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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck," Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley intricately weaves a historical narrative that explores themes of identity, legitimacy, and the complexities of monarchy during the tumultuous period of the late 15th century. Drawing on the figure of Perkin Warbeck, an alleged pretender to the English throne, Shelley employs a vividly descriptive literary style that intertwines psychological depth with rich historical detail. The novel reflects the Romantic preoccupation with individualism and the struggle against societal constraints, serving as a precursor to later historical fiction while emphasizing the emotional ramifications of political upheaval. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, best known for her groundbreaking novel "Frankenstein," was deeply engaged with the issues of her time, including gender, power, and the nature of humanity. Her interest in the historical narrative may stem from her own experiences with societal rejection and her family's tumultuous history. Both her intellectual lineage and personal struggles inform this exploration of Warbeck's narrative, as she draws parallels between the pretender's plight and her own beliefs about personal autonomy amidst rigid structures of authority. "The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck" is a compelling read for those interested in historical fiction, as it not only brings to light an intriguing story from the past but also invites reflection on the universal themes of struggle for acceptance and the fight for self-identity. Shelley's deft combination of narrative intrigue and profound philosophical inquiry makes this work particularly relevant today. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
Table of Contents
Introduction
A lost prince steps from rumor into history, and the world decides whether he is truth or treason. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck unfolds as a richly layered historical romance set amid the unsettled aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, when dynastic legitimacy is both a political weapon and a moral riddle. Rather than merely retelling a famous controversy, Shelley probes how identity is constructed, tested, and defended in the glare of public scrutiny. Her narrative suspends certainty, inviting readers to measure evidence, loyalty, and conscience as crowns are weighed against the claims of memory and hope.
This novel endures as a classic of Romantic historical fiction because it fuses scholarly attentiveness with imaginative sympathy, giving recognizable figures the nuance of living minds. Its lasting appeal lies in Shelley’s refusal to reduce history to winners and losers; she treats power as a contingency shaped by character as much as circumstance. The book participates in the broader nineteenth-century turn to the historical romance while quietly revising its conventions, emphasizing ethical inquiry alongside pageantry. For later readers and writers, it models how narrative can question official histories without collapsing into cynicism, keeping alive the humane urgency that animates the past.
Written in the late 1820s and published in 1830, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck: A Romance is by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, renowned for Frankenstein yet equally committed to political and historical subjects. The novel follows the claimant known as Perkin Warbeck, who asserts he is Richard of Shrewsbury, the younger of the disappeared sons of Edward IV. Tracking his journeys across courts and battle lines, Shelley explores the struggle to establish identity and justice in a world governed by calculation and fear. Her purpose is not to adjudicate definitively but to test the ethics of belief and the costs of allegiance.
Set chiefly in the final decade of the fifteenth century, the story moves through a Europe preoccupied with the fragile new Tudor regime and the unresolved griefs of the previous civil wars. Shelley situates the claimant’s emergence within a web of alliances, marriages, embassies, and rumors, showing how power depends upon perception as much as force. Drawing on chronicle traditions and historical research, she adapts known episodes into dramatic scenes without sacrificing plausibility. The result is a narrative that respects the documentary record while allowing the imaginative freedom necessary to dramatize choices, motives, and conflicts that the archives render only in outline.
Shelley’s engagement with the historical romance places her in dialogue with contemporaries who popularized the genre, yet her approach is distinctively analytic and reflective. She privileges inward conflict as strongly as outward action, turning pageantry into a theater of conscience. Her position within early nineteenth-century letters also matters: coming after the shock of revolutionary and Napoleonic upheavals, she reads late medieval politics with an eye to legitimacy, reform, and the human consequences of realpolitik. The novel thus stands at a crossroads where Romantic interiority meets archival fidelity, producing a work that deepens the genre’s moral and intellectual ambitions.
Stylistically, the book unites measured, lucid prose with a keen sense of place and ceremonial texture. Courts, embassies, and encampments are rendered as living environments—sites where gestures and protocols speak as eloquently as declarations. Shelley modulates tempo between poised reflection and sudden urgency, allowing suspense to arise from choices rather than mere spectacle. She balances the sweep of diplomatic maneuvering with intimate scenes of counsel, doubt, and resolve. This compositional poise enables readers to feel both the grandeur and the precariousness of claims to sovereignty, as private vows intersect with public oaths and history’s outcomes hinge on fragile acts of trust.
At the thematic core are questions of identity, legitimacy, and the shaping force of narrative. Who confers truth when memory is contested and documents are incomplete? What is loyalty when fidelity to a person conflicts with obedience to a state? Shelley interrogates the ethics of belief, the allure and peril of chivalric ideals, and the way rumor hardens into policy. She examines exile and belonging, the costs of ambition, and the moral responsibilities of those who recognize another’s humanity amid factional strife. Her interest in how stories become history makes the novel a meditation on evidence, persuasion, and the fragile foundations of authority.
Characterization is central to the book’s power. Shelley presents the claimant with dignity and complexity, inviting readers to weigh charisma, conviction, and vulnerability without prescribing judgment. Figures around him—advisers, allies, and the women whose fortunes are bound to his—are rendered with compassion and independence of mind. Henry VII and other rulers appear not as caricatures but as strategic thinkers navigating uncertainty. The novel thereby resists moral simplification, showing how decent intentions can be compromised by necessity, and how pragmatism can shade into cruelty. This ethical granularity ensures the conflicts feel earned, sharpening the drama without sacrificing historical credibility.
Although not as widely read as Frankenstein, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck has secured a respected place within Mary Shelley’s oeuvre and within the canon of Romantic historical fiction. Modern criticism has increasingly recognized its sophistication as a political novel and its careful reimagining of Tudor origins. The book’s reappraisal underscores Shelley’s breadth as a writer who could blend archival conscience with psychological insight. Its durability rests on how persuasively it stages debates that continue to challenge readers: what counts as evidence, how leaders claim moral authority, and whether fidelity to persons or institutions best safeguards a common good.
The novel’s influence is felt less in direct imitation than in the ongoing vitality of historical narratives that revisit official accounts to recover muted voices and alternative possibilities. By dramatizing a contested claimant without reducing him to impostor or icon, Shelley offers a template for ethically engaged historical storytelling. Subsequent treatments of late medieval and Tudor history frequently echo her concern with narrative bias and the human face of statecraft. In this way, the book helps sustain a literary tradition that values empathy as a method of inquiry, encouraging readers and writers to approach the past with rigor and humility.
