Anne Neville (21 page)

Take, for instance, Richard’s changed attitude to the Neville inheritance, which, as we have seen, was the core of his estates, power-base and plans for the future in the north of England. Under the 1475 act, he had held this for as long as there were male heirs of the Marquis Montagu living. Before his accession, Richard had been striving to protect his tenure of these properties by minimising the dangers posed by George Neville, by degrading him and securing his wardship himself, and to acquire the reversionary rights of the next heir Richard Lord Latimer, by seeking his wardship also. Once of age, he needed the boys to release their rights to him or, at the very least, to marry them off to safe and powerless ladies. He secured custody of George but had yet to marry him off, so that his line continued, and had failed to wrest control of Richard from his uncle Cardinal Bourchier. Duke Richard’s plans were thwarted, however, when George died on 4 May 1483, still unmarried and childless. Gloucester’s title was reduced to that of a life-tenant: he could keep the Neville inheritance for life, but could not pass it on his son.
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His dominance of the North was limited to his own lifetime. Once king, he did secure custody of Latimer, but no longer was he interested in extending his estate in the Neville lands beyond his own days and in barring Latimer from his Neville inheritance. Almost at once, instead, Richard sold Latimer’s marriage to Humphrey Stafford of Grafton, who married him to his daughter Anne. Stafford certainly expected Latimer to succeed in due course not merely to his modest barony, but to Middleham, Sheriff Hutton, Penrith and potentially Gloucester’s dominance in the
North and the West March. A great future had been purchased for Anne Stafford and her heirs.
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Another part of the great Warwick inheritance had been inherited from the Despensers. The lordship of Glamorgan in the marches of South Wales had been allotted to Anne and most of the rest, including Tewkesbury and Hanley, to Isabel and hence her son Edward, Earl of Warwick. The underlying title derived from the Countess Anne was debatable, however: she should have divided the lands with the son of her half-sister George Neville, Lord Abergavenny, whose title had been recognised to no avail both in 1449 and in 1470.
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The two royal dukes of Clarence and Gloucester had firmly rebutted his claims. Now, however, Richard acknowledged them and granted livery of at least some of the lands to Lord Abergavenny.
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It was a signal favour to him deserving of the most committed service. If applied to the whole inheritance, it could have transformed Abergavenny from a middle-ranking noble in Kent and Sussex to one of the greatest Welsh marcher lords of his day. Whilst it cannot be demonstrated that Richard’s award was implemented and that many Despenser lands actually changed hands – indeed T.B. Pugh demonstrated that Richard kept his grip on Glamorgan
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– the grant indicates that Richard no longer cared particularly about keeping the estate intact or honouring the act of 1474. He was giving away his nephew Warwick’s lands as well as Anne’s own;moreover, once Prince Edward had died, it would all be at Warwick’s long-term expense.

Another sign that such issues scarcely concerned him any more is that on 1 July 1484 the countess of Warwick was allocated £80 a year to support herself. Most probably this indicates that she was released from custody and allowed to set up house herself. The revenues arose not from her own inheritance, but from the estate in Yorkshire of Richard’s former chamberlain in the minority of his son at the hands
of the custodians Sir Thomas and Lady Jane Wortley.
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Perhaps Richard no longer feared any threat that she posed to his tenure of her estates. Now in her sixties, she did not remarry. Richard also allowed a Beauchamp rival, Edward Grey Lord Lisle, whom he himself raised to viscount, to secure Chaddesley Corbett in Worcestershire, a part of the Beauchamp trust that first the kingmaker and then Clarence had treated as their own.
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Richard granted away parts of Anne’s inheritance, the London house of le Erber, which he gave to the new college of heralds as their headquarters.
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There was also a further grant to Queens’ College, Cambridge, this time of lands in the East Midlands of Beauchamp and Despenser origin. The king was already committed to endowing Queens’ College by 16 March 1484, when it was licensed to acquire property in mortmain to the value of 700 marks (£466 13s 4d) a year, of which the king granted ‘at the request of my dearest consort’ lands valued at £329 3s 8d a year, in capital value worth over £6,000. Including lands of Anne’s inheritance in East Anglia, they constituted both a major endowment for the college and a substantial alienation of the family estate, a breach once again of the 1474 act, and ultimately a loss to Isabel Neville’s son and Anne’s nephew Edward, Earl of Warwick. Richard was giving away his wife’s inheritance. The souls of both king and queen were to be prayed for, of course. The original warrant appears in Richard’s signet letter book and was therefore authenticated by him. However, the college’s petition was addressed to him, initialled by him, and recalled how ‘of late it pleased your said highness of your grace especial to grant’. The grant of course was to Queens’ College, not King’s: the apostrophe in the title Queens’ reminds us that it was Anne who was patroness alongside Elizabeth Wydeville and Margaret of Anjou rather than King Richard. It may therefore be that this lavish benefaction should really be credited to the intercession of ‘the most serene Queen Anne’ rather than King Richard himself.
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The principal source for the study of a fifteenth-century queen ought to be the records of her estates and her household. For late medieval queens lived even more separate lives from their consorts than ladies did from their lords. Many royal palaces like Westminster had separate apartments for the king and queen. Queens had their own estates – in particular, the ancient queen’s lands across southern England – and their own residences. In 1467–8 these had been worth approximately £4,500; those of Queen Margaret of Anjou had been even more extensive. The principal charge on these revenues was the queen’s household, an elaborate establishment that mirrored that of the king, with carvers, knights and gentlemen above stairs, serving departments below, smaller only than that of the king, but larger than that of the greatest other subject in the realm. That was what ought to have happened to Queen Anne. Most probably it did, but there is no conclusive evidence of it.

