Cecily Neville: Mother of Richard III

by John Ashdown-Hill

Overview

Wife to Richard, Duke of York, mother to Edward IV and Richard III, and aunt to the famous ‘Kingmaker’, Richard, Earl of Warwick, Cecily Neville was a key player on the political stage of fifteenth-century Britain England.

Mythologically rumoured to have been known as ‘the Rose of Raby’ because of her beauty and her birth at Raby Castle, and as ‘Proud Cis’ because of her vanity and fiery temper, Cecily’s personality and temperament have actually been highly speculated upon. In fact, much of her life is shrouded in mystery. Putting aside Cecily’s role as mother and wife, who was she really?

Matriarch of the York dynasty, she navigated through a tumultuous period and lived to see the birth of the future Henry VIII. From seeing the house of York defeat their Lancastrian cousins; to witnessing the defeat of her own son, Richard III, at the battle of Bosworth, Cecily then saw one of her granddaughters become Henry VII’s queen consort.

Her story is full of controversy and the few published books on her life are full of guess-work. In this highly original history, Dr John Ashdown-Hill seeks to dispel the myths surrounding Cecily using previously unexamined contemporary sources.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526706324
Publisher:	Pen and Sword
Publication date:	06/25/2018
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Dr John Ashdown-Hill is a well-known medieval historian, having published extensively on a variety of topics within that period but focussing mainly on the Yorkist era. He is best-known for his pivotal role in uncovering the burial place of King Richard III for and for tracing collateral female-line descendants of Richard’s elder sister to establish his mtDNA haplogroup, which matched the mtDNA of the bones found in the Leicester car park. He continues to write about this period of history, and in 2015 he was awarded an MBE ‘for services to historical research and the exhumation and identification of Richard III’.

Table of Contents

Introduction Confronting the problems ix

Chapter 1 Cecily's Family Background 1

Chapter 2 Cecily's Childhood and Marriage 15

Chapter 3 Cecily's List of Children 34

Chapter 4 Wife and Mother in France 42

Chapter 5 Wife and Mother in Ireland 58

Chapter 6 The End of Maternity 72

Chapter 7 Through the Menopause, into Custody 86

Chapter 8 The Blue Velvet Carriage to Bereavement 94

Chapter 9 The First Reign of Edward IV 102

Chapter 10 Cecily's Sons in Conflict 118

Chapter 11 The Blaybourne Bastardy Myth 130

Chapter 12 The Second Reign of Edward IV 139

Chapter 13 The Accession of Richard III 166

Chapter 14 The Reign of Henry VII 177

Chapter 15 Cecily's Bequests, and what they Reveal 188

Chapter 16 Cecily's DNA and her Dental Record 201

Appendix 1 Alphabetical List of the Manors granted by Edward IV to his mother in 1461 208

Appendix 2 Members of the Entourage of Cecily Neville 213

Appendix 3 The Fifteenth-century Abbots of Colchester 228

Appendix 4 Lucy Fraser, 'Synopsis of Cicely; or the Rose of Raby. An Historical Novel (1795)' 229

Appendix 5 The allegiance of Cecily's siblings in the 1450s and beyond 231

Appendix 6 Where Cecily appears to have been living or staying on specific dates 233

Acknowledgements 235

Endnotes 236

Bibliography 273

Index 282