[Sidenote: The world indulgent to the great.]
"Besides," she added, "if you would really take the charge of your affairs into your own hands and act independently, what you call your errors you may depend upon it the public would designate by a different and a softer name. The world is always disposed to consider what is done by a great and powerful monarch as of course right, and even when it would seem to them wrong they believe that its having that appearance is only because they are not in a position to form a just judgment on the question, not being fully acquainted with the facts, or not seeing all the bearings of them."
She assured her husband, moreover, that if he would take the business of the government into his own hands, he would be very successful in his administration of public affairs, and would be well sustained by all the people of the realm.
Besides thus operating upon the mind of the king, Margaret was secretly employed all the time in ascertaining the views and feelings of the principal nobles and other great personages of the realm, with a view to learning who were disposed to feel hostile to the duke, and to unite all such into an organized opposition to him. One of the first persons to whom she applied with this view was Somerset, the former lover of Lady Neville.
[Sidenote: Opposition to the Duke of Gloucester.]
She presumed, of course, that Somerset would be predisposed to a feeling of hostility to the duke on account of the old rivalry which had existed between them, and she now proposed to make use of Lady Neville's return, and of her agency in restoring her to him, as a means of inducing him to enter fully into her plans for overturning his old rival's power. In order to retain the management of the affair wholly in her own hands, she agreed with Lady Neville that Lady Neville herself was not in any way to communicate with Somerset until she, the queen, had first had an interview with him, and that he was to learn the safety of Lady Neville only through her. Lady Neville readily consented to this, believing that the queen could manage the matter better than she herself could do it.
It will be recollected that Somerset was married during the period of his former acquaintance with Lady Neville, but his wife had died while Lady Neville was in France, and he was now free; so that the plan which the queen and Lady Neville now formed was to give him an opportunity, if he still retained his love for her, to make her his wife.