the Rous roll, two mysterious hands are introduced, offering to her the rival crowns of York and Lancaster; while the white bear, the cognizance assumed by her mighty sire, Warwick the king-maker, lies muzzled at her feet, as if the royal lions of Plantagenet had quelled the pride of that hitherto tameless bear on the blood-stained heath of Barnet.

The principal events which marked the career of her father have been traced in the memoirs of the two preceding queens. Richard Neville, surnamed the king-making earl of Warwick, was heir, in right of the countess his mother, to the vast inheritance of the Montagues, carls of Salisbury. He aggrandized himself in a higher degree by his union, in 1448, with Anne, the sister of Beauchamp earl of Warwick, who had become sole heiress of that mighty line by the early death of her niece the preceding year. Richard was soon after summoned to the house of lords, in right of his wife, as earl of Warwick. He possessed an income of 22,000 marks per annum, but had no male heir, his family consisting but of two daughters: the eldest, lady Isabel,' was very handsome. Bucke calls lady Anne "the better woman of the two," but he gives no reason for the epithet he uses.

When, on the convalescence of king Henry, Margaret of Anjou recovered her former influence in the government, Warwick, having good reason to dread her vengeance, withdrew, with his countess and young daughters, to his government of Calais, where the childhood and early youth of the lady Anne were spent. Occasionally, indeed, when the star of York was in the ascendant, Warwick brought the ladies of his family either to his feudal castle, or his residence in Warwick-lane. The site of this mansion is still known by the name of Warwick-court. Here the earl exercised semi-barbarous hospitality in the year 1458, when a pacification was attempted between the warring houses of York and Lancaster; six hundred of the retainers of Anne's father were quartered in Warwicklane, "all dressed alike in red jackets, with the bear and ragged staff embroidered both before and behind. At Warwick1 Born at Warwick-castle, 1451.-Rous Roll, Heralds' college. 2 Stowe's London.

house six oxen were daily devoured for breakfast, and all the taverns about St. Paul's and Newgate-street were full of Warwick's meat; for any one who could claim acquaintance with that earl's red-jacketed gentry might resort to his flesh-pots, and, sticking his dagger therein, carry off as much beef as could be taken on a long dagger."

At this period the closest connexion subsisted between the families of the duke of York and the earl of Warwick. Richard Plantagenet, afterwards Richard III., was two years older than the lady Anne; he was born October 2, 1452, at his father's princely castle of Fotheringay. He was the youngest son of Richard duke of York and his duchess Cicely, the earl of Warwick's aunt. "At his nativity," says Rous, a contemporary chronicler, "the scorpion was in the ascendant; he came into the world with teeth, and with a head of hair reaching to his shoulders. He was small of stature, with a short face and unequal shoulders, the right being higher than the left.”1

Passing over events already related, that led to the deposition of Henry IV., positive proof may be found that Anne of Warwick and Richard of Gloucester were companions when he was about fourteen, and she twelve years old. After Richard had been created duke of Gloucester at his brother's coronation, it is highly probable he was consigned to the guardianship of the earl of Warwick, at Middleham-castle; for, at the grand enthronization of George Neville, the uncle of Anne, as archbishop of York, Richard was a guest at Yorkpalace, seated in the place of honour in the chief banquetingroom upon the daïs, under a cloth of estate or canopy, with the countess of Westmoreland on his left hand, his sister, the duchess of Suffolk, on his right, and the noble maidens his cousins, the lady Anne and the lady Isabel, seated opposite to him. These ladies must have been placed there expressly to please the prince, by affording him companions of his own age, since the countess of Warwick, their mother, sat at the

The oft-quoted testimony of the old countess of Desmond ought not to invaIdate this statement, for many a lady would think any prince handsome who had danced with her. Rous knew Richard well; he not only delineated him with the pen, but with pencil.-See the Rous Roll.

2 Leland's Collectanea, vol. vi. p. 4.

second table, in a place much lower in dignity. Richard being the son of lady Anne's great-aunt, an intimacy naturally subsisted between such near relatives. Majerres, a Flemish annalist, affirms that Richard had formed a very strong affection for his cousin Anne; but succeeding events proved that the lady did not bestow the same regard on him which her sister Isabella did on his brother Clarence, nor was it to be expected, considering his disagreeable person and temper. As lady Anne did not smile on her crook-backed cousin, there was no inducement for him to forsake the cause of his brother, king Edward. It was in vain his brother Clarence said, in a conference with Warwick, "By sweet St. George, I swear! that if my brother Gloucester would join me, I would make Edward know we were all one man's sons, which should be nearer to him than strangers of his wife's blood."1

Anne was, at this juncture, with her mother and sister at Calais. "For," continues Hall," "the earl of Warwick and the duke of Clarence sailed directly thither, where they were solemnly received and joyously entertained by the countess of Warwick and her two daughters; and after the duke had sworn on the sacrament ever to keep part and promise with the earl, he married Isabel in the Lady-church at Calais, in the presence of the countess and her daughter Anne." The earl of Warwick, accompanied by his countess and lady Anne, returned with the newly wedded pair to England, where he and his son-in-law soon raised a civil war that shook the throne of Edward IV. After the loss of the battle of Edgecote, the earl of Warwick escaped with his family to Dartmouth, where they were taken on board a fleet, of which he was master.

