Anne Neville (19 page)

For a king to be already married at his accession was highly unusual: Edward I was the last instance, although Henry IV
had been a widower and the Black Prince, though married, had predeceased his father. Moreover, English kings normally selected foreign princesses as their queens. Anne was only the third since the Norman Conquest to be of English birth. English noblemen naturally picked from amongst their peers. Royal princes, who were not expected to become kings, followed the example of the nobility, wedding heiresses who could bring them great estates and hence great power. Thus John Lackland was married first to the Gloucester heiress Isabella, whom he set aside for a foreign princess, and Henry Bolingbroke wed the Bohun co-heiress Mary, who died before he acceded and was replaced by a foreign queen. Richard, Duke of Gloucester, as we have seen, married Anne Neville, an even greater heiress. Leaving aside John’s brief and chronologically distant consort, there had been no English queen for two centuries except Edward IV’s consort Elizabeth Grey (née Wydeville).

To marry clandestinely, on impulse and for love, affronted contemporary values. For a reigning king to act thus was scandalous. Edward’s choice moreover was deplored for many reasons: Elizabeth, as an Englishwoman, was his subject;she was a lady of genteel origins rather than royal or even noble blood; she was a widow who had been married before and not the virgin that was traditionally expected; and she brought with her an extensive family of her own – a pack of sons, brothers, sisters and cousins – and hence political complications that conventionally lonely foreign princesses did not. Of course it was Edward who compounded all this by his over-generosity to them all, to the great displeasure especially of Anne’s father Warwick, and it was his enemy, Warwick again, who attributed the king’s infatuation to Wydeville sorcery.
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Anne and Richard, of course, were already married before she became queen: it would have been scandalous for him to set her aside as King John had done to his consort. Anne, moreover, was of both noble and royal blood, well able to trace her descent repeatedly
– albeit remotely – from King Edward III. Yet she too was already an English subject, had a former husband – admittedly a royal prince – and was no virgin (but also no mother) when she married Richard. A virgin was desired, and indeed Anne’s repeated depiction with blonde hair loosed portrays her as virgins and queens were normally painted.
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Actually, the tradition that queens were virgins and not widows was (like many traditions) of recent creation, breached most recently by Henry IV’s queen and rejected by no less than the Black Prince. Had Richard III been unmarried in 1483, he would probably have looked abroad for his queen. Although there was no choice, one can imagine that Anne was not regarded everywhere as ideal queen-material. She had been brought up of course with such ambitions in mind and had a decade of experience as a royal duchess behind her. Moreover, she had done her duty by bearing Richard a son and heir. If any criticisms were thought or murmured, however, they have not been passed down to us and were submerged by the strident opposition and condemnations of King Richard.

Coronations did not make kings or queens. Consecration and anointing did, however, confer a sacral quality and divine approval on them and hence did strengthen and confirm their positions. Evidently Richard wanted that reinforcement as soon as possible, setting the date for the coronation for 6 July, only ten days after his accession. Those in London for Edward V’s abortive coronation and parliament or in Richard’s northern army remained in attendance. Whilst much that was prepared for Edward V’s coronation remained usable, for example the decorations for Westminster Abbey, this clearly was not true of the robes of either the adult king, adult queen, nor the queen’s ladies in waiting. Moreover, this was the first double coronation since 1308 and the first occasion that the special provisions for a double coronation set down in the Royal Book (
Liber Regalis
) were brought into operation.
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Evidently the tailors,
silkwomen and other artisans had to work flat out. It was a tall order, yet the great wardrobe, abbey and other offices appear to have coped, and no hitches are recorded. Primarily, of course, it was the king’s coronation: he took precedence throughout over his consort, whose ceremonial was in a lesser key.

