Anne Neville (20 page)

Of course it was difficult for Rows to present recent history entirely positively and indeed he dodged as far as possible the disasters for the earldom of Warwick of 1397, 1471 and 1478. The treasons and come-uppance of Anne’s father Warwick in 1471 and the attainder and execution of her brother-in-law Clarence in 1478 were euphemistically treated: ‘forward fortune’, in Warwick’s case, ‘him deceived at his end’ and in Clarence’s case ‘maligned for against him and laid all apart’.
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Yet Rows did not merely massage the past into the most acceptable form. An octogenarian and vulnerable to the disapproval of his patrons, it was understandable and pardonable if he was timeserving, as he is usually charged, and he did tailor his message to suit the politics of his day. How could he have
presented a roll to the current queen, also his ancestral patroness, that deplored her dispossession of her mother, the rightful lady of Warwick? Certainly he did amend the Latin
Roll
in this way after Richard’s fall, evidently for his own satisfaction and at no Tudor prompting. His
History of the Kings of Britain
was decidedly hostile and incorporated much Tudor propaganda against the king.
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But even the English version is not wholly uncritical. Rows, we must recall, was committed to the lords of Warwick, amongst whom Anne and Richard were not to be counted. He reported on all Earl Richard Beauchamp’s children, including the three elder daughters who did not succeed, but he did not pursue their lines down to his own day. He knew the Countess Anne– she was born after he came to Guyscliff, she had inherited Warwick and made it her own – and also the Duchess Isabel, for whom it was the principal seat in 1471–6. Rows records the dates and places of birth of each of the Duchess Isabel’s children,
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but he knew Anne much less well. She had resided principally in Calais and the North before leaving her parental home at fourteen, never to return. He possessed no such precise information on Anne’s own son, whom he had probably never seen. Rows was committed to the Countess Anne – the kingmaker featured in his
Rolls
merely as her consort – and considered that she was still his rightful lady. ‘By true inheritance countess of Warwick’, Rows, English
Roll
reports her sufferings because of the kingmaker’s death and her patience through all her tribulations. In the Latin
Roll
, which he had kept for himself, he notes that she was deprived of her heritage and kept straitly by decision of Anne Neville. Later in his
History,
Rows tells more explicitly how it was Duke Richard who had responded to her appeal by locking her up for life.
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Careful reading of the English
Roll
is necessary to appreciate Rows’ ambivalence – more careful reading, probably, than Anne gave it and than most modern historians seem to have undertaken – and the Latin
Roll
never
came to Anne’s notice. What one would like to know and cannot know is how far Rows’ later strictures against King Richard dated back to 1483 or whether they were merely added in consequences of his failure, in response to Tudor propaganda, and because Rows came to believe that Richard had indeed poisoned Queen Anne.
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From Warwick the royal party proceeded on 15 August via Coventry, Leicester and Nottingham to Pontefract (28th), where they overnighted once again at the great castle and elevated the little town into a borough.
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After that they stayed for three weeks from 29 August at York, probably in the archbishop’s palace. York, of course, was the principal city of the North, the region that Richard had made his own as duke, centre of Anne’s Neville connection, and whence they drew most of their support. It was moreover a city that both had visited regularly and knew well, over whose affairs Richard had established his ascendancy, and where he appears to have been popular. Even more than Warwick, York was where the new regime was at its strongest, where existing loyalties must be maintained, and whose display of loyalty might serve to reinforce the fidelity of any doubting southerners. Thirteen thousand of Richard’s white boar badges were commissioned. The king’s secretary John Kendal was sent in advance to lay on the celebrations and much treasure was laid out on magnificent feasts and entertainments.
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It was at this point that the royal couple were joined by their only son Prince Edward, Earl of Salisbury. He had remained in the North when they went south and had missed both the usurpation and their coronation. Since he was their heir, the assurance of a future to their dynasty, one wonders why. Now, however, they had come to him and the family group was complete. Moreover, he could now take pride of place: the highpoint of the forthcoming festivities was to be a splendid public ceremony at which he took centre stage – his formal
creation and investiture as Prince of Wales. Not only were such investitures highly infrequent, but they occurred almost always in Westminster during parliamentary sessions: York was a unique venue. The great wardrobe supplied appropriately splendid clothes and horse-gear and the burghers of York laid on their best entertainment. Combined with King Richard’s own crown-wearing, this visit was designed to signal to northerners and Anne Neville’s traditional retainers the succession of a northern house and indeed of the Neville line to the English crown at last. To southerners, it demonstrated both Richard’s power and popularity in the North.

