Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/29

A.D. 1478.] bestowed on the queen's brother, Anthony, Earl Rivers; and as George Neville, the son of the Marquis of Montacute, was next heir to those lands, he was also deprived of the title, as he had previously been of the lands, on pretence that he had no income to support it.

Clarence left two children by the daughter of Warwick, a boy and girl, whose proximity to the throne afterwards proved their destruction also, as we shall see. There was a prophecy floating amongst the people at that time, that the son of Edward IV. should perish by the hand of a person whose name commenced with G. The name of Clarence was George; and much of the ill-will of Edward, who had great faith in fortune-telling, is said to have been directed to Clarence through it, never seeming to reflect that he had another very active G. near him, in the person of Gloucester, the actual future perpetrator of the deed.



Edward now again gave himself up to his pleasures, and would have been glad, in the midst of his amorous intrigues, to have forgotten public affairs altogether. But for this the times were two much out of joint. It was not in England alone that the elements of faction had been in agitation. Nearly the whole of Europe had witnessed the contentions of overgrown nobles and vassal princes, by which almost every crown had been endangered, and the regal authority in many cases brought into contempt. The changes consequent on the successful usurpation of Henry IV. we have fully detailed; those storms which raged around the throne of France we have partially seen; but similar dissensions betwixt