A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Margaret of Anjou
MARGARET OF ANJOU,
Queen-consort of England, was daughter of Regnier, or René, titular King of Sicily, Naples, and Jerusalem, descended from the Counts of Anjou, and brother of Charles the Fifth of France. Brought up in the petty court of Anjou, her natural strength of mind was not enfeebled by indulgence, and she was considered the most accomplished princess of her time, when she was selected by Cardinal Beaufort for the wife of Henry the Sixth. She was married in 1445, when only sixteen, to share with a weak prince a throne disturbed by rancorous and contending factions. She naturally threw herself into that party which had favoured her marriage, of which the Earl of Suffolk was the chief; and when the destruction of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, was effected by their machinations, she was generally suspected of being privy to his murder. The surrender of the province of Maine, in France, to the king of that country, who was Margaret's uncle, in consequence of a secret article in the marriage treaty, aggravated the odium under which Margaret and Suffolk laboured; and the sacrifice of that nobleman, which followed, is said to have cost her more tears than are usually shed on the loss of a political ally.
Her son was born in 1453, while the national discontents were rising to a crisis. She was soon after called upon to exert all the vigour of her character in resisting the Yorkists, who had defeated the royal army at St. Albans. Though Henry the Sixth was taken prisoner, she raised troops, and defended the royal cause with so much spirit, that she effected a favourable compromise, and restored her husband to the sovereignty The war, however, was renewed, and at the battle of Northampton, the Lancasterians were totally routed, and Henry again taken prisoner. Margaret, with her son, fled to Durham, and thence to Scotland. Returning into the north of England, she interested the nobles there in her cause, and collected a powerful army. With this she met the Duke of York at Wakefield, and totally defeated him. The duke was killed in this battle, and, by the order of Margaret, his head was struck off, and, crowned with a paper diadem, was placed on the gates of York. His youngest son, Rutland, was killed in cold blood by the furious Clifford; several prisoners of distinction were put to death, and an example given of the cruelties which marked the progress of this unnatural war.
In 1461, the queen defeated the Earl of Warwick, partizan of Edward, son of the Duke of York, at the second battle of St. Albans, in which she recovered the person of the king, now a passive agent in the hands of friends and foes. She displayed her fierce and cruel disposition, by ordering Lord Bonville to be executed, to whose care Henry had been entrusted by the Yorkists, and to whom the powerless king had promised pardon. The approach of Edward with a superior force, obliged her again to retreat to the north, and that prince was elevated to the throne by the Londoners, and the lords of the Yorkists.
Margaret's influence, and the licentiousness in which her troops were indulged, increased the Lancasterian party to sixty thousand men. It was met at Towton, in Yorkshire, by Edward and Warwick, at the head of forty thousand men, and a battle was fought, March, 1461, which was the bloodiest of these destructive wars. The Lancasterians were defeated, and Margaret and Henry, who had remained at York, hastily retreated to Scotland. After soliciting aid in vain from that country, she went over to France for the same purpose: and by offering to deliver Calais to the French, should Henry be restored to the crown, she obtained the succour of two thousand men, with which she landed in Scotland. Joined by some of her partizans, and a band of freebooters, she made an incursion into the north of England, and proceeded to Hexham. She was there met and defeated by a force under Lord Montacute.
The unfortunate queen fled with her son into a forest, where she was seized by a band of robbers, who took her jewels, and treated her with great indignity. While they were quarrelling about the booty, Margaret escaped, and fled wearied and terrified into the depths of the forest. Seeing a man coming towards her with a drawn sword, she summoned up all her courage, and going to meet him, "Here, friend," said she, "I commit to your protection the son of your king." Struck by the nobleness and dignity of her manner, and charmed with the confidence reposed in him the man, though a robber, devoted himself to her service. He concealed the queen and her son for some time in the woods, and then led them to the coast, whence they escaped to Flanders.
Margaret went to her father's court, where she remained several years, while her husband was imprisoned in the Tower of London, n 1470, the rebellion of the Earl of Warwick against Edward, and his subsequent arrival in France, produced an alliance between him and the exiled queen. It was agreed that Warwick should endeavour to restore the house of Lancaster, and that Edward, the son of Margaret and Henry, should marry his daughter Anne, which alliance took place in France. Warwick landed in England, and Edward was forced to escape to Flanders. Margaret was preparing to second his efforts; but on the very day on which she landed at Weymouth, the battle of Barnet, April 14th., 1471, terminated the life of Warwick, and the hopes of the confederacy. Margaret, with her son, took refuge in the sanctuary of Beaulieu, in Hampshire, intending to return to France; but being encouraged by the increase of her party, she advanced to Tewksbury, where she was met by Edward, who totally defeated her, and took her and her son prisoners, the latter of whom was cruelly put to death. Margaret was confined in the Tower, where her husband died about the same time. Louis the Eleventh ransomed her, and she returned again to her father's protection.
The home to which the loving René welcomed his forlorn daughter, was a castle on the River Mayence; the scenery was beautiful, and the king had a gallery of paintings and sculpture, which he took delight in adorning with his own paintings; he had also ornamented the walls of his garden with heraldic designs carved in marble. It was in such pursuits that Rene, a true Proven9al sovereign, found alleviations for his afflictions. But Margaret's temperament was of too stormy a nature to admit of the slightest alleviation of her griefs. She passed her whole time in bitter regrets, or unavailing sorrows. This intensity of suffering affected her constitution. The agonies and agitations she had undergone seemed to turn her blood into gall: her eyes were sunken and hollow, her skin was disfigured by a dry, scaly leprosy, until this princess, who had been a miracle of beauty, such as the world seldom beholds, became a spectacle of horror.
Her errors and her misfortunes were the result of the circumstances by which she was surrounded; her talents and virtues were of a lofty stamp; had she been married to a stronger-minded man, she would no doubt have been a better and a happier woman.