Gone Medieval - Cecily Neville: Mother of Richard III

Episode Date: July 31, 2021

Born in 1415 as the youngest of the 1st Earl of Westmorland's 22 children, Cecily Neville led one of the Medieval periods' most captivating lives. The wife of Richard, Duke of York, and the mother of two kings of England—Edward IV and Richard III, her life was filled with promise and power from the very beginning. In this episode of Gone Medieval, fact meets fiction! Matt is joined by author Annie Garthwaite, as they delve into her debut novel 'Cecily'. With extracts from Annie's newly released book, we examine the mind and life of an aristocratic medieval woman, mother, and wife. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. I'm Matt Lewis. Cessaly Neville, the Duchess of York, led one of the medieval periods most fascinating and action-packed lives. It was filled with promise, with wealth and privilege and success, but also with losses and setbacks and fights that she couldn't avoid. We're going to take a slightly different look at this historical figure today. I'm joined by Garthwaite, whose new novel, Cessaly, introduces us to this incredible lady.

If historical fiction is your thing, then I can't recommend this book highly enough to you. If it isn't, then I can vouch for the amount of research and care that went into producing this book. So Annie is perfectly positioned to tell us all about her heroine. Thank you very much for joining us, Annie. Thank you very much. It's lovely to be here. Thank you.

Brilliant. So can you help us initially just to place Cessaly Neville in the medieval period? When was she alive? What's her family background? Right. So one of the amazing things about Sessaly is the length of her life. So she was born in 1415, which is the year of Agincourt and all of that. And she lived right through the first decade of the Tudor dynasty. So from 1415 to 1495. And for the whole of that time, really, she was one of the most powerful women in England and never far from, you know, the center of power. And in fact, she was the only major protagonist of the Wars of the Roses to live right through them from England. the very beginning to the very end and to see the conclusion of it all. Her parents, Ralph Earl of Westmoreland was her father and John Bofut, the illegitimate daughter of Catherine Swinford and John of Gaunt, was her mother. So she came from a family that was very close to the throne,

very close to the crown. Her mother, Joan, was Henry IV's illegitimate half-sister. So she would have grown up very close to the Lancastrian crown, very aware of her status as a powerful medieval woman, and she would have expected to make a very good marriage, and indeed she did, and she married the man who would become Richard Duke of York, and hers was one of a series of quite brilliant marriages that Ralph and Joan arranged for their children. She was the youngest of 13 daughters. Ralph would bring in young men, young orphans typically of noble houses who had grand titles in their pockets and he would marry them into his family, to his daughters.

So when Richard Duke of York came into Ralph's wardship, he was heir to the earldom of Cambridge and to the dukedom of York, so he was a very good candidate to be Cecily's husband. So they married when Cessaly was eight years old and Richard was a few years older than her, but not very much. And then two years after they were married, his star rose even further because his maternal uncle died childless, which made Richard the heir to a vast mortimer inheritance with huge landed estates,

but also with a claim to the throne that many would consider to be stronger than Henry the 6th, the guy who was sitting on the throne at the time, which sounds like a good thing but it was also a threat and a danger that hung over Richard for the whole of his life. It was a bit of a poison chalice, the Mortimer inheritance, wasn't it?

Lots and lots of money, but lots and lots of suspicion and risk and everything else that comes with it as well. Yes, and I always feel about Richard that he would have been, you know, Ralph brought him into his household to make him a king's man,

to make a good Lancasterian of him and marry him to his daughter. And I think if Henry the 6th had proven to be a good king, then Richard would have been loyal to him and happy to serve him throughout his life. I think that was what Richard really wanted, a good king, that he could be a faithful subject to. And certainly he seems to have tried to be that despite Henry the Sixth failings for most of his life. Yeah, I think you know I agree on Richard Duke of York there. He's a bigger who gets a rough press, I think, a lot of the time for his ambition.

And I think if you examine his life, it's a very different story. And Cessaly's obviously wrapped up in that as the woman who is a woman who is. married to him and presumably is his confidant and is helping him develop his policies and his ideas and things like that. So Cecily is key to what drives the nation towards the Wars of the Roses ultimately. Yes. And interestingly in all of that, I think in my view, Cecily saw the situation much more clearly. I think the last thing Richard wanted to be was a traitor. The less thing he wanted to do was rebel against his king. And in his heart, he really didn't want to do that. his father had died a traitor. He knew what that was like. I think Cecily saw things much more

clearly, much more pragmatically. And it's also interesting to remember that her own father, Ralph, was one of the first of the English nobles to support Henry IV's claim to the throne when he usurp the throne from Richard II. So for her, this idea of noblemen making the decision to depose or get rid of a bad king. It was a foundation story of her family, if you like. So when in the fullness of time, she found herself married to Richard Duke of York under the rule of a very weak king surrounded by a corrupt court, what would she naturally conclude would be a sensible course of action, particularly when she could see that the corrupt court around Henry the sixth was putting her husband and her family into direct danger.