Readers can expect a narrative that balances suspense with reflection, drawing them into council chambers and along perilous journeys where decisions carry both personal and national stakes. The uncertainty surrounding identity is handled not as a trick but as a sustained moral test. Alliances waver, consciences speak, and the atmosphere tightens as perception becomes fate. Yet the novel also affords moments of tenderness and steadfastness that counterweigh political calculation. Its pleasures are cumulative: finely weighted scenes, resonant motifs, and the slow accretion of evidence in the court of public opinion, where character may matter more than claim.
In sum, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck endures for its searching examination of power, truth, and the narratives that bind communities together. It offers themes that remain urgent—legitimacy, misinformation, loyalty, and the human costs of consolidation and resistance—while presenting characters whose dilemmas feel immediately recognizable. For contemporary audiences navigating contested truths and shifting allegiances, Shelley’s historical romance provides clarity without dogma, empathy without naivety. Its lasting appeal lies in the invitation it extends: to read history as a moral encounter, to weigh evidence with care, and to hold open the possibility that justice can be imagined and pursued.
Synopsis
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck is a historical novel set in the closing years of the fifteenth century, when the Tudor dynasty is newly established and Yorkist claims linger. It follows the rise and reversals of a young claimant to the English throne known as Perkin Warbeck, presented here as a figure of princely bearing whose past is shadowed by disputed origins. Shelley traces his emergence onto the European stage, the networks that promote him, and the political pressures that shape his path. The narrative blends courtly scenes, diplomatic maneuvering, and martial episodes to depict the uncertain passage from obscurity to notoriety.
The opening situates readers in the aftermath of the Wars of the Roses, revisiting the downfall of the House of York and the mystery surrounding the princes confined in the Tower. Against this backdrop, the novel sketches a clandestine survival and removal of a royal child, whose growth abroad preserves a memory of birthright alongside habits of humility. Mentors, guardians, and chance encounters shape his conscience as rumors travel ahead of him. The question of identity moves from private resolve to public claim, framing a tension between personal duty and the risks of political assertion in a realm wary of renewed civil conflict.
As the youth matures, he comes within reach of continental courts where dynastic rivalries remain alive. The Duchess Margaret of Burgundy, sister to the fallen Yorkist king, encounters the claimant and recognizes in him a likeness she embraces. Her court becomes a center of advocacy, gathering exiles, counselors, and soldiers who recall past loyalties. Through letters, proclamations, and carefully staged appearances, his cause is presented to foreign sovereigns. He is trained in the codes of chivalry and the responsibilities of kingship, while envoys test the mood in England. Support and skepticism coexist, creating a precarious platform from which action must unfold.
The first ventures take him to places where Yorkist sympathy persists, and to shores receptive to bold declarations. Local enthusiasm rises but proves uneven, confronting practical limits of resources and command. From London, King Henry VII counters with proclamations, oaths, and a network of informants, seeking to isolate the challenge without inciting broader unrest. The claimant withdraws and recalibrates abroad, learning the costs of premature confrontation. Meanwhile, shifting alliances among France, Burgundy, and the Empire complicate sponsorship. The narrative emphasizes the fragile nature of favor: a treaty, a payment, or a timely marriage can redirect the currents on which he sails.
Embassies continue across France and the Low Countries, where promises sometimes outpace delivery. Some English gentlemen flirt with conspiracy before retreating; a few expose plans to the Tudor court, earning pardons while deepening divisions among exiles. An attempted acclamation abroad brings renown without decisive strength, compelling another change of base. The claimant adopts patience and ceremony as instruments of legitimacy, even as opponents cast him as an adventurer. With continental backing uncertain, attention turns northward to Scotland, where King James IV, alert to opportunity and honor, extends protection. This northern refuge offers resources, counsel, and a new arena for proving claims.
Under Scottish patronage, the claimant’s court takes firmer shape. Alliances are sealed with oaths, pageants, and a marriage that confers dignity and deepens personal stakes, notably through the figure of Lady Katherine Gordon, whose loyalty is quietly emphasized. A cross-border foray tests English sentiment and the resolve of local magnates. The incursion impresses by boldness but yields limited adhesion, underscoring the gap between sympathy and risk. The Scottish king measures advantage against treaty obligations, and the enterprise contracts. The claimant faces the dilemma of preserving honor while avoiding needless bloodshed, and he seeks elsewhere a footing more responsive to his name.
Discontent in western England offers another opening, as tax grievances swell into rebellion. The claimant’s arrival lends the movement a banner, and momentary successes suggest momentum. Yet discipline, supplies, and unity remain uncertain, and the Tudor response grows methodical. Negotiations, safe conducts, and sanctuary become part of the story, revealing a crown intent on quelling disturbance while displaying measured clemency. The claimant passes through phases of guarded liberty and constraint, surrounded by companions whose fates diverge through prudence, steadfastness, or betrayal. Domestic scenes with Katherine accent the private costs of public ambition, while proclamations and interrogations shape the struggle’s narrative.
In later chapters, pressures intensify within the king’s household and beyond it. Watchful officials monitor conversations, correspondence, and any gesture that might revive faction. The presence of another Yorkist figure under custody darkens the atmosphere, as rumor and fear interweave. Attempts to test confinement, appeals to honor, and the calculations of courtiers converge in a final sequence that decides both policy and reputation. Shelley presents formal declarations and staged appearances that fix the official version of events, while leaving space for private testimony. The resolution closes principal conflicts, defines the fortunes of key characters, and sets a tone of sober aftermath.
Throughout, the novel foregrounds questions of identity, legitimacy, and the fragile architecture of authority after civil war. It traces how names, ceremonies, and memories can mobilize allegiance, and how statecraft answers with surveillance, negotiation, and spectacle. Without pronouncing on ultimate truth, the narrative sustains ambiguity around birth and motive, focusing instead on conduct under trial: steadfastness, mercy, and restraint. By following embassies, councils, marches, and households in sequence, it offers a panorama of late medieval politics shaped by personal bonds. The concluding impression emphasizes the human cost of consolidation and the enduring power of contested stories in national memory.
Historical Context
Mary Shelley sets The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck in the closing phase of the Wars of the Roses and the early Tudor period, roughly between 1483 and 1499. The narrative ranges across England, Ireland, Scotland, Burgundy, and France, situating its characters within courts, borderlands, and port cities that were nodes in late medieval power networks. The reign of Henry VII, begun after Bosworth Field in 1485, frames the action with a climate of surveillance, dynastic anxiety, and diplomacy. This was an age when allegiance could change with a treaty or a dowry, and when trade routes, marriage alliances, and embassies were as decisive as battles.
