10

THE AMIABLE CHARACTER OF CATHERINE OF ARAGON.

pomp and pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love and his pride equally conspired to prompt an extraordinary display. Anne, too, a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably greedy of this kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very consciousness of the dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances attending their union, would secretly augment the anxiety of the royal pair to dazzle by the magnificence of their public appearance. Only once before, since the Norman conquest, had a king of England stooped from his dignity to elevate a private gentlewoman and a subject to a partnership of his bed and throne; and the bitter animosities between the queen's relations on one side, and the princes of the blood and great nobles on the other, which had agitated the reign of Edward IV., and contributed to bring destruction on the heads of his.helpless orphans, stood as a strong warning against a repetition of the experiment.

The unblemished reputation and amiable character of Henry's 'some-time wife' had long procured for her the love and respect of the people; her late misfortunes had engaged their sympathy, and it might be feared that several unfavourable points of comparison would suggest themselves between the high-born and high-minded Catherine and her present rival,—once her humble attendant,—whose long-known favour with the king, whose open association with him at Calais, whither she had attended him, whose private marriage of uncertain date, and already advanced pregnancy, afforded so much ground for whispered

censures.

On the other hand, the personal qualities of the king gave him great power over popular opinion. The manly beauty of his countenance; the strength and agility which rendered him victorious over all competitors in the chivalrous exercises of the time; the splendour with which he surrounded himself; his bounty, the popular frankness of his manners; all conspired to render him, at this period of his life, an object of general admiration to his subjects; while the respect entertained for his talents and learning, and for the conscientious scruples respecting his first marriage which he felt or feigned, mingled so much of deference in their feelings towards him, as to check all hasty censures of his conduct. The protestant party, now considerable by zeal and numbers, foresaw too many happy results to their cause from the circumstances of his present union, to scrutinize with severity the motives which had produced it. The nation at large rejoiced in the prospect of a male heir to the crown, justly dreading a disputed succession, with its long-experienced evils, in the event of Henry's leaving behind him no child but a daughter lately set aside on the ground of illegitimacy. The populace of London, captivated, as usual, by the splendors of a coronation, were also delighted with the youth, beauty, and affability of the new queen. The solemn entry therefore

of Anne into the city of London was greeted by the applause of the multitude; and it was probably the genuine voice of public feeling, which in saluting her queen of England, wished her, how much in vain! a long and prosperous life.

The pageants displayed in the streets of London on this joyful occasion, are described with much minuteness by our chroniclers, and afford ample indications that the barbarism of taste which permitted an incongruous mixture of classical mythology with scriptural allusions, was now at its height. Helicon and Mount Parnassus appeared on this side; St. Anne and Mary the wife of Cleophas with her children, were represented on the other. Here the three Graces presented the queen with a golden apple by the hands of their orator Mercury; there the four Cardinal virtues promised, in set speeches, that they would always be aiding and comforting to her.

On the Sunday after her public entry, a day not at this period regarded as improper for the performance of such a ceremony, Henry caused his queen to be crowned at Westminster with great solemnity; an honour which he never thought proper to confer on any of her many

successors.

The hopes of the royal pair must doubtless have sustained a severe disappointment, in the sex of the child born to them a few months afterwards but of this sentiment nothing was suffered to appear in the treatment of the infant, whom her father was anxious to mark out as his only legitimate offspring, and the undoubted heir to the crown.

She was destined to bear the auspicious name of Elizabeth, in memory of her grandmother, that heiress of the house of York, whose marriage with the Earl of Richmond, then Henry VII., had united the roses, and given lasting peace to a country so long rent by civil discord. The unfortunate Mary, now in her sixteenth year, was stripped of the title of princess of Wales, which she had borne from her childhood, that it might adorn a younger sister; one too whose birth, her interest, her religion, and her filial affection for an injured mother, taught her to regard as base and infamous.

A public and princely christening served still further to attest the importance attached to this new member of the royal family.

