The King’s Mother: Cecily Neville
by Dr Joanna Laynesmith

One of Richard III’s most unnatural crimes, according to Tudor propaganda, was his false accusation that his own mother, Cecily Neville, was an adulteress. Polydore Vergil asserted that she ‘complanyd afterward in sundry places to right many noblemen . . . of that great injury’. More recently Michael K Jones has suggested that Edward IV really was a bastard and that Richard’s claim to the throne was largely inspired by this fact, abetted by his mother. The nature of Richard’s relationship with Cecily remains one of the many mysteries surrounding his accession to the throne.

Of Cecily Neville’s last six children, only George and Richard survived infancy. These boys were with her during some of the most traumatic years of her life, as the Lancastrian kingship collapsed and her husband made his unsuccessful bid for the throne of England.  She would have supervised their early education, perhaps taught them to read.

In the winter of 1460/61 Yorkist fortunes were at their lowest, with the duke of York’s death at Wakefield and the earl of Warwick’s defeat at St Albans. For their safety Cecily sent the boys, aged just eleven and eight, to the court of the duke of Burgundy. Her decision to remain in London to defend the interests of her only other surviving son, the eighteen-year-old Edward, Earl of March, indicates her priorities and her ambition for her family. Immediately after their return to England the king’s little brothers, like their mother, probably lived within the royal household for several years. Richard may well have been nearly thirteen before he left the regular company of his mother for the household of the earl of Warwick.

The year 1469 was to prove the first real test in Cecily’s relations with her sons. This was the year that George, Duke of Clarence, joined forces with his father-in-law, the earl of Warwick, to rebel against and imprison Edward IV. Richard was steadfastly loyal to Edward in the face of slanders that the king was a bastard. When Clarence and Warwick rebelled again in 1470 to reinstate Henry VI, Richard fled with Edward to Burgundy. But where did Cecily stand? Before Clarence and Warwick set sail for Calais from where they launched their initial rebellion Cecily spent five days with them at Sandwich. Michael Jones has surmised that she had fallen out with Edward and was in favour of the rebellion. Yet only months earlier Edward had named his second daughter after Cecily and as soon as Edward regained his throne in 1471 he took his family to join his mother at Baynard’s Castle. My suspicion is that Cecily knew nothing of rebellion but was aware of Clarence’s plan to marry Warwick’s eldest daughter in defiance of the king. This suggests that for all her loyalty to Edward, Cecily did not always put him entirely before her other sons - she wanted George to marry England’s most eligible heiress.

In 1461 one observer claimed that Cecily ‘can rule the king as she pleases’. It appears from surviving correspondence that her relationship with Richard was similar. In 1474 a land dispute arose between servants of Cecily and Richard. When Richard was first informed of his servant’s claim he was prepared to enforce it with men at arms, until he learnt that the dispute was with one of his mother’s men. An exchange of letters followed in which Cecily laid down the terms and place of negotiation and ultimately the affair was settled entirely in her man’s favour. Cecily’s letters also indicate affection for Richard, expressing regret that he had not been able to visit her recently when Edward was with her at Berkhamstead (she had seen Richard only a few weeks previously at Syon).

By the 1470s Cecily was developing a greater interest in religion and she probably shared some of this with Richard. Notably he and Anne owned a copy of Mechtild of Hackeborn’s mystical account of her visions, the Booke of Gostlye Grace, a text which Cecily also owned. They may well have shared a wider interest in Carthusian spirituality. Moreover, in 1478, in the foundation statutes for a college of priests at Middleham, Richard listed saints to whom he had a special devotion, beginning with John the Baptist. Actually we have no other evidence of his interest in this saint, yet by the time of her death in 1495 John the Baptist was the saint who meant most to Cecily. The prioritisation of the Baptist in Richard’s very long list may consequently have been inspired by his mother’s devotion.

This is about as much as we know about the relationship between mother and son before 1483. How far then did she acquiesce in his actions that summer? His use of her London home, Baynard’s Castle, initially made me assume that she was probably party to his decision to take the throne. Yet she does not appear to have attended his coronation. Surely if she had helped mastermind his accession she should have been there?

Certain contemporaries were under the impression that Richard had considered claiming the throne on the grounds of his brother’s bastardy. However, the allegation of Cecily’s adultery does not appear in any official records. Moreover, in the most contemporary description, Mancini’s, there is no mention of Richard accusing his mother of adultery. The question of adultery does appear, however, in Mancini’s account of Cecily’s supposed horror on learning of Edward IV’s marriage. Only five years before Richard’s accession George, Duke of Clarence, had been attainted for that slander (among other offences) so it was still fresh in public memory and doubtless debated again. Presumably this is where Mancini picked it up and why later writers thought it had been part of Richard’s claim as well as Clarence’s.

My suspicion is that Cecily did not actively promote Richard’s accession, but equally did not oppose it either. She was pragmatic enough to recognise the risks for the House of York and England that a child king would bring. Instead her youngest son was a proven politician and warrior, at last a third king Richard and his Neville queen. The only direct evidence of contact between mother and son during Richard’s reign is a letter from Richard in June 1484. The wording seems to me to imply that there was no animosity between them but that they did not see each other on a very regular basis, ‘Madam, I heartily beseech you that I may often hear from you to my comfort’, Richard wrote. If Cecily really resented Richard as Vergil claimed there would be little point in his writing such words.

The final enigma lies in the title Cecily used in her will: ‘wife unto the right noble prince Richard late Duke of Yorke, fader unto the most cristen prince my Lord and son King Edward the iiijth’. Why no mention of her son Richard? Her will was a public document which included requests to the king so most likely she was avoiding any offence to Henry Tudor. This may also explain why she left nothing to her daughter Margaret of Burgundy who had so offended King Henry. Such a coldly political approach at the very end of her life is disappointing to the modern reader, but Cecily’s sense of a duty of good ladyship to the servants now dependent upon Henry’s goodwill must be considered. Ultimately we can only guess at her emotions for the most controversial child in her turbulent brood.

First published in the Ricardian Bulletin Autumn 2005