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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 304



Bet and Oxford, had been slain ; and that own." Enraged at the boldness of the Edward had entered London in triumph, assumed the regal reins, and again sent her unfortunate husband a captive to the Tower. This unexpected blow so overcame the unfortunate Queen that she sank to the ground in a swoon, and, on recovering, rushed in despair with her son to the sanctuary of Beaulieu Abbey, where she met with her companion in adversity, the Countess of Warwick, who, crossing the Channel in another ship, had been separated from her by the storms, made Portsmouth in safety, and shortly after landing received the mournful tidings of her husband's defeat and death. At Beaulieu Margaret was visited and encouraged by the valiant but headstrong Duke of Somerset, the Earls of Ternbroke and Devonshire, and other nobles ; and, at length, overcome by their entreaties, and the hope of success, she quitted her asylum, met the Lancasterian lords at Path, and making a progress through Devon, Somerset, and Gloucestershire, collected a great army to fight uuder her banner. With these forces Margaret resolved to join the Earl of Pembroke, in Wales ; but the men of Gloucester had fortified the bridge over the Severn, and on reaching Tewkesbury she was overtaken by Edward, with a more numerous army. Margaret was anxious to press on to Wales, but the too obstinate Somerset scorned to fly ; and in the battio which ensued the Lancasterians were completely routed, with the loss of about three thousand men, amongst whom were the Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Devonshire, and the Lord Wenlock, who was killed for his treason or timidity by the enraged Somerset. After the battle, the Queen, torpid with grief, was taken prisoner, when, to her misery, she found her son, the Prince of \Vales, in the same condition. Margaret was reserved to grace the victor's triumph, The Prince was taken into the presence of Edward, who sternly asked him what had brought him to England. " T have entered the dominions of my father," replied the Prince, with more warmth than policy, "to revenge his injuries and to redress my Prince, the barbarous Monarch struck him on the face with his gauntlet hand, and immediately afterwards Gloucester and Clarence, or, what is more probable, the knights in their retinue, stabbed him to the heart. His remains were interred without funeral pomp in the Abbey church of Tewkesbury, where to this day his grave is distinguished by a plain slab of grey marble. On the afternoon of Thursday, May the twenty-first, Margaret entered London a prisoner in the train of the: victorious Edward, and was immediately placed in close confinement in the Tower ; and on that very night Henry the Sixth was murdered by the advice, if not the dagger, of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, afterwards Richard the Third. "Onthemorrow," says the chronicler, "tho murdered King was brought through Cornhill from the Tower, with a great company of men bearing weapons, in a manner as if they should have led him to some place of execution, to St. Paul's Cathedral, in an open coffin, bare-faced, that all men might know it to be the body of Henry where it bled. From St. Paul's the body was conveyed to Blackfriars, where the blood again gushing from the wounds upon the ground, convinced the most sceptical as to the cause of his death. In the evening the body was conveyed by water, without priest or clerk, torch or taper, singing or saying, to Chcrtsey Abbey, and there buned, with no pomp, and but little show of respect. In the second of Richard the Third it was removed to Windsor." Superstition noised abroad that miracles had been wrought at Henry's tomb ; he was worshipped by the name of Holy King Henry, and his red velvet hat was said to heal the headache of all who put it on their heads. Whether Margaret witnessed the removal of her husband's remains from the Tower, is not recorded. Her grief for the loss of her royal lord and her son was for a period inconsolable ; and to overflow her cup of sorrow, just previously death had snatched away her sister, Blanche, her brother, John of Calabria, and her sister's husband, Eerry


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