Cecily of York

Infobox British Royalty|royal
name =Cecily of York
title =Viscountess Welles


imgw = 180px
spouse =1) Ralph Scrope of Upsall
2) John Welles, Viscount Welles
3) Thomas Kymbe
issue =Elizabeth Welles
Anne Welles
titles =
royal house =House of York
father =Edward IV of England
mother =Elizabeth Woodville
date of birth = 20 March, 1469
place of birth = Westminster Palace, London
date of death = 24 August, 1507 (aged 38)
place of death = Sandown, Isle of Wight|

Cecily of York (March 20, 1469 - August 24, 1507), was the third, but eventual second surviving, daughter of King Edward IV of England and his Queen consort, the former Lady Elizabeth Woodville, daughter of Richard Woodville, 1st Earl Rivers.

Birth and Family

Cecily was born in Westminster Palace. She was a younger sister of Elizabeth of York and Mary of York, and an older sister of Edward V of England; Margaret of York; Richard of Shrewsbury, 1st Duke of York; Anne of York; George Plantagenet, Duke of Bedford; Catherine of York; and Bridget of York. She was a niece of Richard III of England, senior sister-in-law of Henry VII of England, an aunt of Henry VIII of England, and a great-aunt of Edward VI of England, Mary I of England, and Elizabeth I of England.

Reign of Edward IV

In 1474, Edward IV contacted a marriage alliance with James III of Scotland, whereby Cecily was betrothed to the future James IV of Scotland. Because of this she was for a time styled "Princess of Scots". This agreement was, however, unpopular in the Kingdom of Scotland, and later military conflicts between Edward IV and James III negated the marriage arrangement.

With her older sisters, Cecily was present at the wedding of their brother the Duke of York in 1478. In 1480, Cecily was named a Lady of the Garter, along with her next elder sister Mary.

In 1482, Cecily was betrothed to Alexander Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany, the younger brother of James III, who had recently allied with her father and had personal ambitions for the Scottish throne. He was killed on August 7, 1485, without the marriage having taken place, but the death of Edward IV in 1483 had already changed the marriage prospects for his daughters in any case.

Reign of Richard III

After the death of their uncle Richard's wife Anne Neville, it was rumoured that Richard was considering marriage with one of his nieces. These rumours included Cecily, who was now the second eldest surviving daughter of Edward IV. According to Commines, only two of the elder daughters of Edward IV were declared illegitimate at the time that their younger brothers were excluded from the throne by the Act of "Titulus Regius".

Cecily was married to Ralph Scrope of Upsall, a younger brother of Thomas Scrope, 6th Baron Scrope of Masham, and a supporter of Richard, but the marriage was annulled on the accession of her future brother-in-law, Henry of Richmond, as King Henry VII of England. Many published works fail to note this earlier, nullified, marriage. Years later, Cecily's discarded first husband succeeded another elder brother to the family barony becoming Ralph Scrope, 9th Baron Scrope of Masham. He died circa 1515.

Reign of Henry VII of England

The Lancastrian claimant, Henry, Earl of Richmond, had announced at Rennes, France that he intended to unite the rival royal houses of Lancaster and York, by marrying a daughter of Edward IV, and thus bring to an end the conflicts of generations of descendants of Edward III now known as the Wars of the Roses. His first choice was Elizabeth of York, the eldest of the late king's daughters, but had she died, Henry's marital intentions would have turned to Cecily herself, as he stated explicitly in his declaration.

In 1487, after the accession of Henry VII of England, and his marriage to her older sister, Elizabeth, Cecily was married to a staunch Lancastrian nobleman, John Welles, 1st Viscount Welles, the son of Lionel Welles, 6th Lord Welles and Margaret Beauchamp of Bletso. Her new husband was a maternal half-brother of Lady Margaret Beaufort, and thus an uncle of the half-blood of Henry VII, and both by politics and blood, a royal favourite.

Cecily played a role in various major royal ceremonies during the earlier years of Henry VII's reign, as befitted her position in the Royal Family, as sister of a queen consort and sister-in-law of a king regnant. She carried her nephew, Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, at his christening; attended her sister Elizabeth of York at her coronation as queen consort; and bore the train of Catherine of Aragon at her wedding to Prince Arthur. There is also a record of her lending money to her sister, the queen, in 1502.