And I guess so she would consider from what her mother and father would have been able to tell her, that the regime change was what had made their family and improved their standing in the country. So it wouldn't be an anatomer to her that it might have been to Richard Duke of York as a nobleman who was possibly more interested in being loyal to the crown. It's a way to improve your family's status if you do it right. Yes. It was a way to improve your family status, but it was also kind of a God-given responsibility, you know, that yes, God-anointed kings, but it was the responsibility of the nobles to make sure that they did a good job and to hold them accountable.

So your novel, Cecily, opens in Ruan with the execution of Joan of Arc, and you're going to give us a lovely little reading in a second. Why was that a place for you to start your book? Oh, well, when I realized when I was researching this, and I discovered that it was likely that Cecily was at the burning of Joan of Arc. Certainly she was in France at that time with Richard, and it seems logical to me that she would have been there. You know, it's a novelist's gift, isn't it? Because a lot of this book is about women

and the way they exercise power and the way they come into danger through their exercise of power, and there's no one for whom that's more true than John of Arc. So this seemed a very logical place to start the story in a quite dramatic way. And also, it is right at the beginning of her marriage to Richard. I mean, they were married when they were eight,

but they began their married life proper in 1430 or so just before they went on this French jaunt, ostensibly, to see Henry the 6th crowned king of France. But of course, the burning of John of Arc preceded that. So yes, that seemed like the logical place to start. Lovely. So the reading you're going to give us first is the opening of the book with Cecily in Ruan waiting for the execution of Joan of Arc.

Thank you. 30th of May, 1431, Ruan, France. It's no easy thing to watch a woman burn. A young woman, who has seen only three more summers than yourself, and claims the voice of God compiles her actions. But there it is, the day's work, and she must harden herself to it. So, on the May morning so fine its early sun

has already chased Ruan's street dogs into shadows, Cecily has put on black velvet, sombre and rich. She has bound a rosary at her waist, a reminder to the French that God has answered the prayers of the English and delivered Joan of Arc into their own. hands. A reminder to her king that her loyalty is to him and to heaven. She waits now in the market square, her face to the pyre, and sullen French anger at her back, for the signal that will

tell her Joan is coming out to die. She raises her head when it comes, a trumpet call high and vicious, and beneath it the crowd's murmur growing to a roar. Beside her, her husband Richard, straightens his back, squares his feet. She swallows bile and does the same. The sun is hot enough. That's nothing, she thinks, to the blaze to come. Have courage, her mother would say. Faith and courage can accomplish anything.

Cecily wonders if Joan's mother told her the same. Likely someone did. In her glory days, John put on armour and rode at the head of armies. With words alone, she roused a fearful king and turned the tide of a war. Imagine. Now the tide runs all against her, and she must find only the courage to die. Though Joan is England's enemy,

Cecily wishes courage for her now. Soon the ring of metal feet overwhelms the clarion, and the crowd parts for a wagon, its blade bristling guard, and the prisoner bound upon it. It's the first time she's seen Joan, and isn't sure what to expect, just a pale, thin girl, it seems,

head shorn and bloodied. it doesn't look like there's much fight left in it. The bright armour of John's soldiering days is long gone, and today's thin shift, with the filth of a prisoner near upon it, is scant covering for a body that, some say, English soldiers have been allowed their way with. Though Richard says surely not, Cecily can believe it.

The king's uncles have long wanted John dead. But they wanted her shamed first. Cessaly sees John stumble as she's pulled from the wagon and thinks for a moment she will fall and knock herself senseless. And what then? But the guards press in to hold John upright. Her body crushed between their bulk as they jostle towards the pyre, her arms pinioned behind her, her small breasts jutting.

