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 MARGARET OF ANJOU. 191 her authority." The mind is indeed too fully awakened to a sense of the fell cruelty of some, "who even on their death-beds play the ruffian," not gladly to take refuge in every rational pretext from the supposition that revenge should ever so unsex the feminine character ; in the case of Margaret, however, we have every presumption for her innocence, not only from the readiness of popular fury to involve the highest personages in the crimes of their subordinates, but also because it is admit- ted that her "usual activity and spirit made the public conclude that the duke's enemies durst not have ventured upon such a deed without her privity." In fact, by no means a favorable writer is compelled to acknowledge, that if Margaret connived at the murder she must have evinced an "ignorance in things to come," strangely at variance with her characteristic fore- sight, for this act "threw her headlong upon those evils which with the price of her own blood she would willingly have re- deemed ;" and by it she "lost all that she could lose, her life excepted, her husband, son, and kingdom." The prejudice, however, of political partisanship caused the sentiments of the public to run strongly against the queen, and the stigma affixed to the plotters of the duke's death became indelible, no less from the excellence of the victim, than from the treachery of the crime. It was at first deemed advisable to lure the duke to his destruction by specious overtures of friendship, which, inducing his distrust, might urge him to compromise himself by some undisguised act of retaliation. But this plan failing through the probity of his own conduct and intentions, in the second year of the queen's marriage a parliament was called, first at Cambridge and afterwards at St. Edmundsbury (in preference to London, where Gloucester's popularity would have protected him), and shortly after his appearance there he not only found himself accused of high treason, but discov- ered that the king's mind had been so abused to his prejudice, that, without being permitted an opportunity of exculpation, he was committed to close confinement, nor even suffered to retain his usual attendants. Seventeen days afterwards he was found dead in his bed ; and though the public exposure of his body — the plausible evidence of his having sustained no violent end — was resorted to (an a* c so successfully tried in former cases, but of itself sufficient to excite suspicion), the universal belief that he had been murdered remained unshaken ; which conviction acquired strength from the circumstance of the sud-