the lady Anne and lord Thomas was made by queen Elizabeth on one side in behalf of her sister, and the earl of Surrey for his son on the other. Henry VII. offered at the altar, and gave his sister-in-law

away.

3

The ancient ceremonial of the queen of England taking to her chamber was always performed in earlier times, but its detail was not preserved till the autumn of 1489, when Elizabeth of York went through the formula previously to the birth of her eldest daughter Margaret. As described in a contemporary herald's journal, queen Elizabeth's temporary retirement assumed the character of a religious rite. "On Allhallows' eve," says this quaint chronicler,' "the queen took to her chamber at Westminster, royally accompanied, that is to say, with my lady the king's moder, the duchess of Norfolk and many other ganging before her, and besides greater part of the nobles of the realm, being all assembled at Westminster at the parliament. She was led by the earl of Oxford and the earl of Derby (the king's father-in-law). The reverend father in God, the bishop of Exeter, said mass in his pontificals. The earl of Salisbury held the towels when the queen received the host, and the corners of the towels were golden, and after Agnus Dei was sung, and the bishop ceased, the queen was led as before; when she arrived at her own great chamber, she tarried in the ante-room before it, and stood under her cloth of estate, then was ordained a void of refreshments; that done, my lord, the queen's chamberlain, in very good words, desired, in the queen's name, all her people to pray that God would send her a good hour,' and so she entered into her chamber, which was hanged and ceiled with blue cloth of arras, enriched with gold fleur-delis;" no tapestry, on which human figures were represented, according to this document, was suffered to adorn the royal bed-chamber, "being inconvenient for ladies in such a case," lest, it may be supposed, the royal patient should be affrighted by the "figures which gloomily glare." There was a rich bed and pallet in the queen's chamber: the pallet had a fine canopy of velvet of many colours, striped with gold, and garnished with red roses. Also there was an altar furnished with relics, and a very rich cupboard full of gold plate. When the queen had recommended herself to the good prayers of the lords, her chamberlain drew the traverse, or curtain, which parted the chamber, and "thenceforth no manner of officer came within the queen's chamber, but only ladies and gentlewomen after the old custom."

This etiquette was, however, broken by the arrival of the prince of Luxembourg, ambassador extraordinary from France, who, most earnestly desiring to see the queen, was introduced into her bed-chamber by her mother queen Elizabeth Woodville, his near relative; no other man, excepting the lord chamberlain and Garter king-at-arms, was admitted.

'Cottonian MS., Julius.

Mass was probably said (though the authority does not mention it) at St. Stephen's, the private chapel of Westminster Palace situate near the royal state chambers.

Sir Richard Pole, husband of Margaret, countess of Salisbury who was the queen's cousin-german.

The queen's retirement took place on the 1st of November, and the royal infant was born on the 29th of the same month.' She was named Margaret after the king's mother, and that noble lady, as godmother, presented the babe with a silver box full of gold pieces. At the christening festivals a play was performed before the king and queen in the white-hall of Westminster Palace. Subsequently at the Christmas festival a court-herald complains " there were very few plays acted on account of prevalent sickness; but there was an abbot of misrule who made much sport."

The queen's second son Henry, afterwards Henry VIII., was born at Greenwich Palace, June 28, 1491. He was remarkable for his great strength and robust health from his infancy. During the temporary retirement of the queen to her chamber previously to the birth of her fourth child, the death of her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, occurred; the royal infant, proving a girl, was named Elizabeth, perhaps in memory of its grandmother.

Towards the close of the same year, 1492, Henry VII. undertook an invasion of France, in support of the rights of Anne of Bretagne to her father's duchy. But the queen' wrote him so many loving letters, lamenting his absence, and imploring his speedy return, that he raised the siege of Boulogne, made peace, and came back to England on the 3d of November. His subjects were preparing for him plenty of employment at home, by rebellions in behalf of Perkin Warbeck, who at this time commenced his personification of Richard duke of York, the queen's brother, second son of Edward IV. and Elizabeth Woodville.3

The remaining years of the century were involved in great trouble to the king, the queen, and the whole country; the lord chamberlain, sir William Stanley (brother to the king's father-in-law), was executed, with little form of justice, for favouring the impostor, and the court was perturbed with doubt and suspicion. The bodies of the queen's brothers were vainly sought for at the Tower, in order to disprove the claims of the pretender; and, when the queen's tender love for her own family is remembered, a doubt cannot exist that her mental sufferings were acute at this crisis.

