A crafty Widow. was from her firm adherence to the church of Rome; which had received a shock in the reign of Henry V., by the purer tenets of the Lollards; and that great prince tarnished his glory by the cruel persecution of those reformists. Edward had little or no religion; but what he had, evidently favoured the creed of Wickliffe and his followers. Lady Elizabeth, to an half-finished education, united all the bigotry of those superstitious times. This lady was at the head of all the rigid Catholics; and trusted to the power of her personal charms, to her apparent wisdom, and that prudential conduct she, in effect, possessed, to convert the prince from his heresy. Her confessor, a man of the deepest policy and enthusiastic zeal, urged her on to employ every art to gain over the prince to desert the amiable Princess of Savoy, and to devote himself entirely A crafty Widow. to Lady Elizabeth. But she laid no restrictions on his promiscuous amours; on the contrary, she rather encouraged them," in the double hope of her religion being established, by entirely detaching him from Maria De Rosenvault, who was a professed disciple of Wickliffe's, and also alienating his affections from the virtuous Bona, so that she might, without any opposition on the part of the prince, become Queen of England. Skilled in the art of Rattery, she made him believe that her regard for him was of the most pure and sisterly kind; that, charming as was his person, it was his mental endowments that alone had captivated her, and caused her to forget that decorum and dignity she owed to her sex, her family, and the virtuous principles in which she had been educated. Nothing, indeed, would satisfy A crafty Widow. her but a marriage with her beloved prince; and she covered her artful proceedings by every plausible pretence of heroic virtue. Among much rhetoric which she employed on the important occasion, historians record the following sentence: My liege, if I am too mean to be your wife, I think too highly of myself to become your mistress." It is strange that historians, like some ill judges of painting, look only on the lustre of false colouring which appears on the surface, and examine not closely into the intrinsic worth of the piece. Actions, not words, are the proofs of superior virtue; and can we highly extol it in that woman who endeavoured to persuade the daughter of Edward to marry her own uncle, Richard the IIId? Such a mind shews itself to be more actuated by ambi A crafty Widow. tion in her resistance of Edward's illicit proposals, than guided by a love of unsullied virtue. A marriage, without witnesses, hurried over by an itinerant priest, was, however, the tie that bound this lady, who was then in her wane, to a young and accomplished prince. They well knew that no churchman of respectability would perform the ceremony, as both nobility and clergy rejoiced in the projected alliance with the Princess of Savoy. And though Lady Elizabeth knew her marriage, from the want of witnesses, could not be binding, yet she trusted to some propitious moment, when, by her superior arts, she could blind the infatuated Edward so far as to consent to be publicly married to her. Amongst the good qualities of Edward was great good nature to children; which A crafty Widow. was ever kept alive in his breast, because it was aided by a tender compassion for their helpless years. This compassion he particularly felt for orphans of nobility, well brought up, but reduced to indigence. He knew they had to struggle with an unfeeling world, and, unused to labour, if royalty did not step forward to relieve them, and restore them to title and affluence, they must often perish; for there was no way for them to gain even a temporary or scanty subsistence, in those times, by superior education. Monasteries, which were patronized and supported by the Cardinal of Winchester, Lady Elizabeth's staunch friend, had engrossed chiefly the privileges of tuition; and of those religious houses the superiors were so venal, that, should indigent nobility wish to seek a refuge in a monastic life, as they could not bring pecuniary |