Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/32

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CASSELL'S ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
[A.D. 1493.

Parting of Queen Elizabeth Wydville and her Son the Duke of York.

and expense of a conquest, received the infant princess with great rejoicings.

The rage of Edward know no bounds. He had been so often warned, both by his courtiers and by Parliament, that the crafty Louis would play him false, that he now vowed to take the most consummate vengeance upon him. The best means of inflicting the severest punishment on the King of France engrossed his whole soul, and occupied him day and night. This violent excitement, operating upon a constitution ruined by sensual indulgence, brought on an illness which, not attended to at first, soon terminated his existence. He died on the 9th of April, 1483, in the twenty-third year of his reign and the forty-first of his age. The approach of death awoke in him feelings of deep repentance. He ordered full restitution to be made to all whom he had wronged, or from whom he had extorted benevolences. But such orders were not likely to receive much attention from Gloucester,