To dame Elizabeth Wodeville. 'Right trusty and well-beloved, we greet you well. For as much as we are credibly informed that our right hearty and well-beloved knight, Sir Hugh John, for the great womanhood and gentleness approved and known in your person-ye being sole (single) and to be married-his heart wholly have; wherewith we are right well pleased. How it be of your disposition towards him in that behalf, as yet is to us unknown. We, therefore, as for the faith true and good lordship we owe unto him at this time (and so will continue), we desire and heartily pray ye will on your part be to him well willed to the performing of this our writing and his desire. Wherein ye shall do not only to our pleasure, but we doubt not to your own great weal and worship in time to come; certifying, that if ye fulfil our intent in this matter, we will and shall be to him and you such lord as shall be to both your great weal and worship, by the grace of God, who precede and guide you in all heavenly felicity and welfare. Written by RICHARD DUKE OF York.' At this time York was Lord Protector. We presume the spelling of the letter is modernized. The fair Woodville, however, declined the honor of becoming Lady Johns, and the gallant knight consoled himself elsewhere. We will suppose that the affections of the young Elizabeth were not attracted to Sir Hugh Johns, for shortly after she formed what we are told, and what we have every reason to believe, was a very happy union with John Gray of Groby; heir of Lord Ferrers of Groby, 'possessor of the ancient domain of 'Bradgate, which was hereafter to derive such lustre from being the native place of Elizabeth's descendant, Lady Jane Gray.' Happy would it have been for the fair Elizabeth had she ended her days as Lady Gray of Groby; but it was not so to be. Her husband died in consequence of wounds received in the second battle of St. Albans, where he commanded the cavalry of Queen Margaret, and contributed in a great degree to the success of the arms of Lancaster; and, as he was removed beyond the reach of even royal vengeance, the storm, on the accession of Edward, was suffered, in a somewhat paltry spirit, to burst upon the heads of Elizabeth and her orphan children. It was while living with her mother at Grafton, that she made that attempt on the feelings of the king, which ended in the recovery of her lands and the conquest of Edward's heart. Under the able tutelage of her mother, the fair widow held her own, till Edward, unable to control his passion, surrendered at discretion, and offered her his hand. We do not mean to insinuate anything against her virtue; we have no right to do so, for it was never tainted; we only mean that but for the masterly manner in which the duchess played her game, it might not have ended as it did. So great were the talents of Jacquetta, and such was her influence over the minds of men (she was exceedingly beautiful too), that she was accused, according to the fashion of that day, of dealing in witchcraft; and to this in after times her enemies attributed the marriage of her daughter with the king. Her spells were probably the same as those which Leonora Concini exercised on her mistress, Mary de Medicis, the influence of a strong mind over a weak one. Elizabeth was privately married to the king, and from that time her lot was splendid misery. The king ruled the kingdom, and she ruled the king; and she was not proof against the temptations which beset her. Gentle, amiable, and beloved as she had been in private life, she contrived, when Queen of England, to multiply her enemies with such fatal facility, that her husband was shortly driven from his throne by his former most powerful supporters; and the ultimate ruin of her family may be traced in a great degree to the same cause; viz., the insatiable appetite of the Woodville's for dignities, office, and riches. When Edward was obliged to fly from England, and Warwick and Clarence entered London, the queen took refuge in the sanctuary at Westminster; and here, 'On the 1st November, 1470, the long hoped for heir of York was born. The queen was in want of everything; but Mother Cobb, a well disposed midwife resident in the sanctuary, charitably assisted the distressed queen in the hour of maternal peril, and acted as nurse to the little prince. Nor did Elizabeth, in this fearful crisis, want friends; for Master Serigo, her physician, attended herself and her son; while a faithful butcher, John Gould, prevented the whole sanctuary party from being starved into surrender, by supplying them with half a beef and two muttons every week.'-Ib. p. 390. It is gratifying to find that Edward liberally rewarded these faithful friends of Lady Bessee' after he had re-achieved his crown. Once more after the deaths of her husband and her brothers, and the murder of her sons, she retired to the sanctuary of Westminster; which she subsequently left to appear with her daughters at the court of Richard the Third. On the accession of Henry the Seventh, and the marriage of her daughter Elizabeth with that prince, she was restored to her rank of Queen Dowager; but on some apparent misunderstanding with him, she took up her abode in the Convent of Bermondsey, whether as a prisoner or not it is difficult to determine. She died in that retreat in poverty so great, that she had nothing to bequeath to the queen her daughter but her blessing. She was buried at Windsor, in St. George's Chapel. We come now to the life of Anne of Warwick, and to the reign of Richard the Third, the whole of which is more or less debateable ground. His views, his motives, his actions, even his person, have furnished themes for controversy. Most of the questiones vexatæ of this and the two former reigns have reference to him. As Shakspere has portrayed him, he could have no peer, except perhaps in some Byzantine emperor, or the great enemy of mankind himself. We are almost afraid to enter on any observations concerning him; our limits forbid a fair discussion of the subject, and mere assertion would go for nothing as it ought. Two things, however, we can say with certainty, that Miss Strickland's impartiality appears to forsake her when speaking of him, and that the epithets which she bestows upon him of royal hunchback, venomous hunchback, &c., are in exceedingly bad taste at least, not to say that the fact of his being hunchbacked has never been proved at all. There seems to be a sort of ludicrous connexion in the minds of some writers, between Richard's (quasi) hump, and the crimes with which he is charged. As if his hump impelled him to his iniquities; as if it were his fault instead of his misfortune; or as if it were a greater presumption and a more deadly sin in a man with a hump to murder his nephews, than it would have been in a fine strait fellow of six feet high. Our morality is often too conventional, and we ourselves are too frequently the unconscious slaves of preconceived opinions. Anne of Warwick was the second daughter of the great earl of that name, and had been married to the young Prince of Wales nine months only before his death at Tewkesbury.