The great wardrobe received its orders on 27 June, but our first evidence of Anne’s direct involvement comes on Thursday 3 July, when king and queen apparently exchanged gifts. Richard gave Anne four yards of purple cloth of gold – both imperial and royal – and twenty more yards of the same wrought with garters, plus seven yards of purple velvet. Anne responded with twenty yards of purple velvet adorned with garters and roses.
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Next day, Friday 4 July, they moved to the royal apartments in the Tower, where the coronation ceremonial traditionally began. On Saturday 5 July, the vigil of the coronation began with Richard’s dubbing of forty-nine knights of the bath, who then served dinner – fish – to the monarchs, who solemnly proceeded through the City to Westminster in the afternoon. After the king and his entourage there followed those of Queen Anne. The way was headed by two of Anne’s gentlemen ushers, William Joseph and John Vavasour, as representatives of her two duchies of Aquitaine and Normandy. Next came the queen’s chamberlain and the queen herself traditionally attired. As befitted the more usual virgin, she wore her fair hair loose over her shoulders, and a gold circlet adorned with pearls and precious stones. She wore white cloth of gold, with a cloak and train furred with ermine and trimmed with lace, gold thread and tassels. Given the July date, one can only hope that the weather was mild! She did not ride, but was seated on a litter borne by two palfreys, led by Richard Lord Grey of Powis, attended by Thomas Hopton, gentleman of her chair, and flanked by twelve knights. Borne by palfreys trapped in white damask, the litter itself was of white damask and white cloth of gold garnished with ribbon,
fringed with gold and bells, and topped by an imperial canopy of gilded staves with bells. Next came her five henchmen, her riding horse led by the yeoman of her horse William Danyell, four carriages containing twelve great ladies, and seven ladies of the queen’s chamber. Pausing only at St Paul’s Cross to receive 500 marks in gift from the City, she proceeded to Westminster Hall for a light snack (void) of wine and spices. Supper was taken in the great chamber of Westminster Palace.

Sunday 6 July, coronation day, saw the procession assemble at 7a.m. in Westminster Hall. Cardinal Bourchier, Abbot Eastney, the coronation regalia, knights of the bath, nobility, mayor of London and other dignitaries preceded the king into Westminster Abbey. Queen Anne followed. Anne was clad in a smock of lawn, a kirtle laced with seventy annulets beneath a royal surcoat and a mantle, and a train of crimson velvet secured by heavy silk and gold laces. Again she was bare headed, her hair loose over her shoulders and kept in place with a bejewelled circlet of gold. She was preceded by her chamberlain, attended by Margaret, Countess of Richmond, who perhaps bore her train, flanked by Bishops Goldwell and Courtenay, and followed by two duchesses, her ladies decked in crimson robes, her knights and her esquires. Within the abbey church they stopped at a stage specially erected under the crossing and covered in red worsted where each had a throne. King Richard’s was St Edward’s Chair, Queen Anne’s was to the left and somewhat lower. First of all at the high altar King Richard was anointed with the holy oil, vested, crowned and enthroned, Anne sitting on a stool to one side. Escorted to the altar by the two bishops, Anne prostrated herself on cushions, and then knelt. Her circlet was replaced by a crown, she too was anointed on temple and breast with holy oil, a ring was placed on the fourth finger of her right hand and a crown on her head, and she was invested with her sceptre in her right hand and a rod featuring a dove of peace in her
left. Next followed high mass. They advanced to St Edward’s shrine, near where the monarchs breakfasted and changed their robes. Anne now wore a kirtle, a sleeveless surcoat and a mantle with a train, furred with miniver and ermine, together using fifty-six yards of material. Returning to their thrones, they proceeded to Westminster Hall, and to their chambers. The next stage, at 4p.m., saw king and queen back in Westminster Hall for the coronation banquet, seated at the marble table of king’s bench and attended by two countesses. Surely it was the most impressive and the most debilitating day of Anne’s short life. One and probably both of her weddings had been quiet affairs. Certainly Rows, the artist of the Salisbury Roll and
Beauchamp Pageant
, thought so, as each chose to depict Anne in her coronation robes.
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The jousts and other jollifications that followed are not recorded.

