Margaret of Anjou Part 27

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tewkesbury.]

[Sidenote: Margaret's maternal anxiety.]

Margaret's heart was full of anxiety and agitation as the hour for the commencement of hostilities drew nigh. She had often before staked very dear and highly-valued friends in the field of battle, but now, for the first time, she was putting to hazard the life of her dearly beloved and only son. It was very much against her will that she was brought to incur this terrible danger. It was only the sternest necessity that compelled her to do it.

[Sidenote: She witnesses the fight.]

When the battle began, Margaret withdrew to an elevation within the park, from which she could witness the progress of the fight. For some time her army remained on the defensive within their intrenchments, but at length Somerset, becoming impatient and impetuous, determined on making a sally and attacking the a.s.sailants in the open field.

[Sidenote: Somerset.]

So, ordering the others to follow him, he issued forth from the lines.

Some obeyed him, and others did not. After a while he returned within the lines again, apparently for the purpose of calling those who remained there to account for not obeying him. He found Lord Wenlock, one of the leaders, sitting upon his horse idle, as he said, in the town. He immediately denounced him as a traitor, and, riding up to him, cut him down with a blow from his battle-axe, which cleft his skull.

[Sidenote: Panic and flight.]

The men who were under Lord Wenlock's banner, seeing their leader thus mercilessly slain, immediately began to fly. Their flight caused a panic, which rapidly spread among all the other troops, and the whole field was soon in utter confusion.

[Sidenote: Margaret's terror.]

[Sidenote: She swoons.]

When Margaret saw this, and thought of the prince, exposed, as he was, to the most imminent danger in the defeat, she became almost frantic with excitement and terror. She insisted on rus.h.i.+ng into the field to find and save her son. Those around found it almost impossible to restrain her. At length, in the struggle, her excitement and terror entirely overpowered her. She swooned away, and her attendants then bore her senseless to a carriage, and she was driven rapidly away out through one of the park gates, and thence by a by-road to a religious house near by, where it was thought she would be for the moment secure.

[Sidenote: Capture of the prince.]

The poor prince was taken prisoner. He was conveyed, after the battle, to Edward's tent. The historians of the day relate the following story of the sad termination of his career.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Murder of Prince Henry.]

When Edward, accompanied by his officers and the n.o.bles in attendance upon him, covered with the blood and the dust of the conflict, and fierce and exultant under the excitement of slaughter and victory, came into the tent, and saw the handsome young prince standing there in the hands of his captors, he was at first struck with the elegance of his appearance and his frank and manly bearing. He, however, accosted him fiercely by demanding what brought him to England. The prince replied fearlessly that he came to recover his father's crown and his own inheritance. Upon this, Edward threw his glove, a heavy iron gauntlet, in his face.

[Sidenote: Death of the Prince of Wales.]

The men standing by took this as an indication of Edward's feelings and wishes in respect to his prisoner, and they fell upon him at once with their swords and murdered him upon the spot.

[Sidenote: Margaret receives the tidings.]

Margaret did not know what had become of her son until the following day. By that time King Edward had discovered the place of her retreat, and he sent a certain Sir William Stanley, who had always been one of her most inveterate enemies, to take her prisoner and bring her to him. It was this Stanley who, when he came, brought her the news of her son's death. He communicated the news to her, it was said, in an exultant manner, as if he was not only glad of the prince's death, but as if he rejoiced in having the opportunity of witnessing the despair and grief with which the mother was overwhelmed in hearing the tidings.

[Sidenote: She is borne to London.]

[Sidenote: Her condition on the journey.]

Stanley conveyed the queen to Coventry, where King Edward then was, and placed her at his disposal. Edward was then going to London in a sort of triumphant march in honor of his victory, and he ordered that Stanley should take Margaret with him in his train. Anne of Warwick, her son's young bride, was taken to London too, at the same time and in the same way.

During the whole of the journey Margaret was in a continued state of the highest excitement, being almost wild with grief and rage. She uttered continual maledictions against Edward for having murdered her boy, and nothing could soothe or quiet her.

[Sidenote: Her last hope.]

[Sidenote: Murder of the king.]

