Bitterly she complains that the King had sent letters to the Abbot of Beaulieu, on account of some "synester informacion to his said Highness made," with orders to keep her in strict prison, which was a deep grief to her. She pleads her sore poverty, being cut off from all enjoyment of her jointure and dower of the earldom of Salisbury, and also from her own Despenser lands and earldom of Warwick: and lastly, she represents that she has no opportunity of putting her case into the hands of any solicitor, nor, if she had, is there one that would dare to undertake it.
Edward paid little attention to this sad appeal. Clarence had his brother’s ear: and Clarence had set his mind upon one thing,—to hand down to his children the vast Warwick inheritance, undivided. In order to do this, he grudged his mother-in-law every unnecessary penny: and he determined that so far as in him lay, his sister-in-law, the Princess of Wales, should never marry again. There was much danger of this calamity: not because of any wish to that effect on the part of the girl-widow, whose heart was buried for ever in the nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, and whose sole ambition was to creep out of sight and hearing of the hard, cold world, into some quiet corner, where she could wait undisturbed until God called her to rejoin her dead. The danger arose not from her, but from the Duke of Gloucester. From his early boyhood, Richard of York had loved Anne Neville; or rather, to put it more accurately, he loved himself, and he found in Anne Neville a plaything the possession of which was necessary to his happiness. That he did not love her, he plainly showed by his actions. Had he done so, he would have let her alone, which was all the grace she asked at his hands. But Gloucester, like most human beings, looked upon love and persecution as exchangeable terms. He wanted Anne Neville: whether she wanted him was a point quite unnecessary to take into the account. And Anne did not want him. On the contrary, she intensely disliked him. It was not possible for her to compare to his advantage such a man as this, whose soul was ten times more crooked than his body, with her tender, brave, gallant young Plantagenet, whose death