Cecily of York

Cecily of York

Cecily of York, Viscountess Welles (born March 20, 1469 in Westminster Palace , London , † August 24, 1507 in Sandown , Isle of Wight or Hatfield , Hertfordshire ) was an English princess and third daughter of King Edward IV of England and his wife Elizabeth Woodville .

family

Cecily was born on March 20, 1469 to King Edward IV and his wife Elizabeth Woodville, daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers and Jacquetta of Luxembourg, at the Palace of Westminster. She had two older sisters, Elizabeth and Mary , and seven younger siblings. Cecily was related to numerous English kings: she was the sister of Edward V , the niece of Richard III. , the sister-in-law of Henry VII. , the aunt of Henry VIII. and great-aunt of Edward VI. , Maria I. and Elisabeth I.

Childhood and youth

childhood

In 1474 Edward IV concluded a marriage contract with the Scottish King James III. , whereby Cecily was betrothed to the Scottish heir to the throne Jacob . This treaty was very unpopular in Scotland, however, and there were further military conflicts between Edward and Jacob. The English king, however, paid the dowry until June 11, 1482, when Cecily was betrothed to Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany , the younger brother of King Jacob, by the Treaty of Fotheringhay . He himself had made claims to the Scottish throne. He was sent by Edward, together with his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with an army to Scotland. Richard recaptured the town of Berwick upon Tweed and signed a contract with the Edinburgh merchants to repay the dowry. Edward IV accepted the money and officially broke off Cecily's engagement to Prince Jacob. Alexander Stewart was killed in 1485 without a wedding with Cecily. Their marriage prospects had changed drastically with the death of King Edward in 1483.

In 1480 she was accepted into the Order of the Garter together with her sister Mary as Lady of the Garter .

Under King Richard III.

After the death of King Edward, his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, asserted his rights to the English throne, although Edward had two male heirs. The riddle of the " Princes in the Tower " has not been resolved to this day, but it is certain that Richard declared his brother's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville invalid and their children were therefore considered illegitimate and could not inherit the throne. Richard claimed the throne and by Titulus Regius , passed by parliament in January 1484 , he was declared king and the children of Edward IV were excluded from the line of succession.

Cecily was married to Ralph Scrope of Upsall, a supporter of Richard III. With the accession to the throne of her future brother-in-law, Henry VII, however, the marriage was annulled. Cecily's first husband later became the 9th Baron Scrope of Masham and died around 1515.

Under Henry VII.

Heinrich Tudor, the Lancastrian heir to the throne, had announced in Rennes that he wanted to unite the warring royal dynasties of Lancaster and York by marrying a daughter of Edward IV, thus ending the decades-long Wars of the Roses . His first choice was Elizabeth of York, King Edward's eldest daughter and Cecily's older sister. Had she died, Heinrich would undoubtedly have turned to Cecily, which he expressly emphasized in his declaration.

Second marriage

After Henry VII's accession to the throne and his marriage to Elizabeth of York, Cecily was married at the end of 1487 to a Lancaster loyal nobleman, John Welles, 1st Viscount Welles . He was the son of Lionel Welles, 6th Baron Welles and Margaret Beauchamp of Bletso and thus on his mother's side the half-brother Margaret Beaufort and uncle of Henry VII. The marriage had two daughters: Elizabeth and Anne Welles, who both died young and unmarried. After his death on February 9, 1499, Cecily is said to have mourned her husband very much.

At court

During the first years of Henry VII's reign, Cecily played a major role in several royal ceremonies, such as was due to her as a member of the royal family. She carried her nephew Prince Arthur at his christening, accompanied her sister Elizabeth at her coronation and carried the train of Catherine of Aragon at her wedding to Prince Arthur. Although the king expelled her from court after her third marriage to Thomas Kyme, a man of humble birth, she found consolation in waiting for Margaret Beaufort (Henry's mother).

Third marriage

Despite her grief for her late husband John Welles and the loss of her two daughters from this marriage, Cecily married a third time. Her wedding to Sir Thomas Kyme took place sometime between May 1502 and January 1504 and is said to have been a love marriage. However, since the marriage entered into without the consent of the king and the latter did not approve of this inappropriate marriage, Cecily was banished from court and all her property confiscated. With the intervention of the king's mother, some were returned to her property. However, these could not be passed on to her husband or any children who came from the marriage.

Late years

Cecily spent the rest of her life quietly away from the court. Little information is available about these years, presumably the marriage of two children, Richard and Margaret (or Margery), who survived, married and had offspring. However, they did not receive any royal titles or positions at court, which means that little is known about them and their existence cannot be historically proven.

Princess Cecily died in 1507 at the age of 38, just a few years after her third marriage. She had lived quite modestly in East Standen on the Isle of Wight.

According to Edward Hall's Chronicle , she was buried in Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight. However, there is also the theory that she died in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and was buried locally in a place known as "the friars" (perhaps the monastery of Kings Lanley).

Web links

• Literature by and about Cecily of York in the WorldCat bibliographic database

Individual evidence

1. ^ Norman Macdougall: James III . John Donald, 1982, p. 116 f .
2. ^ Paul Murray Kendall: Richard the Third . George Allen and Unwin, London, pp. 215-220 .
3. ↑ George Fisher: A Companion and Key to English History . London, S. 181 .
4. ↑ Alison Weir: Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World . Ballantine, New York, pp. 410 .