The book evokes the political geography of the British Isles and the near continent with precision. In England, the court at Westminster and the Tower of London symbolize authority and confinement. The Northumberland border and the Cornish peninsula represent regional tensions. Across the Irish Sea, Cork and Waterford embody rival loyalties among Anglo-Irish magnates and royal towns. On the continent, the Burgundian court at Mechelen and the French court of Charles VIII exert influence over English affairs, while the Scottish court of James IV provides refuge and danger. This web of places reflects the interdependence of fifteenth century politics and commerce.
The Wars of the Roses, a series of civil conflicts between the houses of Lancaster and York from 1455 to 1487, form the essential historical backdrop. Henry Tudor’s victory over Richard III at Bosworth on 22 August 1485 ended the open warfare and initiated Tudor rule. He married Elizabeth of York in 1486 to secure dynastic reconciliation, yet Yorkist discontent persisted. The Battle of Stoke Field in June 1487, often seen as the last battle of the wars, did not end conspiracy, only open campaigning. Shelley’s novel mirrors this unsettled aftermath, presenting a realm where legitimacy is contested and memory of past regimes remains potent.
The disappearance of Edward V and his brother Richard of Shrewsbury, the Princes in the Tower, in 1483 created a void exploited by later pretenders. Richard III’s usurpation and the ambiguous fate of the princes seeded rumors that one might have survived. These events are crucial to the novel’s premise, since Perkin Warbeck claims to be Richard, Duke of York. The continuing uncertainty around the princes’ deaths provided fertile ground for alternative narratives and political mobilization, which the novel dramatizes by probing identity, testimony, and the production of official truth in Tudor England.
Perkin Warbeck emerged in Cork in 1491, receiving recognition from local notables and asserting himself as Richard of York. He drew early support from Charles VIII of France, who valued him as leverage against Henry VII during the struggle over Brittany. After the Treaty of Etaples in 1492, French support waned, and Warbeck moved to the court of Margaret of York, Duchess of Burgundy and sister to Edward IV and Richard III. Shelley’s narrative follows this trajectory, using it to show how claimants depended on shifting continental sponsorship and how dynastic politics were inseparable from foreign policy.
The Burgundian connection, centered at Mechelen under Margaret of York and aligned with Maximilian I, is pivotal. In 1493 Henry VII imposed a trade embargo on the Low Countries due to Burgundian sheltering of Warbeck, disrupting the wool trade vital to both economies. The embargo ended with the Intercursus Magnus in 1496, restoring commerce. Burgundian recognition validated Warbeck among Yorkists and vexed English merchants. The novel reflects this nexus by depicting the financial and diplomatic costs of harboring exiles, and by showing how a pretender’s fortunes rose or fell with port customs, merchant lobbies, and princely calculations.
French involvement centers on Charles VIII’s aggressive policy toward Brittany and Italy. Henry VII invaded France in 1492, leading to the Treaty of Etaples in November 1492, by which Charles bought peace with pensions and agreed to expel English rebels. This deprived Warbeck of a powerful backer and forced his relocation to Burgundy. Shelley uses this pivot to illustrate realpolitik: ideals of rightful kingship yield to monetary settlements and continental priorities. The episode underscores the vulnerability of exiles to treaties concluded far from their own circles, an insecurity that shapes Warbeck’s portrayal throughout the book.
Ireland was a springboard for Yorkist claims, as seen with Lambert Simnel’s coronation at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, in 1487. Warbeck’s Cork origins connect him to this precedent, yet the island’s loyalties were divided. Waterford, a royalist port, resisted Warbeck’s attempted landing in 1495, earning from Henry VII the motto Urbs Intacta. The Earl of Kildare, previously dominant, navigated caution after 1487. Shelley’s narrative uses Irish episodes to show how urban corporations, Anglo-Irish magnates, and local grievances shaped dynastic ventures, and how failure in Ireland could both humble and confer a veneer of martyrdom on claimants.
Scotland under James IV offered sanctuary and strategic partnership to Warbeck from 1495 to 1497. In January 1496, Warbeck married Lady Katherine Gordon, a cousin of the powerful Earl of Huntly, cementing his status at court. In September 1496, James led a brief incursion into Northumberland in Warbeck’s name, but devastation without local uprising made the campaign unsustainable. The Treaty of Ayton in 1497, the first Anglo Scottish peace since 1328, required James to abandon Warbeck. In the novel, Scotland embodies both chivalric hospitality and the hard boundary where border warfare, cost, and diplomacy curtail romantic allegiance.
In July 1495, Warbeck attempted a landing at Deal in Kent; his advance force was overwhelmed and many captured. Henry VII’s intelligence network, notably the defection of Sir Robert Clifford, had penetrated Yorkist circles. The exposure of sympathizers culminated in the arrest and execution of Sir William Stanley, Lord Chamberlain, on 16 February 1495, for expressing conditional support if Warbeck proved Edward IV’s son. These developments demonstrate the king’s reliance on surveillance, bonds, and selective severity. Shelley invokes such mechanisms to interrogate the ethics of state power and the precarious line between loyalty, fear, and opportunism.
The Cornish rising of 1497 and Warbeck’s subsequent Cornish campaign form the most decisive sequence for his English venture. In June 1497, Cornishmen led by Michael An Gof, Thomas Flamank, and James Touchet, Lord Audley, marched to Blackheath to protest extraordinary taxation for war against Scotland; they were defeated at Deptford Bridge on 17 June. Exploiting lingering resentment, Warbeck sailed from Ireland and landed at Whitesand Bay in Cornwall on 7 September 1497. Proclaimed as Richard IV at Bodmin and later at Penryn, he rapidly gathered several thousand mainly local supporters, many poor miners and artisans angered by fiscal burdens and regional neglect. Moving east, Warbeck approached Exeter on 17 September. The city resisted with civic militias and hastily fortified gates, and his artillery and morale proved insufficient for a storm. He withdrew toward Taunton, where the hasty levy of followers began to melt away as royal forces under Lord Daubeney and the Earl of Devon converged. On hearing of the king’s approach to Exeter, Warbeck abandoned his host on 21 September and fled south and then east, seeking sanctuary at Beaulieu Abbey in Hampshire. Negotiations produced his submission; he was brought to Henry VII, publicly displayed, and initially treated with a show of clemency. Shelley devotes extended attention to this arc, using Cornwall’s grievances and Exeter’s civic heroism to show how local politics and urban identities shaped national outcomes. The episode crystallizes her themes of popular hope, the fragility of charisma when faced with administrative resilience, and the Tudor preference for containment followed by exemplary punishment.
