Margaret of Anjou

Margaret of Anjou, the queen of Henry VI. of England, was daughter of René of Anjou, the titular king of Sicily, and of Isabella of Lorraine, and was born at Pont-à-Mousson, in Lorraine, 24th March 1429. She was married to Henry VI. of England in 1445; and her husband being a person whose naturally weak intellect was sometimes darkened by complete imbecility, she exercised an almost unlimited authority over him, and was the virtual sovereign of the realm. A secret contract at her marriage, by which Maine and Anjou were relinquished to the French, excited great dissatisfaction in England, and the war with the French which broke out anew in 1449, in the course of which all Normandy was lost, was laid by the English to the charge of the already unpopular queen. In 1450 occurred the insurrection of Jack Cade, and soon after the country was plunged in the horrors of that bloody civil war known as the Wars of the Roses. Margaret took an active part in the contest, braving disaster and defeat with the most heroic courage. At length, after a struggle of nearly twenty years, Margaret was finally defeated at Tewkesbury, and flung into the Tower, where she remained four years, till Louis XI. redeemed her for fifty thousand crowns. She then retired to France, and died at the château of Dampierre, near Saumur, in Anjou, 25th August 1482. Mrs Hookham's Life (1872) is not altogether satisfactory as history.