we account of the royal lineage of Lancaster?"

"Aye! to the confusion of the legitimate princes of that family are the baseborn Beauforts so received in the court of England," muttered the Duke of Exeter in Suffolk's ear.

Suffolk nodded a significant assent to the observation, and was about to address some provoking rejoinder to the Duke of Somerset, but was prevented by an impatient gesture from his royal mistress, who stamping her foot exclaimed

"Mort de ma vie! My lords, are ye engaged in a second dispute on descents for our royal amusement and the divertisement of our Scottish friends withal! Pardu, I should like to know whose escutcheon is without a blot among ye all! I trow it is in the power of the least distinguished among ye, to win cantons of honour and bordures, to grace your shields and emblazon your banners, in the coming melée that we must have with the traitors of York and Warwick! See, therefore, that ye spend not your valour in vain brawls before we call in the name of St. George and Lancaster, to the field!"

ye,

Suffolk, somewhat disconcerted by the conviction of well deserving the rating which his choleric temper knew not how to brook, mounted the fresh steed which his squire had brought to the church. portal, and without other refreshment than a draught of consecrated wine, which one of the priests brought him in haste from the sacristy for a stirrup cup, he started off on his new and perilous emprize.

Although a description of his person, with a reward of a hundred nobles for his apprehension, was affixed to the gate of Carlisle, which was in the hands of a Yorkist garrison, such was the terror which the report of Queen Margaret's army produced, that the young duke was permitted to pass unchallenged by the warder.

In Lancashire and Westmorland the duke traversed through a friendly district, where all appeared eager to welcome and speed him forward on his journey; and he observed with pleasure, the great families in those counties were arming their retainers, and straining every nerve to raise recruits for the queen's service. The red rose was in every bonnet, and the name of Lancaster on every lip. As he drew

nearer to London, Suffolk perceived with much regret, that Margaret's success in raising troops in the north had produced feelings of gloom and alarm; and before he reached Hertford, he found it necessary to assume the disguise of a friar, in order to escape the danger to which every person suspected of being an emissary of the Lancastrian party was exposed.

Wherever he came, Suffolk took due care to enlarge on the queen's preparations for the deliverance of her royal husband, and had multiplied the numbers of her northern army, and the supplies of arms and money she had obtained from the queen-regent of Scotland so daringly, that he might be said in his own single person to have done the work of an armament; so completely had his reports spread terror and consternation among the friends of the white rose. The most important part of his enterprise had been achieved; but having pledged himself to deliver Queen Margaret's greetings and private instructions to the king, from whom also he hoped to obtain some important information respecting the Duke of York's proceedings, he determined to set at nought all personal considerations, and seek an interview with his royal master in the Tower.

After various ineffectual attempts, for the king was now strictly guarded from all access, he obtained admission to his presence in the disguise of a friar from the adjoining Minories, whom the Duke of York permitted to visit his royal pri

soner.

The sprightly young courtier was sadly troubled to repeat either ave, paternoster, or creed, without betraying his secular ignorance; and had he been requested to read a page in the huge breviary book, which he ostentatiously carried under his arm, his incapacity to do so would have rendered his imposture apparent. Suffolk, however, shrewdly calculated, that if challenged to such a test, the person by whom he might peradventure be questioned, would in all probability be as ignorant as himself; and that consideration gave an assured boldness to his demeanour which disarmed suspicion, and he passed into the royal presence without let or hindrance.

"So far so well," thought the young duke; but there he erred, for by an unlucky contingency, on which he had not calculated, the Duke of York was with

King Henry at the critical moment he had chosen for his visit; and it was in consequence of this circumstance alone that he had so easily obtained admittance into the presence of the captive sovereign, who was somewhat indisposed that day; and on hearing that the learned Minorite friar, Matthew, craved an audience, had prevailed on the Duke of York to indulge him with the solace of his company for an hour. York courteously acceded to the royal prisoner's request, but thought proper to be present at the interview.

"Benedicité! holy father," said he, addressing the counterfeit friar with an air of the greatest affability on his en

trance.

"Salve regina," stammered the luckless Suffolk, forgetting in his confusion, at the sight of the awful duke, the lesson in which brother Matthew, of the Minories, had wasted some hours in instructing him.

"Salve regina! forsooth!" repeated the Duke of York; "is that the best salutation you Minorite friars can bestow on Richard Plantagenet? We'll no reginas here."

"Creda domine deus," blundered poor Suffolk.

"Aye! aye! we don't take you for a heretic, so you may spare us the confession of your faith, Sir Minorite," said the duke.

"Ora pro nobis," continued the sham ecclesiastic, who began to experience a fearful suspicion that the duke understood Latin.

