to you shall here, and yn all thyngs truely and feithfully
behave me towardes you and youre heyres, as a true and
feithful subject oweth to behave him to his sovereigne lord
and righteous King of England, France, and Ireland; so help
me God, and Holidome, and this holy Evangelist.
Richard took this oath with the rest. How he kept it will hereafter appear.
The Lady Anne, the second daughter of the Earl of Warwick, who had been betrothed to the Prince of Wales, King Henry's son, was left, by the fall of the house of Lancaster and the re-establishment of King Edward the Fourth upon the throne, in a most forlorn and pitiable condition. Her father, the earl, was dead, having been killed in battle. Her betrothed husband, too, the Prince of Wales, with whom she had fondly hoped one day to sit on the throne of England, had been cruelly assassinated. Queen Margaret, the mother of the prince, who might have been expected to take an interest in her fate, was a helpless prisoner in the Tower. And if the fallen queen had been at liberty, it is very probable that all her interest in Anne would prove to have been extinguished by the death of her son; for Queen Margaret had never felt any personal preference for Anne, and had only consented to the marriage very reluctantly, and from political considerations alone. The friends and connections of her father's family, a short time since so exalted in station and so powerful, were now scattered and destroyed. Some had been killed in battle, others beheaded by executioners, others banished from the realm. The rest were roaming about England in terror and distress, houseless, homeless, friendless, and only intent to find some hiding-place where they might screen themselves from Edward's power and vengeance.
There was one exception, indeed, the Lady Isabella, Clarence's wife, who, as the reader will recollect, was Warwick's oldest daughter, and, of course, the sister of Lady Anne. She and Clarence, her husband, it might be supposed, would take an interest in Lady Anne's fate. Indeed, Clarence did take an interest in it, but, unfortunately, the interest was of the wrong kind.
The Earl of Warwick had been immensely wealthy. Besides the ancient stronghold of the family, Warwick Castle, one of the most renowned old feudal fortresses in England, he owned many other castles, and many large estates, and rights of property of various kinds all over the kingdom. Now Clarence, after Warwick's death, had taken most of this property into his own hands as the husband of the earl's oldest daughter, and he wished to keep it. This he could easily do while Anne remained in her present friendless and helpless condition. But he knew very well that if she were to be married to any person of rank and influence on the York side, her husband would insist on a division of the property. Now he suspected that his brother Richard had conceived the design of marrying her. He accordingly set himself at work earnestly to thwart this design.
It was true that Richard had conceived the idea of making Anne his wife, from the motive, however, solely, as it would seem, to obtain her share of her father's property.
Richard had been acquainted with Anne from her childhood. Indeed, he was related to the family of the Earl of Warwick on his mother's side. His mother, Lady Cecily Neville, belonged to the same great family of Neville from which the Warwicks sprung. Warwick had been a great friend of Lady Cecily in former years, and it is even supposed that when Richard and his brother George were brought back from the Continent, at the time when Edward first obtained possession of the kingdom, they lived for a time in Warwick's family at Middleham Castle.[H] This is not quite certainly known, but it is at any rate known that Richard and Anne knew each other well when they were children, and were often together.
[Footnote H: For a view of this castle, and the grounds pertaining to it, see page 180.]
There is an account of a grand entertainment which was given by the Warwick family at York, some years before, on the occasion of the enthroning of the earl's brother George as Archbishop of York, at which Richard was present. Richard, being a prince of the blood royal, was, of course, a very highly honored guest, notwithstanding that he was but a child. So they prepared for him and some few other great personages a raised platform, called a dais, at one end of the banquet-hall, with a royal canopy over it. The table for the distinguished personages was upon this dais, while those for the other guests extended up and down the hall below. Richard was seated at the centre of the table of honor, with a countess on one side of him and a duchess on the other. Opposite to him, at the same table, were seated Isabella and Anne. Anne was at this time about twelve years old.
Now it is supposed that Isabella and Anne were placed at this table to please Richard, for their mother, who was, of course, entitled to take precedence of them, had her seat at one of the large tables below.
From this and some other similar indications, it is supposed that Richard took a fancy to Anne while they were quite young, as Clarence did to Isabella. Indeed, one of the ancient writers says that Richard wished, at this early period, to choose her for his wife, but that she did not like him.
At any rate, now, after the re-establishment of his brother upon the throne, and his own exaltation to such high office under him, he determined that he would marry Anne. Clarence, on the other hand, determined that he should not marry her. So Clarence, with the pretense of taking her under his protection, seized her, and carried her away to a place of concealment, where he kept her closely shut up. Anne consented to this, for she wished to keep out of Richard's way. Richard's person was disagreeable to her, and his character was hateful. She seems to have considered him, as he is generally represented by the writers of those times, as a rude, hard-hearted, and unscrupulous man; and she had also a special reason for shrinking from him with horror, as the mortal enemy of her father, and the reputed murderer of the husband to whom she had been betrothed.
Clarence kept her for some time in obscure places of concealment, changing the place from time to time to elude the vigilance of Richard, who was continually making search for her. The poor princess had recourse to all manner of contrivances, and assumed the most humble disguises to keep herself concealed, and was at last reduced to a very forlorn and destitute condition, through the desperate shifts that she resorted to, in her endeavors to escape Richard's persecutions. All was, however, in vain. Richard discovered her at last in a mean house in London, where she was living in the disguise of a servant. He immediately seized her, and conveyed her to a place of security which was under his control.
Soon after this she was taken away from this place and conveyed to York, and placed, for the time, under the protection of the archbishop-the same archbishop at whose enthronement, eight or ten years before, she had sat at the same table with Richard, under the royal canopy. But she was not left at peace here. Richard insisted on her marrying him. She insisted on her refusal. Her friends-the few that she had left-turned against her, and urged her to consent to the union; but she could not endure the thought of it.
[Illustration: RICHARD III.]
Richard, however, persisted in his determination, and Anne was finally overcome. It is said she resisted to the last, and that the ceremony was performed by compulsion, Anne continuing to refuse her consent to the end. It was foreseen that, as soon as any change of circumstances should enable her to resume active resistance to the union, she would repudiate the marriage altogether, as void for want of her consent, or else obtain a divorce. To guard against this danger, Richard procured the passage of an act of Parliament, by which he was empowered to continue in the full possession and enjoyment of Anne's property, even if she were to divorce him, provided that he did his best to be reconciled to her, and was willing to be re-married to her, with her consent, whenever she was willing to grant it.