Page:The Queens of England.djvu/241

 MARGARET OF AXJOU. 205 plicable. Doubtless consistency was not the virtue of the age ! Were any letters of Margaret extant, a clue might be afforded in this labyrinth of history ; as it is, we have only to record the bare facts of the meeting and the reconciliation, followed by Margaret's consent to Warwick for the alliance between their children. The fair and unfortunate Anne Neville was married to the Prince of Wales in August, 1470; and Warwick, upon the completon of the ceremony, sailed for England, there to enkindle again the flame of war, which had so long devastated her green vales. Under the joyous excitement of the earl's commencing success, and the prestige of its continuance af- forded by tidings of Henry's emancipation, the queen, with the young married pair, the bride's mother, the prior of St. John, and as large an armament as King Louis and her father could afford, set forth from France in the following February. But again was the stormy passage she encountered the sad presage of the fatal welcome awaiting her advent to the land of her adoption and misfortunes ; and hardly had she touched the shore when intelligence was brought of the disastrous action of Barnet, the deaths of Warwick and Montague, and the recapture of the wretched Henry. The sudden transition from joy to the abyss of hopelessness was too much even for the iron spirit which had stood unshaken, nor shown any signs of weakness, under trials which might have made the sternest natures quail ; her suffering was so intense and appalling, that "she fell down as if pierced by an arrow." For a space her energies seemed paralyzed forever, her courage vanished — her hopes, her fears, at an end ! There is a point at which anguish becomes temporarily its own remedy, and insensibility is the anodyne of speechless sorrow. This solace was hers ! It had been well for the unhappy queen if she had never awakened from her swoon of despair, or re-opened those eyes, fated so soon to rest upon a scene of woe unexampled even in her calamitous career. After a short sanctuary at Beaulieu, in Hampshire, upon the receipt of the adherence of several lords, she once more set forth with many misgivings for "the prince her son's safety," whom she vainly urged to retire to France, and, arriving at Bath, there assembled her friends with the wreck of the army of Warwick. On the 27th of April, thirteen days after the battle of Barnet, Edward, who had again pub- licly proscribed herself and her partisans, set off in pursuit of the queen's army, with which he came up at Tewkesbury,