Yan hearing, and pervesting the Cartimui wis desired, could not forlear angling, but pulled down his visor, and Master Ne ville's also, and dashed out such a pinsant countenance and cheer that all the noblest estates there assembled, pereciving the King to be there amongst them, rejoiced very much. mien as they be mar 11 ant **20 .27@ sites, me D GULLArs 1300 71 (as thor NTR TOMEKALAIS of mus your manndant TUTE THł taki kach & ALITATW exp lent f...I 11m, SLIM no jest, 300 Deer te supportation of your Grace, but to repair tether to view as well their incomparable beauty as for to accompany them at mumenaurice, and then after to dance with them, and to have of their acquaintance. And sir, furthermore they require of your grace licence to accomplish the same cause of their coming. To whom the CardinalThe Cardinal eftsoons desired His said he was very well content they should Highness to take the place of estate. do so. Then went the maskers and when the King answered, that he would first saluted all the dames, and then re- go first and shift his apparel, and so deturned to the most worthiest, and then parted, and went straight into my Lord opened their great cup of gold, filled with Cardinal's bed chamber, where was a crowns and other pieces of gold, to whom great fire prepared for him, and new apthey set certain of the pieces of gold, to parelled himself with rich and princely cast at those pursuing all the ladies and garments. And in the time of the King's gentlewomen, to some they lost and of absence the dishes of the banquet were others they won; and pursuing after this clean taken up, and the table spread again manner all the ladies they returned to with new and clean perfumed cloaths, the Cardinal with great reverence, pour- every man sitting still until the King's ing down all the gold left in their cup, majesty with all his maskers came in which was about two hundred crowns. amongst them. again every man new ap"Oh,' quoth the Cardinal, and so cast parelled. Then the King took his seat the dice and won them, whereof was under the cloth of estate, commanding made great noise and joy. Then quoth every person to sit still as they did bethe Cardinal to my Lord Chamberlain, fore. In came a new banquette beI pray you that you will show them fore the King's majesty, and to all the that mescemeth there should be a noble- rest throughout the tables, wherein I man amongst them who is more meet to suppose were served two hundred dishes occupy this seat and place than I am, to of wondrous costly devices and subwhom I would most gladly surrender the tleties. Thus passed they forth the same if I knew him. Then spake my night in banquetting, dancing, and other Lord Chamberlain to them in French, triumphant devices, to the great comfort declaring my Lord Cardinal's words, and of the King, and pleasant regard of the they redounding him again in the ear, nobility there assembled." the Lord Chamberlain said to the Lord Cardinal, 'Sir, they confess that amongst them there is such a noble personage, whom if your grace will point out from the rest, he is content to disclose himself and to take and accept your place most worthily.' "With that the Cardinal taking a good advertisement amongst them. at the last quoth he, Meseemeth the gentleman in the black beard shall be even he,' and with that he rose out of his chair, and offered the same to the gentleman in the At these gorgeous fêtes, Henry invariably chose Anne Boleyn for his partner; and at the splendid farewell entertainment given to the French ambassadors at Greenwich, on the fifth of May, 1527, he publicly exhibited his preference for Anne, by dancing with her in the mask which concluded the midnight ball. About this period the question or Henry's divorce excited the attention of his courtiers, and shortly afterwards * See the Life of Katherine of Arragon for the particulars of the divorce. the King's secret matter," as his desire | opinion of it. and to procure a decretal to east off his Queen and wed Anne buil and a dispensation for the marriage Boleyn, was named, came to the know- of Henry and Anne from the Sovereign ledge of Katherine, who, although in the Pontiff. Having obtained the dispenheight of rage sie upbraided the King,sation and some other unimportant conmarie no change in her conduct towards cessions, Fox returned to England; and her maid of honour. Only on one occasion, Anne Boleyn mistaking the papai inand then by a sort of caustic pleasantry, struments for the Pope's sanction for did she advert to their mutual situation. the divorce, vented her feelings in a They were playing at cards in the royal tumult of joy, and overwhelmed Fox presence, when Katherine observing | with promises of place and patronage, Anne Boleyn to stop more than once on in gratitude for his services. Wolsey turning up a king, said, "My Lady and Campeggio were appointed to try Anne, you have good luck to stop at