BIRTH OF CECILY OF YORK
When Cecily was born on the 20th March 1469, she came into the world as a Princess of England.
Her Father was King Edward IV, and her Mother, the beautiful Elizabeth Woodville.
Born right in the middle of the Wars of the Roses, Princess Cecily of York’s life was not that of a pampered princess.
Instead, she was a princess to a crumbling kingdom.
Cecily spent most of her toddler years in “sanctuary” in Westminster with her heavily pregnant mother, and two older sisters.
The vulnerable family had to share just a few small cramped rooms, while praying for their lives.
After six months in sanctuary, Cecily’s father Edward IV, finally pushed himself back onto the English throne, reinstating the family.
Cecily’s mother had given birth to a baby boy and heir, also named Edward, it seemed the fate of the York’s was finally looking up.
Unfortunately for Cecily, there was much more tragedy to follow.
No sooner was Cecily back as a Princess of England, her father started making big plans for her.
In yet another bid to solidify the family’s power, he betrothed her to James – Duke of Rothesay, the son of the current King James III of Scotland.
Cecily’s betrothal to the Scottish noble, earned her the rather fetching title of “Princess of Scots” for much of her young life.
In 1481, Cecily turned 12, and plans were made for her to be sent to Scotland and marry.
But then, England and Scotland got into an enormous political argument, and Cecily’s father retaliated by breaking off her engagement, and revoking the marriage.
In 1483, her father Edward IV suddenly died, throwing the York’s into a state of utter turmoil.
Cecily’s younger brother Edward became Edward V, ascending to the throne after his father – but things were about to go disastrously wrong for the York’s.
With Cecily and her family still mourning their father, her uncle Richard, the then-Duke of Gloucester, swept in as Lord Protector, and took the young boy King Edward, and placed him in The Tower of London, for his ‘safety’.
King Edward would soon be joined by his little brother Prince Richard.
Richard then immediately began claiming that all the York children were illegitimate, and that he was the true king.
Once again the women fled to sanctuary, and Cecily had to watch, terrified for her life, as her uncle took the throne of England from her brother.
At the end of the summer of 1483, the sightings of her brothers playing in the Tower grounds, abruptly stopped.
However, the York women, Cecily included, were fighters until the end.
While still holed up in sanctuary, they came up with a plot to exact revenge.
Her mother Elizabeth Woodville, needed a formidable enemy to take down Cecily’s Uncle Richard.
This happened to be Margaret Beaufort, one time Lady in Waiting to Cecily’s mother.
Making plans with Margaret, Elizabeth Woodville offered up her daughters, Cecily and her older sister Elizabeth, as potential brides for Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor.
Elizabeth Woodville, decided it was time to come out of sanctuary, and start making some political moves.
Cecily and her sisters’ lives were still very much in danger, and Elizabeth had to make Richard swear he wouldn’t harm his nieces before they came out of Sanctuary.
In Christmas of 1484, a teenaged Cecily accompanied her mother for a stay at King Richard’s.
Here they were, in the royal palace that used to be their home, stripped of their titles and prestige.
Richard wasn’t finished with discrediting the York women.
He came up with a humiliating plan for Cecily.
In the early 1480s, the King succeeded in marrying her off…
The bridegroom was the humbly named Ralph Scrope, a second son of an eminently unimportant baron.
It was a big come down for a princess who had once been betrothed to the future King of Scotland.
Cecily’s marriage was about as far from a prestigious union, as you could get.
Thankfully, Cecily’s awful marriage didn’t last long.
In 1485, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth, and was now King.
Henry annulled Cecily’s sham marriage to Scrope, and by 1486, Cecily was a free woman.
Henry married Cecily’s older sister Elizabeth of York.
Cecily was now sister to the Queen of England, and an aunt to the heirs the royal couple would have.
When Prince Arthur was born in 1486, Cecily carried her nephew to the christening ceremony.
Just a year after she finally became single again, Henry VII married Cecily off to one of his supporters, Viscount John Welles.
