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selves of this circumstance, used their galleys to annoy the English, and made earnest endeavours to burn the English fleet with wildfire. At length, however, a breeze sprang up; and, while Armagnac beat a retreat from Harfleur, Bedford, ordering sails to be set, entered the harbour, and relieved the town.

After this triumph, Bedford returned with the fleet to England, and met with an enthusiastic reception. The Emperor Sigismund, surprised at the whole affair, desisted from his attempts to bring about a peace, and paid a high compliment to the king and people of England. "Happy," said the German Cæsar, "are subjects to have such a king; and happier still is the king who has such subjects."

It soon appeared, however, that the French had yet to learn that on the sea they were no match for their English foes. A new fleet was without delay fitted out; and, having been strengthened by some caracks of Genoa, it was placed under the command of the Bastard of Bourbon, and posted at the mouth of the Seine to prevent anything in the way of succour going from England to Harfleur. But some English ships, returning to scour the coast, encountered the French, won a decisive victory, took the Bastard prisoner, captured three magnificent caracks of Genoa, in one of which was a large sum of money, and clearing the mouth of the Seine thoroughly of enemies, returned in great triumph to Southampton.

Many long years elapsed ere the French again tried their fortune in an engagement at sea, and Bedford had no further opportunity of signalising his prowess as a naval warrior. He was destined, however, to a career of high distinction. When Henry

the Fifth, after having made himself master of France, died in 1422 in the midst of his glory, Bedford was appointed regent. In that capacity he displayed high powers as a ruler, nobly sustained the honour of England on the Continent, and won a great battle over the French and Scots at Verneuil. But no man is wise under all circumstances; and an impolitic matrimonial alliance, into which this brave and good duke rushed after having passed the age of forty, led to the destruction of his own peace of mind, and to many of the misfortunes experienced by England at home and abroad during the fifteenth century.

It appears that, soon after becoming regent, Bedford espoused Anne, sister of Philip Duke of Burgundy, and cemented that alliance on the permanence of which the interests of England on the Continent mainly depended. In 1432, however, the Duchess of Bedford died at Paris, and the Duke, after appearing for some time the most disconsolate of widowers, was captivated by the fair face and elegant form of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, daughter of the Count St. Pol. With a rashness, which he had not hitherto displayed, Bedford, in the beginning of 1433, espoused this damsel; and Jacquetta, then seventeen, became wife of a man who was as old as her father. This marriage, so hastily contracted, was most disastrous in its results. The Duke of Burgundy, who was tiring of the English alliance, pretended to be highly offended, represented that Bedford's sudden marriage was a slight on his sister's memory, indignantly complained that, without his consent, the Count of St. Pol had ventured to dispose of a daughter, and finally going to Arras, gave his hand in friendship to Charles the Seventh.

The reconciliation of France and Burgundy was celebrated throughout the country with transports of joy, and Bedford experienced such annoyance at the thought of having lost England so powerful an ally, that he gave way to the most poignant regret. After much suffering, the great warrior-statesman expired at Paris on the 14th of September, 1435; and scarcely had his mortal remains been conveyed to Rouen, and laid at rest in the cathedral, when his widow, still under twenty, forgetting him and all dignity, made a clandestine marriage with an obscure squire named Woodville. Living with this man at her manor of Grafton, Jacquetta became mother of Elizabeth Woodville, who was afterwards, under romantic circumstances, elevated by Edward the Fourth to the position of Queen of England.

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Meanwhile the news of Bedford's death, when carried to England, caused profound grief; and while the English people mourned the hero as one of the best warriors that ever blossomed out of the royal stem of Plantagenet," the French king held his memory in reverence as that of a mighty foe. When Charles the Seventh gained possession of Rouen, and his nobles proposed to destroy the monument of black marble over Bedford's tomb, the French King shook his head, and gravely rebuked the proposal. No," said Charles," let him repose in peace, and let us be thankful that he does so repose; for were he to awake, he would make the stoutest of us tremble." Even Louis the Eleventh had too much generosity to disturb the hero's ashes. When advised to deface Bedford's tomb as that of a foe of France, he treated the idea as unworthy of being entertained. "What honour

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should it be to us," asked Louis, "to break the monument and pull out of the ground the bones of him, whom, in his lifetime, neither my father nor your progenitors were ever able, with all their puissance, to turn one foot backward, and who, by his prowess, policy, and wit, kept them all out of Normandy for so many years? Wherefore," continued Louis, "I say, God save his soul, and let his body now lie at rest, who, when he was alive, would have disquieted the proudest of us all."

SIR ANDREW WOOD.

EARLY in the sixteenth century, there stood hard by a canal in the parish of Largo, in the county of Fife, a strange old-fashioned mansion, surrounded by a moat, and fortified with a circular tower. In other days this castellated edifice had been a jointure-house of the queens of Scotland; but it was now inhabited by an old man with white hair, a face browned by exposure to sun and wind, with a person somewhat the worse for many years of toil and fatigue, and with the air of one who had surmounted many difficulties, and passed through much danger. As he walked abroad muttering to himself, or was rowed on the canal in a barge manned by mariners almost as old as himself, the peasantry gazed on him with interest and respect; for the old hero had won a name as by far the greatest sea captain of whom his country could boast.

Andrew Wood appears to have been a cadet of a family long settled in Angus, and to have been a native of Fifeshire. He is said to have been born at the old Kirktown of Largo, on the Frith of Forth. It was probably while wandering in boyhood about the shore, watching ships at sea, and rowing in frail boats in Largo Bay, that he imbibed that love of salt water and of adventurous enterprise which afterwards conducted him to fame and fortune.

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