Page:The Queens of England.djvu/249

ELIZABETH WOODVILLE. 211 king occurred some considerable time before Edward wooed, or had probably ever seen her daughter ; as in the first year of Edward's reign he not only paid the duchess the annual amount of her dower, but added 100/ in advance. Still, it is clear that the duchess had not been able to obtain equal redress for the wrongs of Elizabeth, whose first interview with the young monarch, however, seems to have been sufficient to captivate a heart never able to resist the power of beauty. This romantic rencontre is recorded as having taken place under the following circumstances : Elizabeth learning that the king was to hunt on a certain day in Whittlebury Forest, close to Grafton Castle, whither she had retired when deprived of her sons' inheritance of Bradgate, she resolved to seize this occasion of pleading for their rights with the sovereign. Accordingly, taking her boys, she stationed herself at the foot of a huge tree — which is still standing, and bears to this day, among the people of North- amptonshire, the name of the queen's oak — and waited till the king should pass, when, throwing herself at his feet, she pleaded so urgently that the paternal inheritance of her chil- dren should be restored to them, that Edward, overcome no less by her beauty than by her entreaties, not only accorded her request, but yielded his heart a captive to the lovely supplicant. Unaccustomed to woo in vain, the monarch, whose personal advantages were as striking as his position was brilliant, deemed that he would find but little difficulty in obtaining the fair object of his passion on his own terms; but Elizabeth, whose coolness of head and heart enabled her, through the whole of her career, to steer clear of the dangers to which so many of her sex, similarly situated, would have fallen victims, lost no time in making the king understand that it was only as his wife that he might ever hope to possess her. This unforeseen opposition, as might be expected, still in- creased Edward's passion, and after a struggle of no very long duration, he resolved, at all hazards, to make her his on the only terms she would accept. Accordingly, in the year 1464 — as Fabyan relates, though there are many conflicting- opinions as to the date of the event — the marriage was secretly performed at the town of Grafton, after which the king went to spend several days at Grafton Castle, as if on a friendly visit to Lord Rivers, the father of Elizabeth.