lady, queen Margaret, and this stone shall be for a token of the same."" Margaret also sought to turn the attention of the people to manufactures in woollen and silk; but the temper of the times suited not the calm tenour of peaceful employments. A spirit of adventurous enterprise had been nourished during the French wars, and, from the princes of the blood-royal to the peasantry, there was a thirsting for fighting-fields, and a covetous desire of appropriating the spoils of plundered towns and castles pervading all classes. The very misery of the people of England rendered them combative, and eager to exchange the monotony of reluctant and ill-paid labour for the excitement of war. It was no easy matter to convert the men who had fought at Agincourt, or their sons, into tillers of the soil, or weavers of woollen cloths. As for the silk manufactures, they were chiefly carried on by a company of females who went by the name of "the silk women," and were regarded with jealous displeasure by the London mercers, who petitioned the king against the establishment of this industrious sisterhood as an infringement on their manly rights and privileges. In the commencement of the year 1449, Charles VII. renewed hostilities with England, and in the course of two years re-conquered most of the towns in Normandy. The details of the losses and disasters of the English forces under the command of the duke of Somerset, belong rather to general history than to the life of queen Margaret, although they had a fatal influence on her fortunes by rendering her an object of suspicion and ill-will to the nation,-causing the name of Frenchwoman to be applied to her as a term of re This college was involved in the misfortunes of its foundress, but was preserved by the care of Andrew Ducket, a Carmelite friar. who for forty years held the office of provost. Queen Margaret made over to her college possessions to the amount of 2007., which, though no mean sum in those days, was but a slender endowment. But her liberal designs were not frustrated: what she began, was continued and completed by Elizabeth, consort to king Edward IV. The usual ularity between the armorial bearings of founders and of their foundations, is observable in the arms of Queen's college. The only difference between the arms of Margaret, as given in Willement's Regal Heraldry, and those of the college as Dow borne, are, that the college arms are surrounded by a bordure vert. VOL. II. proach, by those who well knew the art of appealing to the prejudices and exciting the passions of the vulgar against her The partisans of the duke of York failed not to attribute all the losses in France and Normandy to the misgovernment of the queen; insinuating, "that the king was fitter for a cloister than a throne, and had, in a manner, deposed himself by leav ing the affairs of his kingdom in the hands of a woman, who merely used his name to conceal her usurpation, since, according to the laws of England, a queen-consort hath no power, but title only." Queen Margaret, willing to procure the absence of the duke of York at any price, blindly increased his political power by investing him with the government of Ireland. York had left a strong party in England, at the head of which were those powerful nobles Richard Neville, earl of Salisbury, and his son, the earl of Warwick, the brother and nephew of his duchess. These were the great political opponents of the queen, whom they ventured not publicly to attack otherwise than by directing the voice of the people against the measures of the court, and attributing the disastrous state of the country to the treasonable practices of her favourite minister. Suffolk boldly stood up in the house of lords, and complained that "he had been traduced by public report; and demanded of his enemies, if they had aught to lay to his charge, that they should specify his crimes." He adverted to the services his family and himself had performed for their country, and stated, "that his father and three of his brethren had been slain in France; that he had himself served in the wars thirty-four years, and, being but a knight when he was taken prisoner, he had paid 20,000 crowns for his ransom; that he had been of the order of the Garter thirty years, and 1 Parliamentary History. 2 Rolls of Parliament. Margaret of Anjou was born, This event happened in 1429, the same year when the Maid of Orleans took Jargeau by storm. the town, and when great part of the garrison was slain, being hard pressed to surrender by William Renaud, the following colloquy passed between them in the breach :-"Are you a gentleman ?" demanded Suffolk, finding it impossible to escape. "I am," replied Renaud. "But are you a knight?" rejoined the earl. "I am not," answered Renaud. "Kneel down, then," said Suffolk, "that I may make you one, for I cannot otherwise yield to you." This was accordingly done, and affords a rich characteristic of the age of chivalry. a councillor of the king fifteen years, and had been seventeen years in the wars without returning home; and, asking God's mercy as he had been true to the king and realm, he required his purgation." It is scarcely possible to imagine any thing more frivolous than the series of articles which were exhibited against the luckless premier. In the first of these, he is charged with "having intended to marry his son John to Margaret Beaufort, the heiress of the late John duke of Somerset, with the design of murdering and destroying the king, and then declaring her to be the heiress of the crown for lack of heirs of the king's body." This most absurd accusation is in itself a refutation of all the scandalous imputations which modern historians have cast upon the friendship between the duke of Suffolk and queen Margaret, since her ruin must have been comprehended in the murder and destruction of the king. Margaret was, at that period, only nineteen; and, though childless as yet, there was a possibility of her having many children, as she was considered one of the finest women in the world. It was, perhaps, this