Happy Birthday Cecily!
Cecily was born 606 years ago this month, on 3 May 1415. What sort of world was she born into, and how did her early experiences form her character?
We know the date of Cecily’s birth because she recorded it herself, setting it down in one of her many devotional books. Beside her own, she recorded the birthdates of all 12 of her children. She was a woman who took careful note of the things that mattered most to her.
Cecily’s life was marked by war and conflict. It started early. As she was coming into the world, Henry V was preparing to lead the biggest ever English assault on the kingdom of France. It culminated in his triumph at Agincourt in October 1415, when Cecily was just five months old. So, Cecily’s childhood began in a triumphant England, led by a warrior king.
A long war
But Agincourt was, in many ways, an empty victory. Henry V became heir to France, but never its king. He married the French king’s daughter and got himself an heir by her, but died when the child was only six months old. For decades after, England would be at war with France, trying to lay keep a firm hold on the claim to the French throne and pass it on to Henry V’s young son. It’s not too much of a simplification to say that England’s fortunes in France declined steadily through the course of Cecily’s life, or that the glory days of Agincourt - still so much part of England’s national psyche today - was agonisingly short lived. By the end of Cecily’s life, England would lose all of France but Calais. And even there, its hold was tenuous.
Surely, as she grew, Cecily would have developed a keen awareness of the fragility of victory. She’d have understood that winning one battle is rarely enough. You have to hold on to what you’ve won. And that will probably mean fighting again and again.
Family prestige
Cecily was born into one of England’s great families. Her father was Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland, her mother was Joan Beaufort, half sister to Henry V’s father.
Cecily’s mother bore Ralph 14 children, ten of whom survived childhood. Thanks to their closeness to the king, they were able to arrange dazzling marriages for them, usually by buying the wardship of orphaned aristocrats and marrying them to their offspring to acquire their land and titles.
That’s exactly how Cecily got her husband. Ralph bought young Richard’s wardship in 1423 and married him to Cecily within weeks, when she was only eight years old. Don’t imagine that Cecily would have been in any way distressed by this arranged marriage at a young age. She’d have seen it as very much the way of things; normal, expected and acceptable. It’s likely to that, as she grew, she’d have been pleased with the marriage because, based on the family values she’d imbibed with her mother’s milk, it was a brilliant one. Though the youngest daughter, she’d drawn the biggest prize. When she married him, Richard was heir to both the earldom of Cambridge and the dukedom of York.
So, she’d have grown up expecting to wield power and to live a life within the high nobility. But she’d also have grown up with a keen appreciation of the precariousness of her position. To secure those great titles, Richard would have to endear himself, not just to Cecily’s father, but to a young and insecure king. And since Richard’s own father had been executed for treason, that would be no simple task. It was made harder by the fact that, two years after his marriage to Cecily, Richard’s maternal uncle died childless, leaving him not only vast landholdings, but a claim to England’s throne that was, arguably, better than young Henry VI’s or even his Agincourt-hero father, Henry V.
This meant that, however loyal he showed himself to be, however well her served the crown, Richard would always be under suspicion; his good faith constantly in question. Throughout his life, Richard was suspected of wanting Henry’s throne until, finally, backed against the wall, the only way to escape being killed as a traitor, was to become one - to attempt the throne and make himself secure.
So, from an early age, Cecily would have understood that you don’t have to be guilty to be accused. She would have learned that, sometimes, the only way to avoid being destroyed by power, was to cease it for yourself.
Nor was she under any illusion that bad kings could be replaced. Her own father had helped to put down Richard II in order to secure the throne for Henry IV. As Cecily tells Richard in the pages of my novel:
“If a king is weak, if he’s a fool and sets the country at odds. If he can’t keep good order, then the nobles must restore it.”
It was exactly what her father had done and, in time, what she came to expect of Richard.
A Northern childhood
But, for the moment, let’s think of happier things. Cecily spent her childhood in the bosom of a prestigious family in expectation of a great inheritance. She would have spent much of her early years in the magnificent Raby Castle in County Durham, built by her father’s family in the fourteenth century and the principal residence of the Earl of Westmorland. Raby is open to the public and its magnificent fourteenth century keep, which Cecily would have called home, still stands. A small room towards the top of the tower, is reputed to be Cecily’s own.
Raby is, without doubt, one of the most complete and most beautiful castles in England. if you do visit, take time also to visit the exquisite Staindrop church, where Cecily’s father is buried between effigies of his first wife, Margaret Stafford, and his second, Cecily’s mother Joan Beaufort. Interestingly though, Joan herself isn’t buried there. Dying fifteen years after her husband, she decided instead to be buried beside her mother, Katherine Swynford, in Lincoln cathedral. Poor Ralph. It poses an interesting question which I address in my novel, CECILY: In the final analysis, which family demands our greatest loyalty, the one we’re born into or the one we marry into?
Copies of CECILY will be on sale at Raby Castle from 29 July 2021.