the eighth month of her pregnancy, and the political horizon became daily more gloomy, in anticipation of an event more feared than wished by the majority of the people, king Henry was seized with one of those alarming attacks of malady to which his grandfather, Charles VI. of France, was subject. The agitating character of public events, and the difficulties with which the court had had to contend for the last four years, had been too much for a prince of acute sensibility, and who had, moreover, hereditary tendency to inflammation of the brain. For a time both mind and body sank under the accumulated pressure, and he remained in a state that left little hope for his life, and none for his reason. Margaret had doubtless been long aware of the dark shadow that impended over her royal lord, and felt the strong necessity of thinking and acting for him, at seasons when his judgment could not be trusted to form decisions for himself on any matter of importance. She has been blamed for encouraging him to spend his time in pursuits fitter for the cloister than the throne; but, considering the circumstances of his case, her conjugal tenderness and prudence in directing his attention to tranquil and sedative amusements, instead of perplexing him with the turmoils and strong excitement of politics, are worthy of commendation. King Henry was at Clarendon when he was first seized with his dangerous malady, but after a few days he was, by slow degrees, conveyed to his palace at Westminster. The reins of empire had now fallen into Margaret's hands, at a time when she was destitute of any efficient counsellor to assist her in supporting their weight. She had only the alternative of grasping them with an energy suitable to the emergency of the crisis, or resigning them to the formidable rival of her husband's title, the duke of York. She was in ill-health at this time, oppressed with care and sorrow; but she felt the strong necessity of struggling against the feebleness of her sex, and the sufferings incidental to her situation; rallying all the powers of her mind, for the sake of her unfortunate husband and his unborn heir, she assembled a council of prelates and nobles, and conducted the affairs of the realm with singular prudence and moderation, considering the diffi culty of her position. So rigid was her economy and selfdenial at this period, that for the feeding and maintenance of her whole household she only expended the sum of 71. per day, while the sums she disbursed in charities and other benefactions during that year amounted to more than she bestowed on her own personal adornment. Out of her scanty privy-purse she munificently portioned one of her damsels, probably Elizabeth Woodville, in marriage, with 2001. To three esquires of her household, who suffered with heavy infirmities by Divine visitation, the queen gave 61. 6s. 8d.; and when she was at Newmarket, (this must have been before the king's illness,) she gave to two men, whose stable was burnt down, as much as 131. 6s. 8d. One of her solemn days of offering was at the obits of Henry V. and Katherine of Valois, her husband's father and mother." The poverty of the crown, and the frugal management of the queen in regard to her civil list, is evidenced by the scantiness of the salaries accorded by Margaret, at this epoch, to her officers of state and privy councillors. Witness the following examples : "To John viscount Beaumont, seneschal of her manors To Laurence Booth, her chancellor To William Cotton, her receiver To Thos. Scales, for his diligent and daily attendance in our council.. £66 13 9 53 0 0 70 10 0 10 0 0" The next payment is to a person of great importance; one, indeed, who claimed to be treated as a prince of the royal house of Lancaster, and who, at that time, occupied the post of prime-minister, and was, in consequence, stigmatized as "the queen's favourite." Her liberality to him was not such as to warrant a belief in the scandalous reports of the other party, that a personal intimacy subsisted between queen Margaret and this unpopular kinsman of her lord, as the following statement of his salary will testify : "To our dearest cousin, Edmund duke of Somerset, for his good and laudable counsel in urgent business, an annuity of £66 13 4" Extracts from queen Margaret's Wardrobe-book, 1452-3, preserved in the chancery of the duchy of Lancaster. 3 Ibid. VOL. II 2 Ibid. P Pitiful as this stipend-allowing for the full difference in the value of money in those days-was for the principal minister of a state-cabinet, the Lorraine chronicler complains that it was made one of the pretences of the Yorkists for their cruel calumnies against the queen. From the previous authority we find that— “John Wenlock, knight of the queen's chamber, had per annum, 40Z. Her knights of the board, forty marks each yearly. Ismania lady of Scales, Isabella lady Gray (Elizabeth Woodville), lady Margaret Ross, lady Isabella Dacre, and lady Isabella Butler, are mentioned as being in immediate attendance on her person. Likewise ten little damsels, and two chamber-women." [The ladies appear to have served her for love, as no mention is made of money paid to them.] "Queen Margaret's herbman, 100s. per annum. Her twenty-seven armour-bearers, or squires, 1437. 