It might be supposed that there would have been one source of comfort open to her during this dreadful journey in the thought that, in going to the Tower, which was now undoubtedly to be her destination, she should rejoin her husband, who had been for some time imprisoned there. But the hope of being thus once more united to almost the last object of affection that now remained to her upon earth, if Margaret really cherished it, was doomed to a bitter disappointment. The death of the young prince made it now an object of great importance to the reigning line that Henry himself should be put out of the way, and, on the very night of Margaret's arrival at the Tower, her husband was a.s.sa.s.sinated in the room which had so long been his prison.

[Sidenote: Terrible reverse of fortune.]

Thus all Queen Margaret's bright hopes of happiness were, in two short months, completely and forever destroyed. At the close of the month of March she was the proud and happy queen of a monarch ruling over one of the most wealthy and powerful kingdoms on the globe, and the mother of a prince who was endowed with every personal grace and n.o.ble accomplishment, affianced to a high-born, beautiful, and immensely wealthy bride, and just entering what promised to be a long and glorious career. In May, just two months later, she was childless and a widow. Both her husband and her son were lying in b.l.o.o.d.y graves, and she herself, fallen from her throne, was shut up, a helpless captive, in a gloomy dungeon, with no prospect of deliverance before her to the end of her days. The annals even of royalty, filled as they are with examples of overwhelming calamity, can perhaps furnish no other instance of so total and terrible reverse of fortune as this.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION.

[Sidenote: The body of King Henry.]

On the day following the a.s.sa.s.sination of Henry, the body was taken from the Tower and conveyed through the streets of London, with a strong escort of armed men to guard it, to the Church of St. Paul's, there to be publicly exhibited, as was customary on such occasions.

Such an exhibition was more necessary than usual in this case, as the fact of Henry's death might, perhaps, have afterward been called in question, and designing men might have continued to agitate the country in his name, if there had not been the most positive proof furnished to the public that he was no more.

[Ill.u.s.tration: View of Chertsey.]

[Sidenote: Borne away on the river to Chertsey.]

The body remained lying thus during the day. When night came, it was taken away and carried down to Blackfriar's--a landing upon the river nearly opposite Saint Paul's. Here there was a boat lying ready to receive the hea.r.s.e. It was lighted with torches, and the watermen were at their oars. The hea.r.s.e was put on board, and the body was thus borne away, over the dark waters of the river, to the lonely village of Chertsey, where it had been decided that he should be interred.

[Sidenote: Margaret in confinement.]

[Sidenote: Wallingford.]

For some time after Henry's death Margaret was kept in close confinement in the Tower. At length, finding that every thing was quiet, and that the new government was becoming firmly established, the rigor of the unhappy captive's imprisonment was relaxed. She was removed first to Windsor, and afterward to Wallingford, a place in the interior of the country, where she enjoyed a considerable degree of personal freedom, though she was still very closely watched and guarded.

[Sidenote: She is ransomed.]

At length, about four years afterward, her father, King Rene, succeeded in obtaining her ransom for the sum of fifty thousand crowns. Rene was not the possessor of so much money himself, but he induced King Louis to pay it, on condition of his conveying to him his family domain.

The ransom was to be paid in five annual installments, but on the payment of the first installment the queen was to be released and allowed to return to her native land. It was stipulated, too, that, as a condition of her release, she was formally and forever to renounce all the rights of every kind within the realm of England to which she might have laid claim through her marriage with Henry. It might have been supposed that they would have required her to sign this renunciation before releasing her. But it was held by the law of England, then as now, that a signature made under durance was invalid, the signer not being free. So it was arranged that an English commissioner was to accompany her across the Channel, and go with her to Rouen, where he was to deliver her to the French emba.s.sadors, who, in the name of Louis, were to be responsible for her signing the doc.u.ment.

[Sidenote: 1476.]

[Sidenote: The commissioner.]

[Sidenote: Margaret crosses the Channel.]

This plan was carried into effect. Margaret set out from the castle of Wallingford under the care of a man on whom Edward's government could rely for keeping a close watch over her, and taking care that she went on quietly through England to the port of embarkation. This port was Sandwich. Here she embarked on board a vessel, with a retinue of three ladies and seven gentlemen, and bade a final farewell to the kingdom which she had entered on her bridal tour with such high and exultant expectations of grandeur and happiness.