Lady Anne Neville (Wife)

by Marie Barnfield

Warwick's Daughter

Anne was born at Warwick Castle on 11th June 1456, the younger of the two daughters of Richard Neville and Anne Beauchamp, Earl and Countess of Warwick. Although the Neville lands, centred on Middleham in Yorkshire, would have to pass to Warwick’s nearest male heir, Anne and her sister Isabel were still supremely eligible, being coheiresses to vast estates including the earldoms of Warwick and Salisbury. By the time of Anne’s birth her father was already an ally of his uncle-by-marriage the Duke of York, and before she was five years old he had helped York’s eldest son, Edward, to take the throne from the Lancastrian King Henry VI.

The scant evidence that we have suggests Anne may have lived mainly with her mother and sister at Warwick Castle, though her first known public appearance was in York, at the enthronement feast of her uncle Archbishop George Neville in 1465. Also at that feast was the younger of Edward IV’s two brothers, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had recently joined Warwick’s household. During the previous year, a rift had opened between Anne’s father and the King on account of Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Woodville. The new Queen’s possession of several unmarried sisters deprived Warwick of most of the suitable matches for his daughters and the King may have granted him the keeping of Richard and the younger Francis, Lord Lovell, as prospective bridegrooms for Isabel and Anne.

Warwick’s ambition, however, was to marry his elder daughter to Richard’s older brother, George, Duke of Clarence, and his younger daughter to Gloucester. There was nothing in canon law to prevent this; the only obstacle was the King, who wished to reserve George for a diplomatic match. Despite Edward’s opposition, Warwick won George over and sent agents to Rome to secure the dispensation for his marriage, and probably also for Anne’s marriage to Richard. But at that very time relations between the King and the Earl broke down completely; Richard chose to remain loyal to the King and left Warwick’s household for good. As Francis Lovell had already been married off, Anne’s marriage prospects must have looked rather bleak.

Clarence’s marriage to Isabel Neville in 1469 was the foundation stone of their joint rebellion, which destroyed the King’s favourites, and temporarily consigned King Edward to custody and put the Nevilles back in control. After a brief reconciliation with Edward and a further unsuccessful rebellion aimed at placing Clarence on the throne, in April 1470 Warwick and Clarence fled; stopping briefly at Warwick Castle, they collected Anne and her mother and sister to take with them into exile; Isabel’s first baby was born dead aboard ship. Eventually, the fugitives found a safe haven at the French port of Honfleur. Warwick and Clarence made their headquarters there whilst King Louis had the Countess and her daughters removed to the greater security of Valognes Castle south of Cherbourg.

Princess of Wales

Leaving Clarence and their womenfolk behind, Warwick travelled on to the French court at Amboise to plead with Louis for military support to oust King Edward. But Louis’ price was the restoration of Henry VI, and when the Earl returned to Normandy it was in company with Henry’s Queen, Margaret, and their son, Edward, Prince of Wales. In order to gain Warwick’s support, Margaret had grudgingly consented to Anne’s marriage to her son; but as Anne and Edward were first cousins a dispensation was needed in order  for their union to be lawful, and whilst Louis’s messenger hurried towards Rome, Warwick had to return to England without seeing his daughter wed. Anne and her mother followed Queen Margaret to Amboise to await the dispensation, which probably reached them before the end of September. By 19th October they had also learned of Warwick’s victory in England, yet throughout November Queen Margaret contrived to delay the marriage and it was not until the second half of December that the couple were finally wed. Anne was fourteen, a very young woman who would later be described in model terms as ‘seemly, amiable and beauteous’.

As soon as the couple were wed, the English party set off for home. They entered Paris to a royal reception and reached Dieppe before the end of January, but the weather was so stormy that it was March before they set sail; they did not make land until 14th April, and that only at Weymouth many miles west of their probably destination. They had arrived just in time to witness the downfall of the new regime. King Edward had returned and taken London, Clarence had reverted to his Yorkist allegiance, and that very day Warwick had perished in defeat at Barnet. Anne shared in the forced march to Tewkesbury, where King Edward’s forces destroyed the Lancastrian army and Prince Edward was killed in the rout. Anne and her mother-in-law were found in ‘a poor religious house’ and brought to Coventry, where the former Princess of Wales was placed in the keeping of her sister and her husband.

