The New Murrey and Blue blog

In everything I’ve ever read about Cicely/Cecily, daughter of Edward lV, and her last marriage, to Thomas Kymbe/Keymes/Kyme/Kymbe, various spellings, there is a question mark over their supposed children. No proof, no further history and so on. Yet today, on reading Perkin, A Story of Deception by Ann Wroe, in the Epilogue about Perkin’s wife, Lady Katherine Gordon, I came upon something that surely must prove the existence of at least one such child, a daughter, Margaret.

Katherine Gordon took several husbands after Perkin /Richard Duke of York, the last being Christopher Ashton of Fyfield, Berks. In her will, she left to her ‘cousin’, Margaret Keymes, ‘such of my apparel as shall be meet for her by the discretion of my husband and my said executor’. I quote Wroe: “Margaret was the daughter of Cicely, Edward IV’s second surviving daughter, who had taken Thomas Keymes or Kyme as her second husband. This marriage ‘to an obscure man of no reputation’, as Vergil called him, had made Cicely at outcast among the royals. Evidently, at some point, Katherine had befriended her and her daughter. The term ‘cousin’ though, suggested either a blood tie or that general cousinage of royals that Richard Plantagenet (Perkin) had claimed, in 1493, with half the crowned heads of Europe. Katherine’s claim to be cousin to Margaret [Keymes] could have only come through her first husband (Perkin), assuming that he had been the prince he said he was. It was perhaps a tiny signal that she still believed in him.”

If this really is in Katherine Ashton/Gordon’s will, surely it verifies that at least Cicely and Thomas had this one daughter, if no more children? Unless, of course, Wroe is wrong, and there was another Margaret Keymes, totally unrelated to Cicely.

Wiki says: “Two children, Richard and Margaret (or Margery) are mentioned in the enhanced copy, dated 1602, of the heraldic Visitation of Hampshire (1576) made by Smythe, Rouge Dragon pursuivant at the College of Arms, indicating that they lived, married, and had offspring. The children of the princess and her last husband were granted no royal titles or styles, nor did they enjoy any royal favours, lands, or positions at court, nor, indeed, any public recognition whatsoever. Over the centuries any memory of them has been obscured, and thus the veracity of their historical existence is now difficult to substantiate.”

Wiki, I know, but if Margaret Keymes was Cicely’s daughter and is in Katherine Ashton/Gordon’s will, then she is surely verified?

The picture below is a tweaked version of a likeness in the Royal Window, Northwest Transept, Canterbury Cathedral.