The desperate parade passes close enough that Cessaly can see Joan's eyes. One is closed by livid bruises. The other, white-rimmed and wide, is fixed on the crucifix, born high above her by a priest, leading the way to death and whatever might lie beyond that. John's lips are moving, and Cecily recognises the words of the Ave,

falling, stuttering and fast. She wonders what she prays for. Rescue? Or just an end to this. I would pray For the death of every Englishman here Cecilie thinks Then suddenly she's afraid for

No one can fathom the power of Joan's prayers And Richard stands beside her Who has seen John tried And nodded his head at her sentence Her breath catches and she pants once And he's holding out a hand to steady her She raises a palm She shakes her head to signal no

then makes a fist to hide her fingers trembling. He draws back, and she feels his gaze follow hers, to where the guards are handing Joan into the reaching arms of the men who wait to receive her. They draw her up, bare legs flailing, then bind her and bring more wood, so that she stands deep among a thicket of staves. She can no longer hear Joan's prayers, So, out of pity and to guard her own soul, she speaks them with her as the men clammer down and reach for their torches. At last the fire is set, and the flames lick like dogs at John's feet and thighs.

Cecily feels their growing heat against her own cheek, as John's voice, steady at the last, rings out above her head. all I have done was by God's order Then urgent as the priest's arms falter and his burden dips Hold up the cross of Christ that I may see it as I die Ceciline narrows her eyes against livid sparks As Joan's prayers give way to hacking coughs and shrieks Then sudden silence She sets herself to watch as flesh burns

blossoms and falls away. There's grit in her eyes. Sweat runs the cleft of her shoulder blades. And beneath her clasped hands, her stomach shrivels, but she won't flinch. This is a test. Wow, it's such an emotive moment to open a book on as well. It is.

So what drew you to Cecily Neville's story? Was this a case of one? to write about someone and looking for Cecily, or was it an interest in Cecily that turned into a book? It started in school, which was a really long time ago. You know, sometimes you just get those teachers who change your life and just open up a whole world to you. Well, in a very ordinary Northeastern comprehensive,

I had a history teacher called Keith Hill, and he'd just taught history like it had happened yesterday. And he was interested in the people rather than the dates and the facts and the figures. He asked questions like, so why do you think he did that? Or what do you think she was thinking, when, you know? And he could see that my interest was captured.

And so he just, you know, most of his other pupils were asleep. So he just kept throwing books across the desk at me. And novels, too. That's always been my way into history through fiction, really. And he gave me a novel called We Speak No Treason by Rosemary Halley Jarmine about Richard III. And I was captivated by him. So Richard the Third and the Wars of the Rose's Roses,

right through from my teenage years, it's been an interest and a passion. But as I got older, into my 20s, I suppose, I became far more interested in the women around Richard, because there are just some stonking women at that point. There's Margaret Fon Chou, there's Margaret Bawford, there's Elizabeth Woodville, all these fabulous women. Like that was reading, reading, reading about them. But I kept thinking, there's a woman here that I'm not seeing clearly, and it's Richard's mother, it's Cecily. And there's really been very little written about her and very little said, for which I partly blame Shakespeare, because when Cessley appears in the history plays, she has a very small part, she's very old, she has no power or agency or political agenda.

She just wanders around a lot cursing her terrible son. She just pops up as a grumpy old lady, doesn't she? Grumpy old lady. And everyone's thought, oh, well, that's it. Then that's Cecily, grumpy old lady, let's ignore her and move on to more interesting things. You know, the truth couldn't be further from that. So as I got older, and particularly as I was working in business and working in very male-dominated environments, I began to get an idea of how women exercise power in environments that are controlled by men, in environments where men hold all of the power cards.

And so through my 30s, I guess, Cessaly seemed to come much, much closer. So by the time I went to look down into the dark hole in that car park in Leicester that Richard was pulled out of in 2012, wasn't it? I knew that I wasn't going to be writing a novel about Richard. I was going to be writing a novel about his mother. And very grateful we are too. I guess one of the big questions for people with historical fiction is always how accurate is it, how accurate should it be?

So where did you set the mark between accuracy and the artistic license that is the privilege of fiction writers? And the duty of fiction writers too, in a way. I am leery of authors who depart willy-nilly from non-historical fact, and I worry about that. And a lot of the history of this period is so contested, and people have very strong opinions about it. So I wanted to be sure that my account of Cecily's life was as true

to the history as it can possibly be. So if I knew, for instance, that something definitely happened beyond question in this way and at that time, I will not pretend that it didn't. Now, you might think that puts a chain around you as a novelist, but it absolutely doesn't because there is enough in this period where things are not known or things are equivocal or things are debated or things are highly contested, that there is a lot of room for a novelist's mind and imagination to wonder. It's interesting you say it's the responsibility of a novelist to take a bit of license. Do you feel like that gives you room to explore people's motives more and what they might have been thinking, the conversations they might have had? What part did Cecily Neville play in Richard

