The child was born on a certain religious holiday called St. Edward's day, and so they named him Edward. In a few months after his birth he was made Prince of Wales, and it is by this title only that he is known in history, for he never became king.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XII.
Illness of the King.
Strange reverses.
The circumstances of poor Margaret's case seem to have reversed all ordinary conditions of domestic happiness. The birth of her son placed her in a condition of extreme and terrible danger, while the immediate bursting of the storm was averted, and the sufferings which she was in the end called upon to endure in consequence of it were postponed for a time by what would, in ordinary circumstances, be the worst possible of calamities, the insanity of her husband. Happy as a queen, says the proverb, but what a mockery of happiness is this, when the birth of a child is a great domestic calamity, the evils of which were only in part averted, or rather postponed, by an unexpected blessing in the shape of the insanity of the husband and father.
The king's insanity.
His condition concealed.
Margaret's policy.
Henry's health had been gradually declining during many months before the little Edward was born. The cares and anxieties of his situation, which often became so extreme as to deprive him of all rest and sleep, became, at length, too heavy for him to bear, and his feeble intellect, in the end, broke down under them entirely. The queen did all in her power to conceal his condition from the people, and even from the court. It was comparatively easy to do this, for the derangement was not at all violent in its form. It was a sort of lethargy, a total failure of the mental powers and almost of consciousness—more like idiocy than mania. The queen removed him to Windsor, and there kept him closely shut up, admitting that he was sick, but concealing his true situation so far as was in her power, and, in the mean time, carrying on the government in his name, with the aid of Somerset and other great officers of state, whom she admitted into her confidence. Parliament and the public were very uneasy under this state of things. The Duke of York was laying his plans, and every one was anxious to know what was coming. But Margaret would allow nobody to enter the king's chamber, under any pretext whatever, except those who were in her confidence, and entirely under her orders.
Death of the archbishop.