Kitabı oku: «Margaret of Anjou», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XII.
Illness of the King

Strange reverses.

The circumstances of poor Margaret's case seem to have reversed all ordinary conditions of domestic happiness. The birth of her son placed her in a condition of extreme and terrible danger, while the immediate bursting of the storm was averted, and the sufferings which she was in the end called upon to endure in consequence of it were postponed for a time by what would, in ordinary circumstances, be the worst possible of calamities, the insanity of her husband. Happy as a queen, says the proverb, but what a mockery of happiness is this, when the birth of a child is a great domestic calamity, the evils of which were only in part averted, or rather postponed, by an unexpected blessing in the shape of the insanity of the husband and father.

The king's insanity. His condition concealed. Margaret's policy.

Henry's health had been gradually declining during many months before the little Edward was born. The cares and anxieties of his situation, which often became so extreme as to deprive him of all rest and sleep, became, at length, too heavy for him to bear, and his feeble intellect, in the end, broke down under them entirely. The queen did all in her power to conceal his condition from the people, and even from the court. It was comparatively easy to do this, for the derangement was not at all violent in its form. It was a sort of lethargy, a total failure of the mental powers and almost of consciousness—more like idiocy than mania. The queen removed him to Windsor, and there kept him closely shut up, admitting that he was sick, but concealing his true situation so far as was in her power, and, in the mean time, carrying on the government in his name, with the aid of Somerset and other great officers of state, whom she admitted into her confidence. Parliament and the public were very uneasy under this state of things. The Duke of York was laying his plans, and every one was anxious to know what was coming. But Margaret would allow nobody to enter the king's chamber, under any pretext whatever, except those who were in her confidence, and entirely under her orders.

Death of the archbishop. 1454. A deputation.

At length, about two months after Edward was born, the highest dignitary of the Church, the Archbishop of Canterbury, died. This event, according to the ancient usages of the realm, gave the House of Lords the right to send a deputation to the king to condole with him, and to ascertain his wishes in respect to the measures to be adopted on the occasion.

This committee accordingly proceeded to Windsor, and coming, as they did, under the authority of ancient custom, which in England, in those days, had even more than the force of law, they could not be refused admission. They found the king lying helpless and unconscious, and they could not obtain from him any answer to what they said to him, or any sign that the slightest spark of intelligence remained in his mind.

The duke's policy. The duke made regent.

The committee reported these facts to the House of Lords. Finding how serious the king's illness was, the party of the Duke of York concluded to wait a little longer. There was a great probability that the king would soon die. The life, too, of the infant son was of course very precarious. He might not survive the dangers of infancy, and in that case the Duke of York would succeed to the throne at once without any struggle. So a sort of compromise was effected. Parliament appointed the Duke of York protector and defender of the king during his illness, or until such time as Edward, the young prince, should arrive at the proper age for undertaking the government. It was at this time that young Edward was made Prince of Wales. The conferring of this title upon him was confirmed by both houses of Parliament. They thus solemnly decreed that, though the Duke of York was to exercise the government during the sickness of the king and the minority of Edward, still the kingdom was to be reserved for Edward as the rightful heir, and he was to be put into possession of the sovereign power, either as regent in case his father should continue to live until that time, or as king if, in the interim, he should die.

The duke's hopes.

The Duke of York and his friends acceded to this arrangement, in hopes that the prince never would arrive at years of discretion, but that, before many years, and perhaps before many months, both father and son would die. He thought it better, at any rate, to wait quietly for a time, especially as, during the period of this waiting, he was put in possession substantially of the supreme power.

Margaret dissatisfied.

Queen Margaret herself was extremely dissatisfied with the arrangement by which the Duke of York was made regent, since it of course deprived her of all her power. But she could do nothing to prevent it. Besides, her mind was so filled with the maternal feelings and affections which her situation inspired and with the care of the infant child, that she had for a time no heart for political contention.

Her condition.

