A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Margaret of Anjou
She was however the most accomplished princess of that age, both in body and mind; and the rival parties of the cardinal of Winchester and the Duke of Gloucester, being then ambitious of choosing a wife for the young Henry II, King of England, that of the former prevailed, and Margaret was elected, who seemed to possess those qualities, which would enable her to acquire an ascendant over Henry, and to supply all his defects and weaknesses. In 1443, the treaty of marriage was ratified in England; and Margaret, on her arrival, fell immediately into close connections with the cardinal and his party; who, fortified by her powerful patronage, resolved on the final ruin of the Duke of Gloucester, and that good prince at length fell a sacrifice to court intrigues, after being accused of treason and thrown into prison, where he was soon after found dead in his bed; and, although his body bore no marks of outward violence, no one doubted but he had fallen a victim to the vengeance of his enemies.
Henry being a mere cypher in the government, the administration was in the hands of the queen and the earl of Suffolk, who had contracted universal odium at the time of the duke of York's aspiring to the crown. Margaret was considered as a French woman, and a latent enemy to the kingdom, who had betrayed the interests of England, in favour of her family and country. Suffolk was considered as her accomplice; and the downfal of the Duke of Gloucester, who was universally beloved, in which they were both known to have been concerned, rendered them yet more obnoxious.
The partizans of the Duke of York, taking advantage of this, impeached the earl of Suffolk of various crimes; and the king, in order to save his minister, banished him the kingdom for five years. But his enemies, sensible that he enjoyed the queen's confidence, and would be recalled the first opportunity, got him intercepted and murdered on his passage.
The duke of Somerset succeeded to Suffolk's power in the administration, and credit with the queen; but he having been unfortunate in the French war, was equally the object of dislike, and the queen and council, unable to protect him, were obliged to give him up: he was also sent to the tower; and, as Henry had fallen into a distemper which increased his natural imbecility, the duke of York was created Protector during pleasure.
But Henry recovering, was advised by his friends to reverse all this; in consequence, the duke of York levied an army, fought a battle near St. Albans, and took the king prisoner; but treated him with lenity, and was again appointed protector. But this did not last long. The civil war broke out, with various success, till it was thus accommodated, at last, by the parliament; that Henry, who was now again a prisoner, should retain the dignity of king, during life, and that the duke should succeed him, to the prejudice of his infant son, then in Scotland with his mother, who after the late battle at Northampton had fled with him to Durham, and from thence to Scotland: but soon returning, she applied to the Northern barons, and employed every argument to obtain their assistance. Her affability, insinuation, and address, talents in which she excelled, aided by caresses and promises, wrought a powerful effect on all who approached her. The admiration of her great qualities was succeeded by compassion towards her helpless situation. The nobility of that quarter entered warmly into her cause; and she soon found herself at the head of an army of twenty thousand men, collected with a celerity which was neither expected by her friends, nor apprehended by her enemies.
In the mean time, the duke of York hastened northward with a body of five thousand men to suppress, as he imagined, the beginnings of insurrection, lie met the queen near Wakefield; and, though he found himself so much outnumbered, his pride would not permit him to flee before a woman. He gave battle, was killed in the action; and his body being found among the slain, his head was cut off by Margaret's orders, and fixed on the gates of York, with a paper crown upon it, in derision of his pretended title.
Immediately after this important victory, Margaret marched towards London, where the earl of Warwick was left with the command of the Yorkists. On the approach of the Lancastrians, that nobleman led out his army, reinforced by a strong body of Londoners, and gave battle to the queen at St Alban's, 1461. Margaret was again victorious; she had the pleasure of seeing the formidable Warwick flee before her, and of rescuing the king her husband from captivity.
But her triumph, though glorious, was of short duration, and not altogether complete. Warwick was still in possession of London, on which she made an unsuccessful attempt; and Edward, eldest son of the late duke of York, having gained an advantage over the Lancastrians at Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford, advanced upon her from the other side, and was soon in a condition to give her battle with superior forces. She was sensible of her danger in such a situation, and retreated with her army to the north; while Edward entered the capital amidst the acclamations of the citizens, where he was soon proclaimed king, under the title of Edward IV.