Cecily, had three children, Robert, Elizabeth, and Anne Welles, Elizabeth and Anne both died young, and unmarried. Viscount Welles died on February 9, 1499. Cecily's grief was considerable, and all the correct heraldic and religious honours were paid to her husband.

Despite her apparent mourning, some three years into her first widowhood, and having lost two of the children by her late husband, she contracted a marriage which has been described as being "rather for comfort than credit" (see Fuller's "Worthies", vol. 2, p. 165). Cecily's third and final marriage, to Thomas Kyme, Kymbe, or Keme, an obscure Lincolnshire squire, otherwise called Sir John Keme or Kene, of the Isle of Wight, took place sometime between May 1502 and January 1504. It is thought to have been a love match, entered into entirely from the princess's own liking.

Green states that she chose a partner to suit herself who was also someone so unthreatening as to be beneath the notice of the king or likely to arouse his jealousy. This wedding took place without the king's approval or permission. The princess appears to have miscalculated her brother-in-law's attitude. The king banished Cecily from court and all her estates were confiscated.

After the intervention of the king's mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort, some of Cecily’s lands were restored. She was to enjoy only a lifetime interest in those remaining to her, and to have nothing to pass on to her husband, or to any children of their union.

Cecily lived out the balance of her life quietly, far from court. In the royal account books, there is a gap in the record of her final years. Existing details about her final years in this last marriage are scanty and conflicting. Two children, Richard and Margaret (or Margery) are mentioned in the enhanced copy, dated 1602, of the heraldic Visitation of Hampshire (1576) made by Smythe, Rouge Dragon pursuivant at the College of Arms, indicating that they lived, married, and had offspring. The children of the princess and her last husband were granted no royal titles or styles, nor did they enjoy any royal favours, lands, or positions at court, nor, indeed, any public recognition whatsoever. Over the centuries, any memory of them has been obscured, and thus the veracity their historical existence is now difficult to substantiate.

Death and Burial

Princess Cecily died in 1507, at the age of 38, only a few years after contracting her last marriage. She lived at East Standen in the Isle of Wight, "not in great wealth".

According to Edward Hall's "Chronicle", she was buried in relative obscurity in Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight. Horrox disputes this pointing to evidence from the Beaufort account books that states she died at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, after a three-week sojourn there, and was buried at a place that must have been local, known as 'the friars' (perhaps the friary at Kings_Langley, associated with the House of York and where Edmund of Langley the first Duke of York was buried). The writ of "diem clausit extremum", which supplies her death date, styles her as "late wife of John, late Viscount Wells", omitting any reference to her last husband or their children. If she was indeed buried in the precincts of Quarr Abbey, near her last home, then Cecily's tomb and any record of its precise location was lost when Quarr Abbey was destroyed during the Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries. Quarr's building materials were reused.

A stained glass portrait of Cecily, originally from a larger "royal window" depicting Edward IV's family is in the north transept of Canterbury Cathedral, and another stained panel is now in Glasgow's Burrell Collection. These are, along with another window in the parish church of Little Malvern,Worcestershire, her only surviving memorials.

References

*Alison Weir - "Britain's Royal Families" (which discusses the issue of her Kyme, Kymbe, or Keme children's possible survival)
*"Complete Peerage", volume 14 (1998), pg. 626 (sub Welles, for the first marriage of The Princess Cecily to Ralph Scrope)
*J. L. Laynesmith, "The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503", 2004, pp. 199-200 (regarding the anger of King Henry VII at her final marriage and his confiscation of her estates, and the negotiations for a resolution and partial restoration of Princess Cecily's property by the King's mother, Margaret, Countess of Richmond and Derby)
*Mary Anne Everett Green, Lives of the Princesses of England, vol. 3, chapter 13 ("Cecilia Third Daughter of Edward IV"), pp. 404-436
*Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
*Rosemary Horrox, "Richard III, A Study in Service", 1989, p. 295 (the basis of the claim in the "Complete Peerage" regarding Princess Cecily's first marriage to Scrope)
*Stanley Frederick Hockey, "Quarr Abbey and Its Lands, 1132-1631", 1977, University of Leicester Press, p. 61