After his surrender, Warbeck was paraded through London and confined. A failed escape in 1498 led to stricter imprisonment in the Tower. In 1499 authorities alleged a conspiracy between Warbeck and Edward, Earl of Warwick, the last male Plantagenet of the Yorkist line, also held in the Tower. Warwick was tried and executed on 28 November 1499; Warbeck was hanged at Tyburn on 23 November 1499 after a confession. These executions removed major Yorkist symbols and facilitated Henry’s diplomacy, notably with Spain. Shelley reads these events as the closure of a dynastic question by force clothed in legal ritual and narrative control.
The Lambert Simnel affair of 1487 provides crucial precedent. Simnel, presented as Edward, Earl of Warwick, was crowned in Dublin and supported by the Earl of Lincoln and Irish magnates. He landed in Lancashire with German mercenaries under Martin Schwartz and was defeated at the Battle of Stoke Field on 16 June 1487. The episode established patterns repeated with Warbeck: Irish launchpads, continental funding, and the use of imposture to mobilize Yorkist loyalty. The novel juxtaposes these cases to probe why such movements resonated and how the crown refined repression, from pardons and pageantry to more intrusive financial controls.
International diplomacy surrounding the Tudor succession shaped the stakes of suppressing pretenders. The Treaty of Medina del Campo in 1489 arranged the marriage of Arthur, Prince of Wales, to Catherine of Aragon, linking England to Spain’s rising power. Spanish ambassadors pressed Henry VII to eliminate Yorkist threats to stabilize the alliance. Simultaneously, Maximilian’s and Burgundy’s stances affected English commerce until the Intercursus Magnus in 1496. The Treaty of Ayton in 1497 reduced northern pressures. Shelley evokes these entanglements to show that Warbeck’s fate was not merely domestic but embedded in a wider system where marriages, treaties, and trade dictated the horizon of possible mercy.
Social and economic conditions under Henry VII provide context for regional unrest. The crown’s cautious foreign policy still demanded taxation, provoking protests like the Cornish rising of 1497. Bonds and recognizances disciplined the nobility, while customs revenues tied policy to cloth exports. In peripheral regions such as Cornwall, distance from court and dependence on mining fostered distinct identities that could be mobilized by charismatic claimants. Urban resilience at Exeter and Waterford, and the self interest of merchants in London and Antwerp, reveal how civic bodies shaped outcomes. The novel reflects these dynamics by tracing how fiscal pressure, class interests, and regionalism intersected with dynastic claims.
The novel functions as a political critique by questioning the construction of legitimacy and the ethics of statecraft in the 1490s. Shelley highlights how Tudor authority relied on surveillance, coerced oaths, and exemplary justice rather than transparent adjudication of claims. By granting Warbeck interiority and dignity, she scrutinizes the ease with which official histories brand adversaries as impostors. The depiction of civic militias, tax rebellions, and royal pageantry exposes the transactional nature of loyalty. In portraying mercy that serves policy more than conscience, the work critiques a governance model that prizes stability while normalizing controlled violence and information management.
Social critique emerges through attention to class divides and regional grievances. Cornish artisans and miners become instruments and victims of high politics, their burdens ignored until they threaten order. Noble calculations, merchant lobbies, and foreign courts determine fates, while ordinary lives bear costs in levies, punitive fines, and border devastation. Shelley’s focus on prisons, confessions, and public spectacles reveals how humiliation and narrative scripting replace fair hearing. By contrasting chivalric ideals at James IV’s court with Tudor administrative rationality, the novel exposes a transition to modern statecraft that sacrifices openness and local autonomy to centralized control, raising questions about justice and memory.
Author Biography
Introduction
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist, editor, and intellectual best known for Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a foundational work of modern science fiction and a landmark of Gothic literature. Born in the late 1790s, she grew up amid radical philosophical debates and Romantic experimentation, later shaping both with her fiction and editorial labors. Beyond Frankenstein, she wrote historical and speculative novels, short tales for literary annuals, and travel writing, while also championing and curating the posthumous reputation of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her work probes creation and responsibility, the ethics of knowledge, political power, exile, and women’s constrained agency.
Education and Literary Influences
Shelley’s education was unconventional and largely self-directed, cultivated in a household associated with freethinking, dissent, and literary conversation. Without a formal institutional course, she read widely in history, philosophy, and poetry, and encountered contemporary debates about revolution, social reform, and religious skepticism. She traveled during adolescence and early adulthood, gaining exposure to different cultures and political climates that later informed her historical novels and travel writing. The breadth of her reading and the intellectual milieu around her fostered confidence in prose argument, narrative experiment, and the moral possibilities of fiction as a vehicle for ideas.
Her intellectual formation drew on Enlightenment and Romantic sources. She was steeped in the political writings associated with her family circle and influenced by poets whose work reshaped early nineteenth-century literature. Encounters with discussions of contemporary science—including galvanism and theories of life associated with figures like Luigi Galvani and Erasmus Darwin—also proved decisive. In 1816, during a celebrated circle’s summer by Lake Geneva, she participated in a ghost-story challenge that prompted the imaginative seed of Frankenstein. Romantic aesthetics, Gothic conventions, and speculative inquiry thus converged to shape a style at once philosophically engaged and narratively arresting.
Literary Career
Frankenstein emerged from that charged context and appeared anonymously in 1818. Framed by letters and nested narratives, the novel interweaves Gothic suspense with Enlightenment inquiry, scrutinizing the responsibilities of creators and the claims of the rejected. Early critics alternated between fascination and moral alarm, and some readers initially attributed authorship to Percy Bysshe Shelley. A revised edition in the early 1830s, with Mary Shelley’s own introduction recounting the tale’s origin, cemented her claim. Rapid stage adaptations in the early 1820s popularized the creature’s image, while the novel’s ethical drama, formal experimentation, and striking imagery kept it in critical conversation.
Shelley’s subsequent fiction consolidated her range. Valperga (early 1820s), set in medieval Italy, blends political romance with historical inquiry. The Last Man (mid-1820s), a bold, plague-ravaged future history, extends Romantic introspection into speculative apocalypse, pairing intimate grief with global collapse. The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (around 1830) explores legitimacy and national myth; Lodore (mid-1830s) examines guardianship, domestic power, and women’s precarious legal status; and Falkner (late 1830s) investigates conscience, secrecy, and redemption. Across these works, Shelley moved fluently between modes—Gothic, historical, domestic, and speculative—while anchoring narrative to ethical scrutiny and the pressures of political and social structures.
