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her royal parents, without epitaph or inscription, or any other memorial, excepting her portrait painted on glass in a window of the cathedral. A tribute of respect was for centuries paid to her memory by the chapter of St. Maurice, who annually, on the feast of All Saints, after the vespers for the dead, made a semicircular procession round her grave, singing a sub-venite.' This was continued till the French revolution.

M. Michelet, the most eloquent and one of the most erudite of modern historians, has spoken thus of the strange fatality which attended the wedlock of this royal heroine: "Margaret was, it appears, destined to espouse none but the unfortunate. She was twice betrothed, and both times to celebrated victims of calamity,-to Charles of Nevers, who was dispossessed by his uncle, and to the count de St. Pol, whose course terminated on a scaffold. She was married yet more unhappily: she wedded anarchy, poverty, civil war, malediction,—and this malediction still cleaves to her in history. All that she had of wit, genius, brilliancy, which would have rendered her admired elsewhere, was injurious to her in England, where French queens have never been popular, the strong contrast in the national manners and characteristics producing a mutual repulsion. And Margaret was even more than a Frenchwoman : she came like a sunbeam from her native Provence among dense fogs. The pale flowers of the North, as one of their poets terms them, could not but be offended by this bright vision from the South." Beautiful as this passage is, it implies a reproach on the English ladies which they were far from deserving. There is not the slightest evidence of unfriendly feeling subsisting between them and their queen. On the contrary, Margaret and her female court appear, from first to last, to have lived in the greatest harmony. The noble ladies who were appointed of her household when she married, remained for the most part attached to her service through good report and evil report. They clave to her in her adversity, served her without wages, shared her perils by land and sea, and even when compelled to separate from her, they rejoined her in the land of exile with the most generous self-devotion. It is also

1 Villeneuve.

worthy of observation, considering the exciting nature of the jealousies which existed some years before the commencement of the wars of the roses, that no hostile collision ever occurred between the consort of Henry VI. and the proverbially proud Cicely duchess of York, or the countess of Warwick, the wives of her deadliest foes. Margaret has been blamed by English his torians as the cause of the civil wars, but they originated in the previous interruption of the legitimate order of the royal suc cession, the poverty of the crown, and the wealth of the rival claimant and his powerful connexions. The parties who intended to hurl Henry VI. from the throne aimed the first blow at his queen,-first by exciting national prejudice against her as a French princess, and subsequently by assailing her with the base weapons of calumny. These injuries were of course passionately resented by Margaret, and provoked deadly ven geance whenever the fortune of war enabled her to retaliate on the leaders of the hostile faction of York, but she always kept the peace with their ladies.

Margaret's eldest sister Yolante survived her two years; she had a beautiful daughter, called Margaret of Anjou the younger. Maria Louisa, Napoleon's empress, possessed her breviary, in which there is one sentence supposed to have been written by the once-beautiful, powerful, and admired Margaret queen of England,

"Vanité des vanités, tout la vanité !”

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ELIZABETH WOODVILLE,

QUEEN OF EDWARD IV.

CHAPTER I.

Unequal royal marriages-Parents of Elizabeth Woodville-She is maid of honour to Margaret of Anjou-Duke of York writes to Elizabeth-Earl of Warwick writes to her for his friend-She rejects sir Hugh Johns-Accepts the heir of lord Ferrers, John Gray-Elizabeth's sons born at Bradgate-Her husband killed at St. Alban's-Elizabeth's destitute widowhood-Captivates Edward IV.— Their meetings-The queen's oak---Private marriage with the king-Opposition of the king's mother-Recognition of Elizabeth as queen-Her sisters— Her brother, Anthony Woodville-Scene at her court-Coronation-Enmity of queen Isabella of Castile-Elizabeth endows Queen's college-Birth of her eldest daughter-Warwick's enmity to the queen-Portrait of the queen— Her influence-Her father and eldest brother murdered-Her mother accused of witchcraft-Revolution-Edward IV.'s flight-Queen and her mother at the Tower-Flight to sanctuary-Birth of prince Edward-Queen's distressHer humble friends-Return of Edward IV.-Queen leaves sanctuary for the Tower-Her brother Anthony defends the Tower-Re-establishment of the house of York-The queen's friends rewarded.

THE fifteenth century was remarkable for unequal marriages made by persons of royal station. Then, for the first time since the reigns of our Plantagenets commenced, was broken that high and stately etiquette of the middle ages, which forbade king or kaïser to mate with partners below the rank of princess. In that century, the marriage of the handsome Edward IV. with an English gentlewoman caused as much astonishment at the wondrous archery of Dan Cupid as was fabled of old,—

"When he shot so true,

That king Cophetua wed the beggar-maid."

But the mother of Elizabeth Woodville had occasioned scarcely less wonder in her day, when, following the example of her sister-in-law, queen Katherine, she, a princess of Luxembourg by birth, and (as the widow of the warlike duke of Bedford)

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