Then, moreover, the Parliament, at the same time that they made the Duke of York regent, and thus virtually deprived the queen of her power, settled upon her an ample annuity, by means of which she would be enabled to live, with her son, in a state becoming her rank and her ambition. One motive, doubtless, which led them to do this was to induce her to acquiesce in this change, and remain quiet in the position in which they thus placed her.

In addition to the liberal supplies which the Parliament granted to the queen, they made ample provision for maintaining the dignity and providing for the education of the young prince. Among other things, a commission of five physicians was appointed to watch over his health.

She concludes to submit.

Margaret was the more easily persuaded to acquiesce in these arrangements from believing, as she did, that the state of things to which they gave rise would be of short duration. She fully believed that her husband would recover, and then the regency of the Duke of York would cease, and the king—that is, the king in name, but she herself in reality—would come into power again. So she determined to bide her time.

The queen's establishment at Greenwich.

She accordingly retired from London, and set up an establishment of her own in her palace at Greenwich, where she held her court, and lived in a style of grandeur and ceremony such as would have been proper if she had been a reigning queen. Her old favorite, too, Somerset, was at first one of the principal personages of her court; but one of the first acts of the Duke of York's regency was to issue a warrant of arrest against him. The officers, in executing this warrant, seized him in the very presence-chamber of the queen. Margaret was extremely incensed at this deed. She declared that it was not only an act of political hostility, but an insult. She was, however, entirely helpless. The Duke of York had the power now, and she was compelled to submit.

Her care of Henry.

But she was not required to remain long in this humiliating position. She procured the best possible medical advice and attendance for her husband, and devoted herself to him with the utmost assiduity, and, at length, she had the satisfaction of seeing that he was beginning to amend. The improvement commenced in November, about eight or ten months after he first fell into the state of unconsciousness. When at length he came to himself, it seemed to him, he said, as if he was awaking from a long dream.

Recovery.

Margaret was overjoyed to see these signs of returning intelligence. She longed for the time to come when she could show the king her boy. He had thus far never seen the child.

The prince shown to him. Marks of returning consciousness.

We obtain a pretty clear idea of the state of imbecility or unconsciousness in which he had been lying from the account of what he did and said at the interview when the little prince was first brought into his presence. It is as follows:

"On Monday, at noon, the queen came to him and brought my lord prince with her, and then he asked 'what the prince's name was,' and the queen told him 'Edward,' and then he held up his hands, and thanked God thereof.

"And he said he never knew him till that time, nor wist what was said to him, nor wist where he had been, while he had been sick, till now; and he asked who were the godfathers, and the queen told him, and he was well content.

"And she told him the cardinal was dead,¹² and he said he never knew of it till this time; then he said one of the wisest lords in this land was dead.

"And my Lord of Winchester and my Lord of St. John of Jerusalem were with him the morrow after Twelfth day, and he did speak to them as well as ever he did, and when they came out they wept for joy. And he saith he is in charity with all the world, and so he would all the lords were. And now he saith matins of our Lady and even-song, and heareth his mass devoutly."

The king reinstated.

The very first moment that the king was able to bear it, Margaret caused him to be conveyed into the House of Lords, there to resume the exercise of his royal powers by taking his place upon the throne and performing some act of sovereignty. The regency was, of course, now at an end, and the Duke of York, leaving London, went off into the country in high dudgeon.

The queen, of course, now came into power again. The first thing that she did was to release Somerset from his confinement, and reinstate him as prime minister of the crown.

CHAPTER XIV.
Anxiety and Trouble

A great deal of trouble. Angry disputes. Insubordination.

