ransom of Margaret of Anjou was finally settled August 29th, 1475, while Edward was in France. Louis undertook to pay fifty thousand crowns for her liberation, at five instalments. The first instalment of her ransom was paid to Edward's treasurer, lord John Howard, November 3rd, the same year, and the bereaved and broken-hearted widow of the holy Henry, after five years' captivity, was conducted from her prison at Wallingford-castle to Sandwich. In her journey through Kent she was consigned to the care and hospitality of John Haute, a squire of that county, strongly in the interests of the house of York, who attended her to Sandwich, where she embarked. Her retinue, when she landed in France, according to Prevost, consisted of three ladies and seven gentlemen; but these must have been sent by the king of France, since the miserable sum allotted to Haute for her travelling expenses allows for little attendance. The feelings may be imagined with which she took a last farewell of the English shores, where, thirty years before, she had landed in the pride and flush of youthful beauty as its monarch's bride, and all the chivalry of the land thronged to meet and do her honour. Now it was treason even to shed a tear of pity for her sore afflictions, or to speak a word of comfort to her. Truly might she have said, "See if any sorrow be like unto my sorrow!" She safely arrived at Dieppe in the beginning of January 1476. It was requisite, for the validity of the deeds of renunciation she had to sign, that she should be at liberty. Therefore sir Thomas Montgomery took her to Rouen, and on the 22nd resigned her to the French ambassadors; and on the 29th of January she signed a formal renunciation of all rights her marriage in England had given her. There is something touching in the very simplicity of the Latin sentence with which the deed begins, that was wrung from the broken-hearted heroine who had, through so many storms of adversity, defended the rights of her royal consort and son. While they remained in life, she would have died a thousand deaths rather than relinquish even the most shadowy of their claims; but the dear ones were no more, and now,— 1 Rymer, and French Archives. 4 Issue Rolls, Appendix, Edward IV. "Ambition, pride, the rival names With all their long-contested claims, Passively, and almost as a matter of indifference, Margaret subscribed the instrument commencing Ego, Margarita, olim in regno Anglia maritata, etc. 'I, Margaret, formerly in England married, renounce all that I could pretend to in England by the conditions of my marriage, with all other things there, to Edward, now king of England." This deed did not afford her the title of queen, even in a retrospective view: she was simply Margaret, formerly married in England. At the same time she signed a renunciation of her reversionary rights on her father's territories to Louis XI.; but as there were several intermediate heirs, this was no great sacrifice. Margaret intended to take Paris in her journey home, in order to thank Louis XI. for her liberation; but it did not suit that wily politician to receive her, and he sent a message advising her to make the best of her way to her father. The last spark of Margaret's high spirit was elicited at this discourtesy, and declining the escort Louis XI. had prepared for her at Rouen, she set out on her long wintry journey through Normandy,―a resolution which had nearly occasioned the loss of her life. After Normandy had been conquered by Henry V., he had planted some colonies of English settlers in various towns and villages, and one or two of these settlements still remained in a wretched state, being unable to emigrate to their mother-country. Margaret, wholly unconscious of these circumstances, meant to rest for the night, after her first day's journey from Rouen, in a town containing many of these malcontents. Curiosity led a crowd of them to gaze upon her at the inn, but when the word passed among them "that it was Margaret of Anjou, returning from England to her father," murmurs arose; they declared" she had been the original cause of the English losing France, and, consequently, of all their misery, and that they would now take vengeance upon her." With these words they made a rush to seize her; but for Rymer, vol. xii. p. 21. Du Tillet, 145. Archives de France, 212. 2 Prevost. tunately she had time to gain her apartment, while two English gentlemen, her attendants, held her assailants at bay with their drawn swords till the French authorities of the town, hearing the uproar, interfered, and rescued the unhappy Margaret from this unexpected attack. She retraced her steps immediately to Rouen, and was glad to claim the protection she had before refused. We now come to that era of Margaret's life in which a noble author of our times, lord Morpeth, in one exquisite line, describes her as 'Anjou's lone matron in her father's hall." Like Naomi, Margaret returned empty and desolate to her native land, but not, like her, attended by a fond and faithful daughter-in-law, for the unhappy widow of her son had been compelled to wed king Edward's brother, Richard of Glouces ter,-him whom public report had branded as the murderer of Henry VI.; and the idea of this alliance must have added a drop to the already overflowing cup of bitterness, of which the fallen queen had drunk so deeply. The home to which her father welcomed Margaret was at that time at Reculée, about a league from Angers, on the river Mayence, where he had a castle that commanded a view of the town, with a beautiful garden and a gallery