By the king's special command, Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury, stood godfather to the princess; and Shakspeare, by a fiction equally poetical and courtly, has represented him as breaking forth on this memorable occasion into an animated vaticination of the glories of the 'maiden reign.' Happy was it for the peace of mind of the noble personages there assembled, that no prophet was empowered at the same time to declare how few of them should live to spare its splendor; how large a proportion of their number should become victims, either in their own persons or in those of their nearest connections, of the jealous tyranny of Henry himself, or of the convulsions and persecutions

12

BAPTISMAL CEREMONIAL OF THE INFANT ELIZABETH.

of the two troubled reigns destined to precede those halcyon days which they were taught to anticipate!

For the purpose of illustrating the truth of this remark, and at the same time of introducing to the reader the most distinguished personages of Henry's court, several of whom will afterwards be found exerting different degrees of influence on the character or fortunes of the illustrious subject of this work, it may be worth while to enumerate in regular order the performers in this august ceremony. The circumstantial Holinshed, to whom we are indebted for their names and offices, supplies at the same time some of those minute particulars which serve to bring the whole scene before the eye of fancy.

Early in the afternoon, the lord-mayor and corporation of London, who had been summoned to attend, took boat for Greenwich, where they found many lords, knights and gentlemen assembled. The whole way from the palace to the friary was strown with green rushes, and the walls were hung with tapestry, as was the Friar's church in which the ceremony was to be performed.

A silver font with a crimson canopy was placed in the middle of the church; and the child being brought into the hall, the long procession set forward. It began with citizens walking two-and-two, and ended with barons, bishops and earls. Then came, bearing the gilt basins, Henry earl of Essex, the last of the ancient name of Bourchier who bore that title. He was a splendid nobleman, distinguished in the martial games and gorgeous pageantries which then amused the court: he also boasted of a royal lineage, being sprung from Thomas of Woodstock, youngest son of Edward III.; and he was perhaps apprehensive lest this distinction might hereafter become as fatal to himself as it had lately proved to the unfortunate Duke of Buckingham. But he perished a few years after by a fall from his horse; and leaving no male issue, the king, to the disgust of this great family, conferred the title on the low-born Cromwell, then his favourite minister.

The salt was borne by Henry marquis of Dorset, the unfortunate father of lady Jane Grey; who, after he had received the pardon of queen Mary for his share in the plot for setting the crown on the head of his daughter, again took up arms in the rebellion of Wyat, and was brought to expiate this treason on the scaffold.

William Courtney, marquis of Exeter, followed with the taper of virgin wax, a nobleman who had the misfortune to be very nearly allied to the English throne, his mother being a daughter of Edward IV. He was at this time in high favour with the king his cousin, who, after setting aside his daughter Mary, had even declared him heir-apparent, to the prejudice of his own sisters: but three years after he fell a victim to the jealousy of the king, on a charge of corresponding with his proscribed kinsman cardinal Pole; his honors and estates were forfeited, and his son, though still a child, was detained in close custody.

The chrisom was borne by lady Mary Howard, the beautiful daughter of the Duke of Norfolk, who lived not only to behold, but, by the evidence which she gave on his trial, to assist in the unmerited condemnation of her brother, the gallant and accomplished earl of Surrey. The king, by a striking trait of royal arrogance, selected this lady, descended from our Saxon monarchs and allied to all the first nobility, for the wife of his base-born son, created duke of Richmond; but it does not appear that the spirit of the Howards was high enough, in this reign, to feel the insult as it deserved.

The royal infant, wrapped in a mantle of purple velvet with a long train furred with ermine, was carried by one of her godmothers, the dowager-duchess of Norfolk. Anne Boleyn was this lady's step-granddaughter but in this alliance with royalty she had little cause to exult; still less in the closer one which was afterwards formed for her by the elevation of her own grand-daughter Catherine Howard. On discovery of the ill conduct of this queen, the aged duchess was overwhelmed with disgrace; she was even declared guilty of misprision of treason and committed to custody, but was released by the king after the blood of Catherine and her paramours had quenched his fury.

