[Sidenote: Death of the Prince of Wales.]
The men standing by took this as an indication of Edward's feelings and wishes in respect to his prisoner, and they fell upon him at once with their swords and murdered him upon the spot.
[Sidenote: Margaret receives the tidings.]
Margaret did not know what had become of her son until the following day. By that time King Edward had discovered the place of her retreat, and he sent a certain Sir William Stanley, who had always been one of her most inveterate enemies, to take her prisoner and bring her to him. It was this Stanley who, when he came, brought her the news of her son's death. He communicated the news to her, it was said, in an exultant manner, as if he was not only glad of the prince's death, but as if he rejoiced in having the opportunity of witnessing the despair and grief with which the mother was overwhelmed in hearing the tidings.
[Sidenote: She is borne to London.]
[Sidenote: Her condition on the journey.]
Stanley conveyed the queen to Coventry, where King Edward then was, and placed her at his disposal. Edward was then going to London in a sort of triumphant march in honor of his victory, and he ordered that Stanley should take Margaret with him in his train. Anne of Warwick, her son's young bride, was taken to London too, at the same time and in the same way.
During the whole of the journey Margaret was in a continued state of the highest excitement, being almost wild with grief and rage. She uttered continual maledictions against Edward for having murdered her boy, and nothing could soothe or quiet her.
[Sidenote: Her last hope.]
[Sidenote: Murder of the king.]
It might be supposed that there would have been one source of comfort open to her during this dreadful journey in the thought that, in going to the Tower, which was now undoubtedly to be her destination, she should rejoin her husband, who had been for some time imprisoned there. But the hope of being thus once more united to almost the last object of affection that now remained to her upon earth, if Margaret really cherished it, was doomed to a bitter disappointment. The death of the young prince made it now an object of great importance to the reigning line that Henry himself should be put out of the way, and, on the very night of Margaret's arrival at the Tower, her husband was assassinated in the room which had so long been his prison.
[Sidenote: Terrible reverse of fortune.]
Thus all Queen Margaret's bright hopes of happiness were, in two short months, completely and forever destroyed. At the close of the month of March she was the proud and happy queen of a monarch ruling over one of the most wealthy and powerful kingdoms on the globe, and the mother of a prince who was endowed with every personal grace and noble accomplishment, affianced to a high-born, beautiful, and immensely wealthy bride, and just entering what promised to be a long and glorious career. In May, just two months later, she was childless and a widow. Both her husband and her son were lying in bloody graves, and she herself, fallen from her throne, was shut up, a helpless captive, in a gloomy dungeon, with no prospect of deliverance before her to the end of her days. The annals even of royalty, filled as they are with examples of overwhelming calamity, can perhaps furnish no other instance of so total and terrible reverse of fortune as this.
CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: The body of King Henry.]
On the day following the assassination of Henry, the body was taken from the Tower and conveyed through the streets of London, with a strong escort of armed men to guard it, to the Church of St. Paul's, there to be publicly exhibited, as was customary on such occasions. Such an exhibition was more necessary than usual in this case, as the fact of Henry's death might, perhaps, have afterward been called in question, and designing men might have continued to agitate the country in his name, if there had not been the most positive proof furnished to the public that he was no more.
[Illustration: View of Chertsey.]
[Sidenote: Borne away on the river to Chertsey.]
The body remained lying thus during the day. When night came, it was taken away and carried down to Blackfriar's-a landing upon the river nearly opposite Saint Paul's. Here there was a boat lying ready to receive the hearse. It was lighted with torches, and the watermen were at their oars. The hearse was put on board, and the body was thus borne away, over the dark waters of the river, to the lonely village of Chertsey, where it had been decided that he should be interred.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Margaret in confinement.]
[Sidenote: Wallingford.]
For some time after Henry's death Margaret was kept in close confinement in the Tower. At length, finding that every thing was quiet, and that the new government was becoming firmly established, the rigor of the unhappy captive's imprisonment was relaxed. She was removed first to Windsor, and afterward to Wallingford, a place in the interior of the country, where she enjoyed a considerable degree of personal freedom, though she was still very closely watched and guarded.
[Sidenote: She is ransomed.]
At length, about four years afterward, her father, King René, succeeded in obtaining her ransom for the sum of fifty thousand crowns. René was not the possessor of so much money himself, but he induced King Louis to pay it, on condition of his conveying to him his family domain.
The ransom was to be paid in five annual installments, but on the payment of the first installment the queen was to be released and allowed to return to her native land. It was stipulated, too, that, as a condition of her release, she was formally and forever to renounce all the rights of every kind within the realm of England to which she might have laid claim through her marriage with Henry. It might have been supposed that they would have required her to sign this renunciation before releasing her. But it was held by the law of England, then as now, that a signature made under durance was invalid, the signer not being free. So it was arranged that an English commissioner was to accompany her across the Channel, and go with her to Rouen, where he was to deliver her to the French embassadors, who, in the name of Louis, were to be responsible for her signing the document.
[Sidenote: 1476.]
[Sidenote: The commissioner.]
[Sidenote: Margaret crosses the Channel.]
This plan was carried into effect. Margaret set out from the castle of Wallingford under the care of a man on whom Edward's government could rely for keeping a close watch over her, and taking care that she went on quietly through England to the port of embarkation. This port was Sandwich. Here she embarked on board a vessel, with a retinue of three ladies and seven gentlemen, and bade a final farewell to the kingdom which she had entered on her bridal tour with such high and exultant expectations of grandeur and happiness.
[Sidenote: At Rouen.]
She arrived at Dieppe in the beginning of 1476, and proceeded immediately to Rouen, where the commissioner, who came to attend her, delivered her to the French embassadors appointed to receive her, and attend to the signing of the renunciation.
[Sidenote: Her renunciation.]
The document was written in Latin, but the import of it was as follows:
I, Margaret, formerly in England married, renounce all that I
could pretend to in England, by the conditions of my marriage,
with all other things there, to Edward, now King of England.
[Sidenote: Feelings with which she signed it.]
It cost Margaret no effort to sign this paper. With the death of her husband and her son all hope had been extinguished in her bosom, and life now possessed nothing that she desired. She signed this fatal document, renouncing not only all claims to be henceforth considered a queen, but all pretension that she had ever been one, with a passive indifference and unconcern which showed that her spirit was broken, and that the fires of pride and ambition which had burned so fiercely in her breast were now, at last, extinguished forever.