of paintings and sculpture, which he took delight in adorning with his own paintings, and ornamented the walls of his garden with heraldic designs carved in marble.' It was in such pursuits as these that René, like a true Provençal sovereign, sought forgetfulness of his afflictions. But Margaret's temperament was of too stormy a nature to admit of the slightest alleviation to her grief: her whole time was spent in painfully retracing the direful scenes of her past life, and in passionate regrets for the bereavements she had undergone. The canker-worm that was perpetually busy within, at length made its ravages outwardly visible on her person, and effected a fearful change in her appearance. The agonies and agitation she had undergone turned the whole mass of her blood; her eyes, once so brilliant and expressive, became hollow, dim, and perpetually inflamed, from excessive weeping; 1 Villeneuve. and her skin was disfigured with a dry, scaly leprosy, which transformed this princess, who had been celebrated as the most beautiful in the world, into a spectacle of horror.' Villeneuve says Margaret seldom left her retreat at Reculée, with the exception of one or two visits to the court of Louis XI. An hotel at Paris, called the Séjour d'Orléans, situated in the faubourg St. Marceau, which had passed into the family of Anjou-Lorraine, was named by the tradition of Paris as the residence of Margaret of Anjou, after the death of her husband' Henry VI. Her liberation, when ransomed by Louis XI., must be the time meant. Margaret is considered, by one of her French biographers, to have been the person who kept alive the interests of the Lancastrian party for her kinsman the young earl of Richmond, of whom Henry VI. had prophesied "that he should one day wear the crown of England;" but the generally received opinion is, that she, after her return to her own country, lived in the deepest seclusion. A little before his death, king René composed two beautiful canticles on the heroic actions of his beloved daughter, queen Margaret. This accomplished prince died in the year 1480. By his will, which is preserved among the MSS. in the Bibliothèque du Roi, René bequeathed "one thousand crowns in gold to his daughter Margaret, queen of England; and if she remains in a state of widowhood, an annuity of two thousand livres, and the château of Queniez for her abode." He wrote a letter on his death-bed to Louis XI., earnestly recommending to his care his daughter Margaret, and his widow.* After the death of king René, Margaret sold any reversionary rights which the death of her elder sister and her children might give her to the duchies of Lorraine, Anjou, Maine, Provençe, and Barr to Louis XI. for a pension of six thousand livres. She executed this deed on the 19th day of November, 2 History of Paris, vol. ii. p. 213. 1 Villeneuve. 3 Vie de Roi René d'Anjou. 4 Villeneuve. Monstrelet. Bibliothèque du Roi. Through the kindness of the late Mr. Beltz, Lancaster herald, I obtained a copy of Margaret's acknowledgment for the first payment she received of this pension, with a fac-simile of her signature, which is extremely rare:-" Nous Marguerite royne d'Angleterre confessons avoir eu et receu de maistre Denis de Bidant, notaire et secretaire de monseigneur le roy, et receveur-general de ses 1480, in the great hall of the castle of Reculée, where in her girlhood she had received the ambassadors of England who came to solicit her virgin hand for their sovereign. This pension was so unpunctually paid by Louis, that if Margaret had no other resource she would have been greatly inconvenienced, especially as many of the ruined Lancastrian exiles subsisted on her bounty. King René, with his last breath, had consigned her to the care of an old and faithful officer of his household, Francis Vignolles, lord of Moraens, who had shared all his struggles. This brave soldier took the fallen queen to his own home, the château of Damprièrre, near Saumur. The last tie that bound Margaret to the world was severed: by the death of her father, and she wished to end her days in profound retirement. Her efforts to obtain the bodies of her murdered husband and son were ineffectual; but, till the last day of her life, she employed some faithful ecclesiastics in England to perform at the humble graves of her loved and lost ones those offices deemed needful for the repose of their souls. On her death-bed she divided among her faithful attendants the few valuables that remained from the wreck of her fortunes; and, worn out with the pressure of her sore afflictions of mind and body, she closed her troublous pilgrimage at the château of Damprièrre, August 25th, in the fifty-first year of her age.' She was buried in the cathedral of Angers, in the same tomb with finan., la somme de six mil livres tourn., à nous ordonnée par mon seigneur pour nre. pension de ceste pñte année commencée le prémier jour d'Octobre dernier passé, de laquelle somme de vi lr. nous nous tenons pour contente et bien palce, et en avons quitte et quittons mon seign' le roy, le dit receveur-għal et tous autres. En tesmoing de ce nous avons signé ces putes. de nre. main et fait scellée du seel de nos armes le douziesme jour de Fevrier, l'an mil ecce quatre vingts et ung. Maz011 B17 р The above autograph acquittance is in the register or collection entitled Sceaux, vol. v. p. 183, in the MSS. Royal Lib. Paris. 1 Miss Costello, the accomplished author of The Boccages and the Vines, declares she has visited the château, which is of fine architecture, and is at present in complete preservation. |