"Thus fell," says the historian, "this unfortunate Queen within four months after the death of Catherine. To have expressed a doubt of her guilt during the reign of Henry, or of her innocence during that of Elizabeth, would have been deemed a proof of disaffection. The question soon became one of religious feeling, rather than of historical disquisition. Though she had departed no farther than her husband from the ancient doctrine, yet, as her marriage with Henry led to the separation from the communion of Rome, the Catholic writers were eager to condemn, the Protestant to exculpate her memory. In the absence of those documents which alone could enable us to decide with truth, I will only observe that the King must have been impelled by some powerful motive to exercise against her such extraordinary, and, in one supposition, such superfluous vigour. Had his object been (we are sometimes told that it was) to place Jane Seymour by his side on the throne, the divorce of Anne without execution, or the execution without the divorce, would have effected his purpose. But he seemed to have pursued her with insatiable hatred. Not content with taking her life, he made her feel in every way in which a wife and a mother could feel. He stamped on her character the infamy of adultery and incest; he deprived her of the name and right of wife and Queen; and he even bastardized her daughter, though he acknowledged that daughter to be his own. If then he were not assured of her guilt, he must have discovered in her conduct some most heinous cause of provocation, which he never disclosed. He had wept at the death of Catherine (of Arragon); but, as if he sought to display his contempt for the character of Anne, he dressed himself in white on the day of her execution, and was married to Jane Seymour the next morning."*

Now, nothing could be more indecent and unmanly than such conduct as this, let Anne have been guilty as she might; and nothing, in such a man, but mortified self-love could account for it. Probably he had discovered, that in some of her moments of levity she had laughed at him. But not to love him would have been offence enough. It would have been the first time he had discovered the possibility of such an impiety towards his barbarous divinityship: and his rage must needs have been unbounded.

What Providence may intend by such instruments, is one thing what we are constituted to think of them, is another: charitably, no doubt, when we think our utmost; but still with a discrimination, for fear of consequences. As to what was thought of Henry in his own time or afterwards, we must not rely on the opinion of Baker, Holinshed, and other servile chroniclers, of mean understanding and time-serving habits, who were the least honourable kind of "waiters upon Providence," taking the commonest appearances of adversity and prosperity (so to speak) for vice and virtue, and flattering * Lingard, vol. iv., p. 246. (Quarto Edit.)

PASSAGES RESPECTING HIM FROM WYAT, &c.

399

every arbitrary and conventional opinion, as though it were not to perish in its turn. We are to recollect what More said of him (as above) in his confidential moments and Wolsey in his agony, and Pole and others, when, having got to a safe distance, they returned him foul language for his own bullying, and blustered out what was thought of him by those who knew him thoroughly. Observe also the manifest allusions in what was written upon the court of those days, by one of the wisest and best of its ornaments, Sir Thomas Wyat-a friend of Anne Bullen's. The verses are entitled, "Of a Courtier's Life," and it may be observed, by the way, that they furnish the second example, in the English language, of the use of the Italian rime terzette, or triplets, in which Dante's poem is written, and which had been first introduced among us by Sir Thomas's friend, the Earl of Surrey (another of Henry's victims):

Mine owne John Poynes, sins ye delight to know
The causes why that homeward I me draw
And flee the prease of courtes whereso they goe,
Rather than to live thrall under the awe

Of lordly lookes, wrapped within my cloke,
To will and lust learning to set a law,

It is not, that because I storme or mocke

The power of those whom fortune here hath lent
Charge over us, of right to strike the stroke;
But true it is, that I have alway ment

Less to esteeme them, than the common sort
Of outward thinges that judge in their entent;

*

My Poynes, I cannot frame my tong to fayn,
To cloke the truth, for praise, without desert,
Of them that list all vice for to retayne;
I cannot honour them that set theyr part
With Venus and with Bacchus their life long,
Nor hold my peace of them although I smart
I cannot crouch, nor kneele to such a wrong,
TO WORSHIP THEM LIKE GOD ON EARTH ALONE,
That are as wolves these sely lambs among.

(Here was a sigh perhaps to the memory of his poor friend

Anne):

I cannot wrest the law to fyll the coffer

With innocent blood to feed myselfe fat,

And do most hurt where that most help I offer

I am not he that can allow the state

Of hye Cæsar, and damn Cato to die;

(an allusion probably to Sir Thomas More).