Duchess of Gloucester

The estates of both Anne’s parents were treated as forfeit and her mother’s lodgings in Beaulieu sanctuary were surrounded by a royal guard. The King granted the Neville lands in the North to his younger brother Richard, whilst the girls’ own inheritance went to Clarence. The disgraced Anne was left with nothing, but in the middle of February 1472 Richard successfully requested the King’s permission to marry her. Initially, George agreed to co-operate only if he could retain possession of both girls’ entire inheritance, but after some persuasion he conceded ‘a parcel’ of manors and Richard and Anne sent off to Rome for a dispensation to cover the affinity that had arisen between them as a result of Anne’s marriage to Edward of Lancaster. According to the Crowland Chronicle, Clarence put up more of a fight than these bald facts would suggest, going so far as to hide Anne away in order to prevent the marriage; Richard, however, discovered his cousin somewhere in London, dressed as a kitchenmaid, and had the good sense to avoid accusations of abduction by taking her to St Martin’s Sanctuary. Precisely when these events occurred is not known. Nor is it known quite when the marriage took place. The dispensation might have reached England as early as June, but the earliest extant reference to Anne as Duchess of Gloucester appears in a statute enrolled between late October 1472 and 8th April 1473.

One of the first tasks Richard undertook after his marriage was to obtain the Countess of Warwick’s release into his own household at Middleham. She rode north in late May of 1473, and in no time rumours were emanating from the royal household that Edward meant to restore all her property so that she could give it to the Gloucesters. These rumours may have unnerved Clarence as, when Richard returned to London for parliament that autumn, he found his brother arming men to ‘deal with’ him.  According to news that found its way to the French court, George was also claiming that Richard had (somehow) married Anne by force, which would have invalidated the union.

King Edward forced Clarence to submit his dispute with Richard to arbitration by the royal council. The council’s final award was that the Countess of Warwick’s entire inheritance was to be divided between her daughters and their husbands as though she were dead. Should Richard and Anne be ‘divorced’ – i.e., their marriage voided – Richard was to retain his interest in Anne’s share of the inheritance so long as he continued trying to effect a valid marriage with her, thus robbing Clarence of any further incentive to force an annulment. After the long Easter recess of 1474, the agreement was passed into law. Two months later, Richard and Anne sealed indentures with George and Isabel that rehearsed and agreed all the terms of the Act except those relating to the possibility of Richard and Anne being ‘divorced’. Clarence had managed to keep rather more than a half share of the estates, including both earldoms, though Richard and Anne had acquired the Welsh lordship of Glamorgan.

The new Duchess of Gloucester could finally settle into her new role, of which we catch occasional glimpses in the records. Anne had more about her than simply good looks and nice manners. Their marriage helped Richard win the acceptance of Warwick’s old retainers in the North, and for his part Richard never overlooked the fact that the lands of the 1474 settlement had come to him in right of Anne, every deed relating to them being issued in joint names. Anne was a friend to Durham Priory, which rewarded her ‘good deeds’ on their behalf with membership of their Fraternity of St Cuthbert, and she communicated regularly with the Prior on behalf of members of the ducal household. During the summer of 1475, when Richard was away in France, Anne appears to have stood in for him to some degree, as in that year the York city council made gifts to members of Richard’s council who had come ‘bearing letters from the lady Duchess of Gloucester’. The couple’s only child, Edward, seems to have been conceived on Richard’s return from France and born at Middleham during the summer of 1476.

In the autumn after Edward’s birth, we find Richard purchasing furs and silks for Anne in London. In June 1477 Richard and Anne were admitted together to the Corpus Christi Guild of York and walked in its annual procession. In September 1478 they issued a charter in joint names confirming the liberties of Cardiff, capital of the lordship of Glamorgan, and a year later they rode away to visit the lordship together. A surviving fragment of financial accounts affords us a snapshot of their stay at Swansea Castle, during which a local tailor repaired seven gowns for Anne. It may have been on this journey that the couple endowed Great Malvern Priory with its great west window, in which Richard and Anne’s arms are both incorporated.