Duke of York's policies and things like that? Is that responsibility to make them more human, to fill in the gaps in our knowledge in a way that makes sense given the facts that we do have? Yes. And there's a difference between a novelist and historian, isn't it? And a historian must steal almost exclusively, in fact, and interpret them. But a novelist is doing something different because a novelist is also examining human nature and human character. So it has a responsibility to really delve into these people and say, what were they thinking? What were they doing? And, you know, we don't know about the private conversations that happened between Richard and Cecily in their bedroom at night. We don't know how far she influenced his thinking. We don't

know how much they were in love. But we can imagine and we can infer from the slim evidence that we do have what was going on. I was also really lucky when I was researching the book because I set down, this having been my lifetime's ambition, I sat down in earnest in 2017 to write. And by pure serendipity, because I hadn't really even been a biography, Cessaly at that time, but by pure serendipity, Joanna Laine Smith, published her biography of Cessley Neville. Now, she's a serious historian writing and an expert on medieval woman, so she was clearly the woman to talk to. So I begged her to have lunch with me, and we talked four hours. And she was a huge help to me, as you were Matt with Richard Duke of York as well, to make sure that I, as an amateur historian at best,

didn't make foolish factual errors. So I think between yourself and Joanna, you kept me on the straight and narrow. Well, I think that's why I said at the start, you know, I can vouch for how much work and research went into this because, you know, we did exchange emails about, you know, where was Richard on this date? What do you think he was thinking? Why do you think he did those kinds of things? So I've written a biography of Richard Duke of York. So you were picking my brains about him and Joanna's brains about Cessaly to help you build that framework, I guess, that you hang the story on to ensure that the core of it, the framework, is historically accurate. medieval women can be notoriously hard to find in the sources

they're often absent from any of the materials we have was this a problem with Sessilemon I guess a biography coming along at just the right time is really helpful but was that a problem that you found and if it was is that useful to a writer of fiction because it leaves you the room to fill in some of those gaps yeah exactly that it's a double-edged sword isn't it it's a problem and it's a gift because you're right a lot of their lives are not chronicled and you're left almost to guess what Cecily was doing by what was happening with her men. I mean, there are some magnificent sort of surviving documents.

There were letters that, you know, her fabulous will, which tells you so much of what she was thinking and who she was talking to at the end of her life, who she was close to at the end of her life. So there's bits and pieces. But, you know, we don't have a diary that tells us exactly how she was thinking from one day to the next and, you know, how cross she was with Margaret Avenjou. You know, we don't have any of those things. So we have to surmise and make those things up.

But there's been hundreds of novels about the Wars of the Roses, and one could arguably say we don't need another one. But this one is a book about this woman, to which the backdrop is the Wars of the Roses. That's the furniture, if you like, of her life. What I was really interested in doing with this book is getting into the mind of a medieval aristocratic woman and trying to imagine, you know, a pre-Reformation, pre-feminist, medieval woman.

How did she think? How did she operate? How did she get her way? And how did she make things happen? That's what I wanted to investigate with this. Because I think these women's stories we need to recover from history. Absolutely. And I think fiction is, given the lack of source material about them sometimes, Fiction is a really great way to reconstruct those lives because, as you say, historians are constrained by the facts.

So if you don't have a lot of facts, there isn't a lot of material for a biography of a lot of medieval women. But what there is is enough to then fill in the gaps around a story of historical fiction. So fiction kind of gives us a way to meet these women that we're denied by their lack of appearance in the source. So I think that's a really good place to learn more about medieval women because we can't get nonfiction. books out of stories, material that just isn't there. But what we can do is, as you say, we can imagine their roles and their position. And that can give us a real insight into what may have been going on at the time that we otherwise wouldn't have. Yes. And it's imagination backed by the discipline of staying true to the historical fact. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not plucking

it from nowhere. As you said before, there's that framework of fact around which you can, you know, hang a nice flowing dress that is the story of Cecily's life. You've another reading for us now. Can you just tell us where this crops up in Cecily's story, please? Well, one thing, medieval aristocratic women are expected to do a lot, right? They're expected to be great wives. They're expected to do business. They're expected to understand the law.

