Page:The Queens of England.djvu/285

 ELIZABETH OF YORK. 245 Henry took no part in the ceremonies of his queen's corona- tion, but at the festivals which followed it he appeared and shared the pleasures. The absence of the queen-dowager from the coronation of her daughter might justify the rumors that she was harshly treated by the king, her son-in-law. It was said that he never forgave her for consenting to a reconcilia- tion with her most cruel enemy Richard the Third, and for her consenting to his proposal of wedding her daughter Elizabeth, affianced as she had been Jo himself — a proposal, however, as we have shown, eagerly accepted by Elizabeth ; and of sending for her son, the Marquis of Dorset, to abandon his cause. The decree passed at the council held at the monastery of Carthusian monks near Richmond, soon after the discovery of the conspiracy of Lambert Simnel, proves the ill-will of Henry against his wife's mother ; for the second article of it contains the following sentence : "That Elizabeth, late wife to Edward the Fourth, and mother-in-law to Henry, now king of Eng- land, should forfeit all her lands and goods, for that (contrary to her faith given to them who were in the plot for bringing in King Henry) she had yielded up her daughter to the hands of the tyrant Richard." Henry seems to have forgotten that the unfortunate Elizabeth Woodville was wholly in the power of Richard when she made those enforced concessions to his will, or he must have been enraged by the report then circulated, that she had lent her countenance, in common with her sister- in-law, the Duchess of Burgundy, to the impostor Lambert Simnel. If we may credit Speed, this unfortunate queen, after being despoiled of her dowry, was condemned to confinement in the monastery of Bermondsey, in Southwark, where finally she ended her days. On the 1st of November, 1489, the queen took to her cham- ber, with all the etiquette formerly practiced at Winchester, but on this occasion in the palace of Westminster, to prepare for the advent of her second child, and on the 29th. she gave birth to a princess, named Margaret. The good intelligence which always reigned between the queen and the mother of her husband may be received as evi- dence of the fine qualities and sweet temper of Elizabeth, for rarely does it occur that mothers-in-law feel any warm affection for the wives of their sons ; and although Margaret Beaufort was justly accounted one of the most worthy women of her time, she might not be so superior to the generality of her sex in