MRS. HOOKHAM'S MARGARET OF ANJOU.*
WHEN we first took up this work, it created a favourable impres- sion, and though it had been published some little time, we thought its merits deserved some words of recognition. On a closer in- spection, first impressions melted away, and we became more and more aware of the fact that the work was one of doubtful value. It is wanting in accuracy, judgment, and impartiality ; it moralises far too much ; it has no opinion of its own on points on which earlier writers have differed ; and it has no index. We bad hoped to find done for Margaret of Anjou what Rawson Gardiner has done for James I. and Lord Stanhope for Queen Anne, a work that would have had some historic worth, as filling up crevices in the chapter of English history which bears upon the Wars of the Roses. We will not deny that there is evidence of great and varied re- search on Mrs. Hookham's part, and that her task has been a most laborious one ; the information she has culled from numerous sources would more than suffice to produce with judicious handling a valuable and interesting work, but it lacks the historian's touch to transform the mass of information into useful history.
We do not see much of Margaret herself before the middle of Vol. I., the first portion being devoted chiefly to the career of her father, Rene, and to a sketch of his ancestors and the early his- tory of Anjou. To the great struggle itself between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster we need not allude ; Mrs. Hook- bara's account is full and comprehensive, and contains, in addition to the usual narrative, many details collected from various hitherto little utilised stores ; in fact, of this part of the work we cannot complain ; it is accurate and exhaustive, and though the materials are not put together with much method, they are well selected and may be depended upon. It is easy to see that she prefers red to white roses, and that the burden of her tale is that " the Queen can do no wrong," the spirit of this text often reach- ing to all who wore the daisy for their badge. Her praises and prejudices are so transparent, that one is rather taken shack on reading " that those historians who call Queen Margaret .1 proud and vindictive,' and who attribute all the evils of this disastrous reign to her wilful passions, must surely be blinded by prejudice, and forgetful of that impartiality which ought ever to be the distinguishing characteristics of an historian." As for • The Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou. By Mary Anne Hookham. London: Tinsley Brotbers.
Queen Margaret not being cruel, Mrs. Hookham is strangely in- consistent, for after speaking of the clemency of the Lancastrians and contrasting Margaret's moderation with Edward's cruelty, she admits that if Margaret had won the battle of Tewkesbury and taken Edward prisoner, she would have put him to death ; moreover, after the battle of Wakefield the captives were all slain in cold blood, and their heads by the Queen's orders set on poles and placed about the city of York, whilst Margaret herself had by her Coventry Parliament passed an Act of attainder against Edward, his mother, and others of his kin ? In all the fierceness and de- speration of this civil war, the reprisals, Mrs. Hookham will find , were pretty evenly balanced, and the savage nature of each contest was aggravated by the conviction that it was one of life or death. Mrs. Hookham has committed one shocking bit of bungling. In Vol. II., p. 207, she writes that Henry VI. was captured on the 29th of June, 1465; his capture was followed by an ignominious entry into London, and by imprisonment in the Tower. On p. 210 we read that
"The youthful Edward was now enjoying the sunshine of prosperity, acknowledged as the lawful sovereign of a people who rejoiced in his favour and success. No longer fearing civil discord, this monarch gave himself up to the dissipations and amusements of his high station. .... It was during this season of tranquillity, while King Henry was in captivity and Queen Margaret banished the kingdom, that Edward was, by the advice of his Ministers, persuaded to confirm to his pos- terity his right to the Crown by his marriage with some foreign prin- cess. The ladies who wore selected were Isabella of Castile, who was afterwards married to Ferdinand of Arragon, and Bona of Savoy, the sister of the Queen of France. This last was chosen by King Edward, and the Earl of Warwick was dismissed to Paris to demand the hand of the lady."
On page 213 we read that the union between Edward and Eliza- beth Woodville was privately solemnised at Grafton on May 1, 1464 ; and two pages further on, that about Michaelmas, 1464, Warwick and Clarence led Elizabeth by the hand to the Abbey of Reading, in the King's presence, and declared her Queen of England before the nobility and people assembled. How, then, could the Earl of Warwick have been sent to Paris in the following year to demand the hand of Bona of Savoy ? As Edward was married in May, 1464, if not earlier, and since the Earl of Warwick was in France in 1465, how comes Mrs. Hookham to attribute the defec- tion of the latter to King Edward to personal revenge at the sup- posed insult offered him by the King through his marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, whilst he (the Earl of Warwick) was nego- tiating for the marriage with Bona of Savoy ? It is far from pro- bable that the King's marriage had anything whatever to do with the King-maker's desertion, and it is more than probable he was jealous of the growing power of the Queen's relatives, the Wood- villes, whilst his own relatives, the Nevilles, hitherto the most in- fluential family in the realm, were being gradually but surely supplanted. The late Lord Lytton accounted for it through a gross insult offered to one of Warwick's female relations by the young monarch, and the licentious character of the latter renders such a thing likely, though Creasy says there is no historical authority for it earlier than Hall, who wrote in Edward VI.'s reign.
In any case, Mrs. Hookham's version of the whole matter is con- tradictory and full of ambiguity.
The final chapter of these volumes consists of what Mrs. Hook- ham is pleased to call a "summary review of England during the fifteenth century, the period in which King Henry VI. and Queen Margaret reigned in this country." It is not quite clear whether the summary is to extend over the whole of the fifteenth century, or only that portion of it during which Henry VI. and his wife were in power ; however, to the literature of the country, Mrs.
Hookham cannot devote more than ten lines, divided into three infinitesimal paragraphs, viz. :—
" Of historians, in tho reign of Henry VI., amongst these was John Skewish, a native of Cornwall, who compiled an abridgment of the chronicles and of the Wars of Troy. Harding, another historian of those times, was likewise the first poet-laureate. Ho held this appoint- ment to Edward IV. Among the poets of this period we may especially mention James L, King of Scotland; Lydgate, a monk of Bury, whose pieces amounted to 251 in number ; also Hugh Campden, and Thomas Chester."
Meagre as this account is, it might have been accurate, or at least more perfect. The name of John Skewish is new to us, though as he was a native of Cornwall, it may be found in the county archives ; it is probable that the abridgment of the Wars of Troy, which Mrs. Hookham attributes to him, is the History of Troy, which Caxton printed at Cologne in 1471, which was the first great work of his pen, and the first English book from his or any other press ; but if the abridgment was taken from this work of the old printer of Westminster, it could not have been during the reign of Henry VI. Harding the his- torian could scarcely have been poet-laureate to Edward.' IV., for he was born in 1378,—i.e., eighty-three years be- fore the accession of that monarch ; moreover, John Kay was laureate certainly during part of Edward IV.'s reign ; and in those days, poet-laureate was not an "appointment to" the reigning sovereign, but a degree conferred by the Universities. This, it will be seen, is not a valuable addition to our information on the literature of England during the fifteenth century ; one would have expected to hear something of the writer, Sir John Fortescue, particularly as he was so faithful to the Lan- castrian cause through every change, and followed Queen Mar- garet to her exile in France,. but his name is not mentioned. Mrs. Hookham also tells us that " engravings on wood and copper first appeared about the year 1460. These may be seen in the remaining old prints of Andrew Montague, Martin Schoon, and Albert Durer." Apart from the German formsehneiders who were 'employed as early as the year 1300 to engrave on wood the designs of the card-painters, it has been settled beyond all doubt that images of saints, with inscriptions beneath them, were engraved on wood as early as 1423. Of the three engravers mentioned by Mrs. Hookham, we know nothing of Muntague ; Schoon's name was Schongauer ; and Albert Durer was not born uutil 1471, whilst no engraving of his bears date earlier than 1497. Scarcely a word is said about the printing-press and its introduc- tion into London; there is no allusion to the first book, printed by Caxton at an English press, the Game and Plage of the Chesse- perhaps because it contained a prayer for the prosperity of Edward and England, which was distasteful to one of such strong Lancastrian proclivities as Mrs. Hookham.
With regard to the death and burial of Henry VI., Mrs. Hookham is content to follow without question the tradition handed down to us by certain writers, that no decent respect was paid to the King's burial, and that there was neither " priest nor clerk, torch nor taper, saying or singing," in the cloisters of Chertsey Abbey. If Mrs. Hookham had examined more carefully the Issue Rolls of the ancient Pell Office, she would have found, in addition to the records of payments to certain persons for the duties they performed in connection with the King's confinement, death, and burial, a payment " for obsequies and masses said at Chertsey, aforesaid, on the day of the burial of the said Henry." Mrs. Hookham states positively that King Edward " resolved to despatch him "—i.e., Henry—and that a few days after the battle of Tewkesbury the latter was put to death whilst at his devotions in the Tower, and that it was generally believed he was murdered by the hand of the Duke of Gloucester. Now it is very doubtful whether the Duke of Gloucester, then a lad of eighteen, was in London at the time of the King's death, for almost immediately after the battle of Tewkesbury he had gone into Kent to suppress the rebels in that county, and he could gain nothing by murdering Henry VI., a sovereign from whom he had received much kindness ; but even if he were in London and at the Tower, as some have said, his presence there proves nothing, for his sister-in-law and her young family were residing in the Tower at the time, and it was only natural he should be with them.
We close these volumes with a feeling of dissatisfaction that out of much valuable material, Mrs. Hookham has failed to pro- duce a better result. It is only fair to state that with the excep- tion of the errors we have pointed out, the work seems to be tolerably free from actual inaccuracy, particularly that portion of it which treats of the Wars of the Roses. It is the style of writing, the want of arrangement, the soliloquising, and the shrinking from giving an opinion when most required, which we condemn, and which combine to render the work as a contribution to history unsatisfactory and inconclusive.
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