After breakfast, Queen Marguerite proceeded to business. She held a long sitting of her council—for the King being a prisoner, she was virtually and unavoidably the Lancastrian Sovereign. The Prince was yet too young to assume this position, though circumstances had forced him to the front so early that his intellect was beyond his years. He had inherited nothing of the mental weakness of his father.
The council consisted of the Prince, Warwick, Clarence, Oxford, Jaspar Tudor Earl of Pembroke (brother of King Henry by the mother's side), Walter Lyhart Bishop of Norwich (the Queen's Confessor), Ralph Mackarell, her Chancellor, and several gentlemen of less note who were in the Queen's suite. The only ladies admitted in attendance on the Queen were the Countess of Warwick and the Lady de Vivonne, the latter of whom understood no English. Any thing of serious consequence could therefore be said in that tongue.
English had now almost entirely taken the place so many centuries held by French as the Court language, and there is very little difference between the English of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the reign of Elizabeth a polishing process was slowly progressing, which has never ceased,—though how far all changes in this respect are improvements, may reasonably be open to question.
The idea of a new campaign was now mooted. Marguerite was sure of help from King Louis. The Duke of Burgundy was a more doubtful ally, who vacillated between the rivals as inclination or policy led him, and who was at that time recently married to the youngest sister of Edward IV., and yet entertaining and pensioning a number of the Lancastrian fugitive nobles. Just now the Red Rose was in the ascendant at his Court. His personal liking for Edward was doubtful, and his fear and dislike of Warwick were not doubtful. Two of the most prominent Lancastrian nobles, the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, both of whom were at his Court, did their utmost to incline him in their own direction, and the result was that he openly offered his assistance to Queen Marguerite, while he privately sent underhand information to Edward of all her plans so far as they were known to him. This, at least, is generally believed. It is, nevertheless, very possible, that the Duchess Margaret may be really responsible for much of her lord's apparent treachery. She was a woman to whose soul conspiracy and scheming were as the breath of life.
The preparations for the campaign were quietly maturing as the summer advanced. It was arranged that Warwick was to precede the Queen, landing about September, and she was to follow with more troops, two months later. But in the mean time it was desirable that some means should be found to make the interests of Warwick identical with those of King Henry. No one knew better than Marguerite that Warwick's fidelity was an article that had its price, and that he might be expected to serve any cause just so long as that cause served him. He was perpetually at see-saw, and a very little additional pressure at either end would hoist or depress him in an instant. The fact of his daughter's marriage to Clarence made him more dubious than ever. True, Clarence himself was at the present moment a Lancastrian: but how long would he remain so? He was even less to be trusted of the two: for while solid advantage was required to weigh with Warwick, caprice was enough at any time to sway the actions of Clarence. Something, therefore, must be done to provide a make-weight for Warwick's family connection with Edward: and while the Queen was considering how it could be done, King Louis made a suggestion to her which showed the best way to do it.
Human hearts will break through all state trappings, and will insist on being heard even through the roar of revolution. The young Prince of Wales, barely seventeen, had fallen passionately in love with the Lady Anne Neville, Warwick's youngest daughter, who was a year younger than himself. But people were grown up at that age in the eventful fifteenth century, which acted like a hot-bed upon the intellect and judgment of its children. That the Prince should marry the Lady Anne Neville was politically most devoutly to be wished: it was ardently desired by both the parties most concerned, by Warwick himself, and by every body but the one person into whose hands the matter had to come for decision. But so well were the feelings of Queen Marguerite known to all around her, that no one but the King of France himself dared to suggest to her the marriage of her son with Warwick's daughter. And when suggested, the proposal was at first received by the Queen with a blaze of indignation. The wrath was all for Warwick,—certainly not for the innocent Anne, whom she loved dearly for her own sake.
"What!" cried the Queen passionately, "does he ask to marry his daughter to the son of the woman he traduced? The wounds that he has inflicted on me will bleed till the day of judgment."[#]
[#] These are the Queen's own words.
King Louis had need of all his craft and cajolery (in both which he was an adept when he chose) to bring the insulted woman to what he considered reason. Perhaps, after all, she yielded rather to the pleading eyes of her darling than to any political argument. But she did yield: and usually, when Marguerite resolved to do any thing, she did it graciously.
The marriage of the Prince of Wales and the Lady Anne was celebrated in the chapel of Amboise, in July or August, 1470. It was attended by the usual ludicrous stratagems on the part of King Louis, who loved grand pageants only less than he detested paying bills for them. Accordingly, when hangings were to be put up, he bought new velvet for those parts where they could be seen, and made old serve wherever they could not. On the present occasion, His Majesty had new robes made for himself and the Queen, but the fronts only were of previously unused material,—for, as the King very truly observed, "when we are sitting in the traverse in chapel, who will see the backs of our clothes?" On this economical principle, the gold trimmings on Queen Carlotta's dress were gold in front, but at the back tinsel was employed. A splendid diamond served as a button to fasten the ostrich feather in His Majesty's hat (which was of a round form turned up with fur, like a tall "pork-pie" hat), but the velvet of which the back portion was composed was creased and worn, and the back fur had been cut from an old cloak of the Queen's.