Young Edward, now in his twentieth year, was of a temper well fitted to make his way in these times of war and havock. He was not only bold, active, and enterprizing, but his hardness of heart rendered him impregnable to all those movements of compassion, which might relax his vigour in the prosecution of the most bloody designs against his enemies. Hence the scaffold, as well as the field, during his reign, incessantly smoked with the noblest blood in England. The animosity between the two families was become implacable, and the nation, divided in its affections, took different party symbols. The adherents of the house of Lancaster chose, as their mark of distinction, the red rose; those of York assumed the white: and these civil wars were thus known all over Europe by the name of the "Quarrel between the Two Roses."
Queen Margaret, as I have observed, had retired to the north. There great multitudes flocked to her standard; and she was able, in a few week, to assemble an army of sixty thousand men. Edward and the earl of Warwick hastened with forty thousand, to check her progress. The two armies met at Towton; and, after an obstinate conflict, the battle terminated in a total victory on the side of the Yorkists. Edward would give no quarter, and the routed army was pursued as far as Tadcaster, with great bloodshed and confusion. Above thirty-six thousand men are said to have fallen in the battle and pursuit. Henry and Margaret had remained at York during the action; but learning the defeat of their army, fled with great precipitation into Scotland. The queen of England however found there a people little less divided by faction than those she had left. Their king being a minor, and the regency disputed by two opposite parties. They agreed however to assist them, on her offering to deliver up to them the important fortress of Berwick, and to contract her son to a sister of their king. The dauntless Margaret, stimulated by natural ambition with her northern auxiliaries, and the succours from France, ventured once more to take the field, and make an inroad into England. But she was able to penetrate no farther than Hexham. There she was attacked by lord Montacute, brother to the earl of Warwick, and warden of the marches, who totally routed her motley army, and all who were spared in the field suffered on the scaffold.
The fate of this unfortunate heroine, after this overthrow, was equally singular and affecting. She fled with her son into a forest, where she endeavoured to conceal herself; but was beset during the darkness of the night by robbers, who despoiled her of her jewels, and treated her with the utmost indignity. She made her escape, however, while they were quarrelling about the booty; and wandered some time with her son in the most unfrequented thickets, spent with hunger and fatigue, and ready to sink beneath the load of terror and affliction. In this wretched condition she was met by a robber, with his sword naked in his hand; and, seeing no means of escape, suddenly embraced the bold resolution of trusting entirely to his faith and generosity. "Approach, my friend!"—cried she, presenting to him the young prince!—"to you I commit the safety of your king's son." Struck with the singularity of the events and charmed with the confidence reposed in him, the robber became her protector. By his favour she dwelt concealed in the forest, till she found an opportunity to make her escape into Flanders, whence she passed to her father in France, and lied several years in privacy and retirement. Henry was less fortunate. He lay concealed during twelve months in Lancashire; but was at last detected, delivered up to Edward, and thrown into the Tower, 1465.
In 1470, however, Warwick had been sent to France to negociate a marriage between Edward IV, and Bona of Savoy; but Edward had, in his absence, given his people an English queen. This the earl resented; and though Edward knew he had been ill used, he was too proud to make an apology; and Warwick, in revenge, drew over the duke of Clarence to his party, by marrying him to his eldest daughter, coheiress of his immense fortune, besides many other discontented lords. Finding his own name insufficient, and being chased to France, Warwick entered into a league with queen Margaret, formerly his inveterate enemy.
On his return to England, he was joined by the whole of the Lancastrians. Both parties prepared for a general decision by arms; and a decisive action was every moment expected, when Edward, finding himself betrayed by the marquis of Montague, and suspicious of his other commanders, suddenly abandoned his army and fled to Holland. Henry VI. was taken from his confinement in the Tower, and placed once more upon the English throne; and a parliament, called under the influence of Warwick, declared Edward IV. an usurper.