Queen of England

After Edward IV’s death on 9th April 1483, Richard rode south to take up his position as Protector to the young Edward V. Anne followed once he seemed to be safely established in London, and arrived in the capital shortly before the beginning of the political crisis that ended with Richard taking the throne; it was during this period that Clarence and Isabel’s orphaned son, Edward, Earl of Warwick, was delivered into Anne’s care.

Richard and Anne were crowned together on 6th July. Richard presented Anne with a set of scarlet gowns for her ladies to wear at the coronation ceremony, whilst Anne made Richard a present of a full-length gown of purple cloth-of-gold decorated with Roses and Garters for his use the following day. Shortly afterwards, the couple set out together on their first royal progress. At Windsor they temporarily parted ways, Anne going by the direct road to Warwick whilst Richard pressed on westwards through Tewkesbury. After reaching Warwick, Richard spent another week there with Anne before they continued on their journey. As they rode northwards, Richard wrote to his herald in France asking him to purchase fine wines over there for himself and his ‘queen and consort’. At Pontefract the couple were joined by their seven-year-old son Edward. In York they received such a rapturous reception that Richard decided to reward the city by staging there Edward’s investiture as Prince of Wales, a very grand occasion at which Richard and Anne wore their crowns.

The accounts of King’s Lynn show that as Queen, Anne acquired a lion, perhaps the same one that Edward IV had owned, and like Edward sent it on tour to entertain the crowds. In the spring of 1484, she and Richard rode together to Queens’ College, Cambridge which Anne ‘endowed…with great rents’; in thanks, the university decreed an annual mass ‘for the happy state of…(King Richard) and his dearest consort Anne.’ The couple then made for Nottingham where during April they received the disastrous and unexpected news of their son’s death at Middleham. ‘You might have seen the father and mother…almost out of their minds for a long time when faced with the sudden grief.’

This is our last clear sighting of Anne for many months. The only account we have of Richard’s journey through York to young Edward’s resting place at Middleham makes no mention of her presence, and the supposition that she stayed with Richard at Scarborough Castle that summer is based solely on the fact that one of the castle towers was referred to in 1538 as ‘The Queens Towre of Lodging’. It is not until Christmas that we next find a clear reference to her, at Westminster Palace, where according to the Crowland Chronicler ‘much attention was given to dancing and gaiety’, with frequent changes of matching clothes by Queen Anne and Edward IV’s eldest daughter, the Lady Elizabeth.

As the court was celebrating Twelfth Night, news arrived that Henry Tudor had determined to attempt an invasion that coming summer. Immediately, Richard found himself assaulted by hostile rumours. A tale was spread that he was planning to divorce Anne in order to marry Elizabeth, yet it very soon became clear that Anne was seriously – mortally – ill. The only clues as to the nature of her illness are that she was bedridden for about two months but may possibly have been unwell for much of the previous year, and that her doctors advised Richard to stop sharing her bed. As for Richard marrying Elizabeth, it is now known that a marriage plan for them was indeed being considered for Richard’s widowhood, but it was a double match between Richard and a Portuguese princess, and Elizabeth and a Portuguese prince.

Anne died on 16th March 1485, the same day that England experienced a great eclipse of the sun. She was just three months short of her twenty-ninth birthday. She was laid before the great altar in Westminster Abbey ‘with honours no less than befitted the burial of a queen’. In their letter of condolence, the Venetian Senate encouraged Richard to take comfort in the knowledge that his queen had ‘led so religious…a life, and was so adorned with goodness, prudence, and excellent morality, as to leave a name immortal’. Two weeks after her death, Richard called the mayor and citizens of London together to address rumours that he had hastened Anne’s end in order to marry Elizabeth. Speaking ‘in a loud and distinct voice’, he ‘showed his grief and displeasure aforesaid and said it never came into his thought or mind to marry in such manner wise, nor willing nor glad of the death of his queen but as sorry and in heart as heavy as man might be…’