From the fairytale turrets of Saumur Castle, atop which golden fleur-de-lys glistened in the summer light, to the bulbous towers of Angers, where the chĂąteau loomed on a cliff edge above the River Loire, the funeral cortege of Margaret of Anjou carried the queen on her last journey.
For six years she had been exiled back to the lands in which she grew up, a half-welcome guest of her father and King Louis, with little more than hunting dogs, books and a casket of relics to remind her of past glories. She was going now to rejoin her ancestors. Her last request to King Louis was that he would allow her to be buried with her parents: in their sepulchre at Angers Cathedral.
Since her capture at Tewksbury in 1471 Margaret's life had become one of solitary retirement. She had not stayed long in the Tower of London, although she must have been there when Henry was killed.
For a time she was kept at Windsor Castle, and by January 1472 she had moved to Wallingford in Oxfordshire, where her keeper was her old friend, Alice Chaucer, dowager duchess of Suffolk.
The women had once been close, Alice perhaps even having something of a maternal place in Margaret's heart. Since Suffolk's murder their lives had taken very different courses, and their enforced time together during Margaret's imprisonment cannot have been entirely happy.
Where Margaret had resisted the Yorkist regime with all her strength, Alice had come to terms with it even before Henry VI was first deposed. In 1458 Alice had overseen the marriage of her only child, John, to York's daughter Elizabeth. At the time this must have seemed a dangerous move, but her gamble had paid off. Her son still lived, a prominent member of the court of King Edward IV, and a king's brother-in-law.
Margaret, by contrast, had lost her family to the wars. Under house arrest, she was reliant on Edward to provide her with enough money to cover the expenses of herself and her servants.
One of those servants was Lady Katherine Vaux. Katherine had lost her husband, Margaret's old servant Sir William, at Tewksbury and the pair were bound so tightly together, whether through shared grief or the loyalty of many years' service, that Katherine stayed with Margaret until the end.
The pair of them probably appear in an image in the Guild Book of the London Skinners' Fraternity in 1475. Margaret wears an ermine-lined dark gown, her head covered like a nun, kneeling forward to read a religious text from her prayer book while a discarded crown and sceptre lie beside her. Behind Margaret is a more fashionably dressed woman, evidently in attendance on the queen, with her prayer book in her hands, her eyes more on her mistress than her prayers.
Both Katherine and Margaret were members of this fraternity in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary who Margaret, like Henry, always particularly revered. As this image in the Skinners' record suggests, Margaret's imprisonment under Edward IV was not especially stringent.
Other members of the Skinners' Guild Fraternity included Queen Elizabeth Woodville and her ladies, so the fraternity would not have risked their ire by welcoming Margaret without their consent.
Margaret was provided with clothing, mostly black, at royal expense and had enough freedom not only to join this guild but also to enjoy the services of the dean of Edward's chapel in 1474. Having moved from Wallingford to London for most of the intervening years, in 1475 an international treaty between Edward and Louis XI was finalized that ransomed Margaret to Louis for ÂŁ50,000.
In return for being able to return to her father's territories with a small pension from Louis, Margaret was forced to renounce all of her claims not only in England but also in France. The woman who had clung so tenaciously to her family's right to the English crown was now willing to give up virtually everything she owned to go home. After all, there was no one to inherit her titles or lands after her death. Thus, in November 1475, she was transferred into the keeping of Sir Thomas Montgomery to be escorted to France.
For several years Margaret lived in her father's castle at Reculée, near Angers, but when René died in 1480 she had to rely on one of his servants to provide her literary interests. Some years earlier she had commissioned the Burgundian memoirist Georges Chastellain to write Le Temple de Bocace, a consolation piece dwelling on the changing fortunes of the world and the unjust criticism that had been levelled at her.
Presumably she also occasionally rode or hunted through the verdant rolling fields and woodland surrounding her, enjoying at least one pastime from her old life. Margaret may have ridden from her modest home at Dampierre to the more imposing ChĂąteau Montsoreau on the banks of the River Loire, over time she developed enough of a relationship with he castle's owner, Madame de Montsoreau, to gift her all of her hunting dogs shortly before her death - a high-status offering for a lady who had perhaps been a friend in the queen's last years.
In the summer heat of 1482 Margaret fell ill and, with the faithful Katherine Vaux at her side, she made her last will and testament on 2 August. Louis XI, who had once mocked her proud writing style, would have found little to displease him in the humble petitions that filled this short document.
'Sound of mind, reason and thought, however weak and feeble of body', Margaret asked to be buried in the cathedral church of St Maurice in Angers beside her parents, 'in whatever manner it pleases the king to ordain, or in another place if he prefers'.
She wrote that she did not have enough money to cover the cost of the funeral and suggested that Louis sold her remaining possessions to pay for her burial - as indeed he did.
And perhaps thinking of Lady Katherine, she 'recommend(ed] very humbly and affectionately' her 'poor servants... to the good grace and charity of the said King'. She had evidently lived on the charity of others for some time, and implored Louis, as her sole heir, to cover any remaining debts she had incurred.
Louis did as Margaret asked and had her honourably buried with her parents, but he insisted on reclaiming the hunting dogs that she had gifted to Madame de Montsoreau. 'You know (Margaret] has made me her heir, the king reminded Montsoreau in a letter written days before the queen actually died, 'and that this is all I shall get; also it is what I love best. I pray you not to keep any back, [or] you would cause me a terribly great displeasureâ.
Even in death, Henry and Margaret were the pawns of others.â
JOHNSON, Lauren. âLife and Death of Henry VIâ.
Fan cast: Sophie Turner as young Marguerite and Lena Headey as Queen Marguerite.
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