The dowager-marchioness of Dorset was the other godmother at the font of the four sons of this lady, three perished on the scaffold; her grand-daughter lady Jane Grey shared the same fate; and the surviving son, during the reign of Elizabeth, was imprisoned till his death for the offence of distributing a pamphlet asserting the title of the Suffolk line to the crown.

The marchioness of Exeter, who was the godmother at the confirmation, had not only the affliction to see her husband brought to an untimely end, and her only son wasting his youth in captivity, but was herself attainted of high treason some time afterwards, and underwent a long and illegal imprisonment.

On either hand of the douchess of Norolk walked the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, the only nobles of that rank then existing in England. Their names occur in conjunction on every public occasion, and in almost every important transaction, civil and military, of the reign of Henry VIII.; but the termination of their respective careers was strongly contrasted. The duke of Suffolk had the extraordinary good fortune never to lose that favor with his master which he had gained as Charles Brandon, the partner of his youthful pleasures. What was a still more extraordinary instance of felicity, his marriage with the king's sister brought to him neither misfortunes nor perils, and he did not live to witness those which overtook his granddaughters. He died in peace, lamented by a sovereign who well knew his worth.

The duke of Norfolk, on the contrary, was powerful enough by birth and connections to impress Henry with fears for the tranquillity of his

14

BIOGRAPHIC NOTICES OF THE NOBLE SPONSORS.

son's reign, and sacrificing the memory of former services to present alarm, he gave orders for bringing this old and faithful servant to the scaffold almost with his latest breath. But even Henry was no longer absolute on his death-bed: for once he was disobeyed, and Norfolk survived him; but he languished during the whole of the following reign in a captivity poorly compensated by a brief restoration te liberty and honors under Mary.

One of the child's train-bearers was the countess of Kent. This was probably the widow of the second earl of that title of the name of Grey she must therefore have been the daughter of the earl of Pembroke, a zealous Yorkist who was slain fighting in the cause of Edward IV. Henry VIII. was doubtless aware that his best hereditary title to the crown was derived from his mother; and during his reign the Yorkist families enjoyed at least an equal share of favor with the Lancastrians, whom his father had almost exclusively countenanced.

Thomas Boleyn earl of Wiltshire, the proud and happy grandfather of the princely infant, supported the train on one side. It is not true that he afterwards, in his capacity of a privy councillor, pronounced sentence of death on his own son and daughter; even Henry was not inhuman enough to exact this of him; but he lived to witness their cruel and disgraceful end, and died long before the prosperous days of his illustrious grandchild.

On the other side the train was borne by Edward Stanley third earl of Derby. This young nobleman had been a ward of Wolsey, and was carefully educated by that splendid patron of learning, in his house, and under his own eye. He proved himself a faithful and loyal subject to four successive sovereigns, stood unshaken by the tempests of the most turbvlent times, and died full of days, in the possession of great riches, high hereditary honors and universal esteem, in 1574.

A splendid canopy was supported over the infant by four lords, three of them destined to disastrous fates. One was her uncle, the elegant, accomplished, viscount Rochford, whom the impartial suffrage of posterity has acquitted of the odious crime for which he suffered by the mandate of a jealous and capricious tyrant.

Another was lord Hussey, whom a rash rebellion brought to the scaffold a few years afterwards. The two others were brothers of that illustrious family of Howard, which furnished in this age alone more subjects for tragedy than 'Thebes or Pelops' line' of old. Lord William was illegally condemned to perpetual imprisonment and forfeiture of goods for concealing the misconduct of Catherine Howard his niece; but Henry was pleased soon after to remit the sentence : he lived to be eminent in the state under the title of lord Howard of Effingham, and died peacefully in a good old age. Lord Thomas suffered by the ambition so frequent in his house, of matching with the