"Spare your prayers till you are at the gallows' foot, for there they may stand thee in some stead, but here they will be of small avail to thee, master friar," observed York; "for even if, perchance, that cowl of thine should cover a shaven crown, it will not protect thy knave's neck from a rope," continued he, twitching off the grey hood that concealed the golden ringlets and handsome features of the truant lord chamberlain. Suffolk, rendered desperate at this unexpected detection, sprang upon the Duke of York, and would have plunged his dagger into his breast, had not his arm been arrested by King Henry, who exclaimed, with great earnestness

Nay, God forbid that our princely kinsman's blood should be foully spilt in our very presence, and me sitting by consenting to the deed!"

"Now out upon such unkingly scruples," cried Suffolk, exasperated beyond all patience at the interference of his royal master, which had enabled the Duke of York to recover his guard, and after a momentary struggle to disarm his daring antagonist, and hold him captive in his stalwart grasp. "Had your grace

but let me alone," continued he fiercely, gnashing his teeth, "I had ridded you of your worst enemy ere now."

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Nay, marry, but you are mistaken, Suffolk," returned the king; "for I should then have been left wholly in the insolent hands of that pestilent traitor, Warwick, who hath never deigned to show me the slightest courtesy: whereas, my good cousin of York, albeit he wrongfully pretendeth to uphold his title to the crown of England as better than mine own, hath always entreated me like a king."

"It may be so," returned Suffolk, sullenly; "and I am right glad that your grace is so well satisfied with the usage you receive in your doleful prison-house; but, for my part, I should have thought your grace would have received more contentment in seeing your traitor cousin slain by my hand, than in knowing that your faithful servant, and trusty peer, would be doomed to an ignominious death, for attempting to do you a service."

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Nay, gentle Suffolk," returned the king, my cousin York will, I trust, permit me to intercede with him for your life."

"Not I, in sooth," responded York, sternly; "for well he deserveth to die for the treacherous part he hath played in carrying intelligence to and from Queen Margaret, to say nought of his murderous attempt on my life, even now."

"Alack! poor Suffolk," said the king, "all this evil hath come upon thee by reason of that profound ignorance whereof thou didst so lately boast thyself in the pride and naughtiness of thy presumptuous heart; whereas, thou mayest now perceive that a little knowledge of Latin would have saved thy life."

"May Heaven grant me patience," cried Suffolk, stamping with bootless rage; "but I vow it is worse tnan the thoughts of block or halter to me, to know that I have incurred this peril for a king who talks so like a pedagogue!

The warrior statesman, on whose fiat the fate of the youthful duke hung, in

spite of all his efforts to preserve a stern countenance, could not refrain from smiling at the angry vivacity with which his luckless captive made this observation.

"Nay, marry, my good cousin of York," said the king, " an thou enjoyest the shrewdness of yon malapert boy's jest against me, so much I pr'ythee take pity on him and spare his life, as if it be only for the jest's sake."

"I am willing to remit the extremest penalty, which he hath incurred by his late exploit, in consideration of your grace's supplication in his favour," said the Duke of York, "but then it shall be on condition of his revealing all he knoweth of the queen's contumacious proceedings in the north; therefore, sir spy, speak out and truly, an thou hopest to preserve life and limb."

"I would suffer myself to be hanged, drawn, and quartered a thousand times o'er, ere I would preserve my recreant life on such terms, Duke Richard," replied the prisoner, 66 were it not that I wot well that I can do no harm to my queen and cause by my confession; therefore do I accept thy conditions, provided thou wilt pledge thy knightly word that I shall not be slain after I have spoken."

"I pledge it," said York.

"Thou must also assure me, faithfully, my lord duke, that thou wilt not evade thy guarantee, by turning me over to thy son, Edward de la Marche, nor yet to the Earl of Warwick, to be dealt with according to their mercy, which I trow will be but small," rejoined Suffolk.

"I promise to hold thee safe from the vengeance of my princely heir, and from all other harm, an thou wilt speak truly all thou knowest of Queen Margaret's designs and present strength."

With all the pleasure in life, my lord duke," replied Suffolk; "and I hope, in the first place, that it will give you and my royal master here (to whom I was verily charged to bear my sovereign lady's loving greetings) much content to hear that she is in excellent health and spirits, as also our fair young lord her son, Edward, prince of Wales, who groweth daily in stature and understanding, and promiseth to become a very hopeful prince."

"An thou tellest me nothing more to the purpose than such impertinent folly, my lord chamberlain," interrupted York, angrily, "I will cause thee to be hanged as high as Paul's spire within the hour!"

