Richard III by Desmond Seward Read Free Book Online Page A

supporters.
    It is probable that some time during his stay there, he also first met his future wife, Warwick’s daughter Anne Nevill. Her mother – the great Beauchamp heiress, who had brought Warwick his Earldom and the best part of his wealth – is known to have been at Middleham often, since the castle was a favourite residence of her husband, and no doubt she brought her daughters with her. Anne’s sister Isabel, who would one day marry Clarence, was Richard’s contemporary, but Anne was at least four years younger. No doubt, like most boys, he would have taken little notice of anyone quite so insignificant.
    In 1466 the young Duke of Gloucester attended the Nevills’ lavishly ostentatious celebrations at Cawood Castle after the enthronement of his cousin George Nevill as Archbishop of York and Primate of England. Incredible quantities of food were served. Over a hundred oxen, 500 stags and more than 4,000 sheep were eaten, together with13,000 puddings, while a hundred casks of wine, 300 casks of ale and 105 gallons of hypocras (spiced wine cup) were drunk. All this profusion, intended to display the Nevill wealth and magnificence, was presided over by Warwick, the new Archbishop’s brother, as ‘steward of the feast’. Interestingly Gloucester was the only male member of the Royal Family present. He sat at the same table as his cousin, Warwick’s small daughter Anne. 7 In 1467 he and the Earl sat together on a commission to investigate some disturbances at York. In 1468 he and Warwick, this time accompanied by Clarence, rode to escort their sister Margaret of York on her way to Margate, where she took ship for Burgundy and her ducal husband. Even before she arrived in the Low Countries, the Burgundians were singing songs about her whoring – she seems to have shared her brother the King’s promiscuity.
    Richard finally ceased to be his cousin Warwick’s henchman some time during 1468, the Earl being granted, in the autumn of that year, £1,000 for expenses incurred by his maintenance. There was good reason for the young Duke to say goodbye to Warwick and to go to court. Although no one realized it at the time, something had happened four years before which would lead to a mortal quarrel between the Earl and the House of York, and which would eventually contribute to the total destruction of the dynasty. By 1468 the crisis was already on the horizon.
    In September 1464 the great Council of the realm had met at Reading Abbey. It was expected that matters of some importance would be discussed, and, indeed, the King announced the introduction of an entirely new gold coinage (including the famous angel of six shillings and eightpence, the most beautiful of all English coins). It was expected that the topic of Edward’s marriage would be raised; Warwick was already negotiating for the hand of Louis XI’s sister-in-law, Bona of Savoy, immortalized as ‘Lady Bone’ by English chroniclers. To the assembly’s amazement, the King suddenly announced that he was already married, to ‘Dame Elizabeth Grey’, the young widow of a Lancastrian knight.
    In fact, Edward had married her five months earlier, on May Day, in secret at her mother’s manor house of Grafton in Northamptonshire.A compulsive womanizer, the King had been pursuing her for some months, but, according to Mancini, she had held out for marriage even when he held a dagger at her throat. 8 Another popular tale says that she had lain in wait for him when he was hunting in the forest near Grafton, to solicit the return of her husband’s confiscated estates. She was twenty-seven, five years older than Edward, and clearly most attractive.
    We have a better idea of what she looked like than of any other medieval English Queen – from a portrait at Queens’ College, Cambridge, and from a picture of her with her husband and children in a stained-glass window at Canterbury Cathedral. The portrait shows a face of delicacy and elegance, while the window depicts