a the validity of the King's marriage; but king, but you are not like others, you before Canipeggio arrived, public business will have all or none.' was suspended by the sudden appearance Cardinal Wolsey, little suspecting the and rapid spread of that alarming epiKing's real purpose in desiring to rid denic, the sweating sickness. A desire himself of his consort, offered his aid, to shun the contagion induced most of and even ventured to predict success. the nobles to shut themselves up in reIn truth, Wolsey looked only to the po- tirement; Henry caught the alarm, and litical consequences of the divorce, and sent Anne home to her parents at Hever; to perpetuate the alliance between Eng- but although he rejoined his Queen, and land and France, actually went to France took part with her in her daily devotions, and entered into negotiations for a mar-Anne was more than ever the object of riage between Henry and Renee, the daughter of Louis the Twelfth. In this state of ignorance the Cardinal was not long suffered to remain. His slow, cautious mode of proceeding offended the King, who recalled him, and communicated to him his firm determination to marry Anne Boleyn. This announcement overwhelmed Wolsey with astonishment. For several hours, he on his knees implored the King to desist from his purpose; but finding all efforts vain, he resolved, rather than give mortal offence to his sovereign, to urge forward the divorce, and trust the issues to the events of time. As to Anne, she already swayed the will of the English monarch, and she resolved to share his throne immediately his marriage with Katherine was lawfully annulled. Meanwhile a treatise was composed by Henry and several of his prelates, in which his case was supported by all the authority which law or custom had sanctioned since the world commenced, and by all the arguments which erudition or ingenuity could supply. A copy of this treatise was sent to the Pope, and Stephen Gardiner and Edmund Fox, the King's almoner, were commissioned to obtain a favourable his affection. In one of his letters to her at this period, he says, As touching your abode at Hever, you know what aire doth best suit you, but I would it were come to that, thereto if it please God that neither of us need care for that, for I assure you I think it long." In the following letter his fears for her health are rendered apparent. "The uneasiness my doubts about your health gave me, disturbed and frightened me exceedingly, and I should not have had any quiet, without hearing a certain account. But now since you have yet felt nothing, I hope it is with you as with us; for when we were at Walton, two ushers, two valets de chambre, and your brother, master treasurer, fell ill, and are now quite well; and since we have returned to your house at Hunsdon,* we have been perfectly well, God be praised, and have not at present one sick person in the family; and I think if you could retire from the Surrey side, as we did, you would escape all danger. There is another thing that may comfort you, which is, that in truth few or no women have been seized with this distemper, In Essex, purchased by the King of Sir Thomas Boleyn in 1512. ANNE BOLEYN, Serand Queen of Benry the Eighth. CHAPTER I. Birth-Descent-Parentage-Education-Goes to France as maid of honour to Queen Mary-Enters the service of Queen Claude-Her talents and accomplishments-Her proposed marriage-She returns to England-Appointed maid of honour to Queen Katherine-Regulations of the Royal Household. HE records of no Queen Consort of England more fully exemplify the vanity of human ambition, nor are more replete with startling and romantic incidents. than those of Anne Boleyn; a queen, whose character remains to the present day a debateable point in history. By the advocates of the Reformation, whose cause she zealously supported, even her vices have been painted as virtues, whilst the opposite party have depicted her as a monster, deformed in person, and base and brutal in mind. Sanders, one of her bitterest detractors, says, "she was ill-shaped and ugly, had six fingers, a gag tooth, and a tumour under her chin, with many other unseemly things in her person. At the age of fifteen she permitted her father's butler and chaplain to have access to her person; afterwards she was sent to France, where she was kept privately in the house of a person of quality; then she went to the French court, where she led such a dissolute life that she was called the English hackney. That the French king admired her, and from the freedoms he took with her, she was called the king's mulc." These slanders, however, bear the colour of untruth upon their face. Her exquisite portrait by Holbein, in the British Muscum, and from which the engraving in this work is taken, is an incontrovertible witness of her beauty; and the preceding pages will show that her moral conduct, although highly