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ELIZABETH WOODVILLE. 219 duced by the discovery of the bodies in the Record Office, which was formerly the Tower Chapel, too strong to leave a reasonable doubt as to their authenticity, and Richard began to breathe more freely. It is little to the credit of the queen and of her daughter Elizabeth, that after the usurpation of Richard, and his murder of the two sons of the queen — the two brothers of the princess, these ladies were anxious to ally themselves to the tyrant and murderer by marriage. Elizabeth was extremely and even re- voltingly anxious for the death of Anne, Richard's queen. In a letter to Howard, Duke of Norfolk, she called Richard "her joy and maker in this world — the master of her heart and thoughts." She expressed her surprise that the queen was so long in dying, adding, "Would she never die?" These are melancholy exhibitions of human nature. The Queen, Anne of Warkick, died ; but Richard, deterred by pow- erful political motives, declined marrying Elizabeth. The queen, whose maternal anguish, or, perhaps, rather am- bition threatened to destroy her, was constantly visited in the Sanctuary by a physician, who, being also a priest, found fre- quent opportunities of conferring with her in secret ; and, through him, negotiations were commenced between her and Margaret Beaufort, which terminated in Elizabeth's consent- ing to recognize Margaret's son, Henry, Earl of Richmond, the last of the Lancastrian line, as king of England, on his mar- rying her daughter Elizabeth, and finding means to dispossess Richard of the throne. The failure of the insurrection of Buckingham, who, dis- gusted with some act of the usurper, had taken up arms against him, and was joined by Dorset, the queen's eldest son, and her brother, Sir Edward Woodville, threw her once more into utter despair, and in 1484 she was compelled, partly through fear of starvation, to surrender herself and her daughters into 'the hands of Richard, under a solemn oath, taken in presence of the council and the city authorities, that their persons should be secure. She was then placed under the actual custody of Nesfield, a squire of the body to Richard, to whom an annual sum was al- lotted for her maintenance as a private gentlewoman. There she remained until the successful revolution that placed Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, on the throne, with her daughter Elizabeth as his partner of it.