Not as well known as her sister Elizabeth of York, Queen of England, Cecily attended many important events at the court of her father King Edward IV of England and her brother-in-law, King Henry VII. There are scattered references to her appearances throughout the historical records. Despite this, we know very little about her personality.

Born on March 20, 1469, Cecily was the third daughter and child of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville. We can presume they named her after her paternal grandmother, Cecily Neville, Duchess of York. She was nursed by Isabel Stidolf, the wife of one of Elizabeth Woodville’s servants. She grew up together with her elder sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, to whom she was very close, although Mary of York, the second sister, died in 1482.

Cecily and Elizabeth were educated together. They both spoke French and inscribed a French prose manuscript of the ‘Romance of Saint Graal’ on folio 1, signing their names ‘Elysabeth, the kyngys dowther’ and ‘Cecyl the kyngys dowther’. Together, the sisters owned another book of adventures entitled ‘Testament de Amyra Sultan Nichhemedy, Empereur des Turcs’ in which they both signed the title page. Cecily is described as being ‘fair’. As with any noble lady, they taught her the skills needed in anticipation of her marriage, such as running a household and estates, and how to grace a royal court.

Because of the vagaries of the civil strife in England, later called the Wars of the Roses, King Edward IV was forced to flee the country when Henry VI took back the throne he had lost to Edward. In 1470, Elizabeth Woodville fled to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey with all of her children. The Queen gave birth to the future King Edward V during their five months in sanctuary. By April 1471, Edward IV had returned to England and gained back the throne. It must have been a stressful time for Cecily and her sisters.

As early as 1473, her father considered a marriage alliance between England and Scotland. The agreement formally betrothed Cecily by proxy in a ceremony in Edinburgh on October 26, 1474, to the infant son of James III, King of Scots, the future James IV. King Edward planned on invading France and needed peace with the Scots before leaving the country.

From this time forward, they called Cecily ‘the Princess of Scots’ and King Edward continued to pay her dowry until circumstances changed in 1482. Cecily, Elizabeth and Mary attended the marriage of their brother Richard to Anne Mowbray, heiress of the Duke of Norfolk, on January 15, 1478. In April 1480, Cecily and Mary were made Ladies of the Garter and given robes for the ceremony.

By 1482, James III, King of Scots, created havoc staging a border raid on England. He also imprisoned his own disgruntled brother, Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany. Albany managed to escape captivity and made his way to the English court, where he influenced King Edward. In June, with the Treaty of Fotheringhay, the king broke off Cecily’s betrothal to Prince James and affianced her to Albany, who harbored his own ambitions to the Scottish throne. The betrothal and marriage were contingent on the annulment or divorce of Albany’s marriage to his French wife, Anne de la Tour.

Albany, along with King Edward’s brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, rode north to Scotland at the head of an English army and they took James III captive. However, Albany ended up making peace with his brother. This did not revive the match between Cecily and Prince James, and they formally broke off all marriage agreements in October 1482.

King Edward IV died unexpectedly in April 1483 and all of his daughters were unmarried at the time. The Duke of Gloucester took possession of Cecily’s brother, now King Edward V, and had Elizabeth Woodville’s brother executed, alarming the dowager queen. She fled with her family once again into sanctuary in Westminster Abbey. Gloucester took the throne as Richard III and Parliament declared all of Edward IV’s children illegitimate, because of an alleged prior marriage/betrothal made by Edward IV before he married Elizabeth Woodville.

Richard III pressured Elizabeth Woodville to give up her younger son, Richard. He put the two brothers in the Tower of London, where they disappeared in the summer of 1483. Richard III and Elizabeth Woodville came to an agreement on March 1, 1484, for her and her daughters to come out of sanctuary. The king promised to treat the women well and find them gentlemen to marry, and to provide each of them with two hundred marks per annum of income from lands.

It is possible they sent the women to Sheriff Hutton along with their sister Elizabeth, but there is no record of the younger daughters living there. Cecily may have been with her mother, possibly at Heytesbury. Elizabeth Woodville later sent her daughters to court where they spent Christmas. The only daughter Richard made a match for was Cecily, possibly in 1485. Thomas, fifth Baron Scrope of Upsall, a strong supporter of Richard III, had two sons. Cecily married the second son, Ralph, which was not a distinguished match for the daughter of a former king.

Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort began putting a plan in motion to marry one of Elizabeth’s daughters to Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor. Tudor had a claim to the throne of England through his Lancaster Beaufort ancestry. The women wanted to bring peace to England and end the Wars of the Roses by uniting the houses of Lancaster and York. On Christmas day, Henry Tudor swore an oath in Rennes Cathedral in Brittany where he was in exile, to marry Elizabeth of York (or her sister Cecily due to the unavailability of Elizabeth).

Henry Tudor, with the help of the French king, invaded England and won the Battle of Bosworth on August 22, 1485, where Richard III lost his life. After Tudor’s accession as King Henry VII, as promised, he married Elizabeth of York and Cecily went to live in the household of Margaret Beaufort, who seems to have been very fond of her. Considered the most beautiful of Edward IV’s daughters, men could have taken advantage of Cecily to challenge Henry VII’s claim to the throne. She therefore needed protection.

Cecily played a prominent role at public court functions. Once Elizabeth of York married Henry Tudor, she paid her unmarried sisters fifty pounds annual salary and for her married sisters, she paid their husbands one hundred and twenty pounds per annum. When Queen Elizabeth went into seclusion before the birth of her first child, Prince Arthur, Cecily joined her.

