her relations. How the brothers subsequently perished in the Tower is too familiar a tale to need repetition. Then, after a time, followed the defection of Buckingham from the cause he had hitherto served with more zeal than conscience. By some this falling-off was attributed to a desire on his part to obtain the crown for himself, as being descended from Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, the youngest son of Edward the Third. So preposterous a claim found no favour with any, not even with his more immediate partizans; and, finding this to be the casebeyond his power to control it-he suddenly shifted his ground, and declared himself the friend of Richmond, whom his party proposed should espouse the young Princess Elizabeth. Her two brothers having been made away with in the Tower, she was the undoubted heiress of the throne, and such an union would, they imagined, for ever reconcile the conflicting claims of York and Lancaster. Whatever might have been the faults or the crimes of Richard with respect to others, he had been a benefactor to Buckingham, and that upon no stinted scale; well, therefore, might the monarch exclaim, upon learning his treachery, that "Buckingham was the most untrue creature living." The proposal for this union having been communicated to the Queen-mother in her sanctuary at Westminster, she at once acceded to it as readily as the country had done; and upon the twenty-fourth day of September, Buckingham sent to the Earl, appointing the tenth of October for the general outbreak, and urging him, when the time came, to land at Plymouth with his followers. The King, however, or usurper, as they styled him -was fully aware of their projects, and the accidents of nature came in aid of his preparations to defeat them. When Buckingham raised the standard of revolt on Salisbury, and was about to march forward for the purpose of effecting a junction with his Welsh adherents, the Severn, swelled by a heavy fall of rain, suddenly rose to an unusual height, and completely barred his passage. Those who were with him, disheartened by this untoward event, and yet farther alarmed by Richard's proclamations, were seized with a sudden panic more than commensurate to their causes, either conjoined or singly; they broke and dispersed in all directions as if with one consent; and Buckingham, thus abandoned, attempted to fly, but was betrayed by one of his own servants, and conducted back to Salisbury, where he was immediately beheaded. In the meanwhile, Richmond, true to his agreement, appeared off the coast with five thousand Breton soldiers. Upon the shore appeared a large army, either to oppose or join him; and doubting which of the two was their object, instead of landing, he returned to Brittany. Still the main plot of the conspirators was not abandoned. "On Christmas-day following, the Earl of Richmond, accompanied by the Marquess of Dorset, went to the cathedral of Vannes, where they solemnly pledged themselves to each other, and Richmond swore to marry Elizabeth of York immediately after he ascended the throne." The King, de facto, if not de jure, met these conspirings with demonstrations of equal energy. He caused his principal enemies to be attainted of treason, confiscated their estates, and used every means, short of actual violence, to draw the ex-Queen and her children from their asylum in the abbey. There they had been, for many months, protected in a great degree by the influence of Dorset and the bishop, Lionel Woodville; but the protectors themselves were now in danger; they had been too deeply implicated in Buckingham's plot, and, upon the failure of his revolt, found it prudent to consult their own safety by a speedy flight to France. The situation of the refugees in the sanctuary then became irksome, if not absolutely perilous. A cordon of soldiers, commanded by John Nesfield, a squire of King Richard's guard, kept watch about the abbey, night and day, rendering flight impossible, and reducing them to much distress. While these coercive measures threatened them on the one hand, the voice of the tempter was heard upon the other, proffering them ease and safety if they would leave the sanctuary, and the Princess would confirm by her own confession the Act of Parliament which bastardized her as the illegitimate child of Edward the Fourth. The document, in which Richard makes these proffers-and there is little or no doubt of its being genuine is very curious, and may still be seen. Thus lured, on the one hand, by the voice of the charmer, and on the other, impelled by an irresistible necessity, the refugees, after so many months of self-imposed imprisonment, were at length induced to abandon their asylum in March, 1484. Nor does Richard, in this instance at least, pursue the treacherous course which his chroniclers have been so fond of imputing to him on other occasions. The ex-Queen was placed under the care of Nesfeld, the same officer that had kept watch and ward, who while he treated her with decent civility was not likely to let her escape, or band with the King's enemies. Elizabeth of York and her younger sisters were hospitably entertained at court, where the former was treated by Queen Anne more like a sister than a distant relation. Richard, too, showed her no less attention, whereupon slander, which could no longer accuse him of cruelty or faithlessness, now pretended to discover that he was actuated by too much affection, and wished to marry her himself; the promulgators of this report declaring that Richard sought the match, in order to prevent his rival from strengthening his hold upon the popular favour, by an alliance with the Yorkist heir to the throne. From the Christmas of 1484 until the death of Richard the Third, there are few historical records to light us through the darkness of a period that yet must have been fertile in stirring events. The most material record that we have of Elizabeth of York's connexion with the revolt in favour of Richmond, is a metrical narrative, of little poetical merit, entitled, "The most Pleasant Song of Lady Bessy," written by Humphrey Brereton, who, as he himself informs us, was an esquire in the retinue of Lord Stanley, afterwards Earl of Derby. According to this chronicler, the Lady Elizabeth warmly espoused the cause of Richmond, and was the first to urge Lord Stanley to adopt the same side in the dispute : : "down she bended upon her knee Who was your beginner, who was your ground, "Remember Richmond banished full bare, You may recover him of his care If your heart and mind to him will gree. Let him come home and claim his right, And let us cry him king Henry.'' To this, and many singular arguments, Stanley abruptly replies,― "Go away, Bessy I tell thee now for certainty, That fair words make oft fooles full faine, When they be but found vain-glory." Bessy, however, persists, till by her pathetic remonstrances and by the dark picture she draws up of the usurper, she at length brings him round to act as she would have him. Perhaps the strongest plea in her quiver is the appeal that she makes to his superstitious feelings "In Westminster as he " (her father) "did stand On a certain day in a study, A book of reason* he had in his hand, * A book of reason, i.e. a "horoscope." I came before my father the king, He spake to me full sore weeping These were the words he said to me; And to my words give good listening, Neither to any creature do it tell, • All the matter to him show you may, As soon as the truth to him is shown, your For there shall never son of my body be gotten But That shall be crowned after me. you shall be queen and wear the crown, So doth expresse the prophecye."" To all this he replies, I have thought on this matter as much as yee, But it is hard to trust women, For many a man is brought into great woe, Through telling to women his privity." The parties being agreed in the main, another difficulty arises, in that Lord Stanley feared to employ a scribe to write the letters by which he proposed summoning his partizans. Lady Bessy obviates this, by telling him that she has been taught to write like any scrivener; whereupon it is settled that he shall come to her chamber at night, attended only by his trusty |