King Richard, Queen Anne and Prince Edward, five bishops, three earls, six other peers and many gentry set off from Pontefract on 29 August. They were met outside the city walls by the mayor, aldermen and councillors and processed past three pageants to York Minster – it was the feast of the beheading of St John the Baptist. A splendid service featured the
Te Deum
before the royal couple proceeded to the adjacent palace of the archbishop. King and queen attended two banquets and a performance of the Creed play. The visit culminated on 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, when the royal party processed from the palace to the Minster for mass. Richard munificently presented twelve silver gilt figures of the apostles to York Minster. The Minster’s relics were displayed on the high altar. Immediately afterwards Prince Edward was knighted, created prince of Wales and invested with the insignia of the golden wand and wreath. His nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick and the king’s bastard John of Pontefract were also knighted. Following dinner, another banquet, the king, queen and prince sat crowned for four hours. So splendid was the occasion that Crowland called it a second coronation. Amongst a very large and sumptuous order to the great wardrobe were suits of armour, five heralds’ doublets, five banners of the Trinity, SS George, Cuthbert and
Edward, and of the king’s arms, and 13,000 cushions embroidered with boars – that number again, somewhat greater than the population of York itself. King Richard also founded a chantry college for a hundred extra priests at the Minster. A foundation so unprecedented in size required large buildings, which were indeed commenced, and large endowments that were never transferred. Professor Dobson has suggested that at this stage Richard may even have been contemplating York Minster as his burial place.
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(If Barnard Castle was still an option, Middleham was no longer part of Anne and Richard’s hereditary estate, and neither college was really worthy of a sovereign.) Additionally Richard reduced the city’s fee farm and scattered benefits lavishly amongst other northern churches, communities and individuals. York had seen nothing like it since the enthronement of Archbishop Neville, which both Anne and Richard had attended, eighteen years before.

Proceeding southwards to Pontefract on 21 September, they stayed for three weeks, before moving on to Lincoln on 11 October, where the royal party were greeted by news of Buckingham’s rebellion. Richard took on the task of suppression himself, whilst Anne, presumably, proceeded to London independently. However, the honeymoon period was over. Although the rebels were soon routed, there was never to be another time when Richard’s right to rule was unquestioned.

THE QUALITY OF QUEENSHIP

Warwick had hoped to make his daughters royal and at different points had schemed for each to become a queen. That had been Anne’s destiny during her brief first marriage. It was an expectation and aspiration that she surely abandoned when she married Duke Richard. No better than third in the male
line to the throne, rather further away if Edward IV’s daughters were admitted, he was a youngest son and never scheduled for the crown. That he became king was unexpected and surely unplanned. Anne was carried with him to throne and crown. Given the weight attached at the usurpation to legitimacy and to the invalidation of Edward IV’s marriage, it was important that there was no question about the validity of the union of King Richard and Queen Anne: unlike that of Edward IV, Rows rather forcefully hinted.
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They lived their lie. If Richard had not been scheduled to be king, neither was Anne to be queen. After Edward of Lancaster’s death, she must have abandoned any such pretensions. As a mature Englishwoman, she brought to the throne much baggage – traditions, biases and connections – which were very much Richard’s as well. He used them to make himself king and found himself obliged to rely quite heavily on them once this was accomplished. However, Anne’s heritage was either to be submerged in Richard’s own royal line of succession or to follow a different course once their line faltered: its preservation, as we shall see, was no longer his concern.