For about six years after this time, that is, from the birth of Prince Edward till he was six years old, and while Margaret was advancing from her twenty-fourth to her thirtieth year, her life was one of continual anxiety, contention, and alarm. The Duke of York and his party made continual difficulty, and the quarrel between him, and the Earl of Warwick, and the other nobles who espoused his cause, on one side, and the queen, supported by the Duke of Somerset and other great Lancastrian partisans on the other, kept the kingdom in a constant ferment. Sometimes the force of the quarrel spent itself in intrigues, manœuvres, and plottings, or in fierce and angry debates in Parliament, or in bitter animosities and contentions in private and social life. At other times it would break out into open war, and again and again was Margaret compelled to leave her child in the hands of nurses and guardians, while she went with her poor helpless husband to follow the camp, in order to meet and overcome the military assemblages which the Duke of York was continually bringing together at his castles in the country or in the open fields.

The king's health during all this period was so frail, and his mind, especially at certain times, was so feeble, that he was almost as helpless as a child. There was an hereditary taint of insanity in the family, which made his case still more discouraging.

Modes of amusing the king. The singing boys.

Queen Margaret took the greatest pains to amuse him, and to provide employments for him that would occupy his thoughts in a gentle and soothing manner. When traveling about the country, she employed minstrels to sing and play to him; and, in order to have a constant supply of these performers provided, and to have them well trained to their art, she sent instructions to the sheriffs of the counties in all parts of the kingdom, requiring them to seek for all the beautiful boys that had good voices, and to have them instructed in the art of music, so that they might be ready, when called upon, to perform before the king. In the mean time they were to be paid good wages, and to be considered already, while receiving their instruction, as acting under the charge and in the service of the queen.

Pretended pilgrimages. The king comforted.

Margaret and the other friends of the king used to contrive various other ways of amusing and comforting his mind, some of which were not very honest. One was, for example, to have different nobles and gentlemen come to him and ask his permission that they should leave the kingdom to go and make pilgrimages to various foreign shrines, in order to fulfill vows and offer oblations and prayers for the restoration of his majesty's health. The king was of a very devout frame of mind, and his thoughts were accustomed to dwell a great deal on religious subjects, and especially on the performance of the rites and ceremonies customary in those days, and it seemed to comfort him very much to imagine that his friends were going to make such long pilgrimages to pray for him.

So the nobles and other great personages would ask his consent that they might go, and would take solemn leave of him as if they were really going, and then would keep out of sight a little while, until the poor patient had forgotten their request.

One real pilgrimage.

It is said, however, that one nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, who was so kind-hearted a man that he went by the name of the Good Duke, actually made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem on this errand, and there offered up prayers and supplications at the famous chapel of the Holy Sepulchre for the restoration of his sovereign's health.

The philosopher's stone. Promised treasures.

They used also to amuse and cheer the king's mind by telling him, from time to time, that he was going to be supplied with inexhaustible treasures of wealth by the discovery of the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone was an imaginary substance which the alchemists of those days were all the time attempting to discover, by means of which lead and iron, and all other metals, could be turned to gold. There were royal laboratories, and alchemists continually at work in them making experiments, and the queen used to give the king wonderful accounts of the progress which they were making, and tell him that the discovery was nearly completed, and that very soon he would have in his exchequer just as much money as his heart could desire. The poor king fully believed all these stories, and was extremely pleased and gratified to hear them.

Intervals of good health.

There were times during this interval when the king was tolerably well, his malady being somewhat periodical in its character. This was the case particularly on one occasion, soon after his first recovery from the state of total insensibility which has been referred to. The Duke of York, as has already been said, was put very much out of humor by the king's recovery on this occasion, and by his own consequent deposition from the office of regent, and still more so when he found that the first act which the queen performed on her recovery of power was to release his hated enemy, Somerset, from the prison where he, the Duke of York, had confined him, and make him prime minister again. He very soon determined that he would not submit to this indignity. He assembled an army on the frontiers of Wales, where some of his chief strong-holds were situated, and assumed an attitude of hostility so defiant that the queen's government determined to take the field to oppose him.

Restoration of Somerset. Armies marshaled.

