which should send her head to the block-a condemnation he was seeking every means to ensure ! How cruel must that heart have been which could let its owner pursue the chase on the day that consigned his victim to a violent death! Henry is said to have waited beneath a tree in Richmond Park, where he sought shade from the sun, surrounded by his train, on the morning of the 19th of May, 1536, when the sound of the gun that announced the severing of the beautiful head he had once doted on, from the fair body so fondly prized, struck on his eager ear, which thirsted for the signal that he was free. He uttered an exclamation of joy, commanded the hounds to be let loose, the chase to commence, and took the route towards Wolf Hall, where his future bride

attended his presence. Did no shudder pass over her frame when she greeted the self-made widower? Did her hand not tremble when it met the clasp of that which had so lately signed the death-warrant of Anne Boleyn? Had she no womanly thought of how often she had beheld that hand fondle her late mistress, whom he once loved so passionately? Such thoughts, we fear, were far from Jane Seymour at that meeting. She saw in her burly lover but the instrument to crown her ambition, him who was to elevate her to the throne she longed to ascend.

The following morning Henry led her to the altar in the parish church nearest her father's seat in Wiltshire, where the nuptials were solemnized, in the presence of several of the king's favourites. After the wedding-feast the party proceeded to Marwell, a residence granted to the Seymours by Henry. Thence they went to Winchester, where, after remaining a few days, they directed their course to London, where, on the 29th of May, Jane was presented as queen to her subjects. Loud were the congratulations, and exaggerated the compliments lavished on the bride and bridegroom by

their obsequious courtiers on this occasion; and, when parliament opened a short time after, the Lord Chancellor Audley, not content with noticing the recent marriage of his sovereign with all due respect, lavished on him the most fulsome panegyric as a victim to circumstances connected with his two former marriages, and of extravagant laudation for a third time entering the bonds of wedlock, trying to make it appear that Henry did so solely for the good of his kingdom, and not to satisfy his own inclination. Audley referred, with an unfeeling and indelicate openness, to the guilt of Anne Boleyn, evincing, by so doing, that he was well aware of the gross mind of his ferocious master; for surely decency ought to have taught him to avoid all mention of her. He moved that the infant Princess Elizabeth, daughter of the ill-fated Anne, should be declared illegitimate; as also had been the Princess Mary, daughter of the ill-used Catherine of Arragon; and that the crown should devolve on the children, male or female, of the new queen, Jane Seymour. Low indeed must have been the state of morals, and terrible the dread inspired by the gross sensualist Henry, when a lord chancellor could thus outrage common decency and truth, in presence of a parliament, without one voice being raised in dissent to his falsehoods! He must have known the moral degradation of those he was addressing, to count on, not merely their toleration, but their approbation. But the nobility, who petitioned the barbarous Henry to wed again ere the marriage had been dissolved on a futile pretext, ere the violent death of Anne Boleyn had yet released him from wedlock with her, must have been the ready ministers to the passions and cruelty of their brutal sovereign, and held themselves bound to commend his vices.

Jane Seymour had acquired wisdom by the example furnished during the reign of her unhappy predecessor.

Without the natural gaiety and ready wit so apt to encroach on the dignity of a queen, and so dangerous in the wife of a moody and suspicious husband, for which Anne Boleyn was so remarkable,' Jane was not tempted into any of those levities and repartees which the possession of these fascinating qualities but too often induces. Calm and discreet, no less by acquired prudence than by natural temperament, she observed a dignified and queen-like demeanour, equally removed from haughtiness and familiarity. If she captivated few, she offended none, but pursued the even tenour of her way, satisfied with her high estate, and by no means disposed to do aught that could risk its loss by incurring the displeasure of her lord and master. Little can be recorded of a woman so discreet and cautious as Jane during the brief period she filled the place vacated by the death of Anne Boleyn. She took no part in political intrigues, leaned to no party; and although the sister of the ambitious Somerset, never allowed herself to be made the instrument to work out any of his designs. She is said to have behaved with great kindness to the Princess Mary, and to have won Henry to tolerate her. Of the helpless infant Elizabeth, then in her fourth year, historians give us no reason to believe that she took any notice, although the position of the poor child might well excite commiseration and sympathy, stripped of the title of Princess of Wales, which she had borne since her birth, and deprived of a mother by a violent death. Jane could not

2

"Burnet dit qu'elle étoit d'un enjouement, qu'elle ne retenoit pas toujours dans le bornes d'une exacte bienséance et de la discretion