They're expected to run vast estates. They're clever ladies. But the one thing they're expected to do more than anything else is breed. And Cessaly began her married life with rich. Richard when she was 15 and she didn't deliver her first living child until eight years later when she was 23. And the pressure upon her to do that must have been intense because if you didn't do that, if you didn't provide the heirs, nothing else you did really, really counted. So that passage of time must have created a big question mark over her and a lot of expectancy,

you know, was she able to provide heirs for Richard Duke of York, probably the most important nobleman in the kingdom, so a lot of pressure building up over eight years. Oh, you can imagine every time she went to court, everybody looking at her waistline to see if she was expecting yet. And, you know, she came from a very feckoned family. You know, her mother had dozens of children, so the pressure was on. Hi, I'm Susanna Lipscomb, and in my new podcast, not just the Tudors, I'll be talking about everything from Aztecs to witches, Belethkeh to Shakespeare, Mogul India to the Mayflower. Not in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors.

Subscribe to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I also wanted to delve into what it was like to be a medieval aristocratic woman having a child, and there are some very bizarre ways of doing it. So about a month before your baby was expected, you went into seclusion, went into a private room, the curtains were kept constantly closed, the fires constantly burning, you saw no men, not even your husband, and you were only waited on by other women and only by other women who had themselves had children.

And finally you had your child, it was taken away from you and baptized, brought back. And even then, you couldn't leave that room. You had to remain in that room for several weeks after that until you emerged and you were churched and all of that. So I thought I'd take you to the heat of August in 1439, where Cessaly is waiting for the birth. of her long-awaited first child.

Her whole life, Cecily has chafed against confinement. Now, in the third week of her lying in, she wants nothing more than to wait out these long summer days in the sheltered half-light of this curtained room. She was brought here straight from the church, shriven, blessed, absolved of sin. They led her back over summer fields,

where the ring of scythes in the haycrop played counterpoint to the murmuring of priests, who paced beside her for and aft, lining her way with prayer. Then under Fotheringay's towering barbican, they brought her, through the halls, the passages and stairways of the castle,

to this room. which is her world now, till the child comes. At the threshold she hesitated. The priests drew back, and only Richard stood beside her. His face was pale, his gaze tender, but his fingers grasped hers tightly, and she knew it would hurt him to let her go.

She looked to where her feet must take her, where her waiting women moved like shadows in the dim, and at the bed where she were labour, pillow-laden, canopyed and wide, wait, he said, and turned to take from waiting-arms a drape of soft white wool. His hands unfolded it, and there, harnessed with silver and seeded with pearl, was a girdle, pordered, thin with age. I begged Lornavitt from Westminster, from the Abbey. For you, she knew then what it was.

He gave into her hands the girdle Christ's mother wore when she delivered, that fell from her hips as she ascended to heaven, that was caught in the waiting arms of Thomas, the disciple who doubted. It has rested in England a thousand years. It is the comfort of queens in childbed. It is his hope for her preservation. She wondered how he'd convinced the monks to lend it,

how long he'd petitioned, how rich had been his gift of arms. She held it against her face and breathed its age. I will come back to you, she told him. His lips were firm upon her brow. I will wait. Wow, so Cecily and Richard go on to have a dozen children in the end, seven of whom survive infancy.

What do we know, if anything, about Cecily's relationship with some of her children? Is it possible to tease out how she felt about some of those? And probably what I'm angling at is did she have a favourite? It's really hard to know, isn't it? It's really hard to know. but I see in Cecily a very pragmatic love for her children. Most of her children, and I'll come to that in a moment. As an example of that, she marries her eldest daughter, Anne, to the Duke of Exeter,

who to Henry Holland. And it would appear that it was not a happy marriage and that he was a bit of a brute. And certainly he always fought for Lancaster, so he became, a natural enemy of Cecily's house as things progressed. But after Edward IV came to the throne, Henry Holland was obviously on the losing side and he was a tainted. But Cecily herself made sure that lands from his estate were given directly into Anne's hands and Anne's control.

And I see that as a woman seeing and acknowledging that her daughter needed to be, as we would call it today, financially independent and able to live an independent life. She certainly didn't want to have anything more to do with Henry Holland. So I think Cecily's love was very pragmatic and practical, but very intense. And I think she did have a favourite. And I think the favourite was Edward, the golden boy, you know, the first living son. She did have a son prior to Edward, but he died very quickly. So Edward, I think, was the golden boy.

