Many days had not elapsed after the funeral of the dead King, when London was startled with the news that the Princess of Wales was missing. How she had made good her escape no man knew: that she was no longer a prisoner in the Tower was the one thing certain. Princess, indeed, no one now called her. As her father's daughter, she was still the Lady Anne: and this title now replaced the royal one. The first idea was that she had taken refuge at Beaulieu with her mother; but this was soon found to be a mistake. The Countess of Warwick was still in sanctuary, though her elder daughter, the Duchess of Clarence, had departed at once to take her proper place at Court as King Edward's sister-in-law: and from her honorary imprisonment poor Lady Warwick was inditing pitiful letters to every person whom she thought likely to have any influence with King Edward, in the hope of procuring her pardon. She addressed herself to every member of the royal family in turn; and she notes as a special grievance in the petition she presently offered to the King, that "in the absence of clerkes, she hath wretyn l'res with her owne hand."[#]
[#] Cott. MS. Jul. B. xii., fol. 317.
Bitterly she complains that the King had sent letters to the Abbot of Beaulieu, on account of some "synester informacion to his said Highness made," with orders to keep her in strict prison, which was a deep grief to her. She pleads her sore poverty, being cut off from all enjoyment of her jointure and dower of the earldom of Salisbury, and also from her own Despenser lands and earldom of Warwick: and lastly, she represents that she has no opportunity of putting her case into the hands of any solicitor, nor, if she had, is there one that would dare to undertake it.
Edward paid little attention to this sad appeal. Clarence had his brother's ear: and Clarence had set his mind upon one thing,—to hand down to his children the vast Warwick inheritance, undivided. In order to do this, he grudged his mother-in-law every unnecessary penny: and he determined that so far as in him lay, his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, should never marry again. There was much danger of this calamity: not because of any wish to that effect on the part of the girl-widow, whose heart was buried for ever in the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, and whose sole ambition was to creep out of sight and hearing of the hard, cold world, into some quiet corner, where she could wait undisturbed until God called her to rejoin her dead. The danger arose not from her, but from the Duke of Gloucester. From his early boyhood, Richard of York had loved Anne Neville; or rather, to put it more accurately, he loved himself, and he found in Anne Neville a plaything the possession of which was necessary to his happiness. That he did not love her, he plainly showed by his actions. Had he done so, he would have let her alone, which was all the grace she asked at his hands. But Gloucester, like most human beings, looked upon love and persecution as exchangeable terms. He wanted Anne Neville: whether she wanted him was a point quite unnecessary to take into the account. And Anne did not want him. On the contrary, she intensely disliked him. It was not possible for her to compare to his advantage such a man as this, whose soul was ten times more crooked than his body, with her tender, brave, gallant young Plantagenet, whose death
"had made all earth and heaven
One vaulted grave to her."
It was not his disadvantages of person which made Anne shrink from Gloucester like a bird from a snake. Had the characters been exchanged, matters might have been very different.
These being the circumstances of the case, Anne had lent a willing ear to the overtures of Clarence, who sent her secret messages during her imprisonment, offering to deliver her from the Tower and keep her in hiding from Gloucester. His object was to prevent her from requiring her share of the Warwick lands: hers was to get rid of persecution from a man whom she hated. Both being agreed upon the means, however they might differ in the object, Clarence contrived to steal Anne out of the Tower, and secreted her in a very romantic manner. The Princess of Wales was actually placed in service, as a cook, in "a mean house" in the City of London. So thoroughly was she concealed, that nearly two years elapsed before the indefatigable Gloucester succeeded in discovering the place of her retreat.
King Edward appears to have been at this time in a most gracious frame of mind, which he evinced by scattering pardons and honours broadcast on all sides. Fauconbridge, the latest insurrectionist in favour of the House of Lancaster, was not only pardoned, but made Vice-Admiral. Bishop Waynflete, Lord St. John, and even the Earl of Oxford, were taken into favour. The poor Countess, his mother, who was Warwick's sister, was left in such poverty for some time that she was reduced to earn her bread by her needle, until Edward was pleased to awake to the fact of her existence, and to grant her a pension of £100 per annum. The Duke of Gloucester was created Lord High Chamberlain, the Earl of Wiltshire Chief Butler, and the Earl of Essex Treasurer of the Exchequer. The castles of Middleham and Sheriff Hutton—possessions of Warwick—were granted to Gloucester, who had always been Edward's favourite brother, notwithstanding the anger of Clarence at this poaching on his preserves. The King also granted all the lands of John Lord Lovell, deceased, to his sister the Princess Elizabeth and her husband, John Duke of Suffolk, son of the famous Duke who had been the counsellor of Queen Marguerite. This was a stroke of policy, for Suffolk was a Lancastrian. But now that Henry VI. and his son were dead, numbers of Lancastrians came in and offered themselves as henceforward loyal subjects of Edward IV., who had now in their eyes become the rightful King. Thomas Earl of Ormonde led the van: and he was followed by Jaspar Earl of Pembroke, the late King's half-brother, by the Duke of Exeter from his prison, various members of the Courtenay and Clifford families, and among others, not least, by Margaret Duchess of Somerset, the mother of the only person living who could on any pretence of right dispute the crown with Edward. This was Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond, heiress of the Beauforts, and widow of Edmund Tudor, the elder but deceased half-brother of King Henry. The Beauforts, who were the illegitimate children of John of Gaunt by Katherine Swynford, the lady who afterwards became his third wife, had been formally legitimated in 1397, by a patent which distinctly pronounced them capable of succeeding, to all "honours, dignities, positions, and offices, public and private, whether permanent or temporary, and to all feudalities and nobilities, by whatsoever name known, whether dukedom, princedom, earldom, barony, or other fief, mediately or immediately held of us ... as if they had been born in lawful wedlock."[#]
[#] Patent Roll, 20 Ric. II., Part 2.
This language undoubtedly qualified the Beauforts for the royal succession, and was meant to do so:[#] but at the time the patent was drawn up, there was little reasonable probability of any such event, for not only the reigning Sovereign, but the whole House of Lancaster, lay between them and the throne. But now that the royal family was reduced to the children of Richard Duke of York, and the heiress of the Beauforts, Edward IV. was very naturally jealous of the latter. Under the old law, she stood before him; and it was therefore necessary for his peace that some bar should be provided to her further advance. This was the more desirable, since she had a son, a clever youth of fifteen years, concerning whom an anecdote, very awkward for Edward, was in circulation among the populace. Five years[#] before this, Jaspar Tudor, going into Wales, where young Richmond was residing with Lord Pembroke, had brought him back with him, and presented him to King Henry. The King was reported to have said, laying his hand on the boy's head as he spoke,—