Her short fiction, often published in fashionable annuals, allowed compressed experimentation with identity, metamorphosis, and the uncanny. Stories such as The Mortal Immortal, Transformation, and The Invisible Girl refine themes of longevity, alienation, and visibility within rigid social orders. She also ventured into travel writing with Rambles in Germany and Italy in the 1840s, a reflective work that mingles observation, cultural critique, and political sympathy. The shorter forms honed her economy of suggestion and her ability to fuse intimate psychology with broader debates about science, faith, and history—qualities that resonate with her longer novels’ structural and thematic ambitions.
Shelley was also a tireless editor and biographer. She assembled, annotated, and introduced editions of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poetry and prose in the late 1830s and early 1840s, crafting a carefully curated portrait that balanced candor with the constraints of the era’s moral and legal pressures. She contributed numerous literary lives to Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopaedia, notably on Italian and Spanish authors, displaying critical acumen and linguistic range. Through these labors she advanced Romantic studies before the discipline existed in modern form, shaping reception histories and ensuring that the circle’s achievements—her own included—remained legible to a widening reading public.
Critical reception during her lifetime was varied. Frankenstein secured notoriety and staying power, though reviewers sometimes questioned its propriety. Her historical novels drew respect for research and moral purpose, yet were often measured against the more flamboyant Romantic models surrounding her, and The Last Man—now hailed for its prescience—initially puzzled or alienated many readers. Financial realities encouraged publication in periodicals and annuals, where she cultivated a substantial readership. Over time, her editorial work consolidated her stature as a cultural mediator, while the evolving afterlife of Frankenstein slowly recast her not only as a Romantic figure but as a major innovator.
Beliefs and Advocacy
Shelley’s writing reflects a humane skepticism and a commitment to responsibility—personal, scientific, and political. Inherited arguments for women’s intellectual equality and civil liberty animate her depictions of constrained female agency, legal dependence, and the moral education of children and guardians. Frankenstein interrogates unchecked ambition and the ethical obligations creators owe their creations; The Last Man questions utopian certainties and explores the costs of hubris; Lodore and Falkner scrutinize authority within domestic and legal structures. Her historical novels often probe national myth-making, exposing how power shapes memory, while her tales consider the dignity of outsiders and the precariousness of recognition.
In public and paratextual writings—the prefaces, notes, and biographical sketches that frame her editions—Shelley advocated for tolerance, intellectual integrity, and principled citizenship. She defended the literary value and moral seriousness of Romantic art while navigating social expectations and financial limitations, including constraints on what she could print about her late husband. Rambles in Germany and Italy voices sympathy for continental reform movements and reflects her cosmopolitan sensibility. Although careful in public life, she used editorial choices, narrative design, and travel commentary to argue for compassion, education, and measured progress, deploying literary culture as an instrument of ethical persuasion.
Final Years & Legacy
After her partner’s death in the early 1820s, Shelley returned to Britain, sustaining herself and her household through writing and careful editorial projects. She produced later novels—Lodore and Falkner—and, in the mid-1840s, a substantial travel book. Persistent health problems shadowed her later years, but she remained active in literary networks, safeguarding manuscripts and encouraging reprints that would stabilize the Romantic canon. She died in the mid-nineteenth century in London. Notices at the time acknowledged her as the author of Frankenstein and as a devoted editor, recognizing a career that balanced imaginative daring with tenacious stewardship of literary heritage.
Shelley’s long-term impact is profound. Frankenstein has become a touchstone for debates about scientific responsibility, bioethics, and the social status of the “other,” inspiring innumerable adaptations across theater, film, and global popular culture. The Last Man, once dismissed, is now read as a visionary meditation on catastrophe and community. Scholars have recovered the ambition of her historical and domestic fiction and her importance as an editor and biographer. Today she stands as a central Romantic-era figure, a pioneer of speculative fiction, and a model of intellectual independence whose works continue to inform discussions of gender, power, technology, and care.
The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
PREFACE.
The story of Perkin Warbeck was first suggested to me as a subject for historical detail. On studying it, I became aware of the romance which his story contains, while, at the same time, I felt that it would be impossible for any narration, that should be confined to the incorporation of facts related by our old Chroniclers, to do it justice.
It is not singular that I should entertain a belief that Perkin was, in reality, the lost duke of York. For, in spite of Hume, and the later historians who have followed in his path, no person who has at all studied the subject but arrives at the same conclusion. Records exist in the Tower, some well known, others with which those who have access to those interesting papers are alone acquainted, which put the question almost beyond a doubt.
This is not the place for a discussion of the question. The principal thing that I should wish to be impressed on my reader's mind is, that whether my hero was or was not an impostor, he was believed to be the true man by his contemporaries. The partial pages of Bacon, of Hall, and Holinshed, and others of that date, are replete with proofs of this fact. There are some curious letters, written by Sir John Ramsay, laird of Balmayne, calling himself Lord Bothwell, addressed to Henry the Seventh himself, which, though written by a spy and hireling of that monarch, tend to confirm my belief, and even demonstrate that in his eagerness to get rid of a formidable competitor, Henry did not hesitate to urge midnight assassination. These letters are printed in the Appendix to Pinkerton's "History of Scotland." The verses which form the motto to these volumes, are part of a rythmical chronicle, written by two subjects of Burgundy, who lived in those days; it is entitled, "Recollection des Merveilles, advenues en nostre temps, commencée par très élégant orateur, Messire Georges Chastellan, et continuée par Maistre Jean Molinet."
In addition to the unwilling suffrage of his enemies, we may adduce the acts of his friends and allies. Human nature in its leading features is the same in all ages. James the Fourth of Scotland was a man of great talent and discernment: he was proud; attached, as a Scot, to the prejudices of birth; of punctilious honour. No one can believe that he would have bestowed his near kinswoman, nor have induced the earl of Huntley to give his daughter in marriage to one who did not bear evident signs of being of royal blood.
The various adventures of this unfortunate prince in many countries, and his alliance with a beautiful and high-born woman, who proved a faithful, loving wife to him, take away the sting from the ignominy which might attach itself to his fate; and make him, we venture to believe, in spite of the contumely later historians have chosen, in the most arbitrary way, to heap upon him, a fitting object of interest—a hero to ennoble the pages of a humble tale.
CHAPTER I.
THE FLIGHT FROM BOSWORTH FIELD[1].
He seemed breathless, heartless, faint and wan, And all his armour sprinkled was with blood, And soil'd with dirty gore, that no man can Discern the hue thereof. He never stood, But bent his hasty course towards the idle flood.
