Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/27



ERY few persons have lived to see such great revolutions in their family as Cecily duchess of York. Her father, from a baron, became a great and puissant earl; and no less than nine of his sons were, by descent, marriage, or creation, peers of the realm, his daughters matched suitably with the first nobility or gentry.

The Nevils, his grandchildren, were, if possible, still more illustrious: their vast honours and alliances gave them almost the sovereign power, at least it gained them the power of making and unmaking kings; to this combined strength it was owing that the house of York, the eldest branch of that of Plantagenet, was able to assert its rights to the crown, and finally to obtain it, for Cecily, the youngest of twenty-one children of Ralph earl of Westmorland and Richmond, marrying Richard Plantagenet duke of York, the Nevils thought it their interest to set him upon the throne.

Cecily was by birth a Lancastrian, her mother being the daughter of John duke of Lancaster, by his last duchess, but born before marriage, consequently illegitimate: so that Joan was half sister to king Henry IV. and Cecily was first cousin one Rh