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Paris to put an end immediately to the treaty of marriage be tween the earl of Richmond and the princess Elizabeth, and to return to her. The parties who had projected the marriage were struck with consternation, and greatly incensed at the queen's conduct; but these steps were the evident result of the personal restraint she was then enduring. If Richard III. chose to court her daughter as his wife, queen Elizabeth ought to be acquitted of blame; for it is evident, that if she had been as yielding in the matter as commonly supposed, she would not have been under the control of John Nesfield.

The successful termination of the expedition undertaken by the earl of Richmond, to obtain his promised bride and the crown of England, at once avenged the widowed queen and her family on the usurper, and restored her to liberty. Instead of being under the despotic control of the royal hunchback's man-at-arms, the queen made joyful preparation to receive her eldest daughter, who was brought to her at Westminster from Sheriff-Hutton with honour, attended by a great company of noble ladies.' Queen Elizabeth had the care of her daughter till the January following the battle of Bosworth, when she saw her united in marriage to Henry of Richmond, the acknowledged king of England.

One of Henry VII.'s first acts was to invest the mother of his queen with the privileges and state befitting her rank as the widow of an English sovereign. She had never been recognised as queen-dowager, excepting in the few wrangling privy councils that intervened between the death of her husband and her retreat into the abbey of Westminster, and even during these, her advice had been disregarded, and her orders defied; therefore to Henry VII., her son-in-law, she owed the first regular recognition of her rights as widow of an English sovereign. Unfortunately Elizabeth had not been dowered on the lands anciently appropriated to the queens of England. but on those of the duchy of Lancaster, which Henry VII. claimed as heir of John of Gaunt. However, a month after 1 Lord Bacon's Life of Henry VII. p. 2.

*This change seems first to have been made by Henry IV., who by his wil caused his widow, Joanna of Navarre, to be dowered on the duchy of Lancaster; a custom continued to the days of Edward IV.

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the marriage of her daughter to Henry VII. the queendowager received possession of some of the dower-palaces, among which Waltham, Farnham, Masshebury, and Baddow may be noted.' Henry likewise adds a pension of 1027. per annum, from his revenues. The scandalous entries on the Parliamentary rolls, whereby she was deprived of her dower in the preceding reign, were ordered by the judges to be burnt, their first lines only being read, " because from their falseness and shamefulness they were only deserving of utter oblivion."

Although so much has been said in history regarding Henry VII.'s persecution of his mother-in-law, this, the only public act passed regarding her which appears on the rolls, is marked with delicacy and respect. If she were deprived of her rights and property once more, no evidence exists of the fact, excepting mere assertion. Nor are assertions, even of contemporaries, to be credited without confirmatory documents at any era, when a country was divided into factions furious as those which kept the reign of Henry VII. in a continual ferment. It is possible that Henry VII. personally disliked his mother-in-law; and in this he was by no means singular, for there never was a woman who contrived to make more personal enemies; but that he ever deprived her of either property or dignity, remains yet to be proved. This queen had passed through a series of calamities sufficient to wean the most frivolous person from pleasure and pageantry; she had to mourn the untimely deaths of three murdered sons, and she had four daughters wholly destitute, and dependent on her for their support; it can therefore scarcely be matter of surprise that, in the decline of life, she seldom shared in the gaieties of her daughter's court. Nevertheless, she appeared there frequently enough to invalidate the oft-repeated assertions that she fell into disgrace with the king for encouraging the rebellions of the earl of Lincoln and Lambert Simnel. Was such conduct possible? The earl of Lincoln had been proclaimed heir to the throne by Richard III., and as such, was the supplanter of all her children; and Lambert Simnel represented a youth who was the son of Clarence, her enemy,

1 Memoir of Elizabeth of York, by sir Harris Nicolas.

and the grandson of the mighty earl of Warwick,' the swor foe of all the house of Woodville. However, at the very time she is declared to be in disgrace for such unnatural partiality, she was chosen by the king, in preference to his own beloved mother, as sponsor to his dearly prized heir, prince Arthur. "On September 20th, 1486, Elizabeth of York gave birth to an heir, and on Sunday following, her mother, the queendowager, stood godmother to him in Winchester cathedral." After describing the procession, in which the princess Cicely carried the infant, the historian adds,-" Queen Elizabeth [Woodville] was in the cathedral, abiding the coming of the prince; she gave a rich cup of gold, covered, which wa borne by sir Davy Owen. The earl of Derby gave a gold salt, and the lord Maltravers gave a coffer of gold; these standing with the queen as sponsors." Soon afterwards Henry VII. sought to strengthen his interest in Scotland, by negotiating a marriage between James III. and his mother-in-law, a husband certainly young enough to be her son; yet his violent death alone prevented her from wearing the crown-matrimonial of Scotland,-when she would have been placed in a situation to injure her son-in-law, if such had been her wish.