Spenser.
After a long series of civil dissension—after many battles, whose issue involved the fate of thousands—after the destruction of nearly all the English nobility in the contest between the two Roses, the decisive battle of Bosworth Field was fought on the 22nd of August, 1415, whose result was to entwine, as it was called, the white and red symbols of rivalship, and to restore peace to this unhappy country.
The day had been sunny and warm: as the evening closed in, a west wind rose, bringing along troops of fleecy clouds, golden at sunset, and then dun and grey, veiling with pervious network the many stars. Three horsemen at this hour passed through the open country between Hinckley and Welford in Leicestershire. It was broad day when they descended from the elevation on which the former stands, and the villagers crowded to gaze upon the fugitives, and to guess, from the ensigns they bore, to which party they belonged, while the warders from the near castle hastened out to stop them, thus to curry favour with the conqueror; a design wholly baffled. The good steeds of the knights, for such their golden spurs attested them to be, bore them fast and far along the Roman road, which still exists in those parts to shame our modern builders. It was dusk when, turning from the direct route to avoid entering Welford, they reached a ford of the Avon. Hitherto silence had prevailed with the party—for until now their anxiety to fly had solely occupied their thoughts. Their appearance spoke of war, nay, of slaughter. Their cloaks were stained and torn; their armour was disjointed, and parts of it were wanting; yet these losses were so arbitrary, that it was plain that the pieces had been hacked from their fastenings. The helm of the foremost was deprived of its crest; another wore the bonnet of a common soldier, which ill accorded with the rest of his accoutrements; while the third, bareheaded, his hair fallings on his shoulders, lank and matted from heat and exercise, gave more visible tokens of the haste of flight. As the night grew darker, one of them, and then another, seemed willing to relax somewhat in their endeavours: one alone continued, with unmitigated energy, to keep his horse at the same pace they had all maintained during the broad light of day.
When they reached the ford, the silence was broken by the hindmost horseman; he spoke in a petulant voice, saying:—"Another half mile at this pace, and poor Flœur-de-Luce founders;[3] if you will not slacken your speed, here we part, my friends. God save you till we meet again!"
"Evil betide the hour that separates us, brother!" said the second fugitive, reining in; "our cause, our peril, our fate shall be the same. You, my good lord, will consult your own safety." The third cavalier had already entered the stream: he made a dead halt while his friends spoke, and then replied:—"Let us name some rendezvous where, if we escape, we may again meet. I go on an errand of life and death: my success is doubtful, my danger certain. If I succeed in evading it, where shall I rejoin you?"
"Though the event of this day has been fatal to the king," answered the other, "our fortunes are not decided. I propose taking refuge in some sanctuary, till we perceive how far the earl of Richmond[2] is inclined to mercy."
"I knew the earl when a mere youth, Sir Humphrey Stafford," said the foremost rider, "and heard more of him when I visited Brittany, at the time of King Louis's death, two years ago. When mercy knocks at his heart, suspicion and avarice give her a rough reception. We must fly beyond sea, unless we can make further stand. More of this when we meet again. Where shall that be?"
"I have many friends near Colchester," replied the elder Stafford, "and St. Mary boasts an asylum there which a crowned head would not dare violate. Thence, if all else fail, we can pass with ease to the Low Countries."
"In sanctuary at Colchester—I will not fail you. God bless and preserve you the while!"
The noble, as he said these words, put spurs to his horse, and without looking back, crossed the stream, and turning on the skirts of a copse, was soon out of sight of his companions. He rode all night, cheering his steed with hand and voice; looking angrily at the early dawning east, which soon cast from her cloudless brow the dimness of night. Yet the morning air was grateful to his heated cheeks. It was a perfect summer's morn. The wheat, golden from ripeness, swayed gracefully to the light breeze; the slender oats shook their small bells in the air with ceaseless motion; the birds, twittering, alighted from the full-leaved trees, scattering dew-drops from the bra aches. With the earliest dawn, the cavalier entered a forest, traversing its depths with the hesitation of one unacquainted with the country, and looked frequently at the sky, to be directed by the position of the glowing east. A path more worn than the one he had hitherto followed now presented itself, leading into the heart of the wood. He hesitated for a few seconds, and then, with a word of cheer to his horse, pursued his way into the embowering thicket. After a short space the path narrowed, the meeting branches of the trees impeded him, and the sudden angle it made from the course he wished to follow, served to perplex him still farther; but as he vented his impatience by hearty Catholic exclamations, a little tinkling bell spoke of a chapel near, and of the early rising of the priest to perform the matin service at its altar. The horse of the fugitive, a noble "war-steed, had long flagged; and hunger gnawed at the rider's own heart, for he had not tasted food since the morning of the previous day. These sounds, therefore, heard in so fearless a seclusion, bore with them pleasant tidings of refreshment and repose. He crossed himself in thankfulness; then throwing himself from his horse (and such change was soothing to his stiffened limbs), he led him through the opening glade to where a humble chapel and a near adjoining hut stood in the bosom of the thicket, emblems of peace and security.
The cavalier tied his horse to a tree, and entered the chapel. A venerable priest was reading the matin service; one old woman composed his congregation, and she was diligently employed telling her beads. The bright rays of the newly-risen sun streamed through the eastern window, casting the chequered shadow of its lattice-work on the opposite wall. The chapel was small and rustic; but it was kept exquisitely clean: the sacred appurtenances of the altar also were richer than was usual, and each shrine was decked with clusters of flowers, chiefly composed of white roses. No high praise, indeed, was due to the rude picture of the Virgin of the Annunciation, or of the Announcing Angel, a representation of whom formed the altar-piece; but in barbaric England, in those days, piety stood in place of taste, and that which represented Our Lady received honour, however unworthy it might be of the inspiress of Raphael or Correggio. The cavalier took his disornamented casque from his head, placed it on the ground, and knelt reverentially on the bare earth. He had lately escaped from battle and slaughter, and he surely thought that he had especial motive for thanksgiving; so that if his lips uttered a mere soldier's "Ave," still it had the merit of fervour and sincerity.
