George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence
George Plantagenet | |
---|---|
Duke of Clarence | |
Born | 21 October 1449 Dublin Castle, Ireland |
Died | 18 February 1478 Tower of London | (aged 28)
Burial | 25 February 1478[1] |
Spouse | |
Cecily Neville |
George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence (21 October 1449 – 18 February 1478), was the sixth child and third surviving son of
Though a member of the
Life
George was born on 21 October 1449 in Dublin at a time when his father, the Duke of York, had begun to challenge Henry VI for the crown. His godfather was James FitzGerald, 6th Earl of Desmond. He was the second of the three sons of Richard and Cecily who survived their father and became a potential claimant for the crown. His father died in 1460. In 1461 his elder brother, Edward, became King of England as Edward IV and George was made Duke of Clarence. Despite his youth, he was appointed as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the same year.[5]
Having been mentioned as a possible husband for
Clarence had actively supported his elder brother's claim to the throne, but when his father-in-law (known as "the Kingmaker") deserted Edward IV to ally with Margaret of Anjou, consort of the deposed King Henry, Clarence supported him and was deprived of his office as Lord Lieutenant.[6] Clarence joined Warwick in France, taking his pregnant wife. She gave birth to their first child, a girl, on 16 April 1470, in a ship off Calais. The child died shortly afterwards. Henry VI rewarded Clarence by making him next in line to the throne after his own son, justifying the exclusion of Edward IV both by attainder for his treason against the House of Lancaster as well as his alleged illegitimacy. After a short time, Clarence realized that his loyalty to his father-in-law was misplaced: Warwick had his younger daughter, Anne Neville, Clarence's sister-in-law, marry Henry VI's son in December 1470. This demonstrated that his father-in-law was less interested in making him king than in serving his own interests and, since it now seemed unlikely that Warwick would replace Edward IV with Clarence, Clarence was secretly reconciled with Edward.[6]
Warwick's efforts to keep Henry VI on the throne ultimately failed and Warwick was killed at the battle of Barnet in April 1471. The re-instated King Edward IV restored his brother Clarence to royal favour by making him Great Chamberlain of England. As his father-in-law had died, Clarence became jure uxoris Earl of Warwick, but did not inherit the entire Warwick estate as his younger brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had married (c. 1472) Anne Neville, who had been widowed in 1471. Edward intervened and eventually divided the estates between his brothers.[5] Clarence was created, by right of his wife, first Earl of Warwick[7] on 25 March 1472,[8] and first Earl of Salisbury in a new creation.[5]
In 1475 Clarence's wife Isabel gave birth to a son,
Death
This section needs additional citations for verification. (February 2018) |
Though most historians now believe Isabel's death was a result of either consumption or
According to the bill of attainder passed against him, Clarence made a number of his servants swear personal loyalty to him and sent them into various parts of the kingdom to stir up rebellion against Edward, claiming that Edward intended to disinherit him and that he had used witchcraft to poison his subjects. It was also alleged that he had plotted to have a "strange child" pose as his son, while he intended to send his son into Ireland or Flanders to get assistance against Edward, but this plan was not successful. Clarence was also said to have secretly kept a document signed by Henry VI, specifying that Clarence was to become king in the event of his death.[9]
In 1477 Clarence was again a suitor for the hand of Mary, who had just become
The arrest and committal to the Tower of London of one of Clarence's retainers, an Oxford astronomer named John Stacey, led to his confession under torture that he had "imagined and compassed" the death of the king, and used the black arts to accomplish this. He implicated one Thomas Burdett, and one Thomas Blake, a chaplain at Stacey's college (Merton College, Oxford). All three were tried for treason, convicted, and condemned to be drawn to
This was a clear warning to Clarence, which he chose to ignore. He appointed John Goddard to burst into Parliament and regale the House with Burdett and Stacey's declarations of innocence that they had made before their deaths. Goddard was a very unwise choice, as he was an ex-Lancastrian who had expounded Henry VI's claim to the throne. Edward summoned Clarence to Windsor, severely upbraided him, accused him of treason, and ordered his immediate arrest and confinement.
