Page:The Queens of England.djvu/248

 210 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. ' of York, who, however, held his penniless follower in such high esteem that he particularly recommended him, by letter, to the fair Elizabeth, as did the Earl of Warwick ; but whether it was the purse or the person of the suitor that did not meet her approbation (and the after-career of the lady leads us to suspect that the state of the former was likely to have no small influence in her decision), the young knight received little favor at her hands, and was, after some deliberation, finally rejected. Not very long after, she accepted the proposals of John Grey, son and heir of the wealthy and powerful Lord Ferrers of Groby; thus securing- what appeared to all a most advantageous and desirable alliance in every point of view, he being highly spoken of personally, as well as for the posi- tion he occupied, and being a staunch adherent of the Lancas- trian cause, which, of course, gave her additional favor with her royal mistress. At this period, 1452, Elizabeth was about twenty-one years of age. The father of John Grey dying in the year 1457, he became Lord Ferrers ; but owing to the distracted state of the country, for the war of the Roses was then at its height, he was obliged to remain at his post as commander of the queen's cavalry, instead of taking his place in the House of Peers. Elizabeth followed her husband in one or more of. his cam- paigns, and is said to have acted, on a certain occasion, as a spy in the camp of Warwick, whither she was sent by Mar- garet of Anjou under pretext of requesting some personal favor for herself, the earl being known to entertain a consid- erable regard for her, notwithstanding her preference of the Lancastrian champion to the suitor he had so strongly urged her to accept. But this life of turmoil and anxiety, harassing and distressing as it must have been to a court-bred beauty, was soon to be succeeded by a far heavier state of suffering; for at the second battle of St. Albans her gallant husband, who had mainly assisted in obtaining the brilliant but fleeting triumph of his party, was so severely wounded that he died shortly afterwards, on the 28th of February, 1461, leaving her a desolate widow with two sons, who, out of revenge for the part their father had taken against the Yorkists, were deprived of their patrimonv of Bradgate, where they were born, and were living with their mother in retirement and poverty when Edward the Fourth ascended the throne. The reconciliation between the Duchess of Bedford and the