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Bill of Attainder, Duke of Clarence, Earl of Warwick, Isabel Neville, jure uxoris, King Edward IV of England, King Henry VI of England, Malmsey Wine, Plantagenet, Prince George, Ralph Neville
The Earl of Warwick’s efforts to keep King Henry VI on the throne ultimately failed and the Earl of Warwick was killed at the battle of Barnet in April 1471. The re-instated King Edward IV restored his brother Prince George, the Duke of Clarence, to royal favour by making him Great Chamberlain of England.
As his father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, had died, the Duke of Clarence became jure uxoris Earl of Warwick, but did not inherit the entire Warwick estate as his younger brother, Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester, had married (c. 1472) Anne Neville, the other daughter of Ralph Neville, the Earl of Warwick. Anne Neville, had been widowed in 1471, when her husband, Prince Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales and son of King Henry VI, was killed in battle.
King Edward IV intervened and eventually divided the estates between his brothers. The Duke of Clarence was created, Jure Uxoris (by right of his wife), first Earl of Warwick on March 25, 1472, and first Earl of Salisbury in a new creation.
In 1475 Clarence’s wife Isabel gave birth to a son, Edward Plantagenet, later Earl of Warwick. Isabel died on December 22, 1476, two months after giving birth to a short-lived son named Richard (October 5, 1476 – January 1, 1477). George and Isabel are buried together at Tewkesbury Abbey in Gloucestershire. Their surviving children, Margaret and Edward, were cared for by their aunt, Anne Neville, until she died in 1485 when Edward was 10 years old.
Death
Though most historians now believe Isabel’s death was a result of either consumption or childbed fever, the Duke of Clarence was convinced she had been poisoned by one of her ladies-in-waiting, Ankarette Twynyho, whom, as a consequence, he had judicially murdered in April 1477, by summarily arresting her and bullying a jury at Warwick into convicting her of murder by poisoning.
She was hanged immediately after trial with John Thursby, a fellow defendant. She was posthumously pardoned in 1478 by King Edward IV. The Duke of Clarence’s mental state, never stable, deteriorated from that point and led to his involvement in yet another rebellion against his brother King Edward IV.
In 1477 the Duke of Clarence was again a suitor for the hand of Princess Mary, who had just become Duchess of Burgundy. King Edward IV objected to the match, and the Duke of Clarence left the court.
The arrest and committal to the Tower of London of one of the Duke 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 Tyburn and hanged. Blake was saved at the eleventh hour by a plea for his life from James Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, but the other two were put to death as ordered.
This was a clear warning to the Duke of Clarence, which he chose to ignore. He appointed John Goddard to burst into Parliament and regale the House of Commons with Burdett and Stacey’s declarations of innocence that they had made before their deaths.
John Goddard was a very unwise choice, as he was an ex-Lancastrian who had expounded King Henry VI’s claim to the throne. King Edward IV summoned the Duke of Clarence to Windsor, severely upbraided him, accused him of treason, and ordered his immediate arrest and confinement.
The Duke of Clarence was imprisoned in the Tower of London and put on trial for treason against his brother King 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 the Duke of 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 February 18, 1478, by tradition in the Bowyer Tower, and soon after the event, a false rumour spread that he had been drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine.