"Past the pearl-gates, through the golden—
When we meet His face who died,
Each want full filled, new and olden,
We, too, shall be satisfied."
King Edward quitted England on the twentieth of June, 1475, for a personal interview with the King of France. At this interview an agreement was entered into between the monarchs for the ransom of the royal widow who for four years had been pining out her life in English prisons. What moved that inscrutable mortal, King Louis, to lay down twenty thousand crowns in hard cash for the ransom of Marguerite, is one of those puzzles in psychology which must ever remain perplexities. It is true that her father, King René, was pressing him hard—as hard as it lay in his dreamy artist nature: and it is also true that Louis was urged—or at any rate professed to be so—by considerations of the outraged dignity of his own family, to which Marguerite belonged, through her continued imprisonment—a statement which might be true—and by feelings of compassion for a helpless woman—an assertion which hardly can be so. One of the last men to be moved by sentiments of pity, particularly towards a woman, was surely Louis XI.
King Edward was more consistent with himself. He took care to have the money in his pocket before he permitted Marguerite to escape his fingers. And, with that intense smallness of soul which—with the exception of King John—was most remarkable in him of all the Plantagenet monarchs, he refused, in his diplomatic negotiations, to bestow upon Marguerite the regal title. Judging from his diction, he was puzzled what to call her. He hit at last upon her title as a Neapolitan Princess, less than which it might seem impossible to give her. On the thirteenth of November, 1475, Thomas Thwaytes, knight, received the royal command to deliver "the most serene Lady Margaret, daughter of the illustrious Prince King René," to Sir Thomas Montgomery; and the latter was ordered to convey the said lady to "the most serene Prince, Louis of France, our dearest cousin." The ingenious way in which King Louis is very civilly described, without admitting his title to the crown of France, is worth notice. But when the actual delivery came, it was found that a lower indignity yet was possible for poor Marguerite. She was required to sign a formal renunciation of all rights and privileges in England which her marriage-settlements had secured to her. In this document no title whatever was given to her. She was not even recognised as a foreign Princess. The opening words described her as "Margaret, sometime in England married." The words would have truly described every cottager's wife in the kingdom who bore the name of Margaret—then one of the commonest names in England. But when the insulting document was laid down before the Queen, she calmly took up the pen and signed it. What did titles signify to her now? There was no husband, there was no son, whose rights could be invaded, and whose feelings could be outraged, by any renunciation of name or dignity on her part. She felt with Valentina of Orleans—"Rien ne m' est plus: plus ne m' est rien!" So she quietly signed her regal "Marguerite,"[#] and by her own act laid down that queenly title which had been so heavy and blood-stained a burden.
[#] In signing English documents, the Queen spelt her name "Margarete."
Queen Marguerite survived this action six years, which she spent, so long as her father lived, with him at the Castle of Reculée, near Angers, and afterwards at Château Dampierre, near Saumur. Her last years were burdened with the horrible disease of leprosy,[#] supposed to have been caused by intense grief. It was on the twenty-fifth of August, 1482, at Château Dampierre, that she laid down the weary weight of life, and as we would fain believe and surely may be allowed to hope, went to keep eternal holiday.
[#] What was meant by leprosy in the Middle Ages is an unsettled question. It was evidently a cutaneous disease of some kind, but is generally supposed not to have been identical with the oriental leprosy of which we read in Scripture.
Perhaps, for her, there was no other way into the Garden of God than through that great and howling wilderness. If it were so, how glad a sight must the lights of home have been to that storm-wearied voyager!
This interview between the two Kings had a further pecuniary result—the payment during some time of an annual sum of £11,000 by France to England—a sum which the King of France was careful to term a pension, and which the King of England took equal care to call a tribute. Edward also made a further effort to obtain the young Earl of Richmond, who was the fly in his ointment: but that wary youth, learning the fact, took instant sanctuary, and the effort was in vain.
The winter of 1475-6 opened with rejoicings for the birth of the Princess Anne—perhaps the best of the daughters of Edward IV. She certainly possessed two qualities enjoyed by few of the others—lowliness and modesty. The rejoicings were increased a week after New Year's Day, when a second royal Anne was born—the only child of the Duchess of Exeter and Sir Thomas St. Leger. She lived to become the stock of the Dukes of Rutland: and she transmitted to them, not only the property of her mother, but also lands on which she had no equitable claim—those of the hapless Duke of Exeter. Had there been any right feeling in the heart of his wretched widow, she would have bequeathed those estates to the last of the Holands of Exeter, his sister Anne, Lady Douglas, and they would have descended to her posterity, the Nevilles of Raby. She did it not: and she had little time to do it. The baby daughter had scarcely more than entered this troublesome world, ere the soul was required of the Princess Anne of Exeter. She died on the twelfth or fourteenth of January, 1476. For her an awful account waited at the judgment bar.
In the last month of that year, Isabel Duchess of Clarence was summoned before the same Divine tribunal. Her death was a signal misfortune to her husband. Her influence had not been altogether for good, by any means, yet such good as had been in it was sorely missed. Clarence had loved her, and it is doubtful if he ever loved any other creature. After her death he became reckless even beyond his former unscrupulous condition. Gloucester kept his sinister eyes upon him, ready to take advantage of the first political slip which he might make. It came two years after Isabel's death. Clarence, who had previously quarrelled with his brother Edward, was present at a trial of some old women on the charge of witchcraft, and took the liberty of remonstrating with the judges on too much haste in condemning the prisoners, as it seemed to him, without sufficient evidence. Gloucester took advantage of this circumstance. He adroitly represented to the King that Clarence had interfered with the course of justice, thus taking upon himself a prerogative of the Crown: that there was strong reason to think that he contemplated a journey to Burgundy, with the view of assisting the Duke, then in hostility to King Edward: that he had many times tried to supplant his brother. The intensely superstitious Edward was reminded of an old prediction that "G. shall reign after E.,"—and did not George begin with the fated letter? So did Gloucester, but of course my Lord Duke omitted that suggestion. He succeeded in frightening Edward into a panic. Clarence was arrested, placed before the Council, and condemned unheard. He was sentenced to be hanged: but at the intercession of the Duchess Cicely, mother alike of the King and of the criminal, the sentence was commuted to imprisonment in the Tower. Ten days later, in his dungeon, Clarence was found dead, his head hanging over an open butt of his favourite liquor, malvoisie. Hence arose the popular tradition that he had been allowed to choose the manner of his death, and that he had elected to be drowned in a butt of malmsey. In all probability the open butt had been placed in his cell by order of the brother who so well knew Clarence's weakness, and hoped by this means to get rid of him without any legal responsibility as to his end. So perished the false and faithless Clarence,—destroyed, like many another, on a mere technical pretext, when on other counts he had previously merited execution a hundred times over.