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Gramercy, mighty duke!" returned Suffolk; "I thought it would pleasure you to hear the message which I was charged by Queen Margaret to deliver to my lord the king, first, and the rest will come in due rotation."

"Discuss the same to me then, without delay, my lord chamberlain, or ware the penalty of trifling with a prince in his angry mood," rejoined York, sternly.

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Nay, my Lord of York, I will tell you right gladly, an you will have a moment's patience with me; but if you frown and fume at that rate, you will put all the particulars of Queen Margaret's force out of mine head, as completely as you did my priestly learning even now."

"Pr'ythee, my fair chamberlain, have a care how you chafe my cousin York, at this time, by ill-timed gibing, which verily becometh not a man who standeth in peril of life and limb," said King Henry.

"I shall send the Earl of Warwick to deal with him, since he setteth me at nought," observed York.

"Twere pity to give his mightiness that trouble," returned Suffolk, "since I am not only ready, but willing, to inform your lordship, for your satisfaction, that our sovereign lady, Queen Margaret (to whom I communicated a verbal copy of the summons addressed to her, (which you enforced our royal lord to sign and seal, commanding her immediate return to court,) intendeth to render due obedience to the same, and she enjoined me to advertise King Henry that such was her purpose."

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Humph!" observed the duke; " and whom doth she intend to bring along with her?"

"To the best of my recollection, some six-score thousand Scottish spears, which have been lent to her by that gracious Lady Mary of Gueldres, the queen-regent of Scotland, on certain conditions."

"What be they?" demanded the duke. "That she should, forthwith, contract our hopeful young Prince Edward of Wales to the Lady Margaret her daughter, sister to the Scottish king; which royal alliance hath so raised the aforetime drooping spirits of the friends of Lancaster, that even the cravens of the cause bear themselves right gallantly on the occasion, and are ready to ruffle it with the boldest of the York braggarts on their own dunghill."

"What meanest thou by that saucy similitude, boy?" demanded York.

"I mean this dirty sink of all iniquity, the city of London, where every paltry 'prentice lad sporteth a white paper cockade in his flat cap, and crieth Hey for the rose of York! down with nobility and the royal throne of Lancaster!'"

"We are glad to hear that our loving commons are so well affected to our cause," observed York; " and is this all thou canst tell us, sir spy, of the queen's proceedings ?"

"Nay, marry, scarcely half of the good news with which she commissioned me to cheer our well-beloved liege," responded Suffolk; " only it irketh thee so sorely, my Lord of York, to hear it, that I deem it most prudent to say no

more."

Say on, thou malignant imp of Lancaster!" cried the duke.

"Well, then, my good lord, I am bounden, since it is your pleasure to hear these things, to tell you furthermore that, albeit, I passed through your garrison town of Carlisle in open day, and read mine own proscription on the walls and gate, no one there durst take me into custody, through fear of Queen Margaret's army, to which they have since then rendered up the town on indifferent good terms, as I have been informed."

"The dastardly villains!" exclaimed the duke; but, perchance, you lie only to vex me."

"That were pity," observed King Henry; " for a lie is a deadly sin, and that ought never to be incurred lightly." "I speak the truth, my liege,' returned Suffolk; and if that vex the Duke of York, I will hold my peace, or devise such fictions as may put him into a better mood."

"Wilt thou swear, audacious boy, that thou spokest nought but the truth, when thou didst affirm that Queen Margaret had spirited up six-score thousand men ?" demanded York.

"Nay," returned Suffolk, coolly, "I should be loth to swear to a precise number, seeing that a multitude of wellappointed recruits from all parts have flocked to the red rose banner ere this; and on the word of a nobleman, I do aver, that all Lancashire, Westmorland, Cheshire, and part of Yorkshire, were rising to join Queen Margaret on her

London march; and my good lord, you may expect to see her here in less than three days with all her northern chivalry, led by those two valiant princes, the Dukes of Exeter and Somerset, for whose return to London you raised so notable a coil."

"An it be really so," said the Duke of York, after a moody pause, 66 we must e'en tax our friends and followers to assist in giving them as warm a welcome as circumstances will admit; and by the holy rood, we will not tarry for them here, but show these invaders of the public peace our readiness to encounter with them by marching northward to give them greeting on the road. We shall leave our trusty Earl of Warwick to guard our good city of London, and our royal cousin Henry of Lancaster, meantime, from all foes; and as for this saucy prating springald, whom, for our word's sake, we doom not to the death which his late tricks have merited, we will send him to our castle of Ludlow, there to be put in strict ward in one of the nether apartments of the donjon keep, on meagre diet, till his saucy tongue is a little tamed, and our farther pleasure known."

