London, for goods delivered for the use of queen Anne, as specified in bills in the care of John Kendal, the king's secretary. The court arrived at York August 31. The re-coronation of the king and queen, likewise the re-investiture of prince Edward of Gloucester as prince of Wales, took place soon. after at this city; measures which must have originated in the fact, that the sons of Edward IV. having been put to death during the northern progress of the court, the usurper considered that oaths of allegiance, taken at the re-coronation, would be more legal than when the right heirs were alive. The overflowing paternity of Richard, which, perhaps, urged him to commit some of his crimes, thus speaks in his patents for creating his son prince of Wales: "Whose singular wit and endowments of nature, wherewith (his young age considered) he is remarkably furnished, do portend, by the favour of God, that he will make an honest man."1 But small chance was there for such a miracle, if his life had been spared. It is curious that Richard III. should express hopes for his son's future honesty, at the very moment when he was putting him in possession of his murdered cousins' property. After the coronation had been performed in York cathedral, queen Anne walked in grand procession through the streets of the city, holding her little son by the right hand he wore the demi-crown appointed for the heir of England. The Middleham household-book mentions that five marks were paid to Michell Wharton, for bringing the prince's jewels to York on this occasion. The same document proves that the court was at Pontefract September 15th,-that fearful fortress, recently stained with the blood of Richard's victims. Richard gave, by the way, in charity to a poor woman, 3s. 6d. ; the charge of baiting the royal charrette was 2d.; and the expenses of the removal of my lord prince's household to Pontefract, 248. Α formidable insurrection, headed by the duke of Buckingham, recalled Richard to the metropolis: he left his son, for secu nity, among his northern friends, but queen Anne accompanied her husband. 'White Kennet's notes to Bucke. The prince was seven years old, according tc Rous. It is a doubtful point whether Anne approved of the crimes which thus advanced her son. Tradition declares she abhorred them, but parliamentary documents prove she shared with sir James Tyrrel the plunder of Richard's opponents, after the rebellion of Buckingham was crushed. She received one hundred marks, the king seven hundred marks, and sir James Tyrrel two manors from sir William Knyvet, being the purchase-money for his life. Anne's share of this plunder amounts to considerably more than her proportion of queen-gold. If Anne had even passively consented to the unrighteous ad vancement of her family, punishment quickly followed; for her son, on the last day of March, 1484, died at Middlehamcastle "an unhappy death." This expression, used by Rous his family chronicler, leads his readers to imagine that this boy, so deeply idolized by his guilty father, came by his end in some sudden and awful manner. His parents were not with him, but were as near as Nottingham-castle when he expired. The loss of this child, in whom all Anne's hopes and happiness were garnered, struck to her heart, and she never again knew a moment's health or comfort; she seemed even to court death eagerly. Nor was this dreadful loss her only calamity. Richard had no other child; his declining and miserable consort was not likely to bring another; and if he did not consider her in the way, his guilty and ruffianly satellites certainly did, for they began to whisper dark things concerning the illegality of the king's marriage, and the pos sibility of its being set aside. As Edward IV.'s parliament considered that it was possible for Anne to divorce Richard in 1474, it cannot be doubted that Richard could have resorted to the same manner of getting rid of her, when queen. Her evident decline, however, prevented Richard from giving himself any trouble regarding a divorce; yet it did not restrain him from uttering peevish complaints to Rotherham, arch 1 Continuator of Croyland. The June following the death of the prince, Richard III. added in his own hand, to the audit of expenses paid for the clothing of his son, "whom God pardon,”—a proof that a lively remembrance of the by was still active in the father's heart, and that he lost no opportunity of offers a prayer for the small sins which the object of his guilty ambition might have cormitted. See White Kennet's notes to Bucke. bishop of York, against his wife's sickliness and disagreeable qualities. Rotherham, who had just been released from as much coercion as a king of England dared offer to a spiritual peer who had not appeared in open insurrection, ventured to prophesy, from these expressions, "that Richard's queen would suddenly depart from this world." This speech got circulated in the guard-chamber, and gave rise to a report that the queen, whose personal sufferings in a protracted decline had caused her to keep her chamber for some days, was actually dead. Anne was sitting at her toilette, with her tresses unbound, when this strange rumour was communicated to her. She considered it was the forerunner of her death by violent means, and, in a great agony, ran to her husband, with her hair dishevelled as it was, and with streaming eyes and piteous sobs asked him, "What she had done to deserve death?" Richard, it is expressly said, soothed her with fair words and smiles, bidding her "be of good cheer, for in sooth she had no other cause."1 : The next report which harassed the declining and dying queen was, that her husband was impatient for her demise, that he might give his hand to his niece, the princess Elizabeth of York. This rumour had no influence on the conduct of Anne, since the continuator of the Croyland Chronicle mentions the queen's kindness to her husband's niece in these words:"The lady Elizabeth (who had been some months out of sanctuary) was, with her four younger sisters, sent by her mother to attend the queen at court, at the Christmas festivals kept with great state in Westminster-hall. They were received with all honourable courtesy by queen Anne, especially the lady Elizabeth was ranked most familiarly in the queen's favour, who treated her as a sister; but neither society that she loved, nor all the pomp and festivity of royalty, could cure the languor or heal the wound in the queen's breast for the loss of her son.' The young earl of Warwick was, after the death of Richard's son, proclaimed heir to the English throne, and as such took his seat at the royal table3 1 Holinshed. Sir Thomas More. * Continuator of Croyland Chronicle. 3 Rous Chronicle. during the lifetime of his aunt, queen Anne. As these honours were withdrawn from the ill-fated boy directly after the death of the queen, it is reasonable to infer that he owed them to some influence she possessed with her husband, since young Warwick, as her sister's son, was her heir as well as his. Within the year that deprived Anne of her only son, maternal sorrow put an end to her existence by a decline, slow enough to acquit her husband of poisoning her,—a crime of which he is accused by most writers. She died at Westminster-palace on March 16th, 1485, in the midst of the greatest eclipse of the sun that had happened for many years. Her funeral was most pompous and magnificent. Her husband was present, and was observed to shed tears,' deemed hypocritical by the by-stander; but those who knew that he had been brought up with Anne, might suppose that he felt some instinctive yearnings of long companionship when he saw her deposited in that grave, where his ambitious interests had caused him to wish her to be. Human nature, with all its conflicting passions and instincts, abounds with such inconsistencies, which are often startlingly apparent in the hardest characters. The queen was interred near the altar at Westminster, not far from the place where subsequently was erected the monument of Anne of Cleves.. No memorial marks the spot where the broken heart of the hapless Anne of Warwick found rest from as much sorrow as could possibly be crowded into the brief span of thirty-one years. Baker's Chronicle. |