On the voyage they encountered the young earl Rivers, with the Yorkist fleet, who gave their ships battle, and took most of them; but the vessel escaped which contained the Neville family. While this ship was flying from the victorious enemy a dreadful tempest arose, and the ladies on board were afflicted at once with terror of wreck and the oppression of sea-sickness. To add to their troubles, the duchess of Clarence was taken in labour with her first child. In the midst of this

1 1 Hall, p. 272.

2 Ibid. pp. 271, 272.

3 Ibid. p. 279.

accumulation of disasters, the tempest-tossed bark made the offing of Calais; but in spite of the distress on board, Vauclere, whom Warwick had left as his lieutenant, held out the town against him, and would not permit the ladies to land: he, however, sent two flagons of wine on board, for the duchess of Clarence, with a private message, assuring Warwick "that the refusal arose from the towns-people," and advising him to make some other port in France.' The duchess of Clarence soon after gave birth, on board ship, to the babe who had chosen so inappropriate a time for his entrance into a troublesome world, and the whole family landed safely at Dieppe the beginning of May 1470. When they were able to travel, the lady Anne, her mother and sister, attended by Clarence and Warwick, journeyed across France to Amboise, where they were graciously received by Louis XI., and that treaty was finally completed which made Anne the wife of Edward, the promising heir of Lancaster.

This portion of the life of Anne of Warwick is so inextricably interwoven with that of her mother-in-law, queen Margaret, that it were vain to repeat it a second time. Suffice it to observe that the bride was in her seventeenth, the bridegroom in his nineteenth year, and that Prevost affirms that the match was one of ardent love on both sides. The prince was well educated, refined in manner, and, moreover, his portrait in the Rous roll bears out the tradition that he was eminently handsome. The ill-fated pair remained in each other's company from their marriage at Angers, in August 1470, till the fatal field of Tewkesbury, May 4th, 1471. Although the testimony of George Bucke must be received with the utmost caution, yet he quotes a contemporary Flemish chronicler," who asserts that "Anne was with her husband, Edward of Lancaster, when that unfortunate prince was hurried before 3 Hall, p. 280.

I Comines.

2 Ibid.

Sir John Bucke was in the service of Richard III., and high in his favour; lat was beheaded at Leicester after the battle of Bosworth, and his family nearly ned. For this reason the utmost degree of personal prejudice guides the pen Richard's historian, his descendant, when vindicating that usurper, and aspersthe reputation of every connexion of Henry VII.

5 W. Kennett; Bucke, vol. i. p. 549.

Edward IV. after the battle of Tewkesbury; and that it was observed, Richard duke of Gloucester was the only person present who did not draw his sword on the royal captive, out of respect to the presence of Anne, as she was the near relative of his mother, and a person whose affections he had always desired to possess." English chroniclers, however, affirm that at this very moment Anne was with her unhappy mother-inlaw, queen Margaret.

The unfortunate prince of Wales, last scion of the royal house of Lancaster, was buried the day after the battle of Tewkesbury, under the central tower of that stately abbey. Some nameless friend, (in all probability his youthful widow,' when opportunity served, caused the spot of his interment to be marked with a grey marble slab, enriched with a monumental brass, of which (or rather of its outlines in the stone) there is a small drawing in the Dinely MS., with the following memorandum :-"This fair tombstone of grey marble, the brass whercof hath been picked out by sacrilegious hands, is directly under the tower of the church at the entrance of the quire, and said to be laid over prince Edward, who lost his life in cool blood in that dispute between York and Lancaster." When the pavement of the nave of Tewkesbury-abbey was repaired in the last century, the marble slab which covered the remains of gallant-springing young Plantagenet was taken up, and flung into a corner with other broken monuments and fragments of less interest, to the great regret of some of the towns-people, who obtained permission to place a brass tablet over the royal grave, with a Latin inscription to this effect:

"Lest all memory of Edward prince of Wales should perish, the pious care of the good people of Tewkesbury has provided this tablet, to mark the spot of his interment."2

This precious relic, from the Itinerary of some historical antiquary of the days of Charles II., was shown to me by J. Gutch, esq. of Worcester, by whom I was kindly favoured with a tracing of the outlines of the brass, which is cer tainly an historical curiosity of no slight interest.

The original tombstone, having been sought and identified by the present learned vicar, the rev. E. Davies, has been polished, and placed as a basement fr the font, to preserve it from further desecration. The remains of "false, perjured, fleeting Clarence," repose in the same abbey. The grave of Isabella Nevile, his