Clarence was imprisoned in the Tower of London and put on trial for treason against his brother Edward IV. Clarence was not present – Edward himself prosecuted his brother, and demanded that Parliament pass a bill of attainder against his brother, declaring that he was guilty of "unnatural, loathly treasons" which were aggravated by the fact that Clarence was his brother, who, if anyone did, owed him loyalty and love. Following his conviction and attainder, he was "privately executed" at the Tower on 18 February 1478, by tradition in the Bowyer Tower, and soon after the event, a rumour spread that he had been drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.[5]
A reason for Edward to have his brother executed may have been that George had "threatened to question the legality of the royal marriage"[10] and he may have discovered from Bishop Robert Stillington of Bath and Wells that George "had probably let slip the secret of the precontract" for Edward's marriage with Lady Eleanor Talbot,[11] although others dispute this.[12][13]
In Shakespeare
Clarence is a principal character in two of William Shakespeare's history plays: Henry VI, Part 3 and Richard III. Shakespeare portrays Clarence as weak-willed and changeable. His initial defection from Edward IV to Warwick is prompted by resentment at the favors bestowed by Edward to the family of his queen Elizabeth Woodville. Despite several speeches proclaiming loyalty to Warwick, and to Henry VI, Clarence defects back to Edward's side when he sees his brothers again; it takes only a few lines for his brothers to shame him into rejoining the Yorkist party. Several lines reference his penchant for wine.
Richard III opens with Gloucester having framed Clarence for treason, using a soothsayer to sow doubt in the King's mind about his brother, and in the first scene Clarence is arrested and taken to the Tower. Gloucester nimbly stage-manages Clarence's death, fast-tracking the order of execution and intercepting the King's pardon when Edward changes his mind. In Act One Scene Four, Clarence recounts a terrifying nightmare in which he has been pushed (accidentally) into the ocean by Gloucester and drowns, then finds himself in hell, accused of perjury by the ghosts of Warwick and Prince Edward. When he is attacked by assassins sent by Gloucester, he pleads eloquently and nobly but is stabbed and drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. It is Clarence's death that sends Edward into a fatal attack of remorse. Clarence is the first character to die in the play; his ghost later appears to Gloucester, then already Richard III, and Henry Tudor, the future Henry VII of England, before the Battle of Bosworth Field, cursing his brother and encouraging Henry.
Children
Clarence married
- Anne of Clarence (16 April 1470 – c. 17 April 1470), who was born and died in a ship off Calais. Identified by some sources as a girl but by others as an unnamed boy.[7][15]
- Henry VIII.
- Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick (25 February 1475 – 28 November 1499); executed by Henry VII on grounds of attempting to escape from the Tower of London.
- Richard of Clarence (5 October 1476 – 1 January 1477); born at Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire; died at Warwick Castle and buried in Warwick.
Genealogy
References
- ^ Visser-Fuchs, Livia (2021). "The King's Hat: Two Anecdotes about Louis XI and Edward IV's Embassy to France in 1477-1478". The Ricardian. XXXI: 102, note 32.
- ISBN 978-1-4456-2134-0.
- ^ Marks of Cadency in the British Royal Family. Heraldica.org. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
- ISBN 0-900455-25-X
- ^ a b c d e f public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Clarence, Dukes of s.v. George, Duke of Clarence". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 428. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the
- ^ a b Chisholm 1911.
- ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004. Retrieved 11 January 2019.
- ^ Alison Weir, Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy (London, U.K.: The Bodley Head, 1999), p. 136.
- ^ "Attainder of George Duke of Clarence - The Wars of the Roses". 12 May 2021. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
- OCLC 759584703– via Internet Archive.
- ^ Kendall 2002, pp. 258–60.
- S2CID 162398938.
- OCLC 1033597891– via Internet Archive.
- ^ Ashdown-Hill 2014, p. 193.
- ISBN 978-0-631-23593-4.
Sources
- OCLC 873815303.
- OCLC 463748217.
- OCLC 1036805089– via Internet Archive.
- OCLC 1036783280– via Internet Archive.
- OCLC 555656395.