ANNE OF WARWICK,

QUEEN OF RICHARD III.

ANNE OF WARWICK, the last of our Plantagenet queens, and the first who had previously borne the title of princess of Wales, was born at Warwick Castle, in the year 1454. On each side of the faded, melancholy portrait of this unfortunate lady, in the pictorial history of her maternal ancestry, called the Rous Roll, two mysterious hands are in troduced, offering to her the rival crowns of York and Lancaster; while the white bear, the cognizance assumed by her mighty sire, Warwick the king-maker, lies muzzled at her feet, as if the royal lions of Plantagenet had quelled the pride of that hitherto tameless bear, on the blood-stained heath of Barnet.

Passing over events that led to the deposition of Henry VI., positive proof may be found, that Anne of Warwick and Richard of Gloucester were companions, when he was about fourteen, and she twelve years old. After Richard had been created duke of Gloucester, at his brother's coronation, it is highly probable he was consigned to the guardianship of the earl of Warwick, at Middleham Castle; for, at the grand enthronization of George Neville, the uncle of Anne, as archbishop of York, Richard was a guest at York Palace, seated in the place of honor, in the chief banquetting-room, upon the dais, under a cloth of estate or canopy, with the countess of Westmoreland on his left hand; his sister, the duchess of Suffolk, on his right; and the noble maidens his cousins,

the lady Anne and the lady Isabel, seated opposite to him. These ladies must have been placed there expressly to please the prince, by affording him companions of his own age, since the countess of Warwick, their mother, sat at the second table, in a place much lower in dignity. Richard being the son of lady Anne's great aunt, an intimacy naturally subsisted between such near relatives. Majerres, a Flemish annalist, affirms that Richard had formed a very strong affection for his cousin Anne; but succeeding events proved, that the lady did not bestow the same regard on him which her sister Isabel did on his brother Clarence, nor was it to be expected, considering his disagreeable person and temper. As lady Anne did not smile on her crook-backed cousin, there was no inducement for him to forsake the cause of his brother, king Edward.

After Margaret was taken away to the Tower of London, Clarence privately abducted his sister-in-law, under the pretence of protecting her. As he was her sister's husband, he was exceedingly unwilling to divide the united inheritance of Warwick and Salisbury, which he knew must be done, if his brother Gloucester carried into execution his avowed intention of marrying Anne. But very different was the conduct of the young widow of the prince of Wales from that described by Shakspeare. Instead of acting as chief mourner to the hearse of her husband's murdered father, she was sedulously concealing herself from her abhorred cousin; enduring every privation to avoid his notice, and concurring with all the schemes of her self-interested brother-in-law, Clarence, so completely, as to descend from the rank of princess of Wales, to the disguise of a servant, in a mean house in London, in the hope of eluding the search of Gloucester; incidents too romantic to be believed without the testimony of a Latin chronicler of the highest authority, who affirms it in the following words:-"Richard duke of Gloucester wished to discover Anne, the youngest daughter of the earl of Warwick, in order to marry her; this was much disapproved by his brother, the duke of Clarence, who did not wish to divide his wife's inheritance. He, therefore, hid the young lady. But the cunning of the duke of Gloucester discovered her, in the disguise of a cook-maid in the city of London, and he immediately transferred her to the sanctuary of St. Martin's le Grand." She needed this asylum, because she was under