Had he been less occupied by his own feelings, he might have remarked the many glances the priest cast on him, who dishonoured his learning and piety by frequent mistakes of language, as his thoughts wandered from his breviary, to observe with deep attention his unexpected visitor. At length the service ended: the old dame rose from her knees, and satisfied her curiosity, which she had excited by many a look askance, by a full and long gaze on the cavalier. His hewn armour, torn cloak, and, unseemly for the sacred spot, the dread stains on his garments and hands, were all minutely scanned. Nor did his personal appearance escape remark. His stature was tall, his person well knit, showing him to be a man of about thirty years of age. His features were finely moulded, his grey eyes full of fire, his step had the dignity of rank, and his look expressed chivalrous courage and frankness. The good woman had not been long engaged in surveying the stranger, when her pastor beckoned her to retire, and himself advanced, replying to the soldier's salute with a benedicite, and then hastily inquiring if he came from the field.
"Even so, father," said the cavalier; "I come from the field of the bloody harvest. Has any intelligence of it travelled hither so speedily? If so, I must have wandered from the right road, and am not so far on my journey as I hoped."
"I have only heard that a battle was expected," said the priest, "and your appearance tells me that it is over. The fortunes, nay, perhaps the life of a dear friend are involved in its issue, and I fear that it is adverse—for you fly from pursuit, and methinks, though stained with dust and blood, that emblem on your breast is the White Rose."
The warrior looked on the old man, whose dignity and language were at variance with his lowly destination; he looked partly in wonder, and partly to assure himself of his questioner's sincerity. "You are weary, Sir Knight," added the monk, whose experienced eyes had glanced to the golden spurs of his visitant; "come to my hermitage, there to partake of such refreshment as I can bestow. When your repast is ended, I will, by confidence on my part, merit yours."
This invitation was that of worldly courtesy, rather than the rustic welcome of a recluse monk. The cavalier thanked him cordially, adding, that he must first provide food and water for his horse, and that afterwards he would gratefully accept his host's invitation. The old man entered with the spirit of a soldier into his guest's anxiety for his steed, and assisted in purveying to its wants, ingratiating himself meanwhile with its master, by discovering and praising scientifically its points of beauty. The poor animal showed tokens of over fatigue, yet still he did not refuse his food, and the cavalier marked with joy that his eye grew brighter and his knees firmer after feeding.
They then entered the cottage, and the soldier's eye was attracted from more sacred emblems by a sword which was suspended over a picture of the Virgin:—"You belong to our Chivalry!" he exclaimed, while his countenance lighted up with joyful recognition.
"Now I belong to the holy order whose badge I wear," the monk replied, pointing to his Benedictine dress. "In former days I followed a brave leader to the field, and, in his service, incurred such guilt, as I now try to expiate by fasting and prayer."
The monk's features were convulsed by agitation as he spoke, then crossing his arms on his breast, he was absorbed in thought for a few moments, after which he raised his head and resumed the calm and even serene look that characterized him. "Sir Knight," said he, motioning to the table now spread for the repast, "I have but poor fare to offer, but a soldier will not disdain its meagreness. My wine I may praise, as being the produce of a generous vintage; I have kept it sealed, to open it on occasions like the present, and rejoice that your strength will be recruited by it."
Bread, fruits, cheese, and a flagon of the wine, which merited the giver's eulogium, composed the fugitive's breakfast, whose fatigue required cordial and repose. As he was occupied by his repast, his host eyed him with evident agitation, eager yet fearful to question him on the subject of the battle. At length he again asked, "You come from the field on which the forces of the king and of the earl of Richmond met?"
"I do."
"You fought for the White Rose, and you fly?"
"I fought for the White Rose till it was struck to the ground[1q]. The king has fallen with his chief nobility around him. Few Yorkists remain to mourn the success of the Lancastrians."
Deep grief clouded the old man's countenance, but accustomed to subdue his feelings, as one on whom, being stricken by an overwhelming misery, all subsequent disasters fall blunted, he continued with greater calmness: "Pardon me, noble gentleman, if I appear to ask an indiscreet question. You are of lordly bearing, and probably filled a place near the royal person. Did you hear, on the night before last, aught of the arrival of a stranger youth at the king's tent?"
The knight eyed the old man with a quick glance, asking, in his turn, "Are you, then, the foster-father of King Richard's son?"
"Did you see my boy?" cried the priest. "Did his father acknowledge him?—Where is he now?—Did he enter the ranks to fight and fall for his parent?"
"On the night of which you speak," said the stranger, evading the immediate question, "the king placed his son's hand in mine, as I vowed to protect and guard him if ill befell our party, as it has befallen."
"Surely some presentiment of evil haunted the king's mind."
"I do believe it; for his manner was solemn and affecting. He bade the youth remember that he was a Plantagenet, and spoke proudly of the lineage from which he sprung. The young esquire listened intently, looking at his father with such an ingenuous and thoughtful expression, that he won my heart to love him."
"Now bless thee, Sir Knight, whoever thou art, for this praise of my poor Edmund. I pray you, hasten to tell me what more passed."
The cavalier continued his account; but his manner was serious, as if the conclusion of his tale would afflict his auditor. He related how, on quitting the royal tent, he had led Edmund Plantagenet to his own, thereto converse with him awhile, the better to learn whether his bearing and speech showed promise of future merit. King Richard had enjoined his son to return to his seclusion early on the following morning; but as soon as he entered his conductor's tent, he knelt to him and asked a boon, while tears gathered in his eyes, and his voice was broken by the fervour of his desire. The noble was moved by his entreaties, and promised to grant his request, if it did not militate against his honour and allegiance. "It is for honour that I speak," said Plantagenet; "I am older in years than in seeming, for already I number twenty summers; and, spite of my boyish look, I am familiar with martial exercises, and the glorious promise of war. Let me draw my sword for my father to-morrow—let me, at your side, prove myself a worthy descendant of the conquerors of France! Who will fight for King Richard with greater courage, fidelity, and devotion, than his acknowledged and duteous son?" The cavalier yielded to his noble yearnings. Clothed in armour he entered the ranks, and hovered a protecting angel near his parent during the bloody contest. And now, as his venerable guardian watched with trembling eagerness the countenance of his guest while he told his tale, and the stranger, with bitter regret, was about to relate that he had seen Plantagenet felled to the ground by a battle-axe, quick steps, and then a knocking, was heard at the cottage door. The stranger started on his feet, and put his hand upon his sword; but a bright smile illuminated the monk's face, as the very youth of whom they spoke, Edmund Plantagenet, rushed into the apartment. His soiled garments and heated brow spoke of travel and fatigue, while his countenance wore an expression of wildness and even of horror. He started when he saw the stranger, but quickly recognized him as his new friend. "Thank God!" he cried, "that you, my dear lord, have not fallen into the hands of, the sacrilegious usurper! It is my father's spirit that has saved you for his son's sake, that I may not be utterly abandoned and an orphan."
With milder accost he bent his knee to his holy guardian, and then turned to answer the cavalier's questions of how he had escaped death from the blow he had received, and what new events had occured since he had quitted the field early on the preceding day?—while the monk chid him for his disobedience to his father's commands, in having mingled with the fray. The eyes of Plantagenet flashed fire at this reproach.—"Could I know that my father's crown and life," he exclaimed impetuously, "depended on the combat, and not bring to his aid my weak arm? God of Heaven! had there been five hundred true as I, we might all have fallen round him: but never, never, should I have seen the sight which last night I saw—nor heard the sounds I last night heard!"
The youth covered his face with his hands, and the boiling tears trickled between his fingers. "Tell me," cried the noble, "what has happened?—and swiftly tell me, for I loiter here too long."
Almost suffocated by emotion, Plantagenet related, that when he recovered from the trance into which the fearful blow he had received had thrown him, the earl's camp-followers were busy among the slain: and that he had seen the body of King Richard—of his father—thrown half-naked across a mule, thus to be borne to be exposed to the public gaze and mockery in Leicester, where, but the day before, he had ridden with the royal crown on his head, the acknowledged sovereign of England. And that crown, base, ill-bartered bauble, having been found in the tent by Lord Stanley, he had brought and placed on Richmond's head, while the soldiers, with one acclaim, hailed him Henry the Seventh, King of England.
The last words more than the others, for the death of his royal master was already known to him, moved the knight:—"Is this the end of our hopes?" he cried. "Am I then too late? Farewell, my friends! Plantagenet, I shall never forget my oath to the king; I shall become, I fear, an outcast and a soldier of fortune, even if I escape worse fate; but claim when you will, and it shall be yours, whatever protection I can afford you."
"Yield, then. Lord Lovel," said the youth, "to my first request. You are in peril, let me share it; permit me to accompany you. If you refuse, my plan is already formed; I repair to the earl of Lincoln, whom King Richard named his successor, and offer myself as a soldier in his attempt to discrown the usurping Henry, and to raise again the White Rose to its rightful supremacy."
"To the earl of Lincoln—the successor of Richard—to him you would repair? It is well—come with me now, and I will present you to that nobleman. If your foster-father consents, bid adieu to this seclusion for a time, and accompany me to London, to new contests—to the combat of right against might—to success and honour, or to defeat and death!"
The sun had risen high when, having taken leave of the venerable monk, who would not oppose his pupil's gallant spirit of enterprise, Lord Lovel and young Plantagenet threaded the forest paths, which, by a safer and a shorter route than the highway, took them on their road to London. For a time they led their horses with difficulty through the entangled thicket, when at last reaching the open road, they mounted, and Lord Lovel, who was desirous of estimating the abilities and disposition of his companion, entered into conversation with him. They first conversed on the sad changes which were the work of the eventful day of battle; afterwards the cavalier led Edmund to speak of himself, his early life, his acquirements, and his hopes.
When Plantagenet was but ten years old his mother died, and her last request to the father of her boy, founded on a deep knowledge of the world, was, that her son might be educated far from the court, nor be drawn from the occupations and happier scenes of private life, to become a hanger-on of princes and nobles. There was a man, a gentleman and a knight, who had been a partizan of the White Rose, and who had fought and bled for it in various battles between the duke of York and Henry the Sixth. In one of these, the misery of the times, and horrible consequences of civil dissension, caused him unwittingly to lift his armed hand against his twin brother, nor did he discover the mistake till, with his dying voice, that brother called on him to assist him against his slayer. A life of seclusion, penance, and prayer, alone blunted his sense of remorse, and quitting the world, he retired to a monastery, where after due noviciate he took vows, and then shrinking from commerce with his kind, followed by visions that spoke for ever to him of his unnatural crime, he retreated to the forest of Leicestershire, to dwell alone with his grief and his repentance.
His retreat was known to many of his friends, and chance had brought the duke of Gloucester at one time to visit him; when the ancient warrior rejoiced with enthusiasm at the exaltation of the party to which he was attached. The death of the mother of Edmund had the effect of softening the duke's heart, of making for a short interval worldly cares and objects distasteful to him, and of filling him with a desire of seclusion and peace. If he was unable to enjoy these himself, he resolved that at least his child should not be drawn by him into the thorny path of rivalship and ambition. His mother's last injunction strengthened this feeling; and the duke, visiting again the hermit of the wood, induced him to take charge of Edmund, and bringing him up in ignorance of his real parentage, to bestow such education on him as would enable him to fill with reputation an honourable, if not a distinguished station in society. This order of things was not changed by Richard's exaltation to the crown. On the contrary, the dangers he incurred from his usurpation made him yet more anxious to secure a peaceful existence for his offspring. When, however, his legitimate son, whom he had created prince of Wales, died, paternal affection awoke strong in his heart, and he could not resist his desire of seeing Edmund: a memorable visit for the priest-bred nursling of the forest! It gave him a link with society, with which before he had felt no connexion: his imagination and curiosity were highly excited. His revered friend, yielding to his eager demands, was easily enticed to recur to the passed scenes of an eventful life. The commencement of the wars of the two Roses, and their dreadful results, furnished inexhaustible topics of discourse. Plantagenet listened with breathless interest, although it was not till the eve of the battle of Bosworth, that he knew how indissolubly his own fortunes were linked with those of the house of York.
The events of the few last days had given him a new existence. For the first time, feeling was the parent of action; and a foregoing event drove him on to the one subsequent. He was excited to meditate on a thousand schemes, while the unknown future inspired him with an awe that thrilled his young heart with mingled pain and pleasure. He uttered his sentiments with the ingenuousness of one who had never been accustomed to converse with any but a friend; and as he spoke, his dark and thoughtful eyes beamed with a tempered fire, that showed him capable of deep enthusiasm, though utter want of knowledge of the world must make him rather a follower than a leader.
They rode on meanwhile, the noble cavalier and gentle squire indulging in short repose. The intense fatigue Edmund at first endured, seemed to be subdued by the necessity of its continuance, nor did it prevent him from conversing with Lord Lovel, He was anxious thoroughly to understand the immediate grounds of the earl of Richmond's invasion, and to ascertain the relative position of the remaining chiefs of the White Rose: "Where," he asked, "are Edward the Fourth's children?"
"The elder of these," Lord Lovel replied, "the Lady Elizabeth, is, by direction of her uncle, at Sheriff Hutton, in Yorkshire."
"And where are the princes? Edward, who was proclaimed king, and his younger brother?"
