MARGARET OF ANJOU (1430-1482), queen of England, daughter of René of Anjou, titular king of Naples and Jerusalem, was born on the 23rd of March 1430. When just fourteen she was betrothed to Henry VI. king of England, and in the following year was brought to England and married at Titchfield Abbey, near Southampton, on the 23rd of April 1445. On the 28th of May she was welcomed at London with a great pageant, and two days later crowned at Westminster. Margaret's marriage had been negotiated by William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk, and when she came to England, Suffolk and his wife were her only friends. Naturally she fell under Suffolk's influence, and supported his policy. This, added to her French origin and sympathies, made her from the start unpopular. Though clever and good-looking, she was self-willed and imperious, and without the conciliatory manners which her difficult position required. In almost everything she was the opposite of her gentle husband, but entered into his educational schemes, and gave her patronage to the foundation of Queen's College, Cambridge. Margaret's really active share in politics began after Suffolk's fall in 1450. She not only supported Edmond Beaufort, duke of Somerset, in his opposition to Richard of York, but concerned herself also in the details of government, seeking not over-wisely pecuniary benefits for herself and her friends. But as a childless queen her influence was limited; and when at last her only son, Edward, was born on the 13th of October 1453, her husband was stricken with insanity. From this time she was the ardent champion of her husband's and son's rights; to her energy the cause of Lancaster owed its endurance, but her implacable spirit contributed to its failure. When York's protectorate was ended by Henry's recovery in January 1455, Margaret, not content with the restoration of Somerset and her other friends to liberty and office, pushed her politics to extremes. The result was the defeat of the Lancastrians at St Albans, and for a year Margaret had to acquiesce in York's power. Yet at this time one wrote of her: "The queen is a great and strong laboured woman, for she spareth no pain to sue her things to an intent and conclusion to her power" (_Paston Letters_, i. 378). All the while she was organizing her party; and ultimately, in October 1456 at Coventry, procured some change in the government. Though formally reconciled to York in March 1458, she continued to intrigue with her partisans in England, and even with friends in France, like Pierre de Brezé, the seneschal of Normandy. After the Yorkist failure at Ludlow in 1459, it was Margaret's vindictiveness that embittered the struggle by a wholesale proscription of her opponents in the parliament at Coventry. She was not present with her husband at Northampton on the 10th of July 1460. After romantic adventures, in which she owed her safety to the loyalty of a boy of fourteen, her only companion, she escaped with her little son to