Читать книгу Red and White: A Tale of the Wars of the Roses онлайн | страница 9
It was an unfortunate thing for Richard of York that he had married a woman who acted toward his ambitious aspirations not as a bridle, but as a spur. Cicely Neville, surnamed from her great beauty The Rose of Raby, was a woman who, like two of her descendants, would have "died to-morrow to be a queen to-day," and would have preferred "to eat dry bread at a king's table, rather than feast at the board of an elector."[#] Of all members of the royal family of England, this lady is to my knowledge the only one who ever styled herself in her own charters "the right high and right excellent Princesse." The Rose of Raby was not the only title given her. To the vulgar in the neighbourhood where her youth was spent she was also known as Proud Cis. And every act of her life tends to show the truth of the title.
[#] The words first quoted were spoken by Anne Princess of Orange, eldest daughter of George II.; the latter by Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, eldest daughter of James I.
It was at the battle of St. Albans—the first fought between the rival Roses—that Dorathie's grandfather had been killed; the husband of the stately old lady who remained head of the household at Lovell Tower. His barony descended to his only daughter Margery, who, after a good deal of hesitation among rival suitors who greatly admired her title and fortune, had gradually awoke to the discovery that she liked nobody quite so well as her old friend John Marston, though he was nearly twice her age, and a widower with three children. So on him, with the full consent of her mother, she bestowed hand and heart, title and fortune; the former being in his eyes, alone of all her lovers, more valuable than the latter. In her right he became Lord Marnell of Lymington, for until a comparatively recent period the title of a peeress in her own right was held to become the property of her husband as absolutely as her goods, and was conferred by courtesy, as a matter of necessity, upon any second wife whom he might marry. Two more children—Dorathie and Ralph—were added to the family: but only the former now survived. It will thus be seen that Frideswide and Agnes were half-sisters of Dorathie. The other member of the family not yet introduced was Walter, the eldest son. He was at present a young squire in the household of Queen Marguerite.