In the summer of 1495 Elizabeth accompanied the king to Lathom House, on a visit to his mother and her husband, Stanley earl of Derby. Perkin Warbeck was expected to invade England every day, and the king brought his wife with him to Lancashire, in order to regain for him the popularity he had lost by the execution of sir William Stanley. Warrington Bridge was at this time built for the passage of the royal pair. While a guest at Lathom House, the king ran a risk of his life from an odd circumstance; the earl of Derby was showing him the country from the leads, when the family fool, who had been much 1 Speed. Bernard Andreas' MS., quoted by Speed. 'Perkin has some historical partisans, who, at this day, believe in his identity with the duke of York; it should be however noticed, that he chose his time of declaring himself very suspiciously, viz., just after the death of his supposed mother, queen Elizabeth Woodville, who could alone have recognised him. 'Song of the lady Bessy; notes by Hayward. White Kennet's Collections

attached to sir William, the brother of his lord, lately put to death by the king, drew near, and pointing to a precipitous part of the leads, undefended by battlements, close to which the royal guest was standing, said to his lord, in the deep low tone of vengeance, "Tom remember Will." These three words struck the conscience of the king, and he hurried down stairs to his mother and his consort with great precipitation. He returned with Elizabeth to London soon after this adventure, when they both attended the serjeants' feast at Ely Place; the queen and her ladies dined in one room, and the king and his retinue in another. Elizabeth was this year so deeply in debt that her consort found it necessary, after she had pawned her plate for 5007., to lend her 20007.,' to satisfy her creditors. Whoever examines the privy-purse expenses of this queen will find that her life was spent in acts of beneficence to the numerous claimants of her bounty. She loved her own sisters with the fondest affection; they were destitute, but she could not bear that the princesses of the royal line of York should be wholly dependent on the English noblemen (who had married them dowerless), for the food they ate and the raiment they wore; she allowed them all, while single, an annuity of 501. per annum for their private expenses, and paid to their husbands annuities for their board of 1207. each, besides perpetual presents. In her own person she was sufficiently economical; when she needed pocket money, sums as low as 4s. 4d., seldom more that 10s. or 20s. at a time, were sent to her from her accountant Richard Decons, by the hands of one of her ladies, as the lady Anne Percy, or the lady Elizabeth Stafford, or Mistress Lee, to be put in her majesty's purse; then her gowns were mended, turned, and new bodied; they were freshly trimmed at an expense of 4d., they were freshly hemmed when beat out at the bottom. She wore shoes which only cost 12d., with latten or tin buckles. But the rewards she proffered to her poor affectionate subjects, who brought her trifling offerings of early peas, cherries, chickens, bunches of roses, and posies of other flowers, were very high in proportion to what she paid for her own shoes.

The queen lost her little daughter Elizabeth in September, 1495; this infant, if her epitaph may be trusted, was singularly lovely in person. She was buried in the new chapel built by her father in Westminster Abbey.

A very tender friendship ever existed between the countess Margaret, the king's learned and accomplished mother, and her royal daughter-inlaw. In her letters Margaret often laments the queen's delicate, or (as she terms it) crazy constitution. In one of them, written about this time, she thus mentions Elizabeth and her infants. It is written to the queen's chamberlain on occasion of some French gloves he had bought for the countess :

"Blessed be God, the king, the queen, and all our sweet children be in good health. The queen hath been a little crazed [infirm in health], but now she is well, God be thanked. Her sickness not so much amended as I would; but I trust it shall be hastily with God's grace. 'Privy-Purse Expenses of Henry VII.; Excerpta Hist., edited by sir H. Nicolas. "Privy-Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York; edited by sir H. Nicolas.

"The countess declares the gloves be right good, excepting they were too much for her hand ;" and adds, with a little sly pride in the smallness of her own fingers, "that she thinks the French ladies be great ladies altogether, not only in estates, but in their persons."

Elizabeth's infants were reared and educated at Croydon. Erasmus visited the princely children there when he was the guest of lord Mountjoy; the family picture he draws is a charming one; and oh! how its interest is augmented when it is considered that sir Thomas More and himself filled up the grouping!