So they raised an army, and the Duke of Somerset, with the queen, taking the king with them, set out from London and marched toward the northwest. They stopped first at the town of St. Alban's.¹³ When they were about to resume their march from St. Alban's, they saw that the hills before them were covered with bands of armed men, the forces of the Duke of York, which he was leading on toward the capital. Somerset's forces immediately returned to the town. Margaret, who was for a time greatly distressed and perplexed to decide between her duty toward her husband and toward her child, finally concluded to retire to Greenwich with the little prince, and await there the result of the battle, leaving the Duke of Somerset to do the best he could with the king.

St. Alban's. The parley.

Very soon a herald came from the Duke of York to the gates of St. Alban's, and demanded a parley. He said that the duke had not taken arms against the king, but only against Somerset. He professed great loyalty and affection for Henry himself, and only wished to save him from the dangerous counsels of a corrupt and traitorous minister, and he said that if the king would deliver up Somerset to him, he would at once disband his armies, and the difficulty would be all at an end.

Reply.

The reply sent to this was that the king declared that he would lose both his crown and his life before he would deliver up either the Duke of Somerset or even the meanest soldier in his army to such a demand.

Attack on the town. Terrible conflict.

The Duke of York, on receiving this answer, immediately advanced to attack the town. For some time Henry's men defended the walls and gates successfully against him, but at length the Earl of Warwick, who was the Duke of York's principal confederate and supporter in this movement, passed with a strong detachment by another way round a hill, and through some gardens, and thence, by breaking down the wall which stood between the garden and the town, he succeeded in getting in. A terrible conflict then ensued in the streets and narrow lanes of the city, and the attention of the besieged being thus drawn off from the walls and the gates, the Duke of York soon succeeded in forcing his way in too.

The king taken prisoner.

King Henry's forces were soon routed with great slaughter. The Duke of Somerset and several other prominent nobles were killed. The king himself was wounded by an arrow, which struck him in the neck as he was standing under his banner in the street with his officers around him. When these his attendants saw that the battle was going against him, they all forsook him and fled, leaving him by his banner alone. He remained here quietly for some time, and then went into a shop near by, where presently the Duke of York found him.

The duke's demeanor.

As soon as the Duke came into the king's presence he kneeled before him, thus acknowledging him as king, and said,

"The traitor and public enemy against whom we took up arms is dead, and now there will be no farther trouble."

"Then," said the king, "for God's sake, go and stop the slaughter of my subjects."

1457. The king conveyed to London.

The duke immediately sent orders to stop the fighting, and, taking the king by the hand, he led him to the Abbey of St. Alban's, a venerable monastic edifice, greatly celebrated in the histories of these times, and there caused him to be conveyed to his apartment. The next day he took him to London. He rendered him all external tokens of homage and obedience by the way, but still virtually the king was his prisoner.

Margaret's despair.

Poor Queen Margaret was all this time at Greenwich, waiting in the utmost suspense and anxiety to hear tidings of the battle. When, at length, the news arrived that the battle had been lost, that the king had been wounded, and was now virtually a prisoner in the hands of her abhorred and hated enemy, she was thrown into a state of utter despair, so much so that she remained for some hours in a sort of stupor, as if all was now lost, and it was useless and hopeless to continue the struggle any longer.

The king's wound. The queen and the prince.

She however, at length, revived, and began to consider again what was to be done. The prospect before her, however, seemed to grow darker and darker. The fatigue and excitement which the king had suffered, joined to the effects of his wound, which seemed not disposed to heal, produced a relapse. The Duke of York appears to have considered that the time had not yet come for him to attempt to assert his claims to the throne. He contented himself with so exhibiting the condition of the king to members of Parliament as to induce that body to appoint him protector again. When he had thus regained possession of power, he restored the king to the care of the queen, and sent her, with him and the little prince, into the country.

Grand reconciliation. 1458. Mutual distrust.

