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FRANCIS LANCELOTT, ESQ. Queens of England. Vol.1.

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FRANCIS LANCELOTT, ESQ.
Queens of England. Vol.1.
page 286



the leading' nobles and ladies of the courts of France and Lorraine. At the tournament that followed, Pierre de Breze, him who afterwards performed such deeds of valour in the wars of the Roses, tilted and vanquished all the nobles who had the boldness to accept his challenge. The bride's father also took part in the jousts, and overcame the King of France ; but the prize was won by the Count St. Pol, whose skill and prowess astonished all beholders. The marriage fête lasted eight days, and the spot where it was held is to this day called the Place de Carrière. l'ho festival concluded, Margaret was delivered over in due form to the Marquis of Suffolk. The King of France accompanied her for two leagues from Nanci, and parted from her in tears. Her father attended her to Bar le Duc. The parting was heart-rending. Neither the father nor the daughter could speak; and after many fond embraces, they, with bursting hearts and choking sobs, separated in silence.. Never, say the French chroniclers, was a princess so adored by her kindred and friends as Margaret of Anjou. ,H.çr Ufe through, Margaret was beset by the torments of poverty. On the day of her bctrothmciit she had hoped never again to feel the pressure of pecuniary necessity ; but experience soon convinced her of her error. From the court of her needy father she had set out with no money and but little apparel; and so exhausted was the exchequer of her royal lord, that ho could not forward her a farthing till after the parliament called in February, 1445, had granted him the half of a fifteenth on all moveables. The progress, therefore, w7as Blow. After her arrival at Bar le Duc, we have no tidings of her till the subsequent March ; when, attended by the Marquis of Suffolk and his wife, the Countess of Shrewsbury, the Dukes of Alençon and Calabria, and many other nobles and ladies, she proceeded from Pontoise to Nantes on the nineteenth, to Vernon on the twentieth, to Rouen on the twenty-third,. and sleeping at Bokamsbard monastery on the thirtyfirst, passed on the following day through Pountamdeur, arrived at Hoirafleet on the third of April, took shipping to Kiddacaws a few days after, whence, with her suite, she embarked on the eighth, and landed at Porchester on the following day. On the tenth she proceeded by water to Southampton, where, overcome by sea-sickness, she was lodged in God's House, a religious hospital, free to sick travellers of every grade, from the King himself to the poorest vassal. Here, ere she had recovered. frpjn„thfl effects of the voyage, she was attacked by the small-pox. But although severe, the attack was short, as in little more than a week afterwards she was married to Henry with the usual ceremony in Tichfield Abbey. The doctor's bill paid to Master Francis, the physician who attended Margaret in this sickness, and in the journey and voyage to England, amounted to three pounds nine shillings and twopence. Only three pounds nine shillings and twopence for sedulously attending to the health of the highest lady in the land during a three-months' perilous travel ! What, in the present day, would the big-wigs of the medical profession say to such terms ? Although the nation had loudly clamoured against the Queen, her youth, beauty, and prestige insured for her a cordial reception. "After her~ marriage," says the chronicler, " which took place on the twenty-second of April, she was honourably escorted to London by the lords and estates of the realm ^Kho met her in sundry nlaces^ jwith great retinues of men in (livers liveries, with her emblem flower—the daisy—in their bonnets, and with their sleeves bordered, and some beaten with goldsmiths' work in most costly manner. The Duke of Gloucester, in an especial manner, met her at Blackheatli, with five hundred men in rich liveries, and conveyed her to Greenwich, where she was met by the Mayor, aldermen, and sheriffs of the City of London, in scarlet array, and the crafts of the same, all-riding on horseback, in blue gowns, with bordered sleeves and red hoods, who, on the twentieth of May, conveyed her with her train through Southwark, and


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