occasion of this very tournament, since a steady disinclination was manifested by the family to his long-projected suit; and the rebellious, though forgiven pair, accompanied the Queen of England as far as Bar le Duc, where, we are told, "René and her mother took leave of her with floods of tears, and prayers for her welfare." Two leagues from Nanci the King and Queen of France had previously parted with their niece, "with many tears, and recommended her to the protection of God; their grief was so great that they could not speak."1

And now she, indeed, began to realise her new position in all its clear detail of light and shadow (for in the far-off horizon was even this last perceptible), as she embarked upon those surges-meet emblem of her subsequently stormy fate-so soon to separate her destiny from the land of her birth, and approached the English shore, where awaited her the same portentous fury of the elements which was ever the companion of her successive arrivals. There are moments when the soundest judgment is not impassible to such natural influences, and who shall say that the emotions of the queen might not have augmented the agony of the woman at the severance of every tie of national and personal attachment implicated in her brief but inauspicious voyage? It is not difficult to believe, that when the last line of the coast she fondly gazed on faded from the eyes of Margaret, the crown so soon to grace that noble head appeared about to encircle a brow aching with regrets, and, it might be, throbbing with some slight foretaste of grief, consequent upon the entwining of her own hitherto sequestered daisy with the thorny glories of the crimson rose of England! Aware, as she must have been, of the deficiencies of Henry's character, and of his total dissimilarity to the husband she herself would have selected, she might have considered herself in the light of

■ Monstrelet.

a victim to her country's welfare, more especially if attached to either of her former lovers-no improbable surmise. Be this, however, as it may, and whether we are to reckon amongst her trials at this early period the unsuccessful struggle of love with policy and ambition, we find no mention of that endearing and plastic nature which her previous character predicted; on the contrary, there appeared a decision and energy probably attributable to her thorough acquaintance with the imbecility of her future spouse, and from the first, perhaps, more excessive than her advocates in England either expected or desired. All circumstances, therefore, combined, must have induced feelings totally dissonant to the best developement of her character, by bringing into exercise elements of sternness, which, in common with the grander quality of heroism, might, but for these, have lain dormant for ever, and which account for much that is repugnant to our prejudices in her after history.

Although the marriage had taken place in the month of November, delays upon her transit from Nanci rendered it the end of March or the beginning of the following April before Margaret landed at Porchester, whence, proceeding to Southampton, she was seized with a sudden and serious indisposition, which again protracted her meeting with her royal consort. According to Stow and others, Henry had been awaiting her at Southwick, where, on the 22d of April, 1445, the marriage was personally solemnised; the ring used on this occasion being made from one "of gold, garnyshed with a fayr rubie, sometime yeven unto us by our bel oncle the Cardinal of Englande, with the which we were sacred on the day of our coronation at Parys, delivered unto Mathew Phelip to breke, and thereof to make an other ryng for the quene's wedding-ring." The Duke of Gloucester, whose near relationship inferred a due amount of

! Foedera, vol. xi. p. 76.

courtesy, seems to have forgotten his disinclination to the match in his desire to shew every mark of honour to his new sovereign; for we find that he met her at Blackheath, and on the following Friday, May 28th, conducted her in triumph to London, "attended (Stow says) by the mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs of the city, and the crafts of the same on horseback." Another tournament completed the celebration of the event, which was distinguished by a costly magnificence and display hardly justified by the empty state of the exchequer on both sides, and somewhat in contrast with the scantiness of the young queen's personal wardrobe.

"The natures of the late married couple were, if not opposite, sufficiently differing: the husband was of a womanish inclination, the wife of a manlike spirit; the king was humble, devout, spiritually given, caring only for his soul's health; the queen was proud, ambitious, worldly given, and not to be quieted till, having brought the kingdom to be governed as she pleased, she might see herself free from rivals in the government. The Duke of Gloucester was no ways pleasing to her, as well for that he had opposed her marriage, an injury not to be forgotten, as likewise that her husband, being long since out of his minority, was still governed by him as formerly when he was under age." This dissonance of taste and feeling, corroborated by every contemporary and subsequent writer, affords sufficient ground, even perhaps upon the score of necessity, for the independence assumed by Margaret in public affairs from the outset of her career, without reference to the instigations of Beaufort, Suffolk, Buckingham, Somerset, and others, who, through her instrumentality, attempted to promote their own political and private schemes.

So long as the secret article of the matrimonial negotiation (which relinquished the province of Maine, "the bul

1 Biondi.

wark of Normandy"), remained undiscussed, the Marquess of Suffolk was lauded to the skies for the part he had taken in obtaining a queen for the nation who seemed likely to secure its admiration and regard; but though the obnoxious topic had been hitherto studiously avoided, the rapid approach of the conclusion of the truce enforced the necessity of fulfilling its conditions. It was evident to Beaufort and his party that, so long as Gloucester opposed the relinquishment of Maine, as a measure most impolitic and fraught with fatal issue to the best interests of the crown, there could be no prospect of success, and therefore the removal of this powerful opponent to his public plans, and the object alike of his undying hatred, even by the foul means of treachery and murder, did not appal the unrelenting cardinal.

We readily avail ourselves of the discrepancies of historians upon this point to exonerate the queen from participation in so horrible a tragedy. Rapin, who in his eagerness to condemn her, forfeits all claim to impartiality, asserts that she "first encouraged the resolution ;" and Biondi surmises that by "Gloucester's death the queen thought to have established her authority." The mind is indeed too fully awakened to a sense of the fell cruelty of some, "who even on their death-beds play the ruffian," not gladly to take refuge in every rational pretext from the supposition that revenge should ever so unsex the feminine character in the case of Margaret, however, we have every presumption for her innocence, not only from the readiness of popular fury to involve the highest personages in the crimes of their subordinates, but also because it is admitted that her "usual activity and spirit made the public conclude that the duke's enemies durst not have ventured upon such a deed without her privity." In fact, by no means a favourable writer is compelled to acknow

1 Hume.

1

ledge, that if Margaret connived at the murder she must have evinced an "ignorance in things to come," strangely at variance with her characteristic foresight, for this act "threw her headlong upon those evils which, with the price of her own blood she would willingly have redeemed ;" and by it she "lost all that she could lose, her life excepted, her husband, son, and kingdom." The prejudice, however, of political partisanship caused the sentiments of the public to run strongly against the queen, and the stigma affixed to the plotters of the duke's death became indelible, no less from the excellence of the victim, than from the treachery of the crime. It was at first deemed advisable to lure the duke to his destruction by specious overtures of friendship, which inducing his distrust, might urge him to compromise himself by some undisguised act of retaliation. But this plan failing through the probity of his own conduct and intentions, a parliament was called first at Cambridge, and afterwards at St. Edmundsbury 1 (in preference to London, where Gloucester's popularity would have protected him), and shortly after his appearance there, he not only found himself accused of high treason, but discovered that the king's mind had been so abused to his prejudice, that, without being permitted an opportunity of exculpation, he was committed to close confinement, nor even suffered to retain his usual attendants. Seventeen days afterwards he was found dead in his bed; and though the public exposure of his body -the plausible evidence of his having sustained no violent end-was resorted to (an act so successfully tried in former cases, but of itself sufficient to excite suspicion), the universal belief that he had been murdered remained unshaken; which conviction acquired strength from the circumstance of the sudden decease of his arch enemy Beaufort ("a prelate much more proper for the world than the Church,") a few weeks subsequently.

1

! Cotton's Abridgment, pp. 632-634.

* Rapin.