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 MARGARET OF ANjOU. 207 with the King of France, that the country of Provence after his decease should revert to the latter, and be united forever to the crown, in return for which she was released, and joined her father in the cession. Du Clos, however, affirms that "on the 7th of March, 1476, she renounced all her claims to the county, in favor of the king; this was two months before the treaty with King Rene was concluded," and between four and five months after she had quitted England. The first instalment was paid in November, 1475, the last in March, 1480, the whole sum being 50,000 crowns. Within a mile or two of Angers, in a castle belonging to King Rene, were spent many of the closing years of one who, in the solitude of her undisturbed retreat, could indulge to the full the melancholy reminiscences of her eventful life, absorbed apparently in the past, and with affections too ex- hausted to allow of any interest in the future. On the death of her father, Margaret surrendered all the claims on Louvaine, Anjou, Provence, and other territories, which the death of her elder sister and children might give her, to Louis the Eleventh, for a pension of six thousand livres, which, however, was very badly paid. She then retired to the house of a faithful officer and friend of her father's, Francis Vignolles, lord of Moraens. In his chateau of Damprierre, near Saumur, she breathed her last two years afterwards. She had outlived most of the fam- ily of her father and his many brothers, as well as her own. Her terrible afflictions had so changed her whole appearance, that from the most beautiful woman of her time, she was become awful to look upon. Her eyes with constant weeping were sunken, dim and perpetually inflamed. The deaths of many noble persons of both sexes rendered the same year (1482) memorable; yet, though several amongst these ex- ceeded the period of her own existence, fifty years, it is cer- tain that no "storied urn or record" of her contemporaries comprehends an equal amount of fame or vicissitude as attach to her, whose resting place is distinguished by no monument save the venerable pile of Angers Cathedral, where she was entombed. Hume says of her that she was "an admirable princess, but more illustrious for her undaunted spirit in adversity than for her moderation in prosperity. She seems neither to have enjoyed the virtues nor been subject to the weaknesses of her sex, and was as much tainted with the ferocity as endowed