Margaret of Anjou
| Margaret of Anjou | ||
|---|---|---|
| Queen consort of England | ||
| ||
| A Victorian imaginary portrait | ||
| Born | March 23, 1429 | |
| Duchy of Lorraine | ||
| Died | August 25, 1482 | |
| Anjou | ||
| Buried | Anjou | |
| Consort | April 23, 1445 - May 21, 1471 | |
| Consort to | Henry VI | |
| Issue | Edward, Prince of Wales | |
| Royal House | Lancaster | |
| Father | René I of Naples | |
| Mother | Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine | |
Margaret of Anjou ("Marguerite d'Anjou,"" March 23, 1429 – August 25, 1482) was the French-born Queen consort of Henry VI of England from 1445 to 1471, and led the Lancastrian contingent, in the Wars of the Roses When her husband began to suffer from a mental illness, Margaret took control. Her conflicts with the Yorkist branch of the Plantagenets led to their open rebellion and the installment of Edward IV on the throne.
Margaret fought to regain her husband's throne, which she briefly succeeded in doing from late 1470 to early 1471. She was captured after the Lancastrian defeat at the Battle of Tewksbury and released. Broken in spirit, she was imprisoned at both Wallingford Castle and in the Tower of London until ransomed by the French king in 1475. She died on August 25, 1482, in Anjou, where she was buried.
History
Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, daughter of Rene of Anjou, titular king of Naples and Jerusalem, was born on the March 23, 1429. When just 14, 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 April 23, 1445. On May 28, she was welcomed at London with a great pageant, and two days later crowned at Westminster Cathedral.
Margaret's marriage had been negotiated by William de la Pole, Duke of Suffolk, and when she came to England, de la Pole and his wife were her only friends. She fell under the duke' 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 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 October 13, 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 the first Battle of 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 Breze, 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 Harlech. Thence after a while she made her way to Scotland. From Mary of Gelderland, the queen regent, she purchased the promise of help at the price of surrendering Berwick. Margaret was still in Scotland at the date of Wakefield, so was not, as alleged by hostile writers, responsible for the barbarous treatment of York's body. But she at once joined her friends, and was with the northern army which defeated Warwick at the second battle of St Albans on the 17th of February 1461; for the executions which followed she must bear the blame. After Towton Margaret with her husband and son once more took refuge in Scotland.
A year later she went to France, and with help from her father and Louis XI equipped an expedition under Pierre de Breze. She landed in Northumberland in October, and achieved some slight success; but when on the way to seek further help from Scotland the fleet was overwhelmed in a storm, and Margaret herself barely escaped in an open boat to Berwick. In the spring she was again trying to raid Northumberland, meeting with many hardships and adventures. Once she owed her escape from capture to the generosity of a Yorkist squire, who carried her off on his own horse; finally she and her son were brought to Bamburgh through the compassionate help of a robber, whom they had encountered in the forest. Thence in August 1463 she crossed to Sluys in Flanders. She was almost destitute, but was courteously treated by Charles the Bold, then Count of Charolais, and so made her way to her father in France.
For seven years she lived at Saint-Michel-en-Barrois, educating her son with the help of Sir John Fortescue, who wrote at this time: "We be all in great poverty, but yet the queen sustaineth us in meat and drink. Her highness may do no more than she doth" (Works, ii. 72, ed. Clermont). Margaret never lost her hopes of her son's restoration. But when at last the quarrel between Warwick and Edward IV brought her the opportunity, it was with difficulty that she could consent to be reconciled to so old and bitter an enemy. After Warwick's success and Henry's restoration Margaret still remained in France. When at last she was ready to sail she was delayed by contrary winds. So it was only on the very day of Warwick's defeat at Barnet (14th of April) that Margaret and Edward landed at Weymouth.
Three weeks later the Lancastrians were defeated at Tewkesbury, and Edward was killed. Margaret was not at the battle; she was captured a few days after, and brought to London on the 21st of May. For five years she remained a prisoner, but was treated honourably and for part at least of the time was in charge of her old friend the duchess of Suffolk. Finally Louis XI ransomed her under the Treaty of Pecquigny, and she retufned to France on the 29th of January 1476. Margaret lived for six years at different places in Bar and Anjou, in poverty and dependent for a pension on Louis, who made her surrender in return her claims to her father's inheritance. Over the previous ten years, she had gained a reputation for aggression and ruthlessness, but now she was a broken spirit, imprisoned at both Wallingford Castle and in the Tower of London until ransomed by the French king in 1475. She died on August 25, 1482, in Anjou, where she was buried.
Legacy
As the courageous champion of the rights of her son and her husband, Margaret must command a certain sympathy. But she was politically unwise, and injured their cause by her readiness to purchase foreign help at the price of English interests. Comines wrote well of her that she would have done more prudently if she had endeavoured to adjust the disputes of the rival factions instead of saying "I am of this party, and will maintain it" (Memoires vi. ch. 13).
Margaret was learned and fierce, a far truer product of the clever and cruel Angevin house than her gentle and scrupulous father, René; she was devoted to hunting as well as to reading and, even in the days of her comparative prosperity, was an importunate beggar of everything which she desired. Her career in England, whose rights and whose fortunes she was ready to sell to anyone who would help her cause, was accompanied by unvarying misfortune for the Lancastrians and most of all for her gentle and uncomplaining husband.
Her fierce partisanship embittered her enemies, and the Yorkists did not hesitate to allege that her son was a bastard. This, like the scandal concerning Margaret and Suffolk, is baseless; the tradition, however, continued and found expression in the Mirror for Magistrates and in Drayton's Heroical Epistles, as well as in Shakespeare's Henry VI.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Abbott, Jacob. History of Margaret of Anjou, Queen of Henry VI of England, Kessinger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 978-0766193505
- King, Betty. Margaret of Anjou, Ulversroft Large Print, 2000. ISBN 978-0708942314
- Maurer, Helen E. Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England, Boydell Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1843831044
- Perot, Ruth S. The Red Queen: Margaret of Anjou and the War of the Roses, 1st Book Library, 2000. ISBN 978-1587212338
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