We know more of royal patronage during Richard III’s brief reign than of either Edward IV before him or Henry VII afterwards because we possess the king’s signet letter book, but strangely Anne herself is almost completely absent. Both Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Wydeville feature frequently in the patent rolls as recipients of a whole series of grants of the particular estates that comprised their dower. For Anne, there are neither any such grants nor any record of signet warrants to the estate officials implementing such decisions. Whereas her son Prince Edward was formally created Prince of Wales by charter dated 24 August 1483,
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there are no grants or parliamentary ratifications conveying to him his principality of Wales, duchy of Cornwall and county of Chester like those for Edward IV’s heir in 1471–2. In neither case need this mean that the queen and prince went unendowed: it is unlikely, but we cannot be sure. Richard III may have argued that Edward IV, as a bastard, was never king and therefore he himself was.
He certainly asserted that Edward IV had never been married to Elizabeth Wydeville and therefore she had never been queen and her son never prince nor King Edward V. The ex-queen and ex-king therefore did not need to be dispossessed of that to which they had no title. In similar vein, as queen to the king and eldest son to the king, it could be asserted that Anne and Edward automatically succeeded to the queens’ lands and to the appanage of the princes of Wales. There was no need therefore for any formal grants. Whilst possibly correct, this is still very odd. Medieval officers wanted assurance and authorisation for their actions – by what warrant did you act? – and the issue of legal title, if not to the lands themselves then to appurtenant rights of way etc., were surely bound to arise. Not only were no grants enrolled, but none of these properties feature in the lists in Richard’s signet letter book, nor were the estate officers included in his lists. That a grant was made after Anne’s death from Higham Ferrers (Northants.) suggests that it had just become available.
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Probably, therefore, Queen Anne succeeded to the whole dower formerly held by Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately, however, there are no estate accounts or other archives indicating Anne’s tenure or what she did with these lands in the National Archives. We really cannot tell. On the evidence cited above of Richard’s alienations, it seems unlikely that Anne secured control of her own inheritance.

However large her dower was, it seems certain that Anne controlled a substantial estate to fund her expenditure as queen. The largest charge should have been her household. That Anne was not always with the king, resided in other royal palaces, and travelled independently, for example to Warwick and from Lincoln in 1483, indicates that she possessed an autonomous household like any other queen. Almost certainly it mirrored that of her predecessor: King Richard was careful to maintain the standards of display expected of a king. However, we know almost nothing about it.

