She Was The Mother of a Plantagenet Princess

Isabel Neville

Born in 1451 at Warwick Castle, Lady Isabel Neville was the elder daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, known to history as the Kingmaker, and Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick in her own right. As co-heiress to one of the vastest territorial estates in fifteenth-century England, Isabel stood at the center of the factional power struggles defining the Wars of the Roses.

Her dynastic value made her hand in marriage a matter of national security. When her father grew alienated from King Edward IV, Warwick allied with the king's ambitious younger brother, George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence. Defying King Edward's explicit prohibition, Isabel and Clarence sailed to English-held Calais and married secretly in July 1469. The wedding cemented an open rebellion against Edward IV, with Warwick seeking to depose the king and place Clarence on the throne. The rebellion faltered, forcing Isabel and Clarence to flee England in 1470. During the perilous naval crossing to France, Isabel gave birth to her first child, who died shortly after birth and was buried at sea.

When Warwick subsequently shifted his allegiance to the Lancastrian Queen Margaret of Anjou and married Isabel's younger sister Anne to the Lancastrian prince, Clarence recognized his own royal ambitions were sidelined. Reconciling with Edward IV, Clarence defected back to the Yorkist cause. Following Warwick's death at the Battle of Barnet in 1471, Isabel and Anne became the sole inheritors of the massive Beauchamp and Neville fortunes, sparking a bitter territorial dispute between Clarence and his younger brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had married Anne.

Isabel bore three surviving children, including Margaret Pole (later Countess of Salisbury) and Edward, Earl of Warwick. In October 1476, she gave birth to a short-lived son, Richard, but never recovered from the complications of childbirth. Isabel died at Warwick Castle on December 22, 1476, at just twenty-five years of age, and was entombed in Tewkesbury Abbey.

Her death triggered the final unraveling of the Duke of Clarence. Convinced his wife had been murdered, Clarence illegally seized Isabel's former attendant, Ankarette Twynyho, accused her of administering poison, and forced a compliant local jury to condemn her to hanging. This blatant abuse of judicial authority outraged Edward IV, providing the crown with legal justification to arrest Clarence for treason. Clarence was attainted by Parliament and executed in the Tower of London in 1478, bringing a tragic close to the alliance forged through Isabel's marriage.