16 march, 1485 — The Death of Queen Anne Neville
"Anne died on 16th March 1485, the same day that England experienced a great eclipse of the sun. She was just three months short of her twenty-ninth birthday. She was laid before the great altar in Westminster Abbey ‘with honours no less than befitted the burial of a queen’. In their letter of condolence, the Venetian Senate encouraged Richard to take comfort in the knowledge that his queen had ‘led so religious…a life, and was so adorned with goodness, prudence, and excellent morality, as to leave a name immortal’. Two weeks after her death, Richard called the mayor and citizens of London together to address rumours that he had hastened Anne’s end in order to marry Elizabeth. Speaking ‘in a loud and distinct voice’, he ‘showed his grief and displeasure aforesaid and said it never came into his thought or mind to marry in such manner wise, nor willing nor glad of the death of his queen but as sorry and in heart as heavy as man might be…’" (x)