Once crowned, Richard set off on progress through the Thames Valley, the West and North Midlands, to York, the centre of his former hegemony. He was concerned to show himself to his subjects and to win their acceptance and adherence, and to reveal himself as a right-minded and gracious king. He professed for example his commitment to justice and renounced the fiscal extortion associated with his late brother. King Richard spread his bounty lavishly, patronising not merely individuals, but also towns and other communities that received new charters. An impressive escort of bishops and noblemen accompanied him. On Saturday 19 July the king and queen proceeded from Greenwich to Windsor, where they surely viewed Edward IV’s splendid half-built chapel of St George and visited his tomb within his two-storey chantry. Anne remained at Windsor Castle for perhaps as long as a fortnight, whilst Richard proceeded on 21 July to Oxford, Woodstock, Tewkesbury (4 August), Gloucester, Worcester and Warwick. Anne was spared thereby the tedious Latin speeches with which Oxford University regaled her husband. He arrived at Warwick on Friday 8 August, where she
joined him, with other ladies of noble rank; so did her nephew, her sister Isabel’s son Edward, Earl of Warwick, to whom town and castle properly belonged.
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Unless she went there independently, Anne did not go to Tewkesbury Abbey, where her first husband had been buried. The mausoleum of her Despenser ancestors and of her grandmother the Countess Isabel, the abbey’s patronage had been allocated to Clarence at the partition of the Warwick inheritance. When the Duchess Isabel died in 1476, Clarence had had her interred at Tewkesbury and had erected for them both a splendid new monument, now lost, in which he himself was interred following his execution.
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When in Tewkesbury, King Richard worshipped in the abbey, prayed and surely also made offerings at his brother’s tomb. Clarence’s forfeiture meant that the abbey had not been repaid the 310 marks (£206 13s 4d) that they had spent on the tomb, which King Richard now reimbursed.
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Although Richard was to move the body of the Lancastrian Henry VI to a more honoured location at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, he evidently felt no need to mark with a fitting monument the tomb of Henry’s son and Queen Anne’s first husband Prince Edward, whom supposedly he had slain. We cannot know whether he prayed or offered at Prince Edward’s tomb. Strangely, the abbey’s historian did not extend the chronicle that ended in 1477 to include this royal visit of the founder’s kin. He ends with the arms of the two royal dukes, not those of Gloucester as king.
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Queen Anne’s absence from much of Richard’s fatiguing progress is perhaps surprising, since the most was made of her connections with her home country in the new monarch’s love-in with his subjects. If not at Warwick as frequently as might have been expected in her youth, it was nevertheless one of her principal homes and perhaps one that she had last visited in 1470 during the Lincolnshire Rebellion. Since then Clarence had had consecrated her grandfather’s
Beauchamp Chapel at Warwick College, where there also lay buried her cousins Henry Neville and Oliver Dudley slain at Edgecote in 1469, and further progress had been made on the still unfinished great tower of Warwick Castle that represented the highest fashion in contemporary architecture.
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Richard committed himself to further expenditure. The king and queen stayed for a whole week. Presumably they stayed in the castle, worshipped and made offerings at St Mary’s church, and visited Guyscliff, where the aged Rows continued to officiate. Almost certainly it was on this occasion that Rows presented the queen with the English version of his
Roll of the Earls of Warwick
and that the queen, perhaps in consequence, commissioned the splendid illustrated biography of her grandfather Earl Richard Beauchamp now known as the
Beauchamp Pageant
. King Richard earned Rows’ approval ‘as special good lord to the town and lordship of Warwick’ by conceding, without fee or fine, undocumented privileges supposedly awarded by William the Conqueror and which Clarence as earl of Warwick had sought to no avail.
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In its progression of illustrations and accompanying text for each lord of Warwick and his consort, Rows’
Rolls
resembles the
Salisbury Roll
of Anne’s Montagu and Neville ancestors, but Rows conceived them on a much grander scale, both in the sheer number of tableaux and the much more elaborate commentary. He also focused more single-mindedly on the direct line in preference to collateral kin. If Rows’achievement stimulated a new version of the
Salisbury Roll
culminating in Anne and Richard in their coronation robes, there was no historian like Rows to enhance its commentary.
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Rows’
Rolls
incorporated a lifetime of devoted antiquarian research. Two versions were made, one English and another Latin. Preparing the sixty drawings of past lords, real and fantastic, earls and countesses, their coats of arms and emblems of any one version would have taken even an accomplished artist many
months to execute: much longer time than Rows possessed between Anne’s accession and her visit to Warwick if that was indeed when it was presented to her. Fortunately her accession required modification only of the last few entries: rather than erasing and rewriting, which did not befall the surviving
Roll
, it is possible that updated versions for Anne and Richard and their son Edward of Middleham were substituted. They are still located after the accounts of Isabel, appropriately as the younger sister, but in the final pedigree Anne is placed first, in the position of seniority,
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which has been interpreted as Rows’ flattery. That Rows’
Rolls
as history are imperfect – there is a good deal of factual inaccuracy and the family legends are recounted as though they actual happened – probably did not matter: almost certainly Anne was as credulous about the family myths as was Rows himself. The
Rolls
made the most of Anne’s ancestral renown. A unique survival from this era, different and superior to other contemporary genealogies, it was a splendid gift that surely gave her much pleasure. Surely it was a further pride to her as much as for Rows that she had brought the crown that her father had sought to the house of Beauchamp and Warwick.