Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/204

 her second son by King Edward, was born at Shrewsbury on 17 Aug. 1472. A third son, George, who died young, was also born at Shrewsbury, according to an old genealogy, in March 1473 (doubtless 1474 of our reckoning, considering the date of the previous birth). The remaining children were a daughter, Anne, born at Westminster on 2 Nov. 1475, and two other daughters, named, the one Catherine, born before August 1479, and the other Bridget, the youngest of the family, born at Eltham on 10 Nov. 1480 (compare, prefatory remarks to Privy Purse Expenses of Elizabeth of York; and the Gent. Mag. for 1831, vol. ci. pt. i. p. 24).

In 1475, when Edward IV made his will at Sandwich before crossing the sea to invade France, he appointed his wife to be principal executrix, out made no special provision for her beyond her dower, except securing to her some household goods as private property and ordaining that the marriage portions which he bequeathed to his daughters should be conditional on her approval of the marriages contracted by them (Excertpa Historica, 369, 378). Soon after this we find evidence of the ill-will borne to her by Clarence, who, when his duchess died in the end of 1476, attributed her death to poison administered by her attendants and sorcery practised by the queen. The interests of the duke and of the queen seem to have been much opposed to each other. The former, after the death of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, in 1477, sought by the medium of his sister, the widowed duchess, to obtain his daughter and heiress, Mary, in marriage. To this Edward was strongly opposed, as the possession of so rich a duchy could not but nave made him dangerously powerful. Yet the queen's brother, Anthony, earl Rivers, aspired to the same lady's hand, and Elizabeth, perhaps after Clarence's death, wrote to the Duchess Margaret asking her to favour his suit, which, however, was rejected with disdain by the council of Flanders as totally unsuitable in point of rank.

In 1478, just before the death of Clarence, took place the marriage of the child, Richard, duke of York, the king's second son, then only in his sixth year, with Anne Mowbray, a mere babe in her third year, daughter and heiress of the last Duke of Norfolk, who had died without male issue the year before. It is difficult to say positively that this match was more due to the queen's influence than to Edward's own policy; but it seems to have much in common with the selfish alliances, some of them quite unnatural, procured by the queen for ner own relations.

On the death of Edward IV in 1483 strong evidence soon appeared of the jealousy with which Elizabeth and her relations were regarded. Although Edward had on his deathbed conjured the lords about him to forget their dissensions, suspicion at once revived when the queen proposed in council that her son, young Edwurd V, should come up from Wales with a strong escort. Hastings threatened to retire to Calais, where he was governor, if the escort was greater than was necessary for the prince's safety, and the queen was obliged to promise that it should not exceed two thousand horse. Her son, the Marquis of Dorset, however, being constable of the Tower, equipped some vessels as if for war. The whole Woodville party clearly expected that they would have a struggle to maintain themselves, and when Gloucester and Buckingham, overtaking the young king on his way up to London, arrested his uncle. Rivers, his half-brother, Lord Richard Grey, and their attendants, Vaughan and Hawte, the act seems to have met with the cordial approval, not only of Hastings, but even of the citizens of London.

Elizabeth threw herself into the sanctuary at Westminster, taking with her her second son and her five surviving daughters, and conveying thither in great haste a mass of personal property and furniture, to make easy entrance for which her servants actually broke down the walls which separated the palace from the sanctuary. While this removal was going on. Archbishop Rotherham came to her and endeavoured to allay her fears, assuring her that if they set aside young Edward he would crown his brother, the Duke of York, whom she had with her in the sanctuary. As some sort of security for this, he very improperly placed the great seal for a while in her hands, but he soon repented his indiscretion and sent for it again.

Elizabeth remained in sanctuary during the whole of the brief nominal reign of her son, Edward V. She certainly had little reason to trust the protector Gloucester, who on 13 June, in that celebrated scene in the council chamber in the Tower, very absurdly accused her of conspiring against him with Jane Shore, and practising witchcraft by which his arm was withered. Yet, notwithstanding the violent issue of that day's proceedings in the execution of Hastings, she let herself be persuaded by Cardinal Bourchier the very Monday after to deliver up her only remaining son out of sanctuary to keep company with his brother in the Tower. Then followed, almost immediately, the usurpation of Richard III, and, a little later, the murder of both the young princes whom the usurper had in his power.