Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/30

10, duke of Exeter, godson to king Henry VI. who was so greatly attached to that pious, but weak prince, that he never would desert his interest, though so contrary to his own; this displeased his duchess so much, that she never was satisfied, until she procured a divorce from him; she saw him reduced to the most abject state of human wretchedness and woe at the court of Burgundy, as the faithful de Comines relates; he was soon after murdered. Ann married in his life-time a very inferior character, Sir Thomas St. Leger, Knight; she survived this alliance only two years, dying January 14, 1475. St. Leger was put to death at Exeter by king Richard III. for attempting to dethrone him, and this probably because that monarch had given the preference to the earl of Lincoln in the succession of the crown to his daughter Ann, who became the wife of Sir George Manners, who in her right was lord Roose; he is ancestor of the dukes of Rutland. Elizabeth, second daughter of Cecily, married to John de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, whose descendants were so peculiarly unfortunate. Margaret, the third daughter of the duchess of York, was married to Charles the Rash, duke of Burgundy, slain in 1477; she was the only one of her children who survived her, she not dying until 1503, and was the celebrated enemy to king Henry VII. and all the Lancastrians, spending her rich dower in projects to ruin that monarch, though the fate of Elizabeth his queen, her neiceniece [sic] and her children must have been included in it. The emperor Charles V. was her godson, and was named after the duke of Burgundy her late husband.

The duchess Cecily of York was extremely unfortunate in the quarrels of her sons. Clarence was peculiarly turbulent, fickle, ambitious, avaricious, and rash. His quarrel with his brother Richard about his marriage, desirous of retaining the whole of the great possessions of the earl of Warwick, Richard Nevil, significantly called the "king-maker," whose eldest daughter he had married, was perhaps the first cause of their extreme dislike to 6