* She was taken prisoner and brought to London with Queen Margaret, and the Duke of Gloster immediately declared himself a suitor for her hand. The Duke of Clarence, who had married Isabel the eldest daughter of Warwick, strenuously opposed his brother's intentions, wishing to preserve the entire possessions of the houses of Warwick and Salisbury to himself. He abducted the young lady, and actually placed her in the disguise of a servant in a house in London, where she was discovered by the Duke of Gloster. Miss Strickland affirms, that the Lady Anne detested Richard, and concurred in this plan in order to avoid him; and quotes as her authority an extract from the continuator of the Croyland Chronicle, which asserts no such thing, but only states the facts of Anne's concealment by her brother-in-law, and her discovery by Gloster. The king interfered for the settlement Probably she was only betrothed to the Prince of Wales, as Queen Margaret was averse from the match, and the marriage was not to be consummated till Warwick had recovered the greater part of England for Henry— which he never did. of the dispute, and the marriage of Anne and Richard took place probably in 1473, as their son and heir was born at Middleham Castle, in Yorkshire, in 1474; from whence the duke, who was governor of the northern marches, set out, on the death of Edward the Fourth, to intercept his young nephew on his road to London. If the plans of Richard for seizing the crown were not previously arranged, they must have been suddenly conceived and as promptly executed; unless, indeed, as Mr. Turner supposes (and his argument is so masterly that we are greatly inclined to agree with him), the duke's first measures were intended merely to remove the Woodvilles from power, and cripple their resources; perceiving that, unless prevented, they would do as much for him; and he was led on from step to step to the seizure of the supreme power, by the positions in which he was successively placed, and by the aspect of events. We refer the reader to Turner's History, vol. iii. book 3, as we cannot here enter into the discussion. Richard seized the crown, and in July, 1483, about three months after the death of Edward the Fourth, he and Anne of Warwick were crowned king and queen, and their son Edward was created Prince of Wales, shortly after the two young princes were put to death in the Tower; and in the spring of the following year, the only child of Richard followed them to the grave. He died at Middleham Castle, 31st March, 1484, while his parents were absent at Nottingham, and the heart of his doting mother received a shock from which it never recovered. From that time her health declined, and she sunk gradually but surely towards the grave. Whether she participated in, or was even cognizant of, the crimes by which her husband gained the crown, and sought to retain it in his family, we know not. If she were, her progress to the tomb might well be hastened by such considerations as must have crowded on her. Nature may sometimes triumph over conscience, when the welfare of a beloved object is secured as the wages of iniquity; but the death of that child for whom so much was dared and suffered, must have left her to sink unrespited beneath that worst of all miseries, the consciousness of having committed a mighty crime-in vain. It has been said that Richard hastened her end for the purpose of marrying his niece, Elizabeth of York. The reason adduced for supposing that he ever thought of Elizabeth seems to be, that she appeared at a high festivity at court, attired in robes of the same materials and fashion as the queen's; and the proof that he 'made quick conveyance of her good aunt Anne' is, his intention of marrying Elizabeth. Surely we need not stay to point out the futility of this. The only thing that looks like proof on this point is, the letter said to have been written by Elizabeth herself to the Duke of Norfolk (quoted in Bucke's History of Richard the Third), in which she begs the duke's good offices to procure for her the hand of the king; protesting that she was entirely his in heart and thought; and complaining that the greater part of February is past, and the queen not yet dead. This letter, according to Bucke, remains in the autograph or original draught under her own hand, in the magnificent cabinet of Thomas Earl of Arundel ' and Surrey.' Dr. Lingard says, that after the queen's death rumours were afloat that Richard had poisoned her, and that this letter seems to confirm the suspicion. He has the following note respecting it. It is evident that Richard had not only promised to marry her, but had told her that the queen would die in February. Hence 'she observes that the greater part of February is past, and the queen still alive."* Now with all respect for the authority of Dr. Lingard, we conceive that this is erroneous, and that he has, unintentionally doubtless, given an impression on the subject which the words of Bucke do not warrant. Those words are as follows. After saying that Elizabeth had objected to the king, that his wife was alive, he continues, 'But 'the answer which was made in the name of the king to the Lady 'Elizabeth concerning his queen was, that she would be no im'pediment of long continuance, being a very weak woman in a • consumption, and past hopes of recovery; her physicians giving "THEIR opinions she would not live past the middle of February 'next following; nor guessed they much amiss, for she died in 'the next month, March.'+ This is a most material modification of the case. It was not declared by Richard that his queen would not survive the month of February, from which the charitable deduction has been drawn, that he was resolved she should not. He merely says that such are the opinions of her physicians: a very different thing from the delivery of a dictum in the shape of a prophecy, by a man who had it in his power to fulfil his own prediction. Mr. Turner has noticed the statement of Bucke, together with what must strike every one accustomed to such investigations, viz., that the substance-not the words-of Elizabeth's letter is given; a circumstance in itself sufficient to qualify the authority of the statement. He has not, however, remarked the discrepancy which we have pointed out, and which we think entirely invalidates the inference which has been drawn from the statement of Bucke, who admits, however, that the king did make Lingard, vol. iii. 4to., p. 594. + Bucke's Life of Richard the Third, in Kennett's History of England, vol. i. p. 568. |