Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/33

Rh met for that purpose at Baynard Castle, where the duchess, their mother, then lay.

She opposed the marriage of her eldest son king Edward IV. with his subject Elizabeth, widow of Sir Richard Widvile, knight, as highly impolitic, and injurious to his dignity and interest. But love was a more powerful passion than duty, or even his own security. The king, however, does not appear to have in the least derogated from his wonted respect to his mother afterwards, though the influence of his queen was superior to that of the widow of his father.

The queen was more beautiful than wise, more accomplished than politic, for she studied more to fill the court of her husband with her own relations, than to gain the friendship of the king's. This impolitic conduct gave a mutual disgust to the royal family and the nobility. Elizabeth was as intriguing as her predecessor queen Margaret, and it was equally ruinous to the interest of her offspring.

No doubt it was on this account that Cecily joined with the grandees, upon king Edward IV's death, in wishing to see the administration, even the kingdom, put into the hands of her only surviving son, who became king Richard III.

By the "Historic doubts" it appears that king Richard's first council was held in her house, and that he wrote her a most affectionate letter from Pontefract June 3, after he was king. The language is humble and respectful.

However, it must be supposed she was greatly shocked at his conduct, when he had thrown off the mask. When he had bastardized all king Edward IV's children, when he had imprisoned, if not destroyed, the sons of that monarch, and she saw the daughters of Edward, instead of sharing the thrones of the greatest potentates in Europe, doomed to be only the wives of some of their father's Rh