne and Richard lived together openly as man and wife. None of the critics of Richard III in his own time ever queried his marriage. Its invalidity is a modern discovery.

Yet without a second dispensation, the marriage was never valid. Duke Richard protected himself. The 1474 act provided that if they ‘be hereafter divorced’– if the marriage was declared null as though it had never happened – he could nevertheless hang on to Anne’s share of the Warwick inheritance for life. Whether he would have provided for and protected Anne,
once she was no longer his consort, we cannot know. For Anne, it was a matter of trust. She would have been the principal loser, since it was her inheritance – not Richard’s – that the duke was to retain for life. Anne knew Richard better than we do and whether he was worthy of such confidence. Richard had committed himself very little to her to leave the validity of their marriage – its permanence and her security – in doubt. Anne was fully aware of the impediments when she embarked on this contract: how could she be otherwise? The 1474 act indicates that any dispensation sought must have been for the couple already married to be allowed to remain in matrimony. Not to wait for a sufficient dispensation, like not to wait for a partner’s divorce today, to jump the gun and to anticipate the legal formalities, is a type of decision with which we are familiar nowadays. Contemporary examples are not uncommon. The famous match that unified modern Spain in 1469 between Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile involved second cousins: originally justified by a forged dispensation, it was not validated by a proper one until 1471. Isabella’s rival Juana La Betraneja was married to her cousin King Alfonso of Portugal ahead of a dispensation that never arrived.
⁶¹
Anticipating dispensations was not unusual amongst royalty: not to seek a valid one at all, however, was wholly exceptional.

There are four alternative explanations of what happened next. The first option, that an adequate dispensation was indeed secured, can be discounted by evidence from 1485.
⁶²
Moreover, Clarke failed to find a second dispensation for Anne and Richard in the penitentiary registers. The second option, that Anne and Richard were indeed divorced, obviously did not happen: Anne died as Richard’s queen. To continue married after a further dispensation was refused, which was the third possibility, was forbidden as sinful by the Church, which was expected to take action to separate such couples after the verdict. Since Anne and Richard were not forcibly
separated, it seems unlikely that their dispensation was declined. Yet surely a sufficient dispensation was never obtained, for in 1485, Crowland unwittingly reported, Richard thought a divorce easily attainable – thought the marriage easily declared invalid.
⁶²
Not to seek an adequate dispensation at all, the fourth possibility and the one argued here, was surely very different.

Originally, no doubt, Anne and Richard meant to have their union ratified. Hence the initial petition that resulted in the 1472 dispensation. The couple had not then consulted their lawyers. Yet, afterwards, Anne and Richard perhaps, but far more probably Richard by himself, decided not to remedy the defects to a valid marriage and to continue living together as husband and wife without proceeding with the legal niceties. There is no evidence of the pangs of conscience that affected others who sought absolution from the Pope. Just possibly, a dispensation was sought but not pursued. If an application to the papacy had ever been made, a verdict – presumably unfavourable – must have been declared well before 1485 when Richard apparently considered setting Anne aside. Rather than risk divorce, Richard decided not to seek a dispensation that would probably have been denied. Their invalid union denied Anne the security to which she was surely entitled. Surely she was the victim here? If she was not Richard’s spouse, Anne had no right to dower. Apparently she received no jointure. Normally she could have kept her own inheritance, but the 1474 act had assured it to Richard for life. Probably Anne did not know of that. The arrangement also denied legitimacy to their children. Surely Richard must have been concerned as he brazened it out, had Anne crowned as queen and their son invested as prince of Wales? Later, in Anne’s last months, the illicit nature of their relationship and her dubious status caused her great anxiety. By then, at least, she knew her whole married life to be a lie. Yet it is hard to see how it could ever have turned out all right. Without a valid marriage, their offspring
were bound to be illegitimate and unable to inherit, as any rival claimants – such as her sister’s children – were certain to stress when the appropriate opportunity arose. Providing, that is, they knew: dispensations are seldom invoked in inheritance cases. As time passed and their marriage was accepted at face value, Anne and Richard may have hoped to get away with it. It was on this basis that Richard forged his political future.

WHAT ARE DUCHESSES FOR?

T
he Apostle Paul wrote that marriage was a means of carnal satisfaction without sin. Sex was certainly expected of their marriage by the duke and duchess and was duly delivered. Children were desired and indeed required. Wives were expected to have children, preferably sons. Though hardly essential to run the ducal household, for she had a host of officers and humbler servants to undertake such domestic tasks, and though often apart, the Duchess Anne was also her duke’s companion, probably more equal in practice than in the formal record, and the source of his landed wealth and political power.

THE GLOUCESTERS’ CHILDREN

The duke and duchess wanted children, above all a male heir. Together they achieved it. Young though she was, Anne cannot have been a virgin when she remarried. Her first union had to be consummated.
¹
Whether she was sexually mature in 1470 we cannot tell. Her new husband, at twenty somewhat the older, was probably already sexually active.

In terms of offspring, it was not a very productive marriage. Anne and Richard had to wait to have children. Presumably they started sleeping together when they married, perhaps in 1472, maybe in 1473, certainly by 1474. By that time, Richard was twenty-two years of age and Anne was eighteen. Only one child is known to have been born to the marriage, a son, Edward. How joyful they must have been when he was born! No doubt he was named after his uncle Edward IV, who may have been his godfather, though inevitably absent from the christening. John Rows tells us that he was born at Middleham ‘in the north country’,
²
far away from Warwick, where Rows lived, or Tewkesbury. Hence neither Rows himself nor the Tewkesbury chronicler could reveal precisely when Edward of Middleham was born. It seems improbable that it was as early as 1473, as is usually supposed, since Rows, admittedly no expert where children were concerned, said the boy was about seven years old in 1483;Vergil, who did not see him, thought him nine.
³
If seven, he was born about 1476–7;if nine, perhaps as early as 1474. Surviving accounts for the lordship of Middleham do not even hint at any celebrations there in the financial year 1473–4.
⁴
The Tewkesbury chronicler says that Edward was born at Middleham in 1476 – an old-style year that continued until 25 March 1477, only shortly before the first explicit mention of him on 10 April 1477, when he was included with his parents in those to be prayed for in a chantry. Edward was the Gloucesters’‘first begotten son’on 1 July 1477.
⁵
No other child was mentioned in the licence, so at that point Edward was not merely their eldest son, but almost certainly their only child. As early as 1 July 1477 he was described as the Gloucesters’‘first begotten son the Earl of Salisbury’– properly Clarence’s title – seven months before this firstborn (
primogenitus
) son was formally created earl of Salisbury by Edward IV.
⁶
‘First begotten’ is not necessarily indicative that there was also a last born or indeed any another offspring. Anne’s father
Warwick had also been earl of Salisbury and so too had been Clarence in Isabel’s right. It demonstrates the boy’s significance to his parents, of which he was heir: his elevation to the peerage was especially gratifying to them. Although one sixteenth-century version of the Tewkesbury chronicle filled the blank left for the boy with the name George – a name perhaps pointing to Archbishop Neville, who died in 1476, or Clarence, who died in 1478, as godfather – it is much more likely that this was a simple error.
⁷
If born before Edward of Middleham, any such son had died by 1477; if afterwards, by 1483. Neither Rows nor the Tewkesbury chronicler mention any other child, but, living so far from the parents, they were unlikely to know of any miscarriages, stillbirths or children who had died in infancy.