Isabel Neville
Stained glass window of George and Isabel at Cardiff Castle
Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Elder daughter of Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick.
The Earl had probably harboured expectations, on behalf of his two daughters, of marriage to very wealthy English noblemen, even into the royal family, but was blocked by the matchmaking of Edward IV on behalf of the Queen’s sisters.
The response was to draw Edward’s acquisitive brother, George, duke of Clarence, away from the Yorkist faction to marry Warwick’s eldest daughter Isabel and make a bid for the throne himself. Isabel died after giving birth to her fourth child.
George accused one of Isabel’s ladies in waiting of poisoning her and, acting as though he were king, had her tried in a local court under his control which, not surprisingly, found her guilty and she was executed. The conviction was posthumously overturned by Edward IV.
Isabel’s younger sister Anne was twice married: firstly to Edward, the Lancastrian Prince Wales, then, after his death at Tewkesbury, to Richard, duke of Gloucester. So she fulfilled her father’s ambition by becoming Queen of England.
IWF