Part 5 (1/2)
On the day preceding the solemnity, the king and queen went from the Tower to Westminster, through the tapestried streets, lined with the city companies in their best display. Beneath a robe of crimson velvet, furred with ermine, the king wore a coat of raised gold, with a tabard s.h.i.+ning with rubies, emeralds, great pearls, and diamonds. Nine children of honour, on great coursers, and dressed in blue velvet, powdered with _fleur-de-lis_ in gold, represented the nine kingdoms which he governed or claimed,--England, France, Gascony, Guienne, Normandy, Anjou, Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland. Following her richly-dressed retinue, the queen was seen seated on a magnificent litter or chariot, borne by two milk-white palfreys. Her person was clothed in embroidered satin, with her hair hanging down her back at great length, beautiful and goodly to behold, and on her head a coronal, set with many rich and orient stones.
After the procession and coronation had terminated, the jousts and tournaments succeeded, and were peculiarly magnificent. The king and queen were stationed on a rich edifice made within the palace of Westminster, where, from a fountain and its cascades, at many places red, white, and claret wine poured out of the mouths of various animals.
The trumpets sounded to the field; and the young gallants and n.o.blemen, gorgeously apparelled, entered it, taking up their ground, checking their horses, and throwing them on their haunches; and they afterwards tourneyed together.
Time pa.s.sed. It was now five years since Henry had separated himself from the society of his queen, and solicited a divorce; and for three years he had lived in such familiar intercourse with Anne Boleyn, that no doubt could be entertained regarding the nature of the connection between them. The situation of the Marchioness of Pembroke at length confirmed this in the most unequivocal manner; and the king, becoming alarmed for the legitimacy of his expected offspring, determined to make her his wife. The marriage was performed, the parties separated as quietly as they had a.s.sembled; and Viscount Rochfort was despatched to communicate the event to the king of France, and request him to send a confidential minister to England.
The divorce from Catharine was accomplished for the king by the ingenuity of his councillors. Intimation was now sent to Catharine that she must in future be contented with the style of dowager Princess of Wales; all persons were prohibited from giving her the t.i.tle of queen, and her income was reduced to the sum settled upon her by Prince Arthur, her first husband. The ungrateful intelligence was conveyed to her personally by the Duke of Suffolk; and, considering the general mildness of her deportment, was received with unwonted indignation. She declared that she was, and ever would remain, the queen; and that before she would renounce that t.i.tle, she would be hewn in pieces. As to her removal to any other residence, where she was to have a new household, and commence a new life as princess dowager, she peremptorily refused to give her consent. ”They might bind her with ropes, but willingly she would never go.”
ANNE BOLEYN.
[BORN 1507. DIED 1536.]
TYTLER.
Mistress Anne Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn. She returned from France in 1527, under circ.u.mstances which were favourable not only to the acquisition of all elegant accomplishments, but to the strengthening of her understanding, and the improvement of her mind. As early as 1515, she had been sent over to that kingdom to be attendant on the Princess Mary, the wife of Louis XII. On the death of this monarch, and the return of his widow to England, Anne entered the household of Queen Claude, in whose palace she remained till she was seventeen. At this time Margaret, d.u.c.h.ess of Alencon, the sister of Francis, became deeply attached to her, and on the demise of the queen she was taken into her family. Here she probably remained till the marriage of that princess with the King of Navarre in 1527, an event which, as it took her protectress from Paris, seems to have occasioned her recall to England, where she immediately became one of the maids of honour to Catharine.
It has been the fas.h.i.+on of many writers of the Roman Church to represent Anne Boleyn as having led a singularly profligate life in her early youth, but there appears no ground for so slanderous an attack. That the education of a youthful and beautiful female in one of the most corrupted courts of Europe should produce austere or reserved manners was not to be suspected, but no evidence deserving of a moment's credit has been adduced to prove the slightest impurity of life; the tales against her being evidently the after-coinage of those misguided zealots who, by destroying her reputation, imagined they were performing a service to religion.
When she first appeared in court she was a lovely young woman in her twentieth year. She is described as possessing a rare and admirable beauty, clear and fresh, with a n.o.ble presence and most perfect shape.
Her personal graces were enhanced by a cheerfulness and sweetness of temper which never forsook her, and her education had secured to her all those female accomplishments which were fitted to dazzle and delight a court. She danced with uncommon grace, sung sweetly, and, by the remarkable vivacity and wit of her conversation, retained the admiration of those who had at first been only attracted by her beauty. On her arrival at court, Anne was welcomed by the homage and adulation which her youth, her loveliness, and accomplishments inspired; and there seems some ground for believing that Henry became enamoured of her almost immediately. But he concealed, it is even said he struggled with, his incipient pa.s.sion.
Dissimulation, however, with his majesty was now at an end. Henry had never been taught to restrain his pa.s.sions; his past life, though outwardly decent, had not been remarkable for constancy; his love of pleasure, and his frequent opportunities of meeting the beautiful Anne at court, exposed him to perpetual temptation; and he at length declared himself, with the confidence of a monarch who felt that he had only to make known his predilection, to be accepted as a lover. But in this he was mistaken; for, although compelled to listen to his solicitations, the lady fell upon her knees and made the following answer: ”I deem, most n.o.ble king, that your majesty speaks these words in mirth to prove me; if not, I beseech your highness earnestly to take this answer in good part, and I speak it from the bottom of my soul. Believe me, I would rather lose my life than give encouragement to your addresses.”
