MARGARET, the better to disguise her plans, affected indisposition, and affirmed that the change of climate was absolutely requisite to her recovery. She therefore had the good fortune, as she fondly imagined it, of obtaining a passport for France. /

She has been accused, but we believe unjustly, of experiencing for Somerset that tender regard she had formerly lavished on the Duke of Suffolk.141 To neither of these noblemen did the unfortunate queen, whose heart seemed a stranger to all the softer passions, evince any other partiality, than what she thought due to their political abilities, and undaunted valour in her cause. Somerset has also been accused of aiming at the throne of his master, and at the instigations of the queen; but Somerset fought for him he thought his only lawful master, and from his steady adherence to the house of Lancaster. Brave and blindly courageous, to an excess of rashness, Margaret, who was an Amazon, and detested the want of spirit both in male and female, certainly found Suffolk and Somerset more after / her own heart, than the mild and pious Henry; whose every leisure hour was passed on his knees before a crucifix, or in supplications to the saints to give success to his arms. Without self-exertion, on all occasions, the saints are generally deaf; and he, to whom prayers should alone be addressed, commands us to make use of our own abilities, and improve the talent he has lent us, ere we can expect to prosper. Activity, on our part with implicit confidence in that favour, which is ‘alike good in all it grants, or all that it denies,’ will gain us more assistance from heaven, than all the monkish indolence of continued and outward acts of devotion.