Clarence and Isabel already had a son,
Edward, and on 5 October 1476 in
Tewkesbury Abbey,
Gloucestershire, Isabel gave birth to another, whom they named Richard. Contemporary reports suggest she looked healthy in the period immediately after the birth. Clarence took her back to
Warwick Castle on 12 November, but she may have become ill. Contemporaries—including the Abbey's own chronicler—believed Isabel to be suffering a illness. She died on 22 December 1476, aged 25. By then her death appears to have been expected. In a double blow, Richard died eight days later on 1 January. Isabel was buried in Tewkesbury Abbey, accompanied by "elaborate obsequies" and a month-long
lying in state, with
vigils and
funerary masses. Richard was buried in Warwick Castle with less fanfare. Clarence may have been suspicious that the deaths of two people close to him―possibly by poison―in such a short space of time were not a coincidence. But if so, he did not immediately act upon his suspicions, and it is possible that he had to travel to Ireland in the meantime, where he was
lord lieutenant. It is curious, suggests the
medievalist John Ashdown-Hill, that the deaths of Isabel and her son occurred at such different lengths of time following their supposed ingestion of poison. According to the later charge, Isabel was poisoned on 10 October 1476, but did not die until 22 December, a period of 73 days. Their son Richard was supposed to have been poisoned on 21 December 1476 and to have died on 1 January, a period of only 11 days. Ashdown-Hill explains this by suggesting that October was actually a scribal error for December, in which case she died the day, possibly a few hours, after her son. This would also explain why Isabel was erroneously said to have been at Warwick when she was actually in Tewkesbury.
Arrest Ankarette Twynho was seized at her house in Keyford, near Frome, on 12 April 1477; Clarence may have believed her to be a
witch. The historian
Michael Hicks has called the method of Twynho's arrest "highly irregular" and it has been compared to an abduction. She was taken —across three shires—in three days. For context, this was akin to the speed with which some of the most important political news of the previous 20 years had travelled. For example, the report of the dumping of
William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk's murdered body on the
Dover shore on 2 May 1450 arrived in London on 4 May. This was a distance of approximately , averaging a day. Similarly, in 1455, news of the murder of
Nicholas Radford in
Devon took five days to travel the from
Exeter to London, averaging a day.
Accused parties }} Ankarette Twynho and her husband William, who had died by 1476, were minor Somerset
gentry. William had been a long-term Clarence retainer, while Twynho had been in the Duchess of Clarence's
service until her death, possibly as a
lady's maid. She had a role caring for Isabel after Richard's birth but seems not to have been a
midwife nor involved in the birth itself. It seems unlikely that Twynho accompanied her mistress to Warwick. Accused with Twynho was one John Thursby, a politically insignificant Warwickshire
yeoman. He was charged with poisoning baby Richard, in whose service he had been. Another man, Sir
Roger Tocotes, was accused by Clarence of
aiding, abetting and
harbouring the criminals, and possibly of orchestrating the whole plot. He managed to avoid capture. Of the three accused, Tocotes was the most important; he was brother-in-law to the influential ecclesiastic
Richard Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, whose
executor he was to be. By 1477, he was a
knight banneret and had twice been
Member of Parliament for
Wiltshire and
sheriff. Tocotes is known to have been in Clarence's inner circle from 1468. A close personal friend, "nobody was a more constant associate of the Duke of Clarence in adversity or prosperity", according to
Michael Hicks. As such, Hicks suggests, "a more improbable object of Clarence's hostility it is difficult to imagine".
Trial and execution Clarence forbade Twynho's daughter and son-in-law from entering
Warwick, and they had to await news in
Stratford-upon-Avon. Twynho was stripped of her jewels and money and imprisoned in the castle. On Tuesday 15th, with Thursby, she was tried in the
guildhall. She was charged with
veneficium, by giving Isabel "a venomous drink of ale mixed with poison". The killing of a master or mistress by a servant was legally
petty treason; Twynho pleaded not guilty. Thursby was accused of poisoning Richard, also with bad ale. The trial was brief. The Duke was present for the proceedings, and may even have led the prosecution. Twynho and Thursby were found guilty; there was only one penalty. Sentenced to death, they were to be "led from the bar to the said lord King's gaol of Warwick aforesaid, and drawn from that gaol through the centre of that town of Warwick to the gallows at Myton, and be hanged there on that gallows until... dead". Before Twynho was taken from the castle for the last time, several jurors visited her in remorse. They explained how being in fear of the Duke, they came to a judgment "contrary to their conscience". The Parliament Roll later recorded that Both Twynho and Thursby were "drawn at the horse's tail" through Warwick to their execution. This had been carried out by noon; between arraignment and death less than three hours had passed.
Clarence's involvement As Warwick was the Duke's , it was unlikely that the accused would receive a fair trial. Clarence could bring influence to bear both on jurors—four of whom were his tenants from Warwick and
Solihull—and on the justices. All of these were local men. Hicks argues that "undue pressure" was undoubtedly required to reach the verdicts Clarence wanted. The historian
A. J. Pollard has called it a
kangaroo court, with Clarence acting, a contemporary record says, "as though he had used a Kyng's power". It is possible that the Duke deliberately altered the chronology of events, depending on whether October was a scribal error for December when the charges were read. Twynho was accused of committing the crime while she and Isabel were at Warwick Castle—thus allowing the Duke to try her there—although contemporaneous evidence indicates that the Duchess was at Tewkesbury until mid-November. To gain the verdicts he needed, Clarence probably engineered proceedings, and if he deliberately changed December to October in the charges, then he also fabricated evidence. Further, all the responsible officials were his men. These included not only the
county clerk, but also the justices of
the bench,
John Hugford and Henry Boteler. The latter were the Duke's current and former
retainers respectively. On these grounds, suggests the historian
Christine Carpenter, the indictments were most improper. Addressing the possibility that Clarence's suspicions were correct, Hicks considers it unlikely that Isabel was poisoned at all because it took so long for her to die: there were no contemporary poisons capable of producing such a protracted death. He suggests that the Duke was guilty of
embracery at the least, and Twynho's original arrest and detention was probably illegal also since the royal commission later referred to "the unlawful taking of Ankarette through three shires". On the other hand, the speed with which proceedings had been conducted—and the swiftness to execution—"about which the petitioner also complained might have been unfair, but it was not illegal", says the legal scholar John Bellamy. Even the charge of embracery is not watertight; as a member of the Warwickshire bench, recommending a verdict to a jury was within the Duke's remit. ==Later events==