and I think she loved him passionately and her loyalty to him was intense. And certainly, that seems to have been reciprocated. You know, I see the relationship between them as being very close. And certainly, you know, when there is regime change and Edward defeats one Lancasterian army at the Battle of Mortimer's Cross, he comes to London where Cessaly is, where she has placed herself in order to prepare the city for his country,

his arrival. He accepts his crown, but then he must very quickly hightail it north to go and fight another Lancasterian army in order to make that crown secure. And he leaves his kingdom in the hands, not of one of his generals, not of one of his captains, not of any of his political associates, but his mother. And he makes her head of his household during his absence, which is effectively his regent. And it's almost if he's, you know, Mom, I've got to go and fight these people. I'm leaving everything in your hands. And you can imagine the court was frantic and full of European ambassadors, trying to fathom out what was going on and writing back to their masters about what was happening in England. And there's some great sort of quotes from their letters, the tenet of which seems to be,

you know, Edward is king and the people worship him like he's a god. But if we want to do business in England we need to do with his mother. And certainly in that early period of his reign, when Cessley was, you know, the most powerful woman in England before he took a queen, they worked hand in glove together and she was a key advisor of his. So I think they had a very strong relationship and a relationship based on absolute respect and trust. I think that's a really good example of where we can fill in some of these gaps in the source material. So we have source material that talks about Cessaly, you know, being the person that you have to do business with. But the fact that Edward puts her there is strongly suggestive of the kind of relationship

that they had, the kind of respect that he had from his mother, which must have come from knowing that she was capable, knowing that she was able to do these things, that she was perhaps some kind of driving force in the family. So that's where you're able to draw on those kinds of things and flesh them out a little bit. Exactly. And he was an 18-year-old boy at that time when he became King and by this time, Cessaly was a seasoned political operator, you know, who'd been through the mill several times and come out of the other end, and who had always been there for him. So very natural in a way that he would rely upon, A, her unquestionable loyalty to him and B, her intelligence and ability to manage complex situations. As a father of an 18-year-old, I'm not sure it's always

natural that they believe everything that you say and think that you're right, but it's certainly It seems to be the case in Edward and Cessidy's relationship. And what about her other children? So she's the mother of some of the most central players during the Wars of the Roses and even in international politics. You know, her youngest daughter, Margaret, goes on to become Duchess of Burgundy. Do we get a sense of how she felt about the rest of her children, how she interacted with them the kind of relationship that she had?

I really wonder about her relationship with Margaret, because the one thing that she did with her daughters, you know, at that time you had daughters in order to make good marriages for them, you know, she married Anne to Henry Holland, which, you know, turned out badly, but it was politically a good marriage to make at the time that she made it. She married Elizabeth also to a duke. And then, you know, the glorious marriage of Margaret to the Duke of Burgundy was, you know, the best, wasn't it? That was the great marriage, which, of course, became possible once Edward was king.

You know, Margaret was the daughter who was with her the longest and with her through that very, very difficult time. when her husband died and, you know, that terrible year between the death of her husband and the ascension of Edward IV. This is kind of 1460 to 1461, so that's a real year of upheaval where Richard Duke of York finally makes his claim to the throne of England, is then killed just before the end of the year in December at the Battle of Wakefield, making Cecily a widow. And then the early months of 1461, Edward presses that claim for the throne and becomes king. So her life is kind of transformed in that year, 18-month period.

from the wife of a traitor who's almost being dispossessed into a widow and then into the mother of a king. And as you said, while he doesn't have a wife, she effectively performs that role of a queen for him. Yeah. I think when she married Margaret then to the Duke of Burgundy, that must have been quite a bittersweet moment because, you know, she knew that she'd made this completely dazzling marriage

into European powerhouse, really. But she also knew she was sending her daughter overseas. she would likely never see her again, and that would be a very difficult thing. But as I say, Cecily was quite a pragmatist. You have one more reading for us. Can you tell us where this appears in the story, please? I do. And Cecily always travelled with Richard,

and they spent their time together whenever they could. And she was with him in France when his duties took him there, and she was with him in Ireland when he was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. And this reading comes from the last day that they're in Ireland. And I see the short time that they spent in Ireland is probably quite a happy time it was politically a very successful time for Richard in Ireland but he was away from the court

It's quite often seen as exile for Richard, isn't it? But I'm not sure that it was quite exile. It was still quite a prestigious position and a break from the politics of England. Yes. And maybe Richard would have been quite happy to stay in Ireland and be a powerful man there. But fate drew him back to London, of course.