very article which first gave the aspiring family of Beaufort an eye to the succession to the throne, in the event of a failure of the royal Plantagenet line of Lancaster. The accusation was treated with infinite contempt by Suffolk, and his replies to the other articles being such as to baffle his enemies, they, at the end of three weeks, exhibited eighteen fresh charges against him; but it is to be observed, that neither in these, nor in the previous catalogue of misdemeanours, is there the slightest allusion to queen Margaret, nor is her name mentioned in any record or contemporary chronicle in connexion with Suffolk,-not even in the satirical anonymous verses that were circulated on the arrest and imprisonment of that unpopular minister. Yet Rapin and other modern writers have not scrupled to assert, "that queen Margaret, in her anxiety to preserve her favourite, caused the parliament, on his arrest, to be prorogued to 1 Parliamentary Rolls, 28th of Henry VI. No. 17. 2 Ibid. * For specimens of these political squibs of the fifteenth century, see Excerpat Historica, pp. 160-162, and 279. Leicester, where he attended king Henry and herself, and appeared publicly in his place as prime-minister." Now the incontestable evidence of the records of parliament prove, that the parliament was summoned to meet at Leicester September 1449, five months before the arrest of Suffolk; but the peers and commons, taking warning by the events of the parliament that sat at Bury St. Edmund's, refused to meet anywhere but at Westminster.' Therefore the writs were re-issued, commanding them to meet at Westminster, November 6th. The same day they were prorogued to London, on account of the plague; adjourned from London again to Westminster, December 4th; and, on the 17th, adjourned till January 22nd2 at Westminster, where Suffolk, as we have seen, in a fatal hour for himself, introduced the discussion of which the commons took advantage to obtain his arrest. These records prove that Suffolk was never released from his imprisonment, after he was once committed to the Tower, till after his sentence of banishment for five years was pronounced, March 17th, by king Henry, who resorted to that temporizing expedient in the vain hope of preserving him from the fury of his enemies. The parliament then sitting at Westminster was prorogued March 30th, and ordered to meet at Leicester, April 29th, the day before Suffolk embarked to fulfil his evil destiny. Two thousand persons had previously assembled in St. Giles's fields, to intercept him on his discharge from the Tower, March 18th. They surprised his servants, but Suffolk succeeded in escaping to Ipswich, where, after arranging his affairs, he wrote that beautiful and pathetic letter to his son, which affords such touching evidence of his loyalty to his sovereign, and his devotion to his beloved wife. He sailed from Ipswich, April 30th, with two small vessels, and sent a pinnace before him to inquire whether he might be permitted to land at Calais; but the pinnace was captured by a squadron of men-of-war, and immediately the Nicolas,' of the Tower, bore down upon the duke's vessels. 1 Rolls of Parliament, 28th of Henry VI. 2 Parliamentary History. 3 Rolls of Parliament, 28th of Henry VI. 4 It is a memorable fact that this vessel, thus acting in defiance of the crown, (as, indeed, did the whole squadron by which the exiled duke was pursued,) ws He was ordered on board, and received with the ominous salutation of "Welcome, traitor !" He underwent a mock trial from the sailors, by whom he was condemned to suffer death. On the second morning after his capture a small boat came alongside, in which were a block, a rusty sword, and an executioner. They lowered the duke into it, telling him "he should die like a knight," and at the fifth stroke his head was struck off, and was left with the severed body on Dover sands, where they were found by his chaplain, and received honourable interment in the collegiate church of Wingfield, in Suffolk. The consummation of this tragedy, far from calming the feverish state of excitement to which the public mind had been stimulated, was only the first sign and token of the scenes of blood and horror that were in store for England. Pestilence had aggravated the woes of a starving and disaffected population, and the inflammatory representations of political incendiaries acting upon the misery of the lower classes, caused the terrific outbreak of national frenzy which, immediately after this event, manifested itself in the rebellion under Jack Cade. It was to suppress this formidable insurrection that Henry VI. prepared for his first essay in arms, by setting up his standard and going in person to attack Cade and his rabble rout, who were encamped on Blackheath in formidable array. At the news of the sovereign's approach at the head of fifteen thousand men, the hot valour of the captain of the great assembly of Kent and his followers received an immediate check, and part of the royal navy placed at the disposal of the confederate peers by Henry Holland, the young duke of Exeter, heir-presumptive to the royal house of Laneaster by the legitimate female line. He had lately succeeded his father in the office of high-admiral, and this was the lawless use he made of its power. He did not anticipate the hour when his own corpse would be left on the sands of the same coast. The death of the elder Exeter is commemorated in the political poem (before alluded to as among the Cottonian MSS.) with those of the dukes of Bedford, Gloucester, and Exeter. These Lancastrian princes are personified by their respective badges: "The root is dead," Bedford; whose device was the root of a tree. "The swan is gone," Gloucester; whose device was a swan. The fiery cresset hath lost his light ;" this alludes to the high-admiral, Exeter, whose picturesque device was the badge of the Admiralty,-a flaming cresset or fre-basket raised on a pole, being a sort of signal along the coast, serving for Lght-houses.-See Excerpta Historica, p. 161. 1 Lingard, vol. i. p. 135. |