From the day when Edward, Prince of Wales, perished in his teens at Tewkesbury, Margaret of Anjou ceased to influence the controversy with which her name is inseparably associated.
Margaret lived several years after regaining her freedom; and, deprived of the crown which her accomplishments had won, the Lancastrian queen wandered sadly from place to place, as if driven by her perturbed spirit to seek something that was no longer to be found.
Tortured by avenging memory, embittered by unavailing regret, and weary of life, Margaret of Anjou summed up her experience of the world when she wrote in the breviary of her niece, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." At length, in August, 1480, the disconsolate queen, after reaching the age of twoscore and ten, breathed her last at Damprierre, and was buried by the side of her father in the Cathedral of Angers.
[CHAPTER LII.]
THE UNION OF THE TWO ROSES.
At the time of the battle of Bosworth the eldest daughter of Edward of York and Elizabeth Woodville was immured in the Castle of Sheriff Hutton, within the walls of which her cousin, Edward Plantagenet, was also secure. After Richmond's victory both were removed to London: Elizabeth of York by high and mighty dames, to be restored to the arms of her mother; Edward of Warwick by a band of hireling soldiers, to be delivered into the hands of a jailer and imprisoned in the Tower.[18]
It soon appeared that Richmond was not particularly eager to wed the Yorkist princess. He was not, however, to escape a marriage. When Parliament met, and the king sat on the throne, and the Commons presented a grant of tonnage and poundage for life, they plainly requested that he would marry Elizabeth of York; and the lords, spiritual and temporal, bowed to indicate their concurrence in the prayer. Richmond, perceiving that there was no way by which to retreat, replied that he was ready and willing to take the princess to wife.
The marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York was fixed for the 18th of January, 1486, and the ceremony was performed at Westminster. The primate, soon to be laid in his grave and succeeded by the Bishop of Ely, officiated on the occasion, and every thing went joyously. The knights and nobles of England exhibited their bravery at a grand tournament; the citizens of London feasted and danced; the populace sang songs and lighted bonfires; the claims of the King of Portugal, the heir of John of Gaunt, and the existence of Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, the heir of Lionel of Clarence, were conveniently forgotten; and the marriage of a spurious Lancastrian prince and an illegitimate daughter of York was celebrated by poets and chroniclers as "The Union of the two Roses."
THE END.