Investigating the identity of "Lady Bergavenny"
Part 1: Joanna Neville?
In this series of articles I will take a closer look at the “Lady Bergavenny” portrait. As you may remember, an article published by the Daily Mail in 2016 claimed that this may be Anne Boleyn.
The original painting has been part of Horace Walpole’s collection at his residence at Strawberry Hill. Upon Walpole’s death in 1797, the estate passed to his cousin, Anne Seymour Damer, and eventually to her heir, the 7th Earl of Waldegrave. By 1842, the Earl of Waldegrave, who had inherited the property and its contents, found himself in financial difficulties and decided to sell the collection. The sale catalogue listed over 4,500 lots including paintings, furniture, books, manuscripts, and various other objects collected by Walpole over the course of his lifetime.
The portrait is now part of a private collection. After it was sold in 1842 during the auction at Strawberry Hill, it was acquired by various collectors. Several engravings and sketches of the portrait were made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: one is preserved in the British Museum, one at the National Portrait Gallery in London and one at the Lewis Walpole Library at the Yale University. A miniature dating to the nineteenth century is held in Arundel Castle.
Joanna FitzAlan Neville, Baroness Bergavenny?
During the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842, the painting was described as “an elaborately finished and curious picture” of “Johanna Lady Abergavenny”, which was a “present from Miss Beauclerc, the Maid of Honour.”[1] This “Miss Beauclerc” was Diana Spencer, wife of Topham Beauclerk, who was also known as a celebrated artist whose works Walpole immensely valued and collected. Just how the portrait became Lady Beauclerk’s possession is currently unknown. When Lady Beauclerk gifted the portrait to Walpole, it was not labelled. Walpole labelled the painting himself, writing at the back:
“Joanna, daughter of Thomas FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, and wife of George Nevil, Lord Abergavenny. She was an authoress. See Catal. of Royal and Noble Authors. H.W.”[2]
Walpole mistakenly believed that Joanna Neville, daughter of the tenth Earl of Arundel and Margaret Woodville, and wife of George Neville, fifth Baron Bergavenny, was the authoress whose works were printed in The Monument of Matrones in 1582. However, he confused Joanna with George Neville’s daughter-in-law Frances Manners who married Henry Neville, sixth Baron Bergavenny.
Walpole identified the unknown woman from the portrait as “Lady Bergavenny” based on the details from the sitter’s clothes and jewels. He believed that the letters in the elaborate golden necklace refer to the sitter’s noble titles. According to the Strawberry Hill sale catalogue the initials in the necklace were A in the centre flanked by two letters B at each side.[3] Walpole identified the A as standing for Arundel, the title of Joanna’s father, and B standing for Bergavenny, the family she married into. In the original painting, it looks like the letter B on the right side was retouched to make it look like an R.
The sitter’s headdress is embroidered with letters A and what Walpole identified as letters I standing for Iane, the Latinized version of Joanna’s name. In Tudor England nobility used their titles rather than last names in jewellery and signatures. For example Joanna’s husband George Neville, fifth Baron Bergavenny, signed his letters as George Bergavenny or Abergavenny, because the title was variously spelled at that time. Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, signed his letters and documents as “Charles Suffolk”, Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset as “Anne Somerset” and so on. In this context it would have made sense for Joanna to wear initialled jewellery referring to her families. However, there are good reasons to doubt the validity of Walpole’s identification of the sitter as “Lady Bergavenny”.
Little is known about Joanna other than that she was the daughter of Thomas FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel and Margaret Woodville (sister of Edward IV’s wife, Queen Elizabeth), and the wife of George Neville, fifth Baron Bergavenny. The exact date of Joanna’s birth is unknown. Her parents married by 17 February 1465 and had at least four children together: two sons and two daughters.[4] Joanna married George Neville, fifth Baron Bergavenny, at an unknown date. It has been a matter of debate among historians if George and Joanna had any children together; it is now believed that they had one daughter, named Jane, who married Henry Pole, Baron Montague.[5]
One crucial detail that we know for certain about Joanna is that she had died between 1 June 1508 and 16 May 1509.[6] This fact alone establishes that she cannot be the sitter in Walpole’s portrait because the sitter wears clothing that dates to the 1520s. It is highly unlikely that Joanna Neville, who died between 1508 and 1509, would have been painted wearing clothes fashionable a decade later. The sitter’s clothing – dress with a square neckline, English-style gable hood with long lappets and the white stripes of material about the shoulders – can be dated to the mid-1520s, based on comparison to other paintings and miniatures from that period.
That being said, I’m certain that the sitter from the “Lady Bergavenny” painting identified as Joanna Neville, Baroness Bergavenny by Horace Walpole, is not really Joanna. Who is it, then? In the next article from this series I will consider the evidence about Anne Boleyn as the possible sitter, as was suggested in 2016.
If you like my posts, you’ll love my books! Secrets of the Tudor portraits is out now, you can also read my other books.
[1] Horace Walpole, A Catalogue of the Classic Contents of Strawberry Hill Collected by Horace Walpole, p. 201.
[2] The Archaeological Journal, Volume 17 (1860), p. 284.
[3] “This is a pleasing portrait of a woman in middle life, handsomely attired in the costume of Henry VIII’s reign, and holding a flower. The network of her head-dress is filled with the letters I and A, the initials of her maiden name, in alternate rows: and she wears a splendid necklace, which has an A in the center and at each side a B standing for Bergavenny, as the title was then written. Lady Joan, daughter of Thomas Earl of Arundel, was the first wife George Lord Bergavenny.” “The Treasures of Strawberry Hill” in Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 173, p. 148.
[4] Susan Higginbotham, The Woodvilles: The Wars of the Roses and England's Most Infamous Family, Kindle edition.
[5] See the detailed investigation in John Ashdown-Hill, The Private Life of Edward IV, pp. 37-38.
[6] "Domina Johanna Lady Aburgayny" is recorded among the dead women between 1 June 1508 and 16 May 1509 in Part 1: Bede Roll, nos 457-481, The Bede Roll of the Fraternity of St Nicholas, see online at https://www.british-history.ac.uk/london-record-soc/vol39/pp203-215#anchorn75
Are those truly A on the gable hood? With the line on the top it resembles a Tau cross. The cross mark dips into almost a V. Could it be a combined emblem ?