Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/92

78 realm, and by the act of the three estates in Parliament assembled. Yet, nevertheless, to put an end to the bloody wars caused by the rival claims of the house of York, and at the urgent request of the three estates, the king had consented to marry the Princess Elizabeth. Never surely did a man more studiously and bitterly seek to humiliate the woman he was about to make his wife, or a woman accept a hand which thus degraded her with a more tame compliance. But the hope of a crown is too apt to extinguish all the natural sentiments of honour or shame, resentment, or self-respect.

The marriage took place on the 18th of January, 1486, and the rejoicings in London, Westminster, and other cities were of the most lively kind. They were heartfelt, for now all parties concluded that there was a hope of peace and comfort. They were far more ardent than at the king's accession or coronation, and the mean-souled monarch saw it with sullen displeasure, for it seemed to imply that though he had taken such pains to place foremost his right to the throne, the people recognised, spontaneously, the superior title of the house of York, and that of his beautiful, and by him superciliously treated wife. "If," says Lingard, "the ambition of the princess was flattered by this union, we are told (on what authority I know not) that she had little reason to congratulate herself on the score of domestic happiness; that Henry treated her with harshness and with neglect; and that in his estimation, neither the beauty of her person, nor the sweetness of her disposition, could atone for the deadly crime of being a descendant of the house of York. Lord Bacon, who is the great historian of this period, and who may be supposed to be sufficiently informed, does not hesitate to add that the manifest affection of the people for the queen produced in him towards her additional coldness and dislike.



Henry, before dismissing his Parliament, conferred favours and promotions on many of his friends. He restored Edward Stafford, the eldest son of the Duke of Buckingham, who had lost his life and fallen under attainder by espousing his cause in the late reign; nor did he forget Morton, the sagacious Bishop of Ely, who had planned the conversion of Buckingham to his cause, and embarked himself in the expedition. Chandos of Brittany was created Earl of Bath; Sir George Daubeny, who had been one of his most successful generals, was made Lord Daubeny; and Sir Robert Willoughby, Lord Broke. The two persons, however, whose counsels and administrative services he chiefly valued, were Bishops Morton and Fox, the latter of whom he raised to the see of Exeter. They had shared in all his adversities, and were now admitted