Page:The Queens of England.djvu/240

 204 THE OUEEXS OF EXGLAXD. Burgundy's archers met and escorted them to St. Pol ; and, indeed, the treatment Margaret experienced from this prince was so opposed to the feelings she entertained for him, that it is said she repented much, and thought herself unfortunate that she had not sooner thrown herself on his protection, as her affairs would probably have prospered better."* We may hope that similar examples of honorable commisera- tion alleviated in some degree the seven long years of subse- quent separation from her husband, which she passed while devoting herself to the education of her son, who now, under the instruction of Sir John Fortescue, was becoming an inter- esting and attractive youth, capable of cheering the weary exile, by the promise of a perpetuity of his father's virtues without the imbecility which obscured them. The hopes, however, which still slumbered in her own breast Margaret sedulously strengthened in her son, neither calculat- ing the probability of a fatal issue to herself, nor to him whom they were to consign to an early grave, while they accelerated his father's death. The year 1469 saw these two precarious visions assume a tangible form. Constantly informed by her emissaries of the state of England, where many continued their correspondence with the banished consort of the house of Lancaster, despite King Edward's efforts to secure their at- tachment ; it was reserved, in the strange fabric of her fate, for the queen's bitterest enemy now to weave the most critical tissue of her destiny. The Earl of Warwick, whose quarrel with the house of York has been variously accounted for, but whose anger might alone be justified by the treatment he had received from the king respecting Edward's marriage to Bona of Savoy, sister to the French queen, quitted the English court in disgust, and applying to Louis of France, so far gained his co-operation, that Margaret was, the following year, sent for from Angers, where she had latterly resided, and after some difficulty persuaded to give him a meeting. It is fruitless to investigate the motives of either party for the reconciliation itself, or for the restoration of mutual confidence. That War- wick should marry one daughter to the Duke of Clarence, the reigning king's brother, yet negotiate a union for the other with the heir of Lancaster, whose interests he was thus sol- emnly pledged to promote, appears to the last degree inex-
 * Monstrelet.