A mere handful of members of her household are known by name. Walter Graunt, a yeoman usher of her chamber in 1484, and John Snowden, a yeoman of her chamber in 1485, attracted royal grants and appear in Richard’s own records. Robert Roo transferred from her son’s household, where he was gentleman of the pantry. We know also of a chamberlain and two chamberers, a carver, gentlemen and yeomen of her horse, chair, and great chamber, and five henchmen, mostly nameless.
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Laynesmith has attempted to fill the gaps.’The majority of those who appear to have been in Anne Neville’s household were members of northern gentry families, and were probably her attendants as duchess of Gloucester also’. Anne’s cousin Elizabeth Parr, her illegitimate half-sister Margaret Huddleston, and another cousin Elizabeth Lady FitzHugh ‘were almost certainly among her personal attendants’, she speculates.
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Here she may be extrapolating from records of the queen’s coronation, which report more of Anne’s attendants than any other source, including seven married ladies from northern aristocratic families: Elizabeth Bapthorpe, Anne’s bastard half-sister Margaret Huddleston, Elizabeth Mauleverer, Grace Pullan, Joyce Percy, Katherine Scrope, Alice Skelton and Anne Tempest.
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At that point, evidently, Anne Neville had not taken on Elizabeth Wydeville’s staff and most probably was continuing her own as duchess. Whether this northern bias persisted in her much larger household as queen is doubtful: her spouse at accession sought to be inclusive and was forced to ‘northernise’ his regime only after the rebellious southerners opted out. Laynesmith, however, may well be right. There is nothing unreasonable about what she writes, but at present we cannot know. Queen Anne certainly required such genteel tirewomen.

Anne shared with Richard suffrages for the good of her soul. It used to be argued that Richard was a most lavish founder of chantries. Certainly, as we have seen, the couple did establish a
chantry at Cambridge, collegiate chantries at Barnard Castle, Middleham and most splendidly at York, all of which prayed assiduously for Anne’s soul. Also, however, she was prayed for at All Hallows the Less in London, St Leonard’s Chapel in Wolverley (Worcs.), St Mary Rykill in York and Wilberfoss nunnery (Yorks.), Carlisle cathedral priory, and the College of Heralds, at Old Sleaford and Brown’s Hospital in Stamford (Lincs.), St Helen Abingdon (Berks.), at Wem and Ludlow in Shropshire, Bishops Stortford in Hertfordshire and Ashbourne in Derbyshire, where other founders set up chantries licensed by the king on condition he and his consort were prayed for.
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Whilst evidence of the accumulation of merit for her in purgatory, one benefit of being a queen, they do not actually imply any pious actions by Anne herself.

QUEEN ANNE’S FINAL SORROWS

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ueen Anne had little opportunity to enjoy being queen. Her reign was exceptionally short. She may have been in ill-health at her succession. By January 1485 she was certainly a sick woman who, despite her relative youth, was past childbearing. The son, whom she loved, had died. Her husband played fast and loose with her inheritance, which no longer mattered to him. He appears also to have identified a younger princess as replacement and waited in eager anticipation for her death, which soon followed. At least Anne was spared the destruction of her husband and all he stood for. Whereas Richard is remembered as the most wicked of kings and uncles, Anne was another victim that he used, exhausted, and inevitably discarded. In this instance Shakespeare was right.

We have already seen how Edward of Middleham’s investiture as prince of Wales was made the centrepiece of Richard’s visit to York in 1483. The prince was left in the North as figurehead of Richard’s regional rule – the king’s hegemony was to be continued in his absence and Anne’s Neville connection maintained through the household and council of
their son. In February 1484, whilst parliament was in session at Westminster, ‘almost all the lords spiritual and temporal and the leading knights and gentlemen of the king’s household’, assembled by royal command in a downstairs room on the corridor leading to Anne’s own apartments, were induced to swear a new oath of allegiance to the prince, ‘on whom’ – Crowland wisely observes ‘all hope of the royal succession rested’.
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Prince Edward fell ill, however, and died on 9 April 1484, one year to the day since the demise of Edward IV. It was a staggering blow, certainly politically, but also personally, to his parents, who were then together at Nottingham. Separation from their son did not indicate that they did not care for him. ‘You might have seen’, reported Crowland, who evidently had seen, ‘the father and mother … almost out of their minds for a long time when faced with the sudden grief’.
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It is the clearest testimony that we possess (and the only one) that Anne and Richard enjoyed a genuinely companionate marriage, that they felt towards their son both the love that we expect today (and which is sometimes denied of past parents by modern historians), and that they were really distraught at their son’s death. Immediately afterwards Richard proceeded via York (1 May) to Middleham (5–6 May), Durham (15th), Scarborough (22nd) and back to York (27th), an itinerary most probably shared by Queen Anne. Both may have attended their son’s funeral, perhaps at Sheriff Hutton.