AT YORK PLACE.

393

and then after to dance with them, and so to have of them acquaintance. And, sir, they furthermore require of your Grace license to accomplish the cause of their repair.' To whom the Cardinal answered, that he was very well contented that they should do so. Then the maskers went first and saluted all the dames as they sat, and then returned to the most worthiest, and there opened a cup full of gold, with crowns and other pieces of coin, to whom they set divers pieces to cast at. Thus in this manner perusing all the ladies and gentlewomen, and to some they lost, and of some they won. And this done, they returned unto the Cardinal, with great reverence, pouring down all the crowns into the cup, which was about two hundred crowns. 'At all,' quoth the Cardinal, and so cast the dice, and won them all at a cast; whereat was great joy made. Then quoth the Cardinal to my Lord Chamberlain, I pray you,' quoth he, show them that it seemeth me that there should be among them some noble man, whom I suppose to be much more worthy of honour to sit and occupy this room and place than I; to whom I would most gladly, if I knew him, surrender my place, according to my duty.' Then spake my Lord Chamberlain unto them in French, declaring my Lord Cardinal's mind, and they rounding him again in the ear, my Lord Chamberlain said to my Lord Cardinal, Sir, they confess,' quoth he, 'that among them there is such a noble personage, whom, if your Grace can appoint him from the other, he is contented to disclose himself, and to accept your place most worthily.' With that the Cardinal, taking a good advisement among them, at the last, quoth he, me seemeth the gentleman with the black beard should be even he.' And with that he arose out of his chair, and offered the same to the gentleman in the black beard, with his cap in his hand. The person to whom he offered then his chair was Sir Edward Neville, a comely knight of a goodly personage,* that much more resembled the King's person in that mask than any other. The King, hearing and perceiving the Cardinal so deceived in his estimation and choice, could not forbear laughing; but plucked down his visor, and Master Neville's also, and dashed out with such a plesant countenance and cheer, that all noble estates there assembled, seeing the King to be there amongst them, rejoiced very much. The Cardinal eftsoons desired his highness to take the place of estate, to whom the King answered, that he would go first and shift his apparel; and so departed, and went straight into my lord's bedchamber, where was a great fire made and prepared for him; and there new apparelled him with rich and princely garments. And in the time of the King's absence the dishes of the banquet were clean taken up, and the tables spread again with new and sweet perfumed clothes; every man sitting still until the King and his maskers came in among them again, every man being newly apparelled. Then the King took his seat under the cloth of state, commanding no man to remove, but sit still, as they did before. Then in came a new banquet before the King's majesty, and to all the rest through the tables, wherein, I suppose, were served two hundred dishes or above,

* Probably a handsomer figure than the King. This (though not the subtlest imaginable) would be likely to be among Wolsey's courttricks, and modes of gaining favour.

This "dashed out" is in the best style of bluff King Hal, and capitally well said by Cavendish.

of wondrous costly meats and devices, subtilly devised. Thus passed they forth the whole night with banqueting, dancing, and other triumphant devices, to the great comfort of the King, and pleasant regard of the nobility there assembled.

"All this matter I have declared at large, because ye shall understand what joy and delight the Cardinal had to see his Prince and sovereign Lord in his house so nobly entertained and pleased, which was always his only study, to devise things to his comfort, not passing of the charges or expenses. It delighted him so much, to have the King's pleasant princely presence, that nothing was to him more delectable than to cheer his sovereign lord, to whom he owed so much obedience and loyalty, as reason required no less, all things well considered.

"Thus passed the Cardinal his life and time, from day to day, and year to year, in such great wealth, joy, and triumph, and glory, having always on his side the King's especial favour; until Fortune, of whose favour no man is longer assured than she is disposed, began to wax something wroth with his prosperous estate [and] thought she would devise a mean to abate his high port; wherefore she procured Venus, the insatiate Goddess, to be her instrument. To work her purpose, she brought the King in love with a gentlewoman, that, after she perceived and felt the King's goodwill towards her, and how diligent he was both to please her, and to grant all her requests, she wrought the Cardinal much displeasure; as hereafter shall be more at large declared."

Pretty Anne Bullen completed the ruin of Wolsey for having thwarted her, and not long afterwards was sent out of this very house from which she ousted him, to the scaffold, herself ruined by another rival. On the Cardinal's downfall, Henry seized his house and goods, and converted York Place into a royal residence, under the title of Westminster Place, then, for the first time, called also Whitehall.

"It is not impossible," says Mr. Brayley (Londiniana, vol. ii., p. 27.) "that the Whitehall, properly so called, was erected by Wolsey, and obtained its name from the newness and freshness of its appearance, when compared with the ancient buildings of York Place. Shakspeare, in his play of King Henry VIII., makes one of the interlocutors say, in describing the coronation of Queen Anne Boleyn:

'So she parted,

And with the same full state paced back again
To York Place, where the feast is held.'

To this is replied

• Sir, you

Must no more call it York Place-that is past.
For since the Cardinal fell, that title's lost.
"Tis now the King's, and called Whitehall."

It is curious to observe the links between ancient names and their modern representatives, and the extraordinary contrast sometimes exhibited between the two. The "Judge," who by

Henry's orders went to turn Wolsey out of his house, without any other form of law-a proceeding which excited even the fallen slave to a remonstrance-was named Shelly, and was one of the ancestors of the poet! the most independent-minded and generous of men.

Henry the Eighth-His Person and Character-Modern Qualifications of it considered-Passages respecting him from Lingard, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and others-His additions to Whitehall-A Retrospect at Elizabeth-Court of James resumed-Its gross Habits-Letter of Sir John Harrington respecting them-James's DrunkennessTestimonies of Welldon, Sully, and Roger Coke-Curious Omission in the Invective of Churchill the Poet-Welldon's Portrait of James-Buckingham, the Favourite-Frightful Story of Somerset -Masques-Banqueting House-Inigo Jones and Ben JonsonCourt of Charles the First-Cromwell-Charles the Second-James the Second.

E have said more about Wolsey than we intend to say of Henry the Eighth; for the son of the butcher was a great man, and his master was only a king. Henry, born a prince, became a butcher; Wolsey, a butcher, became a prince. And we are not playing upon the word do as applied to the king; for Henry was not only a butcher of his wives, he resembled a brother of the trade in its better and more ordiHis pleasures were of the same order; his lan

nary course.

396

HENRY THE EIGHTH;

1

guage was coarse and jovial; he had the very straddle of a fat butcher, as he stands in his doorway. Take any picture or statue of Henry the Eighth-fancy its cap off, and a knife in its girdle, and it seems in the very act of saying, “ What d'ye buy? What d'ye buy?" There is even the petty com placency in the mouth, after the phrase is uttered.

And how formidable is that petty unfeeling mouth, in the midst of those wide and wilful cheeks! Disturb the selfsatisfaction of that man, derange his bile for an instant, make him suppose that you do not quite think him

"Wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best,"

and what hope have you from the sentence of that mass of pampered egotism?

Let us not do injustice, however, even to the doers of it. What better was to be looked for, in those times, from the circumstances under which Henry was born and bred-from the son of a wilful father, and an unfeeling state marriagefrom the educated combiner of church and state, instinctively led to entertain the worldliest notions of both, and of heaven itself from the inheritor of the greatest wealth, and power, and irresponsibility, ever yet concentrated in an English sovereign? It has been attempted of late by various writers (and the attempt is a good symptom, being on the charitable side,) to make out a case for Henry the Eighth, as if he were a sort of rough but honest fellow, a kind of John Bull of that age, who meant well upon the whole, and thought himself bound to keep up the conventionalities of his country. We know not what compliment is intended to be implied by this, either to Henry or his countrymen; but really when a man sends his wives, one after the other, to the scaffold, evidently as much to enable him to marry another as to vindicate any propriety-when he "cuts" and sacrifices his best friends and servants, and pounces upon their goods-when he takes every license himself, though he will not allow others even to be suspected of it-when he grows a brute beast in size as well as in habits, and dies shedding superfluous blood to the lastwe cannot, for our parts, as Englishmen, but be glad of some better excuses for him of the kind above stated, than such as are to be found in the roots of the national character, however jovial. Imagine only the endearments that must have passed between this man and Anne Bullen, and then fancy the heart that could have sent the poor little, hysterical, half-laughing,

HIS VANITY AND TYRANNY.

397

half-crying thing to the scaffold! The man was mad with power and vanity. That is his real excuse.

It has been said, that all which he did was done by law, or at least under the forms of it, and by the consent, sometimes by the recommendation, of his statesmen. The assertion is not true in all instances; and where it is, what does it prove but that his tyrannical spirit had helped to make his statesmen slaves? They knew what he wished, and notoriously played the game into his hands. When they did not, their heads went off. That circumstances had spoilt them altogether, and that society, with all its gaudiness, was but in a half-barbarous state, is granted; but it is no less true, that his office, his breeding, and his natural temper, conspired to make Henry the worst and most insolent of a violent set of men; and he stands straddling out accordingly in history, as he does in his pictures, an image of sovereign brutality.

Excessive vanity, aggravated by all the habits of despotism and luxury, and accompanied, nevertheless, by that unconscious misgiving which is natural to inequalities between a man's own powers and those which he derives from his position, is the clue to the character of Henry the Eighth. Accordingly, no man gave greater ear to tale-bearers and sowers of suspicion, nor resented more cruelly or meanly the wounds inflicted on his self-love, even by those who least intended them, or to whom he had shown the greatest fondness. The latter, indeed, he treated the worst, out of a frenzy of egotistical disappointment; for his love arose, not from any real regard for their merits, but from what he had taken for a flattery to his own. Sir Thomas More knew him well, when, in observation to some one who had congratulated him on the King's having walked up and down with his arm around his neck, he said that he would have that neck cut in two next day, if the head belonging to it opposed his will. He not only took back without scruple all that he had given to Wolsey, but he went to live in the houses of his fallen friend and servant-places which a man of any feeling and kindly remembrance would have avoided. He was very near picking a murderous quarrel with his last wife, Catherine Parr, on one of his theological questions. And how did he conduct himself to the memory of poor Anne Bullen, even on the day of her execution? Hear Lingard, who, though no partizan of his, thinks he must have had some heinous cause of provocation, to induce him to behave so roughly: