Margaret in confinement.
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.
She is ransomed.
At length, about four years afterward, her father, King René, succeeded in obtaining her ransom for the sum of fifty thousand crowns. René 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 embassadors, who, in the name of Louis, were to be responsible for her signing the document.
1476.
The commissioner.
Margaret crosses the Channel.