But so fugitive a thing is public favour, that Warwick was no sooner at the helm of government than his popularity began to decline, though he does not appear to have done any thing to deserve it. The young king was emboldened to return; and though he brought with him but two thousand men, he soon found himself in a condition to obey the call. The city of London opened its gates to Edward; who thus became at once master of his capital and of the person of his rival Henry, doomed to be the perpetual sport of fortune. The arrival of Margaret, whose presence would have been of infinite service to her party, was every day expected. In the mean time the duke of Clarence deserted to the king, and the two parties came to a general engagement. The battle was fought with great obstinacy, and uncommon valour on both sides; but an accident threw at last the ballance on that of the Yorkists. Edward's cognisance was a sun; Warwick's, a star with rays; and the mistiness of the morning rendering it difficult to distinguish them, a body of the Lancastrians were attacked by their friends, and driven off the field. Warwick did all that experience, conduct, or valour, could suggest to retrieve the mistake, but in vain. He had engaged on foot that day, contrary to his usual practice, in order to shew his troops, that he was resolved to share every danger with them; and now, sensible that all was lost, unless a reverse of fortune could be wrought by some extraordinary effort, he rushed into the thickest of the engagement, and fell, covered with a multitude of wounds. His brother, underwent the same fate; and as Edward had issued orders to give no quarter, a great and undistinguishing slaughter was made in the pursuit.
Queen Margaret, and her son prince Edward, now about eighteen years of age, landed from France the same day on which that decisive battle was fought. She had hitherto sustained the shocks of fortune with surprizing fortitude; but when she received intelligence of her husband's captivity, and of the defeat and death of the earl of Warwick, her courage failed her, and she took sanctuary in the abbey of Beaulieu, in Hampshire.
Encouraged, however, by the appearance of Tudor, earl of Pembroke, and several other noblemen, who exhorted her still to hope for success, she resumed her former spirit, and determined to assert to the last her son's claim to the crown of England. Putting herself once more at the head of the army, which increased in every day's march, she advanced through the counties of Devon, Somerset and Gloucester. But the ardent and expeditious Edward overtook her at Tewkesbury, on the banks of the Severn, where the Lancastrians were totally routed and dispersed. Margaret and her son were taken prisoners, and brought to the king, who asked the prince, in an imperious tone. How he dared to invade his dominions? "I came hither," replied the undaunted youth, more mindful of his high birth than his present fortune, "to revenge my father's wrongs, and rescue my just inheritance out of your hands." Incensed at his freedom, instead of admiring the boldness of his spirit, the ungenerous Edward barbarously struck him on the face with his gauntlet; and the dukes of Clarence and Gloucester, Lord Hastings, and Sir Thomas Gray, taking this blow as a signal for farther violence, hurried him aside, and instantly dispatched him with their daggers. Margaret was thrown into the Tower, where her husband had just expired: whether by a natural or violent death is uncertain, though it is generally believed the duke of Gloucester killed him with his own hands.
The hopes of the house of Lancaster were thus extinguished by the death of every legitimate prince of that family. Edward, who had no longer any enemy that could give him anxiety or alarm, was encouraged once more to indulge himself in pleasure and amusement; but he was not deaf to the calls of ambition, and planned an invasion of France. He passed over in 1475, to Calais, with a formidable army; but Lewis proposed an accommodation by no means honourable to France, except in one article, which was a stipulation for the life of Margaret, who was still detained in custody by Edward. Lewis paid fifty thousand crowns for her ransom; and this princess, who, in active scenes of life, had experienced so remarkably the vicissitudes of fortune, passed the remainder of her days in privacy. The situations into which she was thrown in a manner unsexed her; as she had the duties and hardships of a man to encounter, she partook of the same character, and was as much tainted with ferocity, as endowed with the courage of the age in which she lived; though the pictures which remain of her shew a countenance at once mild and dignified.
She died 1481, as is supposed of grief for the misfortunes of a husband and son she had so faithfully served, having in person fought twelve battles.