speak the same language as themselves. Edward, without hesitation, promised to give them a prince of unexceptionable manners, a Welshman by birth, and one who could speak no other language. As soon as their acclamations of joy and promises of obedience had ceased, he ordered his infant son to be brought into the assembly, and, assuring them that he was a native of Wales, and that the first words he should be taught to speak should be Welsh, he presented him to them as their prince. By the death of Alphonso, the king's eldest son, young Edward shortly afterwards became heir to the English monarchy; the principality of Wales was annexed to the crown, and from this period it has given a title to the eldest son of the king of England. The Welsh ever bore an affection to the unfortunate Edward the Second; partly from his having been born amongst them, and partly from his having been their nominal prince. During his worst misfortunes they ever remained true to him, and after his death bewailed him in "lamentable songs."

Shortly after the birth of her son, Eleanor removed to Conway Castle, another of the magnificent structures erected by her husband in Wales. "Here," says Miss Strickland, "all the elegancies of an age further advanced in luxury than is generally supposed were assembled round her. Many traces of her abode at Conway exist; among others, her state bedchamber retains some richness of ornament; it opens on a terrace commanding a beautiful view. Leading from the chamber is an arched recess, called by tradition Queen Eleanor's oriel

"In her oriel there she was,
Closed well with royal glass;
Filled it was with imag'ry,
Every window by an bye."

It is raised by steps from the floor, and beautifully adorned with painted glass windows. Here the Queen of England,

during her levée on rising, sat to receive the ladies qualified to be presented to her, while her tirewoman combed and braided those long tresses which are the glory of a Spanish donna, and which her statues show Eleanor of Castile possessed."

In 1290, the unsettled state of affairs in Scotland rendered it imperative on Edward to hasten to that country. He had left his beloved queen in good health, but scarcely had he reached the Borders when he was overtaken by a messenger, who informed him that Eleanor was lying dangerously ill at Herdely, near Grantham, in Lincolnshire. Forgetting the necessities of state, and the dictates of ambition, in the dread of losing one so dear to him, Edward, turning his back on Scotland, hurried rapidly to Herdely; but before he arrived, his faithful Eleanor had breathed her last.

The grief of Edward at losing his queen is said to have been violent in the extreme; and, indeed, the manner in which he solemnized her obsequies affords sufficient evidence of his admiration, his distress, and his love. During the thirteen days which the royal procession occupied in proceeding from Grantham to Westminster Abbey, the king never quitted the body, and in each town in which it rested caused it to be met by the ecclesiastics of the place, who carried it before the high altar of the cathedral or church, where they performed over it solemn requiems for the repose of the soul of the deceased. "The king," says Daniel, "in testimony of his great affection to her, and as memorials of her fidelity and virtues-in which she excelled all womankind as much as she did in dignity-all along the road in the places where the body rested erected goodly crosses, engraven with her image." There were formerly thirteen of these beautiful memorials, of which those of Northampton and Waltham alone remain. The most celebrated of them-the work of Cavalini-was that at Charing Cross, which stood

nearly where the equestrian statue of Charles the First now stands. This interesting relic of a past age was unfortunately regarded by the fanatics as a relic of Popish superstition, and, in a moment of religious phrensy, was razed to the ground by an illiterate rabble.

"To our nation," says Walsingham, "Queen Eleanor was a loving mother, the column and pillar of the whole realm; therefore, to her glory, the king her husband caused all those famous trophies to be erected wherever her noble corse did rest, for he loved her above all earthly creatures. She was a godly and modest princess, full of pity, and one that showed much favour to the English nation; ready to relieve every man's grief that sustained wrong, and to make them friends that were at discord." Queen Eleanor died on the 29th of November, 1290, in the forty-seventh year of her age.

A NOTICE OF THE LIFE OF

ISABELLA OF VALOIS,

SECOND WIFE OF RICHARD THE SECOND.

ISABELLA of Valois, second wife of Richard the Second, was born at Paris in 1387, and was the eldest daughter of Charles the Sixth of France, and of Isabeau de Bavière, a woman as celebrated for her vices and extravagances as she was for her extraordinary beauty.

This match excited the utmost astonishment in England, and no little displeasure: astonishment, on account of the age of the bride, who, as some historians state, was, at the time of her betrothal, but nine years old, while others declare her to have been only seven; and displeasure, on account of the violent animosity the English had long entertained against the French, an animosity the indulgence of which had brought nothing but the most disastrous consequences during the last fifteen years of Edward the Third's reign, as well as during the earlier part of Richard's own. They desired, also, that as the king's first wife, Anne of Bohemia,-"good Queen Anne," as she is emphatically called,—had brought him no offspring, he should marry a woman capable of giving an heir to the throne, instead of a child who could not be expected to do so for many years. Before determining on this marriage, Richard had, it appears, occupied himself a good deal about the selection of a wife: "He would willingly have allied himself to the Duke of Bourgogne, or the Count of Hainault, but they had no daughters unmarried or unaffianced. The Duke of Gloucester had one of a proper age, and would fain have had