Cecily Neville: Mother of Kings by Amy Licence

Author:Amy Licence [Licence, Amy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2014-06-10T00:00:00+00:00

10

Fickle Fortune

1459–1460

Her tears will pierce into a marble heart;

The tiger will be mild, whiles she does mourn1

Tonbridge Castle, in West Kent, is a Norman motte-and-bailey construction, of which little now remains. In the mid-fifteenth century, it was in the hands of Humphrey Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, who was a loyal Lancastrian. Even though he had fought against York at St Albans, he had been reluctant to do so, with marital ties placing him in a difficult position; his wife, Anne, was Cecily’s closest sibling in age, but their eldest son, Humphrey, was married to Somerset’s daughter Margaret. The castle was considered strong and secure, with its great towers connected by massive curtain walls, its solid keep and double gatehouse. Even when it had fallen into disrepair in the 1520s, Henry VIII was able to describe it as ‘the strongest forteres and moste like unto a castell of any other that the Duke had in England or Wales’.2 In 1451, it had been the location for the court that had been held in judgement upon Richard Lennard, who confessed to being one of those who had killed the Duke of Suffolk.3 It was there that Cecily and her three children found refuge at the end of 1459, until such time as their luck changed again. In the new year, word arrived that York and Edmund had reached Dublin, and that Edward was safe in Calais. It was then a matter of waiting for them to make their next move.

There has been some suggestion that Cecily and her children were kept at Maxstoke Castle in Warwickshire, also in the possession of the Stafford family. This may have been the case briefly, but a detail in the Paston Letters makes it seem more likely that she was at Tonbridge. Initially, she was kept closely guarded – ‘fulle strayte and many a grete rebuke’4 – but very early in 1460, a letter from William Botoner to John Berney records that ‘my Lady Duchesse ys stille ayen receved’ in Kent, which suggests she had been given permission to make visits in the vicinity of the castle. As she remained in her sister’s custody until June, this would have been impossible were she based in Warwickshire. Having been the hostess in Rouen, where she dressed in jewels to welcome the young Margaret of Anjou, Cecily now found herself suffering the slings and arrows of fortune, dispossessed of her home, estates and titles. Most of her sister Anne’s children had been born in the 1430s and 1440s, so there was no nursery or schoolroom for Cecily’s children to join. A new tutor may have been hired to continue to teach George, then ten, and Richard, aged seven, while Cecily herself may have taken responsibility for her thirteen-year-old daughter Margaret. There was precious little else for her to do, deprived as she was of all her previous duties.

Luckily, York had found refuge in Ireland, where his first brief stint as lieutenant was still fresh in the memory of the people.

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