considerable regard for her, notwithstanding her preference of the Lancastrian champion to the suitor he had so strongly urged her to accept. But this life of turmoil and anxiety, harassing and distressing as it must have been to the courtbred beauty, was too soon to be succeeded by a far heavier state of suffering; for at the second battle of St. Albans her gallant husband, who had mainly assisted in obtaining the brilliant but fleeting triumph of his party, was so severely wounded that he died shortly after, leaving her a desolate widow with two sons, who, out of revenge for the part their father had taken against the Yorkists, were deprived of their patrimony of Bradgate, and were living with their mother in retirement and poverty when Edward the Fourth ascended the throne.

How or at what precise period the reconciliation' between the Duchess of Bedford and the king took place is not known; certain it is that that event occurred some considerable time before Edward wooed, or had probably even seen, her daughter; whose first interview with the young monarch seems to have been sufficient to captivate a heart never able to resist the power of beauty. This romantic rencontre is recorded as having taken place under the following circumstances.

Elizabeth, learning that the king was to hunt on a certain day in Whittlebury Forest, close to Grafton Castle, whither she had retired when deprived of her son's inheritance of Bradgate, she resolved to seize this occasion of pleading for his rights with the sovereign. Accordingly, taking her boys, she stationed herself at the foot of a huge tree-which is still standing, and bears to this day, among the people of Northamptonshire, the name of the queen's oak-and waited till the king should pass, when throwing herself at his feet, she

1 This reconciliation must have occurred at a very early period, as in the first year of Edward's reign he not only paid her the annual amount of her dower, but added 100/. in advance.

pleaded so urgently that the paternal inheritance of her children should be restored to them, that Edward, overcome no less by her beauty than by her entreaties, not only accorded her request, but yielded his heart a captive to the lovely supplicant.

Unaccustomed to woo in vain, the monarch, whose personal advantages were as striking as his position was brilliant, deemed that he would find but little difficulty in obtaining the fair object of his passion on his own terms; but Elizabeth, whose coolness of head and heart enabled her through the whole of her career to steer clear of the dangers to which so many of her sex, similarly situated, would have fallen victims, lost no time in making the king understand that it was only as his wife that he might ever hope to possess her.

This unforeseen opposition, as might be expected, still increased Edward's passion, and piqued his amour-propre; and after a struggle of no very long duration, he resolved, at all hazards, to make her his on the only terms she would accept. Accordingly, in the year 1464-as some historians relate, though there are many conflicting opinions as to the date of the event-the marriage was secretly performed at the town of Grafton, after which the king went to spend some days at Grafton Castle, as if on a friendly visit to Lord Rivers, the father of Elizabeth.

This union could not, however, be very long kept secret; and among the many malcontents made by the discovery of it, none exhibited such bitter displeasure as the Duchess of York, mother to Edward, who having assumed all the state of a queen previous to the ruin and death of her husband, now saw herself compelled to yield precedence to the daughter of a lowly squire. This lady, daughter of Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, and granddaughter, by her mother, of John of Gaunt, was equally remarkable for her beauty and unconquerable pride. Furious, therefore, at what she conceived to

be a degradation alike to her son and herself, she left no art untried to endeavour to induce him not to acknowledge Elizabeth as his queen; but all her efforts were vain. Edward, over whose mind the sober judgment and cool discrimination of his wife had obtained as firm an ascendency as her beauty had over his heart, was not to be turned aside from his purpose by the arguments of his mother; and on the 29th of September, 1464, at the palace of Reading, Elizabeth Woodville was declared by Edward to be his wife, after which she was publicly acknowledged as queen at the abbey church of that town, and there received the homage and congratulations of the assembled nobles.

This event was followed by a series of the most brilliant fêtes and tournaments, in which the gallant and gifted Anthony Woodville, second brother to the queen, acted a most conspicuous part. Indeed, Elizabeth took care that none of her own family should remain in the back ground, and she lost no time in marrying all her brothers and sisters to the greatest and wealthiest matches in the kingdom-a proceeding which excited much displeasure among the ancient nobility of the realm.

In order to make his marriage appear less unequal, Edward was most anxious to prove his wife's descent from the house of Luxemburgh; a connexion which her mother's union with Woodville had induced the princes of that line to bury in oblivion, if not absolutely to disavow. To effect this purpose, therefore, he sent an embassy to the Comte de Charolois to use his influence to prevail upon some of Elizabeth's kindred to attend her coronation, and acknowledge their relationship with her. As the squire's daughter was swallowed up in the Queen of England, no objection was made to the fulfilment of this request; a favourable answer was immediately returned to the king's application, and the Comte Jacques de St. Pol, great uncle to the queen, attended by a band of a hundred

knights, with their retainers, arrived in England a few days previous to the coronation.

Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster in the month of May, 1465, with all possible magnificence; and the efforts made on this occasion by herself and her royal spouse to conciliate the good-will of their subjects, by various acts of favour and condescension, won them over to a certain degree to look with more satisfaction on a match that had previously excited no small portion of displeasure and discontent; and when, on the following year, a princess was born, their policy in choosing the child's grandmother, the Duchess of York, for one of the sponsors, succeeded in soothing her violent disapprobation of her son's choice. But one implacable enemy was made whom no attempts at conciliation could win-the Earl of Warwick; and though at this precise period his animosity was not yet developed, as is shown by the fact of his standing godfather to this princess, it was at no distant time fully called forth by various circumstances, among others, that of the queen artfully succeeding in marrying the heiress of the Duke of Exeter to her eldest son by her first husband, when Warwick had set his heart on securing her for his nephew, George Neville.

It has been stated also, by some historians, that Edward had ventured to offer an insult to the daughter of Warwickthe very person whom the ambitious earl had from her childhood hoped to see his bride, until the accession of Elizabeth Woodville to that dignity dealt the death-blow to these aspirations.

And now a storm, which had long been gathering and gaining force, began to burst forth. Robin of Redesdale, reported to have been a noble outlawed for his exertions in behalf of the house of Lancaster, with a large body of in

This band, with their commander, were all mercenaries, and were regularly paid for their services.

surgents, fought and conquered the royal troops at Edgecote, in Yorkshire; and finding Lord Rivers (against whom the people entertained a furious indignation in consequence of his having, in his capacity of Lord Treasurer, tampered with the coin), they dragged him and his son John from their place of concealment in the forest of Deane, and led them, in the names of Warwick and the Duke of Clarence, to Northampton, where they beheaded them without even the form of a trial (1469). But even this was not sufficient to satisfy their thirst for vengeance on the queen's family, for an accusation of witchcraft was brought against her mother, who with some difficulty escaped the fearful doom intended for her.

No sooner did the intelligence of these outrages reach the ears of Edward than he resolved to set off in person to quell the insurgents and restore order, but on his reaching the north he was seized by his powerful and implacable enemy, Warwick, and confined in Warwick Castle, where he was induced to enter into negotiations with the Earl for the marriage of his infant daughter with George Neville. From thence he was conveyed, strictly guarded, to the seat of the Archbishop of York, brother to Warwick, and, after a short stay, succeeded in escaping to Windsor, from whence he went at once to London to rejoin the queen, who had remained there, surrounded by faithful and devoted subjects, as all the inhabitants of the metropolis had continued to be.

And now the tide of fortune turned for awhile: Warwick and Clarence in alarm fled to France, but Anthony Woodville, who commanded the royal fleet, succeeded in taking possession of all their ships, with the exception of that which contained them and their families.

Edward now proceeded to give battle to the rebels, but soon discovered that little confidence was to be placed in his own troops, for on Warwick returning to England they offered to surrender the king to him; Edward, however