Henry, however, in the common jargon of the libertine, declared that he would live in hope; when his perseverance in insult drew forth this spirited reply: ”I understand not, mighty king, how you should entertain any such hope. Your wife I cannot be, both in respect of my own unworthiness, and also because you have a queen already. Your mistress, be a.s.sured, I will never be.”
[The subsequent history of this unfortunate lady, her marriage with Henry after the divorce of Catharine, the false charges brought against her, her unhappy death under the axe, the reader will remember, along with the legend yet preserved in Epping Forest.] On the morning of the day which was to be her last, Henry went to hunt in that district, and as he breakfasted surrounded by his train and his hounds under a spreading oak which is yet shown, he listened from time to time with a look of intense anxiety; at length the sound of a distant gun boomed through the wood. It was a preconcerted signal, and marked the moment when the execution was completed. ”Ah ha, it is done!” said he, starting up; ”the business is done; uncouple the dogs, and let us follow the sport.” On the succeeding morning he was married to Jane Seymour.
MARGARET ROPER.
[DIED 1544.]
BALLARD.
The learned, ingenious, and virtuous daughter of the famous Sir Thomas More, who intended his daughters to be such invaluable wives as he has described: ”May you meet with a wife who is not always stupidly silent, nor always prattling nonsense; may she be learned, if possible, or at least capable of being made so. A woman thus accomplished will be always drawing sentences and maxims of virtue out of the best maxims of antiquity. She will be herself in all changes of fortune, neither blown up in prosperity, nor broken with adversity. You will find in her an ever-cheerful, good-humoured friend, and an agreeable companion for life. She will infuse knowledge into your children with their milk, and, from their infancy, train them up to wisdom. Whatever company you may be engaged in, you will long to be at home, and retire with delight from the society of men into the bosom of one who is so dear, so knowing, and so amiable. If she touches her lute, or sings to it any of her own compositions, her voice will soothe you in your solitudes, and sound more sweetly in your ear than that of the nightingale. You will spend with pleasure whole days and nights in her conversation, and be ever finding out new beauties in her discourse. She will keep your mind in perpetual serenity, restrain its mirth from being dissolute, and prevent its melancholy from being painful.”
As Margaret had, in the early part of her life, by an unwearied application and industry, made herself well acquainted with the learned languages, so she seems afterwards to have been as eagerly bent on the prosecution of the studies of philosophy, astronomy, physic, and the Holy Scriptures, the two last of which were recommended by her father as the employments of the remaining part of her life; so that one might imagine from hence that the chief of her learned and most admired compositions were wrote at that time when her thoughts were free from all uneasiness and perplexities of temporal affairs. But soon after this the scene was changed, when her princ.i.p.al delights and enjoyments seemed to have their period in the untimely loss of her invaluable father. Upon the oath of supremacy being tendered to Sir Thomas, and his refusal to take it, he was sent to the Tower, to the inexpressible affliction of Margaret [Mrs Roper], who, by her incessant entreaties, at last got leave to pay him a visit there, where she made use of all the arguments, reason, and eloquence she was mistress of, to have brought him to a compliance with the oath; but all proved ineffectual, his conscience being dearer to him than all worldly considerations whatsoever, even that of his favourite daughter's peace and happiness. I shall add, from Dr Knight's ”Life of Erasmus,” that ”after sentence was pa.s.sed upon Sir Thomas, as he was going back to the Tower, she rushed through the guards and crowds of the people, and came pressing towards him. At such a sight, as courageous as he was, he could hardly bear up under the surprise his pa.s.sionate affection for her raised in him; for she fell upon his neck, and held him fast in the most endearing embraces, but could not speak one word to him; great griefs having that stupifying quality of making the most eloquent dumb. The guards, though justly reputed an unrelenting crew, were much moved at this sight, and were, therefore, more willing to give Sir Thomas leave to speak to her, which he did in these few words: 'My dear Margaret, hear with patience, nor do not any longer grieve for me. It is the will of G.o.d, and therefore must be submitted to.' And he then gave her a parting kiss. But after she was withdrawn ten or a dozen feet off, she comes running to him again, and falls upon his neck; but grief again stopped her mouth. Her father looked wistfully upon her, but said nothing, the tears trickling down his cheeks--a language too well understood by his distressed daughter, though he bore all this without the least change of countenance. But just when he was to take his final leave of her, he begged her prayers to G.o.d for him, and took his farewell of her. The officers and soldiers, as rocky as they were, melted at this sight; and no wonder, when even the very beasts are under the power of natural affections, and often show them.” ”Good G.o.d,” adds the same elegant writer, ”what a shocking trial must this be to the poor man! How could he be attacked in a more tender part?”
After Sir Thomas was beheaded, she took care for the burial of his body, and afterwards bought his head, when it was to have been thrown into the river. She likewise felt the fury of the king's displeasure upon her father's score, being herself confined to prison; but after a short confinement, and after they had in vain endeavoured to terrify her with menaces she was released, and sent to her husband.
ELIZABETH LUCAS.
[BORN 1510. DIED 1537.]