One of the most extraordinary circumstances which occurred in the course of these anxious and troubled years was a famous reconciliation which took place at one time between the parties to this great quarrel. It was at a time when England was threatened with an invasion from France. Queen Margaret proposed a grand meeting of all the lords and nobles on both sides, to agree upon some terms of pacification by which the intestine feud which divided and distracted the country might be healed, and the way prepared for turning their united strength against the foe. But it was a very dangerous thing to attempt to bring these turbulent leaders together. They had no confidence in each other, and no one of them would be willing to come to the congress without bringing with him a large armed force of followers and retainers, to defend him in case of violence or treachery. Finally, it was agreed to appoint the Lord-mayor of London to keep the peace among the various parties, and, to enable him to do this effectually, he was provided with a force of ten thousand men. These men were volunteers raised from among the citizens of London.

Meeting of the nobles.

When the time arrived for the meeting, the various leaders came in toward London, each at the head of a body of retainers. One man came with five hundred men, another with four hundred, and another with six hundred, who were all dressed in uniform with scarlet coats. Another nobleman, representing the great Percy family, came at the head of a body of fifteen hundred men, all his own personal retainers, and every one of them ready to fight any where and against any body, the moment that their feudal lord should give the word.

Armed bands.

These various chieftains, each at the head of his troops, came to London at the appointed time, and established themselves at different castles and strong-holds in and around the city, like so many independent sovereigns coming together to negotiate a treaty of peace.

Disputes and debates.

They spent two whole months in disputes and debates, in which the fiercest invectives and the most angry criminations and recriminations were uttered continually on both sides. At length, marvelous to relate, they came to an agreement. All the points in dispute were arranged, a treaty was signed, and a grand reconciliation—that is, a pretended one—was the result.

The treaty.

This meeting was convened about the middle of January, and on the twenty-fourth of March the agreement was finally made and ratified, and sealed, in a solemn manner, by the great seal. It contained a great variety of agreements and specifications, which it is not necessary to recapitulate here, but when all was concluded there was a grand public ceremony in commemoration of the event.

Procession.

At this celebration the king and queen, wearing their crowns and royal robes, walked in solemn procession to St. Paul's Cathedral in the city. They were followed by the leading peers and prelates walking two and two; and, in order to exhibit to public view the most perfect tokens and pledges of the fullness and sincerity of this grand reconciliation, it was arranged that those who had been most bitterly hostile to each other in the late quarrels should be paired together as they walked. Thus, immediately behind the king, who walked alone, came the queen and the Duke of York walking together hand in hand, as if they were on the most loving terms imaginable, and so with the rest.

Mock reconciliation.

The citizens of London, and vast crowds of other people who had come in from the surrounding towns to witness the spectacle, joined in the celebration by forming lines along the streets as the procession passed by, and greeting the reconciled pairs with long and loud acclamations; and when night came, they brightened up the whole city with illuminations of their houses and bonfires in the streets.

Fighting again.

In about a year after this the parties to this grand pacification were fighting each other more fiercely and furiously than ever.

The Little Prince and his Swans.

The prince's journey. The little swans.

At one time, when the little prince was about six years old, the queen made a royal progress through certain counties in the interior of the country, ostensibly to benefit the king's health by change of air, and by the gentle exercise and agreeable recreation afforded by a journey, but really, it is said, to interest the nobles and the people of the region through which she passed in her cause, and especially in that of the little prince, whom she took on that occasion to show to all the people on her route. She had adopted for him the device of his renowned ancestor, Edward III., which was a swan; and she had caused to be made for him a large number of small silver swans, which he was to present to the nobles and gentlemen, and to all who were admitted to a personal audience, in the towns through which he passed. He was a bright and beautiful boy, and he gave these little swans to the people who came around him with such a sweet and charming grace, that all who saw him were inspired with feelings of the warmest interest and affection for him.

War breaks out again.

Very soon after this time the war between the two great contending parties broke out anew, and took such a course as very soon deprived King Henry of his crown. The events which led to this result will be related in the next chapter.