Page:The Queens of England.djvu/229

MARGARET OF ANJOU. 193 prince of valor and abilities, "of a prudent conduct and mild disposition" added to the dangerous popularity such qualities inspired, was likely from his wealth and connection to prove a most formidable opponent. The former resulted from the union of many successions, "those of Cambridge and York on the one hand, with those of Mortimer on the other, which last inheritance had been before augmented by an union of the estates of Clarence and Ulster with the patrimonial possessions of the family of March." His duchess was a Neville, daughter of Ralph, Earl of Westmoreland, a house whose influence was hourly increasing; and the Earl of Devonshire, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord Cobham, with many others, were already pre- pared to unite with its nobles in espousing the Yorkist cause. The commencement of the year 1450 saw the popular com- motion reach its height, and Suffolk, who could expect but lit- tle sympathy from the aristocracy, ill brooking, in their sensi- tiveness of hereditary pride, the exaltation of a merchant's grandson to the highest honors in the realm, seemed blindly resolved to brave the universal hostility so speedily to issue in its fall. This once determined upon, as common in such cases, no pause was allowed for reflection upon the honor or humanity of the means. Nevertheless, the queen's power, so decisively used in his behalf, rendered the accomplishment of Suffolk's ruin no easy task ; for Margaret spared not endeavors to secure his safety, but herself suggested his temporary ban- ishment, and furthered his escape to France. How terribly her efforts were frustrated appears in the end of the unfortunate duke. At the moment when he imagined himself safe, perhaps from superstitious reliance upon the verity of a prediction which had declared that he should die in the Tower, he was intercepted near Dover, by emissaries sent to destroy him, in a vessel called "St. Nicholas of the Tower," his head was struck off and his body thrown into the sea ; neither do we find that "any inquiry was made after the accomplices in this atrocious deed," though we may well conceive that Margaret deeply de- plored the loss of this her first English friend, devoted to her, as was also his duchess, and that she was unrelaxingly, though silently, meditating schemes of vengeance towards the perpe- trators, well known, though at present beyond her reach. She was, nevertheless, also meditating schemes of advant- age to the nation. She commenced the foundation of Queen's College, Cambridge, which was dedicated by the royal found-