Having lately had occasion to examine with some particularity the sequence of domestic events during the first four years of King Edward the Fourth, especially in connection with the movements, during part of that time, of the deposed King Henry and his consort, Margaret of Anjou, it has surprised me to find how confusedly the period in question has been treated.
When Margaret of Anjou died at the Chateau of Dampierre, near Saumur, on August 25, 1482 it was as a woman not only retired from the world but almost forgotten by it. She who had been for a time the virtual ruler of Lancastrian England, who had raised armies and intrigued with princes, had not enough money to pay her debts except through the uncertain charity of her uncharitable cousin, the king of France. Crushed by misfortune, bereft of power by the death of her husband and son, picked clean of her remaining rights and possessions by Louis as the price of her ransom from English captivity, she seemed to be of no interest to anybody.
Chapter 5 surveys the known references to St Margaret appearing in medieval English religious drama, parish pageants in London and East Anglia, and civic triumphs of Queen Margaret of Anjou. It also introduces a discussion of a link between St Margaret and St George in late-medieval culture.
XVI.—On certain Inaccuracies in the ordinary Accounts of the early years of the Reign of King Edward IV
