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Anne MANNERS
(C. Westmoreland)
Born: 1527, Belvoir Castle, Leicesterhire, England
Died: AFT 27 Jun 1549
Buried: Staindrop, Durham, England
Father: Thomas MANNERS (1° E. Rutland)
Mother: Eleanor PASTON (C. Rutland)
Married: Henry NEVILLE (5° E. Westmoreland) 3 Jul 1536, Holywell, Shoreditch
Children:
1. Charles NEVILLE (6° E. Westmoreland)
4. Mary NEVILLE
Wood carving tomb at Staindrop of Henry Neville and two of his wives,
Anne, daughter of the Earl of Rutland, and Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Cholmley.
Sometimes Anne Manners is called the eldest daughter of Thomas Manners, 1st Earl of Rutland, and Eleanor Paston; but Cokayne, Vol. XII, Part II, p. 557, calls her the second daughter. Their children were Gertrude, Henry, Anne, Elizabeth, Sir John, Frances, Roger, Sir Thomas, Catherine, Oliver, and Isabel.
On 3 Jul 1536 a triple wedding that reinforced the ties between some of England´s oldest families. Lady Margaret Neville, the daughter of Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, wed Lord Henry Manners, heir to the Earl of Rutland, while Rutland’s daughter Lady Anne Manners married Westmorland’s heir Lord Henry Neville. Another of Westmorland’s daughters, Dorothy Neville, married Lord John De Vere. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, cousin of the Nevilles, played his part in the ceremony as Lady Margaret’s escort from the church to the reception at the Earl of Rutland’s mansion in Shoreditch. Henry VIII even made the trip from Whitehall. Still in the first flushes of his new marriage, his joie de vivre seemed to have been resurrected for the night and he made a suitably stunning entrance dressed as a Turk with her new queen, Jane Seymour, just 6 weeks after beheading Anne Boleyn. Other nobles present in the wedding were Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk; Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk; Henry Grey, Marquess Dorset; Henry Courtenay, Marquess Exeter; Henry Bourchier, Earl of Essex; Edward Stanley, Earl of Derby; Henry Clifford, Earl of Cumberland; Robert Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex; George Hastings, Earl of Huntingdon; Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor of England.
An account of the preparation towards the church and the order of setting forth and the description of the spousal apparel says:
"First, in the morning at the 10th hour of the day were made ready all the spousals aforesaid to go to the church for the receiving of the holy sacrament of matrimony, the bridegrooms and their spouses ornately garnished of and after one manner, in no kind of apparel disagreeing, the kind whereof was this:
The 3 young Lords were indued with doublets and coats of radiant gold, and gowns of pure white damask with broad guards of white velvet laced with silver; The 3 ladies in kirtles of yellow damask and gowns of white damask, and upon their heads circlets of gold set with pearls and stones rich and of great value [f. 200r] and precious, besides their chains of fine gold and pearled carcanets artificially wrought wherewith their necks were environed and garnished to the goodly, decent and seemly setting forth of their natural beauty, [+to?] the delight of the beholders and the great magnificence, praise and honour of their progenitors’ and parents’ nobility;
The church also was hanged with cloth of arras, rich and sumptuous, the pavements strewed and covered with goodly carpets and stools also, and upon the form where they should kneel a carpet of great riches, and thereupon 4 cushions of clean gold, most ornately wrought, and other 4, no less precious, were laid for them to kneel upon; Unto the which church these goodly ladies were brought with the young gentlemen bachelors of their lineage with a great number of knights, esquires and gentlemen, a 100 or mo, which did precede them, and after them followed the barons, earls and dukes"
By 1543 Lady Anne had had two sons, and perhaps one or more daughters. Catherine Stafford went from the Lake Country to Belvoir Castle when Anne gave birth of her first son, because she was too young and still living with her parents.
By the end of 1544, Henry Neville had developed a serious gambling habit. His father, Earl Ralph, disapproved of the gambling, or at least of the debt, and relations between father and son became further strained. Worse, Lord Henry’s relationship with his wife, Lady Anne, was icy. On 1 Oct 1546 he was committed to the Fleet for plotting to murder his father and wife by witchcraft. Gregory Wisdom, a self-taught physician, magician and master conman, offered to solve Neville’s financial woes by murdering his father, Ralph Neville, the incumbent 4th Earl of Westmorland, and his wife, Anne Manners, by magic. Inevitably, the plot fell flat, and 18 months later Neville was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder. For a few weeks it’s a major scandal and it looks as though he might be hanged. He confessed, but in Mar 1547, after the death of Henry VIII, he was pardoned and released in early 1547. His father was ordered on 24 Mar 1546/7 to take him back and pay his debts.
Ralph Neville passed away on 24 Apr 1549, although some sources mention 1550 as the year of his death. The Tudors believed that the new year began on 25 Mar and on this day was the Feast of the Annunciation, which celebrates the day that Mary was first informed of the upcoming birth of Jesus. This ancient form of dating is known as Lady Day dating, and is the reason why you might see dates written like 'February 10, 1573/4'; we would consider it 1574, but at the same time it was 1573). Anyway, 24 Apr 1549 is 24 Apr 1549, even if you consider the old way of dating the events. Therefore, if the last mention we find of Anne was 27 Jun 1549, we must consider that she was, briefly, Countess of Westmoreland.
Anne Manners; her mother Eleanor Paston, her mother-in-law Catherine Stafford; her sister-in-law Margaret Neville, and her daughter Catherine, all share a monument erected in 1591, at St.Leonards, founded by Lady Adeline Neville at the direction of her sister Catherine Constable in Feb 1591.
“This monument is erected in memory that within this church do lie buried the bodies of the Right Honorable and Noble Ladies, Lady Katherine Stafford, daughter to Edward, duke of Buckingham, and wife to Ralph, earl of Westmorland, who died 1553. Lady Alianore, daughter to Sir William Paston, knight, and wife to the Right Honorable Lord Thomas, earl of Rutland, buried 1551. Lady Margaret Nevill, daughter to Ralph, earl of Westmorland, and wife to Henry, earl of Rutland, who d. 1560. And the lady Katherine Nevill, wife to Sir John Constable of Holderness, knight, and daughter to Henry, earl of Westmorland. And Lady Anne Manners, daughter to Thomas, earl of Rutland. Which Katherine died the seven and twentieth day of March, anno domini 1591”
After the death of Anne Manners, Henry Neville married secondly Jane, daughter of Sir Richard Cholmley; and, thirdly, her sister Margaret, widow of Sir Henry Gascoigne.
Sources:
Childs, Jessie: Henry VIII´s Last Victim: The life and times of Herny Howard, Earl of Surrey -
Green, Nina: The Fall of the House of Oxford - Originally published in Brief Chronicles Vol. 1 (2009), pages 41–95 https://shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org/fall-house-oxford/
Harris, Barbara J. :
English Aristocratic Women, 1450-1550 (2002) Oxford University Press
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