exceptionable, was, at least, not so black as her detractors would have us to suppose. Of her birth more than one idle tale has been dressed up in the sober garb of truth. The most scandalous is by Sanders, who assures the world that the King entertained a tender penchant for her mother, and to gratify his desires, sent her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, ambassador to France. years afterwards, Sir Thomas returned, when finding his wife enceinte, he sued for a divorce in the Archbishop of Canterbury's court; but the Marquis of Dorset was sent to him, to declare that the King was the father of the child, and to request him to pass the matter over, Two and be reconciled to his wife; to which he consented. "Thus," continues Sanders, although Anne went under the name of Sir Thomas' daughter, Henry the Eighth was in reality her father." Burnet pronounces this assertion a falsehood, invented more than half a century after the death of the parties implicated, to blacken their fame, and injure the reputation of Queen Elizabeth. And when we consider, that Anne was born in 1507, the date given by Camden, or, what is more probable, 1501, as Herbert says she was twenty years old when she returned from France, we cannot for a moment put faith in this statement by Sanders; for Henry the Eighth, who was born in 1491, was at the period of Anne's birth but a mere boy. Sir Thomas Boleyn was not sent ambassador to France till 1515; and if the records of his family are to be relied on, all his children had been born previous to that date. The family of Boleyn, Bullen, or Bolen -the name is differently spelt-was of French descent, and appears to have settled in Norfolk shortly after the Norman Conquest. Anne's great-grandfather, Geoffrey Boleyn, was apprenticed to a mercer, and became one of the most wealthy and distinguished citizens of London. Having entered the Mercers' Company, he was advanced to the dignity of Lord Mayor in 1457. For his energy, wisdom, and discretion, in preserving the peace of the city, when the partisans of the rival roses met in congress there to reconcile their differences, he was invested with the titles of knighthood. In all his undertakings he prospered, nothing he touched but turned to gold; and to crown his good fortune, he married the daughter of the lord of Hoo and Hastings. To firmly establish his family, he purchased the manor of Blinking in Norfolk, of Sir John Falstaffe, and the manor of Hever from the Chobhams in Kent; and thus, whilst he gave good portions with his daughters, who intermarried with the Cheyneys, the Heydons, and the Fortescues, of Norfolk, he reserved for his son an estate fully adequate to the pretensions of a noble bride, who was the fair Margaret, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Boteler, the great Earl of Ormond, whose ancestors had suffered in the Lancasterian cause. But conspicuous as he was for shrewd sense and enterprising perseverance, munificence and generous liberality formed equally prominent features in his character. To the poor householders of London he left the magnificent bequest of one thousand pounds, and to the poor of Norfolk a donation of two hundred pounds. His equally fortunate, but more aspiring son, Sir William Boleyn, attached himself to the court, and was made a Knight of the Bath at the coronation of Richard the Third. Sir William succeeded in marrying his children into noble families, the most successful match being that of his son Thomas, the father of Anne Boleyn, to the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Surrey, afterwards Duke of Norfolk. During the greater period of the reign of .enry the Seventh, Sir Thomas Boleyn lived in retirement at his paternal niansion of Rochford Hall, in Essex; but the marriage of his wife's brother, Lord Thomas Howard, with Anne, sister of the consort of Henry the Seventh, brought him into close connection with royalty. the commencement of Henry the Eighth's reign, after being appointed a knight of the body, he was made deputy warden of the customs of Calais, and from this time he regularly took part in the toils and pleasures of the court. At Anne Boleyn was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn and Elizabeth Howard. The place is no more certain than the date of her birth; history, topography, and tradition, having all referred it to Blickling Hall in Norfolk, Hever Castle in Kent, and Rochford Hall in Essex. In 1512 her mother died of puerperal fever. Her father afterwards married a Norfolk woman of mean origin; and it is not improbable that it was this second wife, and not the mother of Anne, as Sanders, perhaps by mistake, has asserted, who listened to Henry the Eighth's improper overtures. After the death of her mother, Anne resided at Hever castle, where she received a better education than usually fell to the lot of court ladies at that period. When the peace with France was |