Page:The Queens of England.djvu/274

 234 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. cause of whose son he was induced, against his better judg- ment, to espouse, which led to a revolution in England. Un- prepared for the landing of Warwick and the forces he brought, the intelligence of which was conveyed to him by Alexander Carlile, sergeant of the minstrels, who found his soveregin in bed, Edward had no time to do more than consult with Lord Hastings, chamberlain of the household, and on whose fidelity he could rely. Following his counsel, he lost not a moment in reaching the seaside, and, accompanied by the Duke of Gloucester and eight hundred light horse, he embarked at Lynn for Holland, wholly unprovided with money or clothes, so sudden and hurried had been his departure. He narrowly escaped being taken, but was safely landed at Alkmar, leaving Warwick master of England, to replace Henry the Sixth again on the throne. The queen, alarmed for her safety and that of her children, took refuge with them in the sanctuary of West- minster, where she had her privilege registered. She was then within a short time of her accouchement, and in a month after gave birth to a son, of whom it might truly be said that he was "baptized in tears," so great were the difficulties and sorrows in which his mother found herself placed when he was born. The womanly gentleness of Elizabeth, and the pa- tience with which, under such trying circumstances, she sup- ported the privations and hardships to which she and her chil- dren were reduced, won her the sympathy of all the wives and mothers in the kingdom, and allayed the ill-will incurred by her too great devotion to her relations. Melancholy must have been the reflections of the poor queen, when she looked on the innocent face of the first son God had given her, born in a prison, to the privileges accorded to which he alone owed his safety, and was made aware that her royal husband, his father, was a fugitive, declared a traitor to his country and a usurper of the crown — that infant son so long desired, whose birth but a few weeks before would have been hailed with public rejoicings and private rapture, now unnoticed, save by his doting mother, and surrounded by all the unmistakable symptoms of the poverty and misfortunes to which he seemed born heir. Too young to be aware of the dangers and troubles in which her parents were involved, as also that by the birth of her brother her claims to a crown were destroyed, the youthful Elizabeth knew sorrow only by seeing it pictured in the fair