Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/34

14 subjects; when she saw him change the succession, so frequently, and at length saw it taken by him from the Plantagenets, she must have been extremely hurt. But all those tales about Richard's defaming her character, as well as the pretended aspersions of it by Clarence, Shaw, and Buckingham, appear totally unfounded.

All Richard's projects failed, and by his death in the battle of Bosworth she saw the crown go to an illegitimate stem of the Lancastrian line. It was, however, some satisfaction to her, no doubt, to have it settled in her issue by the marriage of king Henry VII. with her eldest granddaughter, Elizabeth, the heir of king Edward IV. She lived to see several children of this union.

This prospect of having the succession of the crown permanent in her descendants was not, however, without great alloy, for Henry, from fear and hatred to the Yorkists, proscribed every branch of her family, and which, in a few years after her death, were involved in one common ruin; this cruelty in a little time the Tudors retaliated upon themselves. Cecily's venerable age and virtues prevented the royal miser from stripping her of the rich dower she possessed.

The duchess appears to have had her general residence at Baynard castle in London, and Berkhampstead in Herts. The former was given by king Henry VI. to Richard duke of York, her husband, upon the death of Humphry duke of Gloucester. In this palace in 1458 the duke of York lodged his train of four hundred men, and all his noble partizans with their warlike suits, to deliberate about the most effectual means of asserting his claim to the crown: in this palace also his son Edward, earl of March, in 1460, with the friends of the house of York, met and voted to crown him; and here likewise Richard III. with seeming reluctance was Rh