He thus describes the queen's children: "Thomas More paid me a visit when I was Mountjoy's guest, and took me for recreation a walk to a neighbouring country-palace where the royal infants were abiding; prince Arthur excepted, who had completed his education. The princely children were assembled in the hall, and were surrounded by their household, to whom Mountjoy's servants added themselves. In the middle of the circle stood prince Henry, then only nine years old; he bore in his countenance a look of high rank, and an expression of royalty, yet open and courteous. On his right hand stood the princess Margaret, a child of eleven years, afterwards queen of Scotland. On the other side was the princess Mary,' a little one of four years of age, engaged in her sports, whilst Edmund, an infant, was held in his nurse's arms." There is a group of portraits at Hampton Court representing three of these children; they have earnest eyes and great gravity of expression, but the childish features of the princess Margaret, who is then about six years of age, look oddly out of the hood-coif, the fashionable head-dress of the era; even the babies in arms wore the same head-dress.

For seven long years England was convulsed by the pretensions of Perkin Warbeck. In the summer of 1495, the young king of Scotland, James IV., or rather his regency, committed a great outrage against the English monarch by receiving the impostor, and bestowing on him the hand of the beautiful lady Katharine Gordon, who was not only a princess of the royal blood of Scotland, but, by descent from Joanna Beaufort, was one of the nearest relatives Henry VII. and his mother had. Perkin invaded the English border, and Henry levied an army to give him battle, saying, "he hoped now he should see the gentleman of whom he had heard so much." Before the king departed, queen Elizabeth ornamented his basnet with her own hands with jewels; he paid, however, the expenses of her outlay, which fact rather diminishes the romance of the queen's employment.

The greatest danger existed during the succeeding years, that the queen and her children would finally be displaced by the impostor; for as soon as the insurrections in his favour were subdued in one quarter

'She married Louis XII. of France, and afterwards the duke of Suffolk; she was born 1498; Edmund, the queen's youngest son, was born at Greenwich, 1499, and died the succeeding year, which dates prove that the visit paid by Erasmus was during his short life.

'The princess Jane Stuart (younger daughter of James I. of Scotland and his queen Joanna) married the earl of Huntley. The wife of Perkin was second

cousin to Henry VII.

they broke out in an opposite direction. Perkin appeared as if by magic in Ireland, and then invaded the Cornish coast. His western partisans brought the war close to the metropolis. A sharp action was fought at Deptford Bridge and Blackheath. Henry VII. was nearly in despair of success, and seems to have been in a thorough fright, till the battle of Blackheath was decided in his favour,' June, 1497. Afterwards Perkin and his bride were severally taken prisoners. Lady Katharine Gordon was called the White Rose from her delicate beauty and the pretensions of her husband to the rights of the house of York; she loved him, and she had followed him in all his adventures since her marriage, till he left her for security in the strong fortress of St. Michael's Mount, which was captured by the royalists, and lady Katharine brought prisoner to the king, who was then at Winchester Palace. When she entered his presence she blushed excessively, and then burst into a passion of tears. King Henry remembered the near kindred of the distressed beauty to himself; he spoke kindly to her, and presented her to his queen, who took her into her service, where she remained till her second marriage with sir Matthew Cradock. The compassion shown by Henry to the disconsolate White Rose raised some reports, that he was captivated by her beauty; but he seems to have anticipated such gossip by resigning her to the care of his queen.

There was no peace for England till after the execution of the adventurous boy who took upon himself the character of the queen's brother. For upwards of two years Henry VII. spared the life of Perkin, but, inspired with a spirit of restless daring, which showed as if he came 66 one way of the great Plantagenets," this youth nearly got possession of the Tower, and implicated the unfortunate earl of Warwick, his fellow-captive, in his schemes. It is reasonably supposed that Perkin was a natural son of Edward IV., for his age agrees with that monarch's residence in Holland, 1470. Why Henry VII. spared his life so long is an historical mystery, unless he really was a merciful man, willing to abstain from blood, if his turbulent people would have permitted him. That abstinence could no longer continue. Perkin, after undergoing many degradations, in the vain hope of dispelling his delusion of royalty, was hanged at Tyburn, November 16, and the more unjustifiable execution of the earl of Warwick followed. This last prince of the name of Plantagenet was beheaded on Tower Hill, November 28, 1499. The troubles and commotions of civil war entirely ceased with the existence of this unfortunate young man.

A plague so venomous broke out in England after this event, that Henry VII., fearing lest the queen should be among its victims, took her

'See his letter, published in sir Henry Ellis' Collection, vol. i., first series, and likewise Lord Bacon's Henry VII., and Speed.

3 Perkin was taken in sanctuary, at Exeter, September, 1497.

She is buried, with her second husband, at Swansea church. After the death of Sir Matthew Cradock she married a third, and then a fourth husband. For many curious particulars relative to this lady, and her spouses, see "Historica Notices of Sir Matthew Cradock," by the Rev. J. M. Traherne, editor of the Stradling Papers."