After the re-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 15-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, 24s. A formidable insurrection, headed by the duke of Buckingham, recalled Richard to the metropolis: he left his son, for security, among his northern friends, but queen Anne accompanied her husband.

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 that she shared with Sir James Tyrell 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 Tyrell two manors from Sir William Knyvet, who paid this the purchase-money for his life. Anne's share amounts to considerably more than her proportion of queen-gold. If the queen had even passively consented to the unrighteous advancement of her family, punishment quickly followed; for her son, on the last day of March, 1484, died at Middleham-castle "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 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 possibility of its being set aside. As Edward IV.'s parliament considered that it was possible for Anne to divorce Richard nine years previously, 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, archbishop of York, against his wife's Continuator of Croyland.

1485.]

Decline and death.

51

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 prophecy, from these expressions, "that Richard's queen would suddenly depart from this world." His speech got circulated in the guardchamber 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 toilet, 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 queen's kindness to her husband's niece is thus noted :-"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 langour or heal the wound in the queen's breast for the loss of her son."2 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 table 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 16, 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-standers; 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. 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.

ELIZABETH OF YORK,

SURNAMED THE GOOD,

QUEEN-CONSORT OF HENRY VII.

CHAPTER I.

THE birth of Elizabeth of York was far from reconciling the fierce baronage of England to the clandestine marriage of their young sovereign, Edward IV., with her mother-a marriage which shook his throne to the foundation. The prospect of female heirs to the royal line gave no satisfaction to a population requiring from an English monarch not only the talents of the satirist, but the abilities of the military leader-not only the wisdom of the legislator, but the personal prowess of the gladiatorial champion. After three princesses (the eldest of whom was our Elizabeth) had been successively produced by the queen of Edward IV., popular discontent against the house of York reached its climax. The princess Elizabeth was born at the palace of Westminster, February 11, 1466, according to the inscription on her tomb. She was baptized in Westminster-abbey, with as much pomp as if she had been the heir-apparent of England; indeed, the attention Edward IV. bestowed upon her in her infancy was extraordinary. He was actuated by a strong presentiment that this beautiful and gracious child would ultimately prove the representative of his line.

The infant princess, at a very tender age, took her place and precedence, clothed in deep mourning, when the corpse of her grandfather, Richard duke of York, with that of his son, Edmund earl of Rutland, were re-interred at the church of Fotheringay. The bodies were exhumed from their ignoble burial at Pontefract, and conveyed into Northamptonshire with regal state. Richard duke of Gloucester, a youth of fourteen, followed them as chief mourner. Edward IV., his queen, and their two infant daughters, Elizabeth and Mary, met the hearses in Fotheringay churchyard, and attended the solemn rites of the re-interment, clad in black weeds. The next day the king, the queen, and the royal infants offered at requiem. Margaret countess of Rich

mond offered with them. Thus early in life was our Elizabeth connected with this illustrious lady, whose after-destiny was so closely interwoven with her own. Margaret had the charge of the young Elizabeth, as lady governess; she was then the second wife of the Yorkist partisan, lord Stanley.1

Some years passed before the important position of Elizabeth, as heiress of the realm, was altered by the birth of brothers. Her father settled on her for life the manor of Great-Lynford, in Buckinghamshire;2 he likewise authorized his exchequer to pay his queen 4007. yearly, in liquidation of her expenses, incurred for her daughters Elizabeth and Mary; and this revenue was to be continued till their disposal in marriage. These royal children were nursed at the palace of Shene. The hand of his infant heiress was more than once deceitfully proffered by Edward IV. as a peace-offering to his enemies when fortune frowned upon him. He thus deluded the Nevilles, when he was their prisoner at Middleham. Next he endeavoured to interrupt the treaty of marriage between the Lancastrian prince of Wales and Anne of Warwick, by offering "my lady princess" to queen Margaret as a wife for her son. On the subsequent flight of Edward IV. from England, the young Elizabeth and her two little sisters were the companions of their distressed mother in Westminster sanctuary. The birth of her eldest brother Edward, in that asylum, removed the princess Elizabeth, for some years, from her dangerous proximity to the disputed garland of the realm. When liberated from the sanctuary by her victorious father, she was carried with the rest of his children, first to her grandmother's residence of Baynard's-castle, on one of the city wharfs; and then to the Tower of London, and was sojourning there during the dangerous assault made on that fortress by Falconbridge from the river. The full restoration of Edward IV. succeeded these dangers, and peaceful festivals followed the re-establishment of the line of York. At a ball given in her mother's chamber at Windsor-castle, in honour of the visit of Louis of Grauthuse, 1472, the young Elizabeth danced with her royal father, she being then six or seven years old: she afterwards danced with the duke of Buckingham, the husband of her aunt, Katherine Woodville. The same year, her father offered her in marriage to the young exiled earl of Richmond, intending by that means to beguile him into his power.

When the princess was about nine years old, her father made an expedition to France, with the avowed purpose of re-conquering the acquisitions of Henry V. Before he embarked he made his will, dated at Sandwich, in which he thus mentions Elizabeth :

"We will that our daughter Elizabeth have ten thousand marcs towards her marriage; and that our daughter Marie have also ten thou

1 Cole MS.

2 Privy-purse Expenses, and Memoir of Elizabeth, by Sir Harris Nicolas