An Unsound Monarchy: Was Edward IV Illegitimate?

We may cast a wry smile now at the audacity of his mother, Cecily Neville.  It's a Medieval scandal which shouldn't really touch us now. She got away with it and who cares over 500 years down the line?

But the fact is that the entire British monarchy rests on the fact of Edward IV's legitimacy. 

Just as Britons today expect that Charles will succeed his mother, Elizabeth II; and that Prince William will follow his father in his turn.  It's blood-line which secures the inevitability of a coronation. It's blood-line which renders each an heir apparent.

Edward IV claimed his throne because he was the eldest son of Richard, Duke of York.  Richard was able to trace a direct lineage through his mother, all the way back to Edward III.  They initiated the Cousins' War and took the crown, because their genealogy stated that it was their birth-right.

But if Edward's father was really a common soldier, then old Lizzie Windsor over there has only vaguely more right to be queen than you and I. (She's safeguarded only by the fact that Henry Tudor claimed his throne by right of conquest, not blood - a rule of succession which later became outlawed.)

Edward IV had actually been born in France.  His mother, Cecily Neville, had accompanied her husband as far as Rouen, which was safely under English control at the time. 

This was during the tumultuous 1440s, when both England and France laid claim to the French throne.  As Henry VI's Lieutenant of France, Richard, Duke of York, was stationed there for many years.

Three of his children, Edward, Edmund and Elizabeth, were all born in Rouen. 

But then Louis XI's exclamations could merely be ignored as him causing trouble after the fact. After all, he had the nick-name of 'Universal Spider' for his scheming ways, and well knew the power of rumor. Plus it had been his father, Charles VII, who Richard of York had been trying to keep from becoming Dauphin.

Maybe Louis was worried that Edward IV would one day take up that cause again. It was a fair concern, because Edward did just that a few years later.  Only Louis wasn't the only one stating such rumors.

Dominic Mancini, the Italian ambassador to England during 1482-3, dutifully noted down court gossip dating from twenty-two years earlier, when Edward had married his queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Mancini (who didn't speak English and was reliant upon the translations of Italian speakers at court) heard tell that Cecily Neville...

'...fell into such a frenzy, that she offered to submit to a public enquiry and asserted that Edward was not the offspring of her husband the Duke of York, but was conceived in adultery, and therefore in no wise worthy of the honor of kingship.'

If it was true, then no public enquiry occurred.  Yet, even in England, the rumors persisted. Edward IV was forced to put out official rebuttals.

The story was always the same.  Cecily Neville had fallen for a tall archer named Blaybourne, who was based at the English garrison in Rouen. She had become pregnant by the commoner, while her husband was away on campaign.

Richard, Duke of York, had claimed the baby as his son, solely to save his wife's blushes and assuage his own humiliation. If words were spoken, then they were behind closed doors. At the very most, all that was really compromised was the Duchy of York.

Of course, no-one could have imagined, in April 1442, that the newborn Edward would one day become King of England.

This was painted by an unknown artist of the Anglo-Flemish school in 1520.  While this was over thirty years after Edward's death, the portrait was said to be based on previous artwork drawn from life.

This was painted by an unknown Tudor artist in 1540, over fifty years after Edward's death.

There is no mention anywhere that Edward was born prematurely (nor two months late). Hence it's a fair assumption that counting backwards from April 28th 1442 will provide us with a reliable gestation date.

I would have called that nine months, but I'm an historian, not a gynecologist. So I asked my friend Ember to wave her Biology degree over the facts. After asking me an inordinate amount of questions concerning genealogy and Medieval history, she delivered her conclusions.

"No matter what (Cecily is) a minimum of one week, one day overdue; or three to five weeks premature, minimum."

A week overdue didn't sound like a lot to me, but Ember found this amusing. She was stretching the mathematics almost to breaking point in order to reach that minimum. If this was an average pregnancy, then it was all much more awry than that.

The fact was that Edward should have been conceived during the first week in August 1441. The slight technical hitch being that Richard, Duke of York was in Pontoise fighting the French, while Cecily was at the garrison in Rouen.

This is known categorically, because the records from the cathedral at Rouen tell us that, '(a) sermon is being preached for the safety of the Duke of York on campaign in Pontoise.'  Right when he should have been in Cecily's bed.

Richard was gone for five weeks. That August week falls smack bang in the middle of it.

While betrothed as children, the couple didn't actually marry until 1429. Richard was barely home for the first decade of their marriage, as his duties to his king took him almost constantly to France.

In 1438, their son Henry was born, but he died sometime before 1441. Their daughter, Anne of York, followed in 1439. She survived. Unfortunately a second son, also named Henry, was born and died on the same day, February 10th 1441.

Around this time, Richard was created the King's Lieutenant in France, which effectively meant moving there full time. Yet he seems to have had some kind of crisis of faith. Plus the situation was slightly more complicated than it appeared on the surface. He was the highest ranking noble amongst Henry VI's relatives, but he wasn't appointed to serve on the King's Council.

While Richard sank under the weight of circumstance, Cecily must have been grappling with her own issues.  She had spent the first decade of her marriage pretty much abandoned, then they had lost two children. She had been pregnant three times in three years, in an age when one in five women died in childbirth.

When Richard finally sorted his head and situation out enough to actually take up his post, in July 1441, Cecily went with him.

No outsider can glimpse fully inside a marriage, particularly one which happened nearly 600 years ago, but the clues are there. Did Cecily demand to go with him? Because they were mourning together, with a two year old in tow, and she missed him?

Or was it fear for his mental well-being?  Richard never seemed to crack under the strain again. Though he did later abandon Cecily and their three youngest children to the Lancastrian army, after the Battle of Ludford Bridge.

Either way, the couple could not have undertaken the long, arduous journey to Rouen in the best of spirits. They were relocating to another country just months after the loss of their baby; moreover, they were going to live in a war-zone.

They arrived at the beginning of July 1441. Two weeks later, Richard left Cecily and little Anne in Rouen Castle, while he marched over one hundred miles away to Pontoise.  He was gone for five weeks, returning towards the end of August.

My biologist friend Ember calculated that Edward IV should have been conceived during the first week in August 1441.

So why was Edward's baptism so hush-hush, rushed and low key, while no expense was spared for his younger siblings?

Was that just the hurried concern of parents, who'd lost two babies previously?  Or did it mark something else different about this particular baby?

Either way, Richard of York publicly declared himself the father of little Edward.  The legal position of paternity never came into question. 

Granted, when they fled into exile after the Battle of Ludford Bridge, Richard took Edmund with him to Dublin, not Edward. His eldest son was sent with the Earl of Warwick into Calais instead.  But that could just have been practical - keep the heir and his heir apparent apart, for safety reasons. Though given the fact that they were all in the Wars of the Roses, that doesn't hold much weight.

Perhaps we'll never know the truth.  The current royal family is unlikely to release Edward IV's body, from its crypt in Windsor, in order to extract the DNA to test it. Particularly since we now have Richard III's DNA to test it against.  Such paternity examinations might prove once and for all that they were full brothers. 

But then again, it might not.