Anne Neville by Michael Hicks

Author:Michael Hicks [Hicks, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Anne Neville
ISBN: 9780752468877
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2011-09-22T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

Her Husband’s Wife

1475–83

WHAT ARE DUCHESSES FOR?

The 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.

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