Cades Rebellion was kicking off in London. The people around the king were spreading rumours that Richard was behind Cade's Rebellion. So it suddenly became very, very important that Richard should get himself back to England. But they decide to have one day of pleasure before they go. So here we are in September 1450 in Trim, Ireland. Today is their last day. tomorrow they'll ride out of trim and she cannot imagine they will ever return

but the sun is warm the sky blessedly empty of rain so when she looks into Richard's tired morning face and sees the sadness in it she tells him they will have one last day of pleasure they will fly their hawks on the banks of the boine and dry to Tara

to the hill's top this time. From where they've been told, all the counties of Ireland will be given to their sight. Ormond must come too then, says Richard, for there's much still to speak of. Besides, he tells her when her smile falls, he's promised many times to tell us the hill's history

and has not yet. It's a good morning's hawking. rabbits mostly though richard has brought down a hair its muscled hind legs are crossed in a hitch at the falconer's shoulder and its head falls almost to his knees a thing built for an arrow's speed now bouncing quiverless and dull against a servant's greasy jerkin they send the birds and their kill back to the castle and dried on to tara up through its wooded slopes where flies are drawn to the sweat of their horses. She feels her palfrey's muscles bunch with the effort of the climb, and her hand comes away wet from its hide. As they come out of the trees into the light of the open heath,

it tosses its head and sets its harness jangling. They've not come so far before. Ormond rides ahead of them, heralded by skylarks rising from the grass. I should have brought the hawk, she thinks. There was a great fort here, Ormond shouts back, circling his hand above his head to describe it. The fort of the pagan kings, and ran from it ran five roads broad and clear, carrying royal authority to every corner of Ireland. On foot, they traced the great circular ditch that Orman says marked the fort's boundaries,

a fold of green that Cessley thinks could be anything. It was here St Patrick brought the gospel, when first he came to Ireland, Norman calls back striding. The pagan Lagerie was king then. He wouldn't bow to him, but God had his way with him, and the old kingship is gone now forever.

He turned then and laughs, especially since we came. At the Hillsbury Centre stands a stone, smooth and white. almost as tall as a man what's that asked cecily shielding her eyes and pointing ah says ormond he leans in and leas don't go near then he takes her arm and draws her to it richard following kicking at shamrocks in the grass when they stand before it ormond reaches out of hand but doesn't touch is the lea fail destiny's stone He holds up his arms around it, playing the druid. The maker of kings. In the days before Patrick, he tells them,

kingship didn't pass from father to son. It was given by the gods to the man of most merit. The one who had the temerity to ask for it, encouraged to face the test. He looks at them and grins. Well, yes, says Richard, there would be a test. First he must win to his own. bed, Mave, Queen of the World. He sketches about to Cecily. You've done that already, Richard.

Then you must drink her mead and not die. I breathe yet, says Richard, warming to the game. And gallop his horse at a stone wall and trust it will fall before him. Now that's just not sensible, says Richard. And Cecily laughs. Then he must lay his hand on this stone, And if the gods approve him, it will sing out his name. Ormond holds his hand an inch from the stone's top. Richard, Richard, Richard! He's laughing. Then looks round at the sound of voices drifting up to them from the tree line.

It's the followers. They've struggled up the hill with baskets and boxes and a great rolled canopy for shade. Good, think Cecil. I'm hungry. And there goes Ormond striding down the hill to meet them, waving a welcome. She turns to Richard, who stands before the stone, his chin in his hand. I dare you, she says.

He turns his head, smiles slow, lays his testing fingers against the white stone, cocks his head to listen. There's nothing, just the voices below them and the skylarks sending up their song. He frowns at her, mock rueful. She steps to him, turns his frown to a smile with a kiss. It's only a story, she whispers in his ear. She threads her arm through his, and they set off down the hill. That's quite a foreboding moment in terms of the Wars of the Roses, I guess,

but also quite a poignant moment in their relationship, you know, when we've just talked about 10 years after this, Cessaly would become a widow, quite a poignant moment to see them just sharing time together and, you know, a little bit of an in-joke. Yes. I'm sure it was a joke at the time. Yeah. So I'm going to kind of end now with a few quick-fire,

impossible to answer questions for you. Do you believe there's any mileage in the story that Edward, the fourth was illegitimate. Wouldn't that be a gift for a novelist if he were? And of course we all know the story that he perhaps was, that his father was an archer called Blayborn and Cessaly got him upon an archer when she was in France. But certainly I went into the research

kind of hoping that it would be true because it would be just such a great plot twist. But again, it comes back to being true to what was historically factual or at least historically likely. And the more I look at it, it just doesn't add up. You know, the people who insist that he was, current historians who believe it,

talk about, you know, a period of time when Richard and Cecily were in France together in Rouen. He went away to fight a battle at Pontois, and the argument is that he was away from Ruan at the time when Edward must have been conceived. But when you look at the dates, that doesn't quite add up. I mean, A, you would have to have. to assume then that Edward was born dead on his due date, and we all know that rarely happens.

