Anne Neville by Michael Hicks Read Free Book Online Page B

grandmother, the countess’s mother Isabel Despenser. Even daughters had their dynastic and political uses, however, and Isabel’s birthwas moreover an earnest of better things to come. Yet four years passed before the next childbirth, when events repeated themselves. It was in recognition that the countess’s pregnancies were few – and that the hoped-for son might materialise – that a special christening was prepared. Undoubtedly Anne Neville was wanted – but how much more disappointing must have been her sex. Anne was given her mother’s name. And so, in the absence of evidence, sexual intercourse persisted and the waiting continued. How soon it was that the Warwicks realised that there would be no more pregnancies or childbirths we cannot tell. Certainly by 1464, when the countess was forty, Warwick appears to have made his will and invested his hopes in heirs that did not include a son. The countess herself, of course, will have known when her periods ceased. Not to have a son that they both wanted so much was surely one of the sharpest disappointments of their married lives and perhaps their personal tragedy.
    Earl Richard and Countess Anne thus produced only two daughters, Isabel and Anne Neville. Probably conceived at Warwick Castle, their principal seat and the countess’ home, it was there that Isabel was born on 5 September 1451. 24 Most probably Warwick himself was present in the castle, although the labour was an all-female preserve. Nothing is recorded about her christening. Anne Neville also was born at Warwick on 11 June 1456 and ‘in our lady church there with great solemnity was she christened’ 25 at St Mary’s, Warwick College, the Beauchamp mausoleum where Earl Richard Beauchamp and his father were interred. Since Warwick missed the poorly attended great council that met at Westminster from 7 June, almost certainly he was at Warwick for the birth and for the christening, although the son that he so desired failed to materialise. Regrettably the Warwick cantarist John Rows, who reported the occasion, has not transmitted to us details even of who Anne’s godparents were. Presumably it was for theintended son that the ceremonial (and noble godparents) were prepared: the most public statement possible to the Warwick connection that the Neville line was to endure.
    UPBRINGING
    The young married couple who unexpectedly became earl and countess of Warwick in 1449 fought off rivals for the Beauchamp, Despenser and Abergavenny elements of Anne’s inheritance. The earldom of Salisbury fell in following the deaths of Warwick’s father in 1460 and his mother in 1463. Substantial additions to his estates were added from the forfeited property of Lancastrian families such as the Percys, Cliffords and Rooses. Warwick now was the richest nobleman in England by a large margin – richer even, almost certainly, than Richard, Duke of York and than any other subject since John of Gaunt (d.1399). He had moreover accrued a host of offices – captain of Calais, chief forester of the North and chief steward of the northern estates of the duchy of Lancaster, great chamberlain of England, keeper of the seas, warden of the West March, constable and steward of a host of castles and lordships, even briefly king’s lieutenant of the North and steward of England. He conquered the North for Edward IV, not once but repeatedly, was the king’s principal ambassador, presided over the queen’s churching and, to foreigners at least, he appeared greater than King Edward himself. He dominated his brothers, whose personal success, John as earl of Northumberland and warden of the East March, and George as archbishop of York and chancellor of England, enhanced his own. 26
    Warwick’s success happened very quickly, but not all at once. The first years of his first daughter, Isabel, were surely spent with her mother the Countess Anne principally at Warwick. That was where Anne was born. But her father’s career took off first