The last time the queen-dowager appeared in public was in a situation of the highest dignity. The queen-consort had taken to her chamber, previously to her accouchement in the close of the year 1489, when her mother, queen Elizabeth Woodville, received the French ambassador3 in great state, assisted by Margaret, the king's mother. The next year, Henry VII. presented his mother-in-law with an annuity of 4001. No surrender of lands of equal value has yet been discovered; yet, strange to say, historians declare she was stripped of every thing, because about this time she retired into the convent of Bermondsey. Here she had every right to be, not as a prisoner, but as a cherished and highly honoured inmate; for the prior and monks of Bermondsey were solemnly bound, by the deeds of their charter, to find 1 The existence of the young earl of Warwick was a profound court-seeret, till the imposture of Lambert Simnel obliged Henry VII. to show the real person to the public. 2 Lelandi Collectanea, vol. iv. p. 249. 3 Ibid.

* Memoir of Elizabeth of York, by sir Harris Nicolas.

hospitality for the representatives of their great founder, Clare earl of Gloucester, in the state-rooms of the convent.' Now Edward IV. was heir to the Clares, and Elizabeth, queen-dowager, had every right, as his widow, to appropriate the apartments expressly reserved for the use of the founder.2 She had a right of property there; and as it was the custom in the middle ages for royal persons to seek monastic seclusion when health declined, not only for devotional purposes, but for medical advice, where could Elizabeth better retire, than to a convent bound by its charter to receive her? Eighteen months after she was seized with a fatal illness at Bermondsey, and, on her death-bed, dictated the following will:

"In the name of God, &c., 10th April, 1492, I, Elizabeth, by the grace of God queen of England, late wife to the most victorious prince of blessed memory, Edward IV.

“Item. I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor, without pompous interring or costly expenses done thereabout. Item. Whereas I have no worldly goods to do the queen's grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children according to my heart and mind, I beseech God Almighty to bless her grace, with all her noble issue; and, with as god a heart and mind as may be, I give her grace my blessing, and all the aforesad my children. Item. I will that such small stuff and goods that I have be dxposed truly in the contentation of my debts, and for the health of my soul, as far as they will extend. Item. That if any of my blood will wish to have any of Lay said stuff, to me pertaining, I will they have the preferment before all others. And of this my present testament I make and ordain my executors,—that is to say, John Ingilby, prior of the Charter-house of Shene, William Sutton and Thomas Brent, doctors. And I beseech my said dearest daughter, the queen's grace, and my son, Thomas marquess of Dorset, to put their good wills and help be the performance of this my testament. In witness whereof to this my testatent, these witnesses-John, abbot of Bermondsey, and Benedict Cun, doctor of Physic. Given the year and day aforesaid.”

The daughters of Elizabeth attended her death-bed, and ad her affectionate attention; the queen alone was prevented, having taken to her chamber preparatory to the birth of the princess Margaret. Elizabeth died the Friday before Whitsuntide, and as she expressed an earnest wish for speedy and private burial, her funeral took place on Whit-Sunday, 1192. Her will shows that she died destitute of personal property; but that is no proof of previous persecution, since

Quoted by Malcolm from Annales Abbatæ de Bermondsey, formerly belong. ing to the Howard family, now in the British Museum.

The noble panelled halls and state-chambers in this convent were, in 1804, standing nearly in the same state as when Elizabeth occupied them.

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several of our queens, who were possessed of the undivided dower appanage, and whose children were provided for, died not much richer.' Indeed, it was not easy, in that era, for persons who had only a life income to invest their savings securely; therefore they seldom made any. Elizabeth had four daughters wholly dependent on her for support, since the calamities of the times had left them portionless; and after the death of their mother, the queen, their sister was much impoverished by their maintenance. The great possessions of the house of York were chiefly in the grasp of the old avaricious duchess Cicely of York, who survived her hated daughter-in-law several years. Edward IV. had endowed his proud mother as if she were a queen-dowager; while his wife was dowered on property to which he possessed no real title.

Some discontented Yorkist, who witnessed the parsimonious funeral of Elizabeth, has described it, and preserved the interesting fact, that the only lady who accompanied the corpse of the queen on its passage from the river to Windsor-castle. was one mistress Grace, a natural daughter of Edward IV. "On Whit-Sunday, the queen-dowager's corpse was conveyed by water to Windsor, and there privily, through the little park, conducted into the castle, without any ringing of bells or receiving of the dean, but only accompanied by the prior of the Charter-house, and Dr. Brent, Mr. Haute, and mistress Grace (a bastard daughter of king Edward IV.), and no other gentlewoman; and, as it was told to me, the priest of the college received her in the castle, [Windsor,] and so privily. about eleven of the clock, she was buried, without any solemn dirge done for her obit. On the morn thither came Audley, bishop of Rochester, to do the office, but that day nothing was done solemnly for her saving; also a hearse, such as they use for the common people, with wooden candlesticks about it, and a black [pall] of cloth of gold on it, four candlesticks of silver gilt, every one having a taper of no grea weight. On the Tuesday hither came, by water, king Edward's

1 See vol. i., lives of Eleanora of Castile and Marguerite of France, whose creditors were not paid till long after their deaths. Queen Philippa died in det: 2 Arundel MSS. 30. 3 This name is not very legible.

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