It was in vain that Suffolk protested against this arrangement, and even humbled himself so far as to offer something very like an apology to the Duke of York for the reckless license of speech in which he had dared to indulge himself. The duke assured him that he had laid a much lighter punishment upon him than his insolence had deserved, and bade him esteem himself fortunate that he was not hurried to the block, without either trial or shrift, which he told him would undoubtedly have been the case had he left him to the mercy of the Earl of Warwick.

On the 2nd of December, 1460, the Duke of York left London at the head of five thousand men only, and marched northward to intercept Queen Margaret in her advance to the metropolis. He expected to be joined on the road by his son Edward, earl of March, with a mighty reinforcement of troops from Wales and the western counties; but finding himself disappointed in this calculation (for the young earl, mistaking his father's plans, proceeded towards London with his army), he was compelled to throw himself into Sandal Castle, to

avoid an engagement with the queen, whose numbers, though scarcely a sixth of what they had been represented by the Duke of Suffolk, were still very superior to his own.

Ludlow Castle, the place of his destination, was the strong hold of the Duke of York's principality, the marches on the borders of Wales, where his ancestors, the Mortimers, had for ages maintained almost an independent sovereignty, setting at times the monarchs of both England and Wales at defiance. There, as a place of the greatest security, the Duke of York had sent his wife and children during the present contest between himself and the king, or rather, we should say, the queen; for had it not been for his energetic consort, the mild and easy tempered Heury would have allowed his ambitious kinsman to exercise all the functions of royalty without remonstrance.

The Duchess Cicely, with her three fair daughters, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Anne, and her two youngest sons, George and Richard, soon after distinguished by the titles of Clarence and Gloucester, were residing at Ludlow Castle at the time of Suffolk's arrival with the strong escort, which had been appointed by the Duke of York to conduct him thither.

This party was composed of Welshmen, wholly ignorant of the English language, in which Suffolk had vainly exerted all his powers of persuasion, with offers of mighty bribes, to induce them to let him go. Not even their leader could comprehend one word that he said, nor did the Welshmen even know who he was; but the captain of the troop informed the castellan of Ludlow that he was a notable enemy, whom the Duke of York had commanded to be very strictly kept.

This expression was construed by Sir David Griffin into an intimation that the noble prisoner was forthwith to be dealt with according to the tender mercies which the feudal magnates usually extended towards such of their foes as fell into their clutches. So he incontinently introduced the unfortunate young nobleman into a dark, dismal dungeon, loaded his person with fetters, and set before him the hospitable refection of a loaf of coarse bread and a pitcher of water: furthermore, he accommodated him with a truss of clean straw and an earthen lamp, and then left him to the enjoyment of his solitary meditations.

The first thing the hopeless captive did, was to spurn his earthen pitcher and fling his brown loaf to the other end of his narrow cell; then he rent a handful of his golden ringlets from his head, and dashed himself upon the damp pavement in a transport of impotent rage, execrating at the same time the king's unseasonable interposition in preventing him from taking the life of his enemy, till wearied out with his profitless fury, and believing that, forgotten by all the world, he should be doomed to pine away his life in dismal incarceration, he burst into a passion of tears, and finally wept himself to sleep.

The three ladies of York were walking on the ramparts of Ludlow Castle, with the duchess their mother, to enjoy the first glimpse of wintry sunshine that had been visible for many days at the time of his arrival. The circumstance, of course, excited their attention; and the Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, the Duke of York's eldest daughter, recognised with much surprise, and no slight degree of compassion, in the guarded and fettered captive whom she saw delivered to Sir David Griffin for incarceration, the handsome lord chamberlain with whom she had more than once danced galliards and courants at the splendid court of Queen Margaret.

I will not say that the Lady Elizabeth of York had preserved a very tender remembrance of the courtly gallantry with which he had entertained her on such occasions, but she had certainly allowed herself, in the solitary hours that succeeded her removal from court, to draw amusing contrasts between the rough manners and uncouth demeanour of the fierce border chieftains whom her brother the Earl of March was wont to feast at Ludlow Castle, and those of the graceful, elegant Duke of Suffolk. When she last beheld him, he was tricked in all the splendid robing and insignia of his office, with his gold staff in his hand, fluttering from fair to fair, full of gay spirits, and through the cynosure of all ladies' eyes selecting herself as the principal object of his attention-now pale, sullen, weary, and woful, with drooping crest and fettered hands, he appeared before her at a time and place when she least expected to see him, apparently unconscious of her vicinity, and regarding every object around him with looks of scorn and bitter rage.