The 18-year-old Cecily was in the bloom of her youth….while John was at 15 to 20 years older than her.
She set about being a good wife and making babies, but like everything else, this didn’t go to plan at all.
Many of the women in Cecily’s family, including her mother and sister, were extremely fertile and had plenty of children – Cecily didn’t have it so easy.
She may have suffered from multiple miscarriages or stillbirths, and in the end, she only had two daughters with John.
Elizabeth, and Anne, who were born in the late 1480s and early 1490s.
While married to John Welles, and trying to grow her family, Cecily was rarely present at the Tudor court, it was a peaceful existence for Cecily at long last.
Tragedy struck again for Cecily in the summer of 1492.
Her mother, the dowager Queen Elizabeth Woodville, had died at the age of 55, far away from where Cecily was living.
Cecily didn’t attend the funeral, although she did send her husband John in her stead.
To this day, no one is sure why she didn’t go, although some believe Cecily could have been pregnant at the time, and unable to travel the distance to say one final goodbye.
It wasn’t long before disaster decided to strike again, and this time it took everything she loved.
In the late 1490s, Cecily experienced her worst heartbreak ever.
Her two daughters, still young and vulnerable, fell ill and died one after the other, likely from another illness that was sweeping through England.
A heartbroken Cecily, was still recovering from the loss of her two girls, when her husband John Welles also died.
It’s thought that John may have succumbed to the very same illness, that killed his daughters.
According to historical records, Cecily deeply grieved his death, and John in turn, left much of his property to her, saying it was she “whome I trust above all oder.”
After this series of horrific tragedies, Cecily jumped right back into life at the center of the Tudor court.
She was present at the wedding of her now-teenage nephew Arthur, to Katharine of Aragon.
Cecily held Katharine’s train, as she walked down the aisle on the Wedding day.
Just a few short years into her widowhood, Cecily met Sir Thomas Kyme, an unknown and entirely unremarkable Lincolnshire squire.
Cecily found she quite liked the modest Thomas, in fact she found that she loved him, and didn’t mind that he was just a lowly Squire.
Without permission of her brother-in-law, King Henry VII, Cecily married Thomas.
Instead of viewing her love match with happiness, King Henry VII viewed it with fury.
Henry despised that she had gone behind his back to find a husband, rather than letting him make another advantageous match for her.
Despite the fact that Cecily was his wife’s sister, Henry wasn’t willing to show her any mercy.
Instead, he gave her a bitter punishment.
Henry banished her, and her new husband, entirely from his court.
He also confiscated every last estate Cecily had in her name, essentially driving her into poverty.
After a lifetime of surviving for herself, Cecily’s hard-won independence was under threat.
Using the cunning she had inherited from her mother, Cecily called in one of her allies to help – none other than Henry’s formidable mother, Margaret Beaufort, whom Cecily had forged a great friendship.
Margaret gave Cecily her own Collyweston Palace for the couple to stay at.
She then gave her son a stern talking to.
Henry had no choice but to put his tail between his legs and partially recant his punishments.
Although she had those lands for her own lifetime, Henry absolutely denied her the ability to pass them on to Thomas Kyme, or any of the children she might have with him.
Likewise, none of her children could ever have any royal titles.
Cecily all but fades away from history, during these final years.
Thanks to King Henry’s ban on passing down any of her titles or her lands, Cecily’s ancestors also disappear.
She may have had two children with Thomas, named Richard and Margery, but they are so obscure they may not have even existed at all.
On 24th August 1507, when Cecily was just 38, she succumbed to illness and died.
She got only a few precious years with Thomas Kyme, the man she had given up everything for.
King Henry VII made sure that no one would remember the defiant Princess Cecily, in the years to come.
To this day, no one is even sure where she was buried.
There is, however, one trace of Cecily left…..
A stained glass portrait of her father Edward IV’s family, is still in existence in a private collection.
One panel depicts all his daughters lined up together, including Cecily herself.
A restoration now sits in Canterbury Cathedral.
About The Author
