Title:

Duke

First Name:

George

Last Name:

Plantagenet

Memorial Type:

Memorial - no longer extant tomb effigy

Does the monument still exist?

No

Installation Date:

Non-Contemporary (1500-1899)

Allegiance:

Yorkist

Memorial Notes:

George Duke of Clarence and Earl of Warwick. He was the third son of Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and brother to Kings Edward IV and Richard III. When Richard Neville, earl of Warwick was killed by Edward’s army at Barnet in 1471, George inherited Warwick’s fortune through his wife Isabel, Warwick’s daughter, but his plans to control the entire estate by taking his now widowed sister-in-law Anne Neville into his care were thwarted by his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who married Anne, claiming his half of Warwick’s lands.
Isabel had four children, but she died soon after giving birth to her last child, Richard. At the time, George was convinced Isabel had been poisoned and accused one of her ladies-in-waiting of having murdered her. Taking the law into his own hands, he had the lady, Ankarette Twynho, tried, found guilty and hanged. He also alleged that King Edward’s wife Elizabeth was guilty of witchcraft. Edward was forced to act against George. He was imprisoned and charged with treason. He was found guilty and was privately executed at the Tower on 18 February 1478, allegedly by drowning in a barrel of malmsey wine. It may be myth, but a portrait thought to be of his daughter, Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury, shows her wearing a silver barrel on her charm bracelet. The Earl of Warwick was a title that sat within the Beauchamp family (see the Beauchamp Chapel) The title transferred to Richard Neville (Warwick The Kingmaker) through his marriage to Anne Beauchamp. The Abbey sat within the lands associated with the title. Hence the reason George and his wife were interred in the crypt.