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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 320



un trie cignteenin ox January, 1*00, the King was married to the Princess Elizabeth ; hut believing the claims of his wife to the crown to be superior to.his own, he would not permither be crowned with him ; a slight that deeply wounded the pride of the Queen Dowager and tier daughter. From this time the widow of Edward tbe Fourth almost ceased to share in the gaieties or business of the court. Twice only did she appear in public on state occasions. In I486, when she stood godmother to her grandson, Prince Arthur ; and in the following year, when she took a prominent place at the reception of the French ambassador. Shortly afterwards, Henry projected her marriage to James the Third, King of Scots ; and as the violent death of that monarch alone prevented the match, King Henry's dislike to his mother-inlaw, was, at least at this period, evidently founded on private, rather than political motives. Early in the following year, the King assigned an annuity of four hundred pounds to Elizabeth, and shortly afterwards, declining health induced her to retire to the convent of Jîermondscy, where, as the widow of Edward the Fourth, the heir of its founder, she possessed the right of residence, and where she ended her troubled life in great poverty, on the eighth of June, 1492, leaving the following will, dated April the ninth, 1492. " In the name of God, Amen. I, Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, and late wife to the most virtuous Prince of blessed memory, Edward the Fourth. " Item ; I bequeath my body to he buried with the body of my lord at Windsor, without pompous interring or costly expense done there about. "Item; Whereas, I have no worldly goods to do my daughter, the Queen's grace, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children according to my heart and mind. I beseech God to bless her grace, with all her noble issue, and with as good a heart and mind as may be, I give her grace my blessing, and all the aforesaid my children. "Item; I will that such small stuff anu goous tnat 1 nave, DO disposed 01 in the contentation of my debts and for the health of my soul, as far as they will extend. "Item; That if any of my blood wish to have any of my said stuff, to me pertaining, I will that they have the preferment before all others. " And of this my present testament, I make, and ordain my executors, that is to say, John Ingilby, prior of the Charter House of Shene, William Sutton and Thomas Brent, doctors ; and I beseech my dearest daughter, the Queen's grace, and my son, Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, to put their good wills and help for the performance of this my testament. " In witness thereof to this my testament, these witnesses, John, Abbot of Bermondsey, and Benedîct-Cun, a doctor of physic." As the Queen Dowager had expressed a desire for a speedy and aprivate burial, two days after her death, being Whit-Sunday, says a contemporary, "her body was conveyed, without any worldly pomp, to Windsor, and there privately, through the little park, into the castle, without ringing of any bells, or receiving of the dean and canons, but only by the prior of the Charter-House of Shene, and her chaplain, Dr. Brent ; and so privily, about eleven of the clock in the night, she was buried, without any solemn dirge, or the more solemn mass done for her ; but that day there was nothing done solemnly for her, saving a low hearse, such as they use for the common people, with wooden candlesticks about it, and covered with a pall of black cloth of gold, with four silver gilt candlesticks on it, each candlestick having a taper of no great worth, and six escutcheons of her arms painted on the cloth. On the Thursday, there came to the dirge, her three youngest daughters, the Marquis of Dorset, with several other ladies and nobles. But at this solemnity there was never any new torch, but old torches, nor poor men in black gowns and hoods, but a dozen old men, too poor to provide themselves with mourning clothing, and all holding not new torches, but old torch ends. On the next morning, mass χ 2


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