A ROBBER RESCUER

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 871, 15 January 1930, Page 6

A ROBBER RESCUER

In fair Provence they still love the songs written five hundred years ago by Rene. This gifted poet and musician, though Duke of Anjou, Maine, and Porvence, had not a penny; so when his daughter Margaret married Henry VI. of England, in 1445, she had no dowry to bring ” other than her far-famed beauty. But wait! She also brought that indomitable courage with which, afterward, she fought 12 battles for the Lancastrian cause, in the Wars of the Roses, so largely due to the mental weakness of the King. But fortune seldom favoured Margaret. After the Battle of Hexham, where her forces were once more defeated, she had to fly almost alone with her small son Edward to the Scottish border. On the way, a band of robbers attacked her little party, and stole all her jewels. It" was only because they took to fighting over the plunder that the Queen managed to escape with the young Prince into a forest. Yet one of these outlaws, who had seen better days, determined, at great risk, to himself, to succour the Queen and her boy in their need. He sought them out in the forest and led them to his hidden stronghold, since called Queen Margaret’s Cave. In this rough refuge he and his wife protected them until they found means to sail for France.