George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence

Arms of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence: Royal arms differenced by a label of three points argent each charged with a canton gules.[2][3]

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.[4]

Having been mentioned as a possible husband for Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, Clarence came under the influence of his first cousin Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, and in July 1469 was married in Église Notre-Dame de Calais to the earl's elder daughter Isabel Neville.[4]

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.[5] 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.[5]

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.[4] Clarence was created, by right of his wife, first Earl of Warwick[6] on 25 March 1472,[7] and first Earl of Salisbury in a new creation.[4]

In 1475 Clarence's wife Isabel gave birth to a son, Edward, later Earl of Warwick. Isabel died on 22 December 1476, two months after giving birth to a short-lived son named Richard (5 October 1476 – 1 January 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.

Though most historians now believe Isabel's death was a result of either consumption or childbed fever, 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. Clarence's mental state, never stable, deteriorated from that point and led to his involvement in yet another rebellion against his brother Edward.

In 1477 Clarence was again a suitor for the hand of Mary, who had just become duchess of Burgundy. Edward objected to the match, and Clarence left the court.[4]

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 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 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.[4]

A reason for Edward to have his brother executed may have been that George had "threatened to question the legality of the royal marriage"[8] 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,[9] although others dispute this.[10][11]

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 outrage at Edward's marriage to 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.

The Duke and Duchess of Clarence, Cardiff Castle.

Clarence married Isabel Neville in Calais, at that time controlled by England, on 11 July 1469. Together they had four children:[12]

• 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.[6][13]
• Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury (14 August 1473 – 28 May 1541); married Sir Richard Pole; executed by Henry VIII.
• Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick (25 February 1475 – 28 November 1499); the last legitimate Plantagenet heir of the direct male line; 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.

• Ashdown-Hill, John (2014). The Third Plantagenet: George, Duke of Clarence, Richard III's Brother. Stroud: The History Press. ISBN 978-0-7524-9949-9. OCLC 873815303.
• Hicks, Michael (1992). False, Fleeting, Perjur'd Clarence: George, Duke of Clarence 1449–78 (rev. ed.). Bangor: Headstart History. ISBN 1-873041-08-X. OCLC 463748217.
• Kendall, Paul Murray (2002). Richard the Third. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Co. ISBN 978-0-393-34838-5. OCLC 1036805089 – via Internet Archive.
• Pollard, A. J. (1991). Richard III and the Princes in the Tower. Bramley Books. p. 65. ISBN 978-1-85833-772-2. OCLC 1036783280 – via Internet Archive.
• Weir, Alison (2002). Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy. Bodley Head. pp. 136–7. ISBN 0-7126-4286-2. OCLC 555656395.