Anne Beauchamp, 16th Countess of Warwick (13 July 1426 – 20 September 1492) was an important late medieval English noblewoman. She was the daughter of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick, and his second wife, Isabel le Despenser (a daughter of Thomas le Despenser (22 September 1373 – 13 January 1399/1400) and Constance of York).
Anne Beauchamp was the mother of two famous daughters, Isabel Neville, the wife of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence, and Anne Neville, Queen of England as the wife of King Richard III.[1]
She has been described as 'diplomatic, intelligent and resilient' and was at the centre of politics during the War of the Roses.[2]
Anne Beauchamp was born at Caversham Castle in Oxfordshire (now Berkshire). She married Richard Neville 'the Kingmaker' – and her brother Henry Beauchamp married Richard's sister Cecily – in 1436.[3] Following the death of Anne's father in 1439, and subsequently that of her brother Henry in 1446, and his infant daughter Lady Anne in 1449,[4] Neville inherited the title and the considerable estates of the Earldom of Warwick through his wife.[5]
However, this was contested by Anne's three older half-sisters, children of her father's first marriage to Elizabeth, heiress of the Berkeley estates.[6] One of these, Lady Eleanor, was married to Edmund Beaufort, 2nd Duke of Somerset (killed at the First Battle of St Albans in 1455). The litigation over the Warwick inheritance only fuelled the enmity between this branch of the Nevilles and the Beauforts who were closely related. Anne Beauchamp's husband, Richard, was the grandson of Lady Joan Beaufort, Countess of Westmorland, sister of the Duke's late father. Law considered that Anne Beauchamp being a full-blooded aunt of the last countess was more eligible to inherit than her older half-sisters, who were thus not coheirs with her, including the eldest – Lady Margaret, Countess of Shrewsbury (d. 1468). Richard Neville succeeded in keeping the Warwick and Despencer estates intact.[7]
When her husband died in 1471 fighting against King Edward IV of England, Anne sought sanctuary in Beaulieu Abbey and wrote to the King to assure him that she was 'the kinge's true liege woman' and to negotiate her own safety.[2] She also sent appeals to powerful women of the royal family, including Jacquetta of Luxembourg, Duchess of Bedford, Elizabeth Woodville and Elizabeth of York.[2] She remained in sanctuary until 1473.[8]
Her elder daughter, Lady Isabel, married George, Duke of Clarence, the younger brother of King Edward IV of England.[9] Her younger daughter, Lady Anne Neville, was married to Edward of Westminster, the only son of Lancastrian King Henry VI.[10] When Edward of Westminster was killed in the Battle of Tewkesbury on 4 May 1471, Anne Neville was married to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, the brother of Yorkist King Edward IV of England who later became King Richard III of England.[1] They married after a dispensation to marry was issued from Rome on 22 April 1472.[1] Anne joined her daughter Anne's household in 1473, after Richard obtained the king's permission to release his mother-in-law from her sanctuary.[8] Anne is known to have passed an illustrated Book of Hours to her daughter, which had been commissioned by Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick.[11]
Although their mother was still living, the husbands of the two Neville sisters fought over their inheritance.[12] To win his brother George's final consent to the marriage with Anne, eventually Richard renounced most of Warwick's land and property including the earldoms of Warwick (which the Kingmaker had held in his wife's right) and Salisbury and surrendered to Clarence the office of Great Chamberlain of England.[8] In 1474, to settle the dispute once and for all, Anne was declared legally dead by Parliament and her inheritance divided between her two daughters.[13]
After George was executed for treason in 1478,[9] his son Edward inherited the title of Earl of Warwick, while Richard's son was styled Earl of Salisbury.[14]
Anne was once again in sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey in 1486 when she petitioned Henry VII for the return of her estate. She recovered a small portion, but only on condition that she broke the entail and remit the bulk of them to Henry VII.[7] "The 'Warwick and Spencer lands', her own patrimony became part of the crown estate."[15]
Anne died in obscurity, having survived her husband, her daughters and the sons-in-law who had effectively disinherited her. She was buried alongside her husband.[16]
Anne, Countess of Warwick, appears prominently in the Philippa Gregory novels The White Queen (2009), The Red Queen (2010), and The Kingmaker's Daughter (2012),[17] and is played by Juliet Aubrey in the 2013 television adaptation of all three novels, The White Queen.[18] She is depicted as a coldly ambitious mother to Isabel and Anne Neville, and her husband's staunchest supporter.
A more sympathetic portrayal of the Countess of Warwick is in the novel The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman, and a maternal view of her is observed in The Reluctant Queen by Jean Plaidy.[citation needed]
Novelist Sandra Worth represents the Countess as her husband's conscience in her five novels about the Wars of the Roses. Another sympathetic portrayal of Anne Beauchamp is Wife to the Kingmaker, a 1974 title by Sandra Wilson.[19]