The Royal Brothers by Agnes Strickland

Author:Agnes Strickland [Strickland, Agnes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411447011
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

HISTORICAL SUMMARY

EDWARD THE FIFTH nominally reigned over England for two months and thirteen days. His imaginary rule began and ended in his thirteenth year. In that brief space, revolutions of government occurred, of which not one was unstained by faithless, deliberate, and cruel murder; and it was closed by a dark and bloody scene.

Scarcely had the wars of the roses been extinguished, when new factions sprang up from the jealousy always felt, towards court favourites, by the ancient nobility. Such factions characterize the Plantagenet reigns, and more especially those of the princes of York, who, having been long subjects, continued their habits of intermarrying with subjects. Edward the Fourth gave great offence to his proud nobility by his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, Lady Grey, whose husband, Sir John Grey, fell fighting for the cause of Lancaster, at the battle of Barnet. Her father, and several of her family, had sealed with their blood, both on the field and scaffold, their devoted attachment to the red rose. But when the beautiful widow was raised to the English throne by her royal lover, her brothers, uncles, and sons were ennobled, and were great favourites at the court of their royal relative. The Earl of Rivers, the queen's brother, was one of the most learned and chivalric nobles in Europe; he was the great patron of the infant art of printing, an author, and a hero in the field. All parties join in praising a character so accomplished, which shone with the utmost lustre in an age black with crime and barbarism; yet the Earl of Rivers was an object of peculiar jealousy to the Duke of Gloucester's party, which was reinforced by Henry, Duke of Buckingham, a prince of the blood royal. The Marquis of Dorset, the queen's eldest son by her first husband, and Lord Richard Grey, her second son, and Lord Lisle, her brother-in-law, were likewise obnoxious to the adverse factions, for there was a third party, led by Lord Hastings, the king's favourite, and augmented by the Stanleys and Howards, who were the king's personal friends, and ancient adherents of the House of York, faithful to the king's children, but envious and hostile to the Woodvilles, because they were the family of the queen. Such were the three parties at the court of England, when Edward the Fourth died suddenly, of a surfeit, leaving the government of his son's minority wholly unsettled. Young Edward was then at Ludlow Castle, under the tutelage of the Earl of Rivers, his maternal uncle. As soon as the Duke of Gloucester heard the tidings of his brother's death, he marched towards the south with all speed, in consequence, as afterwards appeared, of a secret understanding with Hastings, with whom he had recently been on terms of hostility. Hastings remained at court, but Buckingham, the Duke of Gloucester's ally, hastened with a strong body of troops, ostensibly to join the young king. Lord Rivers, lulled into security by the assurances and professions of the dukes, made haste to meet them with his royal charge.

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