4s. 3d. in all. The queen had a clerk of the closet, or private secretary."1 These entries afford some idea of the household of queen Margaret, at that momentous period of her life when about to become for the first time a mother. That event took place on the 13th of October, 1453, when she gave birth, in Westminster-palace, to a prince, whom Speed pathetically designates "the child of sorrow and infelicity." A writ of summons, under the privy seal, was issued to the ladies of the highest rank in England, to attend queen Margaret at the ceremony of her purification, or churching, which took place at the palace of Westminster on the 18th of November, in the thirty-second of the reign of Henry VI. The ladies summoned were the duchesses of Bedford, York, Norfolk the elder, Norfolk the younger, Buckingham, Somerset the elder, Somerset the younger, Exeter the elder, Exeter the younger, and Suffolk, with eight countesses, among whom may be noted the countess of Warwick, besides a viscountess and seventeen baronesses. There is also an entry in the Pell rolls of the sum of 5541. 16s. 8d. paid to Margaret the queen, for a richly embroidered christening-mantle used at the baptism of the prince; also for twenty yards of russet cloth of 1 Extracts from queen Margaret's Wardrobe-book, 1452-3. MSS. of sir Matthew Hale, left by him to the Society of Lincoln's-inn: 75, Selden Collec.- See Catalogue published by the rev. Joseph Hunter, p. 277. gold to array the font, and five hundred and forty brown sable backs, for trimming her own churching-robe. As the royal infant was born on St. Edward's-day, queen Margaret, in the hope of propitiating the people, bestowed that name, so dear to England, on her son. This fair boy, as he is called in chronicle, was baptized by Waynflete bishop of Winchester. Cardinal Kemp, archbishop of Canterbury, the duke of Somerset, and the duchess of Buckingham, were his sponsors.1 King Henry, meantime, continued in a state of the deepest mental aberration, the only person in his own palace unconscious of the consummation of the hopes of paternity, the anticipation of which he had, a few months before, greeted with transports of joy. His anxious consort caused him to be removed to Windsor-castle, to try the effect of change of air and profound quiet for the restoration of his health and sanity, but his malady continued unabated. The melancholy state of her royal husband was the more distressing to queen Margaret, because the political agitators who were endeavouring to undermine the throne of Lancaster took advantage of her being thus deprived of his protection and countenance, to stigmatize the birth of the prince by insinuating that he was a supposititious child. Now, as Margaret of Anjou was only in her twenty-fourth year, and the king just thirty-three at the birth of this infant, there could be no just cause to doubt of his deriving his existence from them; and the attempts to throw suspicion on the fact emanated, like the calumnies on the birth of the youngest son of James II. and his queen, from the political emissaries of the disappointed heirs-presumptive to the throne. Richard duke of York, who had tacitly occupied that position, was determined not to be superseded in the royal succession by the son whom queen Margaret had borne to king Henry at this inauspicious juncture, after nine years of barren wedlock; and it is palpably evident for what object his partisans endeavoured to poison the minds of the people against his infant rival, by circulating reports that it was either the fruit of an amour between The monks of Westminster were remunerated by the crown for the tapers provided by them for the christening of the infant prince. the queen and her unpopular minister, Somerset, or some low-born child whom she had cunningly imposed upon the nation as her own, in order to get the whole power of the crown into her own hands, as queen-regent during the king's illness, or queen-mother in the event of his death. It was sometimes asserted, by way of variation to these slanders, that the infant of whom the queen was brought to bed had died, and had been replaced by another of the vilest parentage, picked up in the streets, to defraud the rightful heir of the crown. It had been a custom from remote antiquity, both in England and France, for the sovereign, on the birth of his eldest son, to solemnly recognise the infant's claims to his paternity, by taking him in his arms and blessing him, and then presenting him to his nobles as his veritable offspring and their future lord. This patriarchal ceremonial of state king Henry had not, as yet, been able to perform, not having had a single lucid interval since the birth of the prince; and it was in consequence asserted, by the parties most interested in taking advantage of the domestic calamity in the royal family, not that the king could not recognise the infant for his heir, but that "he would not." Nor were these sayings confined to the gossip of old wives over their ale, for the earl of Warwick publicly proclaimed at St. Paul's-cross, that the child who was called Edward of Lancaster and 'the prince,' was the offspring of adultery or fraud, and not the lawful issue of the king, who had never acknowledged him for his son, and never would.' Margaret's indignation at these assertions acting on her naturally impetuous temperament, would not allow her to wait patiently the chances of the king's recovery for her justification; but, as if she expected that her integrity would be manifested by God's especial grace, she made a solemn appeal to the paternal instincts of the royal lunatic, by introducing his unknown infant into his presence, and urg ing him to bestow his benediction upon it, fondly imagining, no doubt, that at the sight of that fair boy, the mysterious voice of nature would assert its powerful influence on Henry's George Chastellain, Chronicle of the Dukes of Burgundy. 1 |