MARGUERITE OF FRANCE,

SECOND QUEEN OF EDWARD I.

THE early death of the brave son and successor of St. Louis, king Philip le Hardi, left his youngest daughter, the princess Marguerite, fatherless at a very tender age. She was brought up under the guardianship of her brother, Philip le Bel, and carefully educated by her mother, queen Marie, a learned and virtuous princess, to whom Joinville dedicated his immortal memoirs. Marguerite early showed indications of the same piety and innate goodness of heart which, notwithstanding some superfluity of devotion, really distinguished the character of her grandfather.

If Marguerite of France possessed any comeliness of person, her claims to beauty were wholly overlooked by contemporaries, who surveyed with admiration the exquisite persons of her elder brother and sister, and surnamed them, by common consent, Philip le Bel and Blanche la Belle. The eldest princess of France was full six years older than Marguerite, and was withal the reigning beauty of Europe, when Edward I. was rendered the most disconsolate of widowers, by the death of Eleanora of Castille. If an historian may be believed, who is so completely a contemporary that he ceased to write before the second Edward ceased to reign, Marguerite was substituted in a marriage-treaty, commenced by Edward for the beautiful Blanche, by a diplomatic manœuvre, unequalled for craft since the days of Leah and Rachel.

It has been seen that grief in the energetic mind of Edward I.