English nobleman
Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick
(25 February 1475 ? 28 November 1499) was the son of
Isabel Neville
and
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence
, and a potential claimant to the English throne during the reigns of both his uncle,
Richard III
(1483?1485), and Richard's successor,
Henry VII
(1485?1509). He was also a younger brother of
Margaret Pole, 8th Countess of Salisbury
. Edward was tried and executed for treason in 1499.
Life
[
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]
Edward Plantagenet was the son of
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence
and
Isabel Neville
, who was the elder daughter of
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick
. Edward was born on 25 February 1475 at
Warwick
, the family home of his mother. At his christening, his uncle King
Edward IV
stood as godfather. He was styled as
Earl of Warwick
from birth,
[1]
but was not officially granted the title until after his father's death in 1478. His potential claim to the throne following the deposition of his cousin
Edward V
in 1483 was overlooked because of the argument that the
attainder
of his father barred Warwick from the succession (although that could have been reversed by an
act of Parliament
). Despite this, he was knighted at York by
Richard III
in September 1483.
[2]
In 1480,
[3]
Warwick was made a ward of King Edward IV's stepson,
Thomas Grey, 1st Marquess of Dorset
, who as his guardian had the power to decide whom he would marry.
[4]
Clements Markham
, writing in 1906,
[5]
claimed that Richard III had "liberated" Warwick from the Tower of London, where Dorset had placed him; however, there are no contemporary sources for this claim, although Dorset was Constable of the Tower.
Dominic Mancini
wrote that Richard, on becoming king, "gave orders that the son of the duke of Clarence, his other brother, then a boy of ten years old, should come to the city: and commanded that the lad should be kept in confinement in the household of his wife".
John Rous
(died 1492) wrote that after the death of Richard III's only legitimate son,
Edward of Middleham
, who was Warwick's double first cousin (their fathers were brothers and their mothers were sisters), Richard III named Warwick as heir to the throne; however, there is no other evidence for this, and historians have pointed out that it would be illogical for Richard to claim that Clarence's attainder barred Warwick from the throne while at the same time naming him as his heir.
[6]
Imprisonment and execution
[
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]
Following the death on 16 March 1485 of Richard III's queen, Anne, young Edward Plantagenet was vested as
Earl of Salisbury
by right of his mother Isabel, who had been a co-heiress with Anne to the
abeyant
earldom.
[7]
This provided Edward and thus his wards with more wealth and potential power. Following King Richard's death on 22 August 1485, Warwick, only ten years old, was kept as a prisoner in the
Tower of London
by Henry VII acting as his ward. His claim to the throne, albeit tarnished, remained a potential threat to Henry, particularly after the appearance of the
pretender
Lambert Simnel
in 1487. In 1490, he was confirmed in his title of
Earl of Warwick
despite his father's attainder (his claim to the earldom of Warwick being through his mother). But he remained a prisoner until 1499, when he became involved (willingly or unwillingly) in a plot to escape with
Perkin Warbeck
.
On 21 November 1499, Warwick appeared at Westminster for a trial before his peers, presided over by
John de Vere, 13th Earl of Oxford
. A week later, Warwick was beheaded for treason on
Tower Hill
. Henry VII paid for his body and head to be taken to
Bisham Abbey
in Berkshire for burial,
[8]
using funds derived from Warwick's estate. It was thought at the time that Warwick was executed in response to pressure from
Ferdinand II of Aragon
and
Isabella I of Castile
, whose daughter,
Catherine of Aragon
, was to marry Henry's heir,
Arthur
. Catherine was said to feel very guilty about Warwick's death, and believed that her trials in later life were punishment for it.
[9]
A number of historians have claimed that Warwick had a mental disability. This conclusion appears entirely based on the chronicler
Edward Hall
's contention that Warwick's lengthy imprisonment from a young age had left him "out of all company of men, and sight of beasts, in so much that he could not discern a
goose
from a
capon
."
[10]
Upon Warwick's death, the
House of Plantagenet
became extinct in the legitimate male line. However, the surviving sons of his aunt
Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk
, continued to claim the throne for the Yorkist line.
Ancestors
[
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]
Ancestors of Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick
|
---|
| | | | | | | 8.
Richard of Conisburgh, 3rd Earl of Cambridge
| | | | | | | 4.
Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York
| | | | | | | | | | 9.
Anne de Mortimer
| | | | | | | 2.
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence
| | | | | | | | | | | | 10.
Ralph de Neville, 1st Earl of Westmorland
)
| | | | | | | 5.
Cecily Neville
| | | | | | | | | | 11.
Joan Beaufort
| | | | | | | 1.
Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick
| | | | | | | | | | | | | 12.
Richard Neville, 5th Earl of Salisbury
| | | | | | | 6.
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick
| | | | | | | | | | 13.
Alice Neville, 5th Countess of Salisbury
| | | | | | | 3.
Isabel Neville
| | | | | | | | | | | | 14.
Richard de Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick
| | | | | | | 7.
Anne Beauchamp, 16th Countess of Warwick
| | | | | | | | | | 15.
Isabel le Despenser
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
|
Further reading
[
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]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Pierce, Hazel (2003).
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541
. Cardiff: The University of Wales Press. p. 6.
ISBN
978-0-7083-2189-8
.
- ^
Christine Carpenter
, ‘Edward, styled earl of Warwick (1475?1499)’,
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008
- ^
Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1476?1485, p212
- ^
Charles Ross,
Edward IV
. Yale University Press, 1997.
ISBN
0300073720
- ^
Richard III, His Life and Character
- ^
Hazel Pierce,
Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541
(University of Wales Press, 2009), p. 9.
- ^
Chisholm, Hugh
, ed. (1911).
"Salisbury, Earls of"
.
Encyclopædia Britannica
. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 72.
- ^
Ian Arthurson,
The Perkin Warbeck Conspiracy, 1491-1499
(Sutton, 1997), p. 215.
- ^
The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria
, preface: "She applied these miseries and disasters to have specially happened for the death of Prince Edward Plantagenet, son of the Duke of Clarence, brother to King Edward the Fourth; whom (most innocent) Henry VII. put to death to make the kingdom more secure to his posterity, and to induce King Ferdinand to give his daughter, this Catharine, in marriage to Prince Arthur".
- ^
Pierce, p. 23.