King René d'Anjou and His Seven QueensStaley, Edgcumbe
History
King René d'Anjou and His Seven Queens
Staley, Edgcumbe
France -- Court and courtiers; René I, King of Naples and Jerusalem, 1409-1480
Her father left her what he could, impoverished as he was: 1,000 gold
crowns and the Castle of Queniez--an inconsiderable estate between
Angers and Saumur. René wrote to Louis a few months before his death,
commending Margaret to his care and charity, and this is how the King
of France executed the trust, so characteristic of his greed and
cunning. He negotiated with Margaret the sale of her reversionary
rights in Lorraine, Anjou, Maine, Provence, and Barrois, for an annual
income of 600 _livres_. The deed was executed at Reculée, November 19,
1480, but Louis never paid the annuity! One purpose Margaret had in
view in this arrangement was the recovery of the bodies of her husband
and son, that she might give them decent burial. Edward IV. would not
allow this seemly duty, and the bones of the illustrious dead were left
dishonoured and unnoted.
Margaret’s nature would not allow of comfort. She was devoured with
regret and consumed by revenge; she spent the last two years of her
stormy life in fretting and fuming over the disasters of her family.
Her whole appearance and her manner changed. No longer lovely, as when
she stepped on England’s inhospitable shore, she became shrunk, aged,
and pallid. The ravenings of her spirit had indeed transformed her into
the “grim grey wolf of Anjou.” She became leprous and hideous--“the
most hideous Princess in Europe,” one might write. Gently but firmly
she had to be restrained, lest she should do herself some harm and
injure others. Alas! Margaret of Anjou came to her death, not in the
halo of sanctity, but in the mist of mental obscurity, and thus she
died alone--perhaps unlamented, and certainly misjudged by posterity.
Near her end languor and paralysis seized her, and she passed away
unconsciously on August 25, 1482.
Above the chief portal of his castle De la Vignolles put up this
epitaph:
“In the year 1480 Margaret of Anjou and Queen of England, daughter of
René, King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem, forced to abandon her
kingdom after having courageously borne herself in a great number of
encounters and in twelve pitched battles, deprived of the rights of
her family, spoiled of all her possessions, without means of support
and without help, found a resting-place in this _manoir_, the home of
François de la Vignolles, an old and faithful servant of her father.
She died here August 25, 1482, aged no more than fifty-three years.
Upon whose soul may Christ Jesus have pity.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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