Page:The Queens of England.djvu/260

222 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. rebellious times. But more peculiarly was it the fate of the younger of these, Anne of Warwick, to be a child of sorrow. This lady was the first who bore the title of. Princess of Wales, and she was the last queen of the race of Plantagenet. Yet we find some difficulty in tracing her eventful history, in its extremes of prosperity and adversity, and blended as it is with the annals of party strife. Anne Neville was born in the castle of Warwick in the year 1454, just at the commencement of the civil war between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, in which her father took so promi- nent a part. At first the Earl of Warwick was the chief sup- porter of the Duke of York and his party, and it was mainly through his influence that Edward, Earl of March, the son of the duke, became King of England. Owing to these cir- cumstances, Anne of Warwick, as tradition tells us, became in her youth much associated with her cousins of the hotfse of York, the youngest of whom, Richard, entertained for her a strong and ardent affection. But he was not the ob- ject of the early choice of this princess. Nor was this very surprising; for this duke, who, upon his brother's accession, obtained the title of the Duke of Gloucester, was deformed in person. "At his nativity," says Rous, a contemporary, "the scorpion was in the ascendant. He came into the world with teeth, and with a head of hair reaching to his shoulders. He was small of stature, with a short face and unequal shoulders, the right being higher than the left." The hateful qualities of his mind were even less likely to win upon the regard of the gentle Anne, who from the first seems to have looked upon him with feelings of aversion and dread. Warwick had united his eldest daughter, Isabella, to George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Richard, for the purpose of attaching him to his interests, at the time when, withdraw- ing in disgust from the court of King Edward, where he felt he had been treated with undeserved neglect and indifference, he had resolved to revenge himself. The deep-seated resentment of the earl did not immediately manifest itself; but its aim was sure, and every step he took was certain in its progress and effect against the Yorkist king, as it had been previously in his favor; and yet the king him- self did not suspect the evil which was working against him, but even employed the earl and his son-in-law to levy troops in his support. These were to have been employed against