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,