LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST. BY AGNES STRICKLAND. "The treasures of antiquity laid up BEAUMONT. A NEW EDITION CAREFULLY REVISED AND AUGMENTED. IN SIX VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: BELL AND DALDY, 6, YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, PREFACE. OUR UR Lives of the Queens of England comprise personal biographies of our mediæval queens, commencing with the consort of William the Conqueror, and occupying that important period of our national chronology, from the death of the last monarch of the Anglo-Saxon line, in the year 1066, to the demise of the last sovereign of the royal house of Stuart, Queen Anne, in 1714. Of these queens, thirty have worn the crown-matrimonial, and four the regal diadem of this realm. What changes-what revolutions-what scenes of civil and religious strife-what exciting tragedies are not involved in the details of those four-and-thirty lives! They extend over six hundred and fifty-two years, such as the world will never see again—the ages of feudality, of chivalry, and romance-ages of splendour and misery, that witnessed the brilliant chimera of crusades, the more fatal triumphs of our Edwards and Henries, in their reiterated attempts to annex the crown of France to that of England, and the national destitution and domestic woe that followed the lavish expenditure of English blood and treasure in a foreign land-the deadly feud of the rival Roses of York and Lancaster, which ended in the extinction of the name and male line of Plantagenet-the stupendous changes of public opinion that followed the accession of the house of Tudor to the throne, effecting first the overthrow of the feudal system, then of the Romish supremacy, leaving royalty to revel unchecked, for nearly a century, in absolute despotism. After the crisis of the Reformation and the emancipation of England from the papal yoke, came the struggle of the middle classes for the assertion of their political rights, overpowering royalty for a time, and establishing a democracy under the name of a Commonwealth; which ended, as all democracies sooner or later must, in a military dictatorship, followed by the restora |