MARGARET OF ANJOU,

QUEEN OF HENRY THE SIXTH.

MARGARET, daughter of René of Anjou, subsequently King of Sicily, and Isabella of Lorraine, was the youngest of her parents' five children, and, according to history, the most favoured by nature of them all. Her grandmother was Yoland, or Violante, of Arragon (at this time a constant visitant at the French court), and the Spanish blood thus intermingled did not slumber in this one, at least, of her descendants. Margaret's own mother, a scion of the line of Charlemagne, was also as spirited as she was beautiful; but René himself, so unfortunate in his career, appears to have naturally approximated more closely to the future consort of his daughter, being devoted to the refinements of art, and attached to the peaceful enjoyments of domestic life. The members of this family were united to each other by bonds of the strongest affection; and Margaret, we are told, was alike the favourite and admiration of France and themselves. Possessed of "a masculine, courageous spirit, of an enterprising temper, endowed with solidity as well as vivacity of understanding, she had not been able to conceal those great talents even in the privacy" of her father's narrowed court, "and it was reasonable to expect that when she should mount the throne they would break out with still superior lustre." She was, says Hume, "the most accomplished woman of her age, both in body and mind, and seemed to possess those qualities which would equally qualify her to acquire the ascendant over Henry and to supply all his defects and weaknesses." With these attractions it is not extraordinary that other proposals, anterior to those of the King of England, had been made for the hand of the Infanta (as she was called among the Provençals); and, indeed, the gallant Count de St. Pol, and the Duke of Burgundy's handsome nephew, Count de Nevers, are both mentioned as favoured lovers of Margaret; in fact, to the first she is reported to have been engaged; but both these alliances were abandoned finally for the more splendid prospects opened by Suffolk's

embassy, nor do we find any record of reluctance upon her part to acquiesce in her father's acceptance. Margaret, who was born March 23, 1429, was about fifteen when this contract took place.

The treaty had been signed at Tours, the present residence of the court, where Rapin, quoting Hall, Biondi, and others, states the marriage to have been celebrated, although the father and mother of Margaret having been united at Nanci, it is on this, as well as upon other accounts, most probable that those authorities which fix the lastmentioned city as the scene of the nuptials are correct. A notice of the event, comprised in a dozen lines of Monstrelet's chronicle, states that here "with the king were René, king of Sicily, and numbers of great lords and knights, the queens of France and Sicily, the dauphiness, and the daughter of René, whom the Earl of Suffolk had come with a splendid embassy to demand in marriage for the King of England. After a few discussions every thing was agreed on; but before their departure with the new queen, a magnificent tournament was held, in which the Kings of France and Sicily, the Lord Charles d'Anjou, the Counts de Foix and de St. Pol, the Lord Ferry de Lorraine, and several other lords, tilted; these feasts lasted eight days, and the ladies were most splendidly dressed." The Lord Ferry of Lorraine, as he is here called, had recently married Margaret's only sister, having eloped with her upon the 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

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 22nd of April, 1445, thẹ marriage was personally solemnised; the ring used on this occasion being made from one "of gold, garnyshed with a fayr rubie, sometime

1 Monstrelet.

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." It was here on the very spot of her marriage, that the youthful queen came first into contact with those troubled elements which were to render her life one long source of tempests and calamities. The court at this time was rent by the contending factions of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, and the protector of the realm, and Cardinal Beaufort, the king's great uncle. Each of these noblemen were anxious to ally the king so as to strengthen their own party. Gloucester had been in treaty with the Count of Armagne for his daughter, and, it is said, had gone so far as a betrothal; but Cardinal Beaufort defeated his rival's object by bringing to the young king's knowledge, the beauty and accomplishments of Margaret of Anjou, niece of Louis XI., king of France. So much was Henry enamoured of the picture and the descriptions which he received of Margaret, that he hurried on the negociation with youthful precipitance, and even sacrificed for the accomplishment, the province of Maine, the key of Normandy, for which his father had shed so much blood. The Duke of Gloucester was, of course, highly incensed at the triumph of the measures of the Beaufort faction over his own, and in which Margaret was so innocently involved. Gloucester, whose near relationship inferred a due amount of courtesy, seeming to have forgotten his disinclination to the match in his desire to shew every mark of honour to his new sovereign, met her at Blackheath, and on the following Friday, May 28, 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.

Yet

"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, spirituallygiven, 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

1 Fœdera, vol. xi., p. 76.

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 hercareer, 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 negociation (which relinquished the province of Maine, "the bulwark 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

▲ Biondi.

writer is compelled to acknowledge, 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, in the second year of the queen's marriage a parliament was called, first at Cambridge and afterwards at St. Edmundsbury (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 endwas 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," only eight weeks subsequently.

Crime is from its very nature short-sighted, and the enemies of the Duke of Gloucester soon experienced this truth by the influx of results inimical to their wishes and anticipations. So long as the duke, the heir presumptive to the crown, continued alive, the popular voice would have been too strongly in his favour to admit of the pretensions, however well founded, of another; but as his death removed an important safeguard from the reigning monarch, so it encouraged the Duke of York, descended from a branch senior to the house of Lancaster, to an indirect attempt upon the succession, by securing an extensive interest in his claims, although not appearing personally on the scene.