Cecily carried the infant Arthur to his christening, wrapped in a mantle of crimson cloth of gold, furred with ermine as she walked under a canopy of estate. Her sister, Anne, the Marquess of Dorset, and the Earl of Lincoln accompanied her. Following the christening, she returned the child to the Queen’s chamber where his parents blessed the child. Cecily carried the Queen’s train during her coronation on November 25, 1487, and sat at the Queen’s table on her left at the coronation banquet.

King Henry had Cecily’s marriage to Scrope dissolved sometime in 1486. Margaret Beaufort arranged a marriage for her with her own half-brother, John, Viscount Welles. John’s father, Lionel, Lord Welles, was the third husband of Margaret’s mother, and it is possible she considered Lionel a father figure. The viscount was penniless because of an attainder put in place during the reign of Edward IV, and lived with Margaret’s mother, the dowager duchess of Somerset.

Henry VII had reversed his attainder and restored his barony of Welles in 1485. He was twenty-years older than Cecily. Some time between November 25 and December 31, 1487, the wedding took place, and the king and queen attended. Welles was a favorite of the king, having joined him in exile and actively working to oppose Richard III.

When Elizabeth Woodville died in April 1492, Cecily did not attend her funeral, but her husband did. She may have been ill or pregnant. Cecily’s grandmother, Cecily, the dowager duchess of York, died in 1495 and bequeathed one her breviaries to Cecily and another one to Margaret Beaufort. There is a record of payment of one pound from the king to Cecily for minstrels in her employ.

Cecily gave birth to two daughters with Welles, christened Elizabeth and Anne. In 1498, they brokered a marriage for Elizabeth to the heir of George Stanley, Lord Strange. Unfortunately, Elizabeth died later that year. Anne also died before her father passed away and she was buried in the church of the Austin Friars in London.

Cecily’s husband died in his London home on February 9, 1499. In his will, he stipulated all of his property should go to Cecily for the rest of her life. He requested burial where Cecily and the king and queen specified. Cecily sent a request to the king at Greenwich, asking for his opinion on the matter. Henry ordered Welles to be buried in the old Lady Chapel of Westminster Abbey.

Although John Welles had given his wife a life interest in his estates upon his death, these rights would normally have gone to the children of Lionel Welles’ first marriage. These precedent Welles heirs challenged John Welles’ will. Margaret Beaufort aided Cecily in retaining these property rights. The intercession of Margaret, and possibly the king himself, permitted Cecily’s claims to prevail. Margaret also issued a special dispensation, allowing Cecily to worship regularly in Margaret’s household.

Cecily returned to the queen’s household. She carried the train of Catherine of Aragon during her wedding to Prince Arthur. She also witnessed the jousting tournaments staged for the marriage and danced with Prince Arthur during the celebrations. Records show Queen Elizabeth repaid a debt to Cecily on May 13, 1502.

After this, Cecily made a secret marriage to Thomas Kyme (or Kymbe or Keme) of Friskney in Lincolnshire. Because she was a princess, she could not marry without the king’s permission. The match with Kyme, a mere esquire, infuriated King Henry. He stood to profit financially and politically by making a more advantageous marriage for the sister of a queen. Also, if Cecily had a son by Kyme, they could easily challenge Henry’s own offspring’s right to the throne. Even if she had daughters, they could be a threat.

There is no recorded date for the wedding. King Henry, when he learned about the couple, banished Cecily from court and confiscated the Welles’ lands, taking away her income. Margaret Beaufort offered Cecily and Kyme refuge at her manor of Collyweston. Margaret Beaufort took an interest in the Welles properties in 1502, indicating that the marriage had taken place that year.

The Queen did not intercede on her sister’s behalf on record, although she may have had a private conversation with the king that he ignored. Elizabeth could have been angry with her sister but afraid to help her. However, Margaret Beaufort intervened, as she was in a better place to do so. In January 1504, Margaret negotiated a settlement with the king and Parliament, restoring Cecily’s interest in the Welles property. In the Parliament roll of 1503-4, they refer to her as Kyme’s wife. Cecily agreed to surrender some of the Welles lands in return for a life interest in the remainder. This allowed her and Kyme to keep the revenues they had already received from the estates.

Cecily was not in attendance on the queen during her last pregnancy or when she died on February 11, 1503, nor did she join in the queen’s lying in state in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower of London precincts. Most likely, she remained in disgrace with the king, but he did allow her to walk in the funeral procession. In 1506, Margaret Beaufort reserved a room for Cecily at her manor of Croydon.

Cecily died on August 24, 1507. There are two different accounts about her death. A seventeenth-century historian, Sir John Oglander, recounts that Cecily’s husband was a native of the Isle of Wight and that the couple lived at East Standen until Cecily’s death. In this account, they buried her at Quarr Abbey, a Cistercian monastery on the Isle of Wight. However, the Beaufort accounts clearly state she died after a three-week stay in the Old Palace at Hatfield, Hertfordshire and was interred at ‘the friars’. This is possibly the friary at King’s Langley where her ancestor, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York (son of King Edward III) was buried.

Regardless of the location, Margaret Beaufort paid for part of Cecily’s funeral expenses. It is unclear if Cecily and Kyme had any children. Any claim that they did originated from the later tradition, which misidentified Kyme as being from the Isle of Wight. Most likely, they remained childless.

Further reading: “Elizabeth of York” by Arlene Naylor Okerlund, “Elizabeth of York and Her Six Daughters-in-Law: Fashioning Tudor Queenship, 1485-1547, “The Last Medieval Queens” by J.L. Laynesmith, “Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World” by Alison Weir, entry on Cecily, Viscountess Welles in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography written by Rosemary Horrox