So there's anywhere between two and four week variations there. And also, in fact, he probably was in Ruan in that critical time, because he came back to Ruan to continue to administer Normandy and he left John Talbot in charge of the military operations in Pantua. So he probably was in Ruan. So I had to, although it was dramatically disappointing, I had to come. come back to the theory that actually Edward was his father's son. And also, you know, the more you examine Cecily's character, I just really don't see Cecily Neville, wife of Richard Duke of York, having it away with an unknown archer. Really? She would be far too much aware of her status and her value to do anything quite so reckless. She is never in her.

her life reckless. No, that was a very risky thing to have done. And what do you think Cecily made of Edward's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville? I can't imagine she was best pleased. I mean, it certainly seems that she came to terms with it, but it would certainly not have been the marriage that she would have wanted for him. You know, Cecilie, I've often heard you say, Matt, you know, she came from a family that married up.

and she would have been contemplating, I am sure, a royal marriage for Edward. So when he suddenly turns up and announces that he's secretly gotten himself married to Elizabeth Woodville, a Lancasterian widow who already has two children by a previous husband, she's going to be fairly cross about it. And we do know that the one thing that Cessaly didn't like was not to be in control. So not to have been consulted, not to have been part of that decision, not to have known what was going on, would have absolutely infuriated her. I can imagine a ding-dong of a row over it. Particularly I guess if she felt her relationship with Edward had, in the early years of his kingship, been really good and really close, they'd worked together, been very productive.

And yet he seems to have excluded her from this key critical political decision. Yes. A big moment to leave her out of. Yes. One might speculate that he wasn't thinking clearly at the time. Yeah, yeah. And how do you think Cecily felt during all of the upheavals of 1483? So this is portions of her family coming to loggerheads in 1483,

again to do with the legitimacy of Edward IV children this time, her other youngest son, Richard III, ends up on the throne. How do you think she felt through all of that? That is so difficult to unravel. And, you know, I'm very conscious of the fact that by this time, too, you know, she's already lost one of her son, she's lost George, in very strange circumstances. She's just lost Edward at 40, which cannot have been expected. So she's very wounded and bereaved at this point.

But the one thing that seems apparent to me is that she supported Richard the third's bid for the throne. You know, in that complex and difficult period when it was uncertain whether Richard would deceive or whether Edward's children would, Richard based himself at Baynard's Castle, which was Cecily's London home, and that was where he was running Operation Sprum, as it were. And I can't but imagine that she was at his side consulting with him.

So it seems to me that once again she was supporting one of her sons to take the throat. But I still have a lot of thinking to do on exactly how all of that unravels. Yeah, it's a hard one to work your way through, I think, isn't it? Because I think the sources don't even tell us whether Cecily was definitely in London in 1483, but I think it's a fairly safe assumption

she wouldn't have missed what was going on. Apart from Medwood's funeral, which would be the unwelcome part of it, there was going to be a coronation, whether it was her grandson or it ends up being her son, and obviously a whole lot of political fallout from the unexpected death of a king. for me it's odd that Cecily would have missed that

and if she was there and Richard is based at Baynard's Castle that implies her support for what he's doing Yes and there's no firm evidence that she was in London but equally I believe I'm right in saying there's no firm evidence that she was somewhere else No no we don't have any of it's where she was at all So if you think as a mother and a grandmother Where would you put yourself?

You'd put yourself right at the heart of what was going on in your family And as a strategist and a politician and a dynast, you would put yourself right in the centre of what was happening politically, and that's Westminster. Yeah, yeah. Make no sense for her not to be there. So can you tell us when your novel is released and also maybe what's next for you and what's next for Cecily?

We are now six days from publication. So Cecily is published on the 29th of July. So I urge you to race off to your bookshop and buy it. Please, I am working on the second novel. it's already underway. And it's another historical fiction set in this same period and it might be looking at later aspects of Cecily's life. Well, thank you so much, Annie, for providing us with a really unique perspective

on such an intriguing lady whose life spans so much of the critical events of the 15th century. Cecily Annie's debut novel, as she mentioned, is released on the 29th of July 2021. And if I'm right, it's set to do great things. Don't forget to subscribe to Gone Medieval wherever you get your podcasts and tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. I would like to give a quick mention

while I've got you to an episode of Susanna Lipscom's, not just the Tudor's podcast, also from history hit. It's called rival Queens and it looks at the relationship between Elizabeth I first and Catherine de Medici.

Elizabeth I, of course, being Cecily Nevel's great-great-granddaughter so you can follow on the family story of strong women with Susanna. Anyway, I'd better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.