'Isabella Neville' (
5 September 1451 -
22 December 1476) was the elder daughter of
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, the ''Kingmaker'' of the
Wars of the Roses, and
Anne Neville, 16th Countess of Warwick.
She was born at
Warwick Castle. In 1469 her ambitious father engaged her to England's heir presumptive,
George Plantagenet, 1st Duke of Clarence, brother to
Edward IV of England. The king was against the marriage, which accordingly took place at a secret ceremony at Calais, conducted by Isabella's relation
George Neville, Archbishop of York, on
11 July 1469. Their first child, Anne, was either stillborn or died shortly after its birth, on a ship just off the coast of
France, near
Calais, on 16 April 1470 . In 1473 she gave birth to a daughter called
Margaret and in 1475 to a son called
Edward. On 6 October 1476 she gave birth to a short lived son, Richard, who died
1 January 1477. Isabella died a few months after the birth at
Warwick Castle. At the time it was believed that she had been poisoned, and her servant Ankarette Twynho was hanged for this crime. It is now believed that she died of either childbed fever or tuberculosis (consumption).
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References
★
The Peerage.com
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Britain's Royal Family: A Complete Genealogy, Weir, Alison, , , Bodley Head, 2002, ISBN 0-7126-4286-2 pages 136 & 137