Was Anne a good queen? Ricardians today wish to establish whether Richard was a good king. Because his reign was so brief, it is an impossible question to answer, besides being anachronistic. Richard’s age did not judge their rulers by the standards – such as reforms and legislative activity – that we do today. What are kings for? When assessing Anne as queen, moreover, we need to consider what queens were for. They had neither the power nor the responsibility of their husbands as rulers. To be queen, in Anne’s case, was not fundamentally different from being the wife, mother and duchess that she had been before. That is why late medieval theorists found it unnecessary to say anything more about queens.
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As queen, her rank was simply higher, her establishment, income and following all larger.

Her prime function, of course, was as breeding stock. It was her duty to supply the necessary son and heir, and this Anne had already fulfilled. This, however, was the barest requisite. It was desirable to have not just an heir, but also a spare, as Prince Harry is today. To ensure the succession and facilitate diplomatic alliances, a whole litter of princes and princesses was the ideal. Unfortunately Prince Edward was all she had delivered and all, moreover, that she could produce. That was to prove a fatal flaw that came to outweigh every other use and service.

A queen was also expected to preside over her husband’s court, to appear at, participate with the king in, and to lead major ceremonies, all of which (as we have seen) Anne appears to have performed satisfactorily. To Faunger she was ‘the social companion of the king in the ritual performance of the regal rites’. Laynesmith waxes lyrical here:

A woman was required in this context not just as an ornament to the king’s court but to complement the king’s masculine qualities with perceived feminine virtues of mercy and peacemaking… The ideal queen thus consummated her husband’s kingship by beauty, chastity and noble character that were an inspiration to good deeds, by mercy and emotion which complemented his judgement and logic, by an inclination to peace that tempered his courage, and by the flesh of the most human that complemented his spirit approaching the divine.
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One hopes that Anne was up to this role, but once again, regrettably, we cannot know.

We cannot even tell how often she was with the king. They were on progress together from Warwick to Lincoln in 1483, for both Christmases at Westminster and in 1484 at Nottingham. Cohabitation is also implied by Richard’s repeated visits to Greenwich, his adolescent home but probably the queen’s
residence. Yet Anne may have shared little of his restless itinerary through England’s provinces, dictated as it was by political and military considerations to which she had little to contribute.

A bachelor court like that of Edward IV, which had however been morally disreputable, was conceivable. That King Edward in the 1480s and King Richard were married did not guarantee respectability. It was kings, not their queens, who set the tone. If there was a role as patroness of the arts and literature, there are indications that Anne fulfilled it. Perhaps Anne as queen was expected to intercede with the king, to induce his exercise of his prerogative of mercy. We cannot tell. Certainly it was desirable that she should not represent any particular interest or become involved in court factions, whether actively or passively, as her predecessor Elizabeth Wydeville had done. It was one of the dangers of a queen who was English that she brought with her to office kinsfolk and dependants who expected patronage and influence on affairs. Anne, at least, was not like that, both because she had few kin of her own – and because those she possessed, like the Beauchamp and Despenser heirs, were not her supporters – and because those she might have advanced, her Neville retainers, were of the utmost value to her husband and more generously rewarded by him than she could have achieved. It is hard, indeed, to show that she exercised any influence on Richard’s patronage or clemency. However Sir William Knyvet thought it worth paying her to escape the penalties of treason.
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Anne’s Warwick inheritance and the Neville connection derived from it had been crucial in creating Richard’s hegemony in the North as Duke of Gloucester, assisted him in securing the throne and was to be an important source of reliable manpower as king. We have already seen the propaganda value of Anne’s Beauchamp and Salisbury antecedents and perhaps also how much they still meant to the queen. To Richard, however, they were superseded by his accession. What
he wanted to pass on to his son was the crown, not merely his estates as duke, and the Warwick inheritance had ceased to be material. One clear indication of this is that he felt free to dispose of it as he wished and, in the interests of winning friends, to acknowledge claims that he had hitherto resisted. Whether Anne shared his changed perceptions must be doubted.