Prev | Current Page 117 | Next

Margaret, Queen of Navarre, 1492-1549

"The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.)"

Her nephew
Henry left her in possession of her revenues, but does not seem to have
been very affectionately disposed towards her; and even had she
been inclined to attempt any recovery of influence, his wife and his
mistress, Catherine de Medici and Diana of Poitiers, two women as
different from Margaret as they were from one another, would certainly
have prevented her from obtaining it. As a matter of fact, however, she
had long been in ill-health, and her brother's death seems to have dealt
her the final stroke. She survived it two years, even as she had been
born two years before him, and died on the 21 st December 1549, at the
Castle of Odos, near Tarbes, having lived in almost complete retirement
for a considerable time. Her husband is said to have regretted her dead
more than he loved her living, and her literary admirers, such of them
as death and exile had spared, were not ungrateful. _Tombeaux_, or
collections of funeral verses, were not lacking, the first being in
Latin, and, oddly enough, nominally by three English sisters, Anne,
Margaret, and Jane Seymour, nieces of Henry VIII.


Pages:
105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129