Rescuing obscure historical figures by Mary Hoffman

 

This could be anybody. An effigy worn by time into a generic female face and form. Hundreds of years old. Where there are few written records it is hard to bring back to life historical figures, even ones born into the nobility. As for ordinary people, they are lost to posterity.

In fact this woman is a member of the nobility - no peasant would warrant the expense of a tomb effigy. She is Cecily Bonville-Grey, subject of a new book by Sarah J. Hodder, and one of the reasons we know anything about her is that she was fabulously rich. 

She was born in 1459 or1460 and at that time the only two ways for a woman to be rich was to inherit or marry money and Cecily did both. She was a member of the wealthy Neville family on her mother's side and a niece of the Duke of York, head of the Yorkist faction in the Wars of the Roses. Her father, William Bonville, was a descendant of a Norman noble who had come to England in the 12th century, so not quite with the Conqueror.

William's grandfather had married a great heiress, who brought to the marriage a vast inheritance from her late first husband.

Around the time of Cecily's birth, her father and grandfather - both called William - were killed at the Battle of Wakefield, where the Duke of York was killed by the Lancastrians. Only her great-grandfather (another William naturally) survived to take the news back to Cecily's mother. But he was soon executed after another battle in which the Lancastrians were the victors.

So before the age of two, little Cecily was heir to a lot of wealth from the three men called William, whom she would not have been able to remember. Her mother, Katherine, was only nineteen when she lost her husband, father-in-law and grandfather-in-law, so she did the logical thing and remarried.

No, not a lion but a very important man at court, William Hastings, who was one of the greatest supporters and confidants of the new king, Edward lV. For the seesaw of this turbulent period now had the Yorkists firmly at the top Henry Vl had been deposed and the Duke of York's oldest son sat on the throne.

So Katherine and Cecily left their beloved home in Devon for Hastings' home in Leicestershire and a life at court. The family soon grew with the birth of three half-brothers for Cecily. But as the 1460s went on, the king and Cecily's uncle Warwick (the "kingmaker") fell out over Edward's choice of bride and soon Katherine found herself caught between her husband, King Edward's right-hand man, and her brother, who was now actively supporting the king's younger brother, Clarence, as a candidate for the throne.

It is hard to keep Cecily disentangled from the complications of the Wars of the Roses and Hodder doesn't do so. In fact, the well-known details of this period help to pad out this rather slim volume (144 pages, including notes and bibliography).

The trouble with people about whom not much is known is that the biographer has to resort to "likely," "most likely" and "maybe." This is the case with Julia Fox's book on Jane Rochford as much as with Germaine's Greer's Shakespeare's Wife. And then something that has been "likely" in one place becomes the basis for the next assertion.

Cecily seems to have got on well with her stepfather, though her mother must have suffered from his well-known infidelities; he was a brother-in-arms to the king, a notorious philanderer. Hastings and her mother planned a marriage for Cecily that would bring her even closer into the Royal circle: her intended husband was to be Thomas Grey, the king's stepson by his wife's first marriage. The marriage took place when Cecily was fourteen or fifteen and Grey four or five years older.

Arms of the Grey family

 

Shortly after the wedding, Thomas Grey was made Marquis of Dorset so now Cecily was a Marchioness; they were just one rung down in the scale of nobility from Duke and Duchess. But with great honours come duties and responsibilities. King Edward launched a new French campaign and took his stepson with him, leaving his new wife behind.

Cecily was sixteen or seventeen when she gave birth to her first child, a boy named after his father. Young Thomas was the first of fourteen children of Cecily's first marriage. It does seem that noblewomen of this period were either prolific, like Philippa of Hainault, the wife of Edward lll or Cecily Neville, the wife of the Duke of York. The king's wife bore him eleven children in addition to her two sons by her first marriage. 

Not all these children would grow to adulthood but these medieval women would have spent a couple of decades being pregnant, as there were miscarriages too. But there were exceptions like the two Margarets (Beaufort and the Princess of Anjou) who had one single son each.

The East Front at Old Shute

 

Cecily, however, in addition to fulfilling her duties as a wife and mother, was a great landowner and spent time and money restoring her childhood home of Shute. She could employ a vast army of household staff to look after her growing family, while she devoted her time to building projects, in this regard resembling the later Bess of Hardwick.

And then, in 1483, everything changed. Edward lV died suddenly in his early forties and - notoriously - his youngest brother, the Duke of Gloucester, declared his nephew Edward Prince of Wales, illegitimate and had himself installed on the throne as Richard lll. 

Cecily's husband was now in great danger, as a son of the widowed queen. No title or Order of the Garter was protection now. A rift had grown between Dorset and his father-in-law Hastings, Cecily's stepfather. They both seem to have been enamoured of Jane Shore, who had been one of the king's many mistresses. But the two men had put aside their differences to support the new boy king

Richard had other ideas. He summarily had Hastings put to death, without trial, for treason. Dorset had gone into hiding in France but Richard, who had already executed Dorset's brother Richard and the former queen's brother, was determined to hunt him down. However, Henry Tudor and the Battle of Bosworth Field intervened and in 1485, Dorset was back in England, with his title and lands restored.

But all was not plain sailing. Henry didn't really trust Dorset, who had after all married a prominent Yorkist and who had been Edward lV's stepson. Dorset didn't help himself by his support of a Pretender, who turned out to be Lambert Simnel. After that pretence was exposed Dorset and Cecily lived quietly, completing their large family. He died in London at the age of forty-six, having escaped the wrath of one king and the suspicions of another.

That was not the end of Cecily's adventures, however, as, at the age of forty-five, she made a second marriage to a man twenty years younger than her, Lord Henry Stafford. Given the age difference, Hodder suggests, convincingly, that this was a love match, maybe the first time Cecily had exercised her own choice. As might have been expected, this choice was very unpopular with Cecily's children. Nevertheless, the marriage lasted eighteen years until Henry's death.

Cecily spent the last seven years of her life as a wealthy widow building memorials to members of her family. She died at 61 in 1530, by which time, Henry Vlll had been on the throne for twenty years. There had been five monarchs in her lifetime, a particularly turbulent period in English history. And, in another twist of history, Lady Jane Grey, the "Nine Days Queen," was her direct descendant.

The Dorset aisle in the church of Ottery St Mary

The book would really have benefitted from the addition of a family tree or two, especially with so many carrying the same name (too many Williams, Elizabeths and Cecilys!) But it fills a gap in our knowledge of a very remarkable woman who bridged the Plantagenet and Tudor eras.

 (Published by Chronos Books)