Affirm that favill (fable-lying) hathe a goodly grace
In eloquence, and cruelty to name

Zeale of justice, and change in time and place;
And he that suffreth offence without blame,

Call him pitiefull, and him true and playne
That raylest reckless unto each man's shame;
Say he is rude, that cannot lye and fayne,
The lecher a lover, AND TYRANNY

TO BE RIGHT OF A PRINCE'S RAIGNE;
I cannot, I;-no, no ;-it will not be;

This is the cause that I could never yet

Hang on their sleeves, that weigh, as thou maist see,
A chippe of chaunce more than a pound of wit;
This makes me at home to hunt and hawke,
And in foul weather at my book to sit;
In frost and snowe, then with my bowe stalke
No man doth marke whereso I ryde or goe;
In lustie leas at libertie I walke.

Towards the conclusion, he says

he does not spend his time among those who have their wits taken away with Flanders cheer and "beastliness :"

Nor I am not, where truth is given in prey
For money, and prison and treason of some
A common practice used night and day;
But I am here in Kent and Christendom,
Among the Muses, where I read and ryme;
Where if thou list, mine owne John Poynes, to come,
Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.

Among the poems of Surrey, is a sonnet in reproach of "Sardanapalus," which probably came to the knowledge of Henry, and may have been intended to do so.

It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted marriage with Anne Bullen; Dr. Lingard says in a "garret;" Stowe says in the royal "closet." It is likely enough that the ceremony was hurried and sudden;-a fit of will, perhaps, during his wine; and if the closet was not ready, the garret was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards made a bishop.

Henry died in Whitehall; so fat, that he was lifted in and out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery. He was "somewhat gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie," says time-serving Holinshed.*

"He laboured under the burden of an extreme fat and unwieldy body," says noble Herbert of Cherbury.†

"The king," says Lingard, "had long indulged without restraint in the pleasures of the table. At last he grew so enormously corpulent,' that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor remove without the aid of machinery into the different apartments of his palace. Even the fatigue of subscribing his name to the writings † Folio edit

* Vol. iii., p. 862, Edit. 1808.

WHITEHALL IN OLDEN TIME.

401

which required his signature, was more than he could bear; and to relieve him from this duty, three commissioners were appointed, of whom two had authority to apply to the paper a dry stamp, bearing the letters of the king's name, and the third to draw a pen furnished with ink over the blank impression. An inveterate ulcer in the thigh which had more than once threatened his life, and which now seemed to baffle all the skill of the surgeons, added to the irascibility of his temper.'

It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace

HOLBEIN'S GATE OF WHITEHALL PALACE.

of the Archbishop of York first became the "King's Palace at Westminster," and expanded into that mass of houses which

*Ut supra, p. 347. Henry had been afflicted with this ulcer a long while. He was in danger from it during his marriage with Anne Bullen. It should be allowed him among his excuses of temperament; but then it should also have made him more considerate towards his wives. It never enters the heads, however, of such people that their faults or infirmities are to go for anything, except to make others considerate for them, and warrant whatever humours they choose to indulge.

D D

stretched to St. James's Park. He built a gate-house which stood across what is now the open street, and a gallery connecting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard; and on the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys for bowling; for although he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports. He was also a patron of the fine arts; and gave an annuity and rooms in the palace to the celebrated Holbein, who is said to have designed the gate, as well as decorated the interior. It is to Holbein we are indebted for our familiar acquaintance with his figure.

The reader is to bear in mind, that the street in front of the modern Banqueting-house was always open, as it is now, from Charing Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south end of the Banqueting-house, at which point the gate looked up it towards the Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-house, on the site of the present Horse Guards, was the Tilt-yard. The whole mass of houses and gardens on the river side comprised the royal residence. Down this open street then, just as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly; Sir Thomas More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with quiet-faced Erasmus; Holbein, looking about him with an artist's eyes; Surrey coming gallantly in his cloak and feather, as Holbein has painted him; and a succession of Henry's wives, with their flitting groups on horseback or under canopy-handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon; laughing Anne Bullen; quiet Jane Seymour; gross-bodied but sensible Anne of Cleves; demure Catherine Howard, who played such pranks before marriage; and disputatious yet buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant, to become the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, also, came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the tilting-yard; but of them we shall have more to say in the time of Elizabeth.

We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary, in connection with Whitehall. Edward once held the Parliament there, on account of his sickly condition ; and he used to hear Latimer preach in the Privy garden (still so called), where a pulpit was erected for him on purpose. As there are gardens there still to the houses erected on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we hear the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising through the trees.