Page:The Queens of England.djvu/171

 ANNE OF BOHEMIA. 145 However this may be, Richard, so far from indignantly re- senting such injustice and insult to the blood royal, aided the efforts of his favorite to obtain a divorce from his fair and noble kinswoman ; and the queen wrote with her own hand to Pope Urban, to entreat him to grant the duke permission to put away his wife and marry the object of his guilty passion. By this unjustifiable act she offended many of the greatest nobles in the land to whom Philippa was related, and this without gaining any advantage for her favorite, as the divorce never was accomplished. But Anne was severely punished by Providence for this her first and last evil act. A great grief arising from this very act befell the queen, in the impeachment and execution of Sir Simon Burley, for whom she had ever entertained a warm and constant friendship. The Duke of Gloucester, enraged at the insult offered by the king, queen, and Duke of Ireland to his kins- woman, resolved to be avenged ; and after much plotting and underhand dealing on both sides, this powerful and unscrup- ulous noble, for whom Richard, king though he was called, was no match either in strength of position or authority, accom- plished the destruction of several of the king's most attached adherents, who were ignominiously executed at Tyburn by having their throats cut ; "Sir Simon Burley onely had the worship to have his head strucken off. Loe ! the noble respect which the gentle lords had to justice and amendment." It is difficult to conceive a position more painful and humili- ating than the one occupied by Richard at this period. Not only powerless, but possessing not even the shadow of power, he was treated with open disrespect by the insolent nobles, who, headed by Gloucester, had entirely usurped the regal authority, making him a cipher in his own kingdom, and leaving him not so much as the means to keep up the semblance of a court or royal household. He and his queen chiefly at this period resided at Eltham and Shene, so called by Edward the Confessor, from the lonely landscape around it. But even here he could not escape from a sense of his thralldom. The queen had also to suffer from the persecutions which were carried on against her attendants, many of whom were sacrificed without justice or mercy ; and that, probably, less on account of their being for- eigners, than on account of their Lollardism. Robert de Vefe, Duke of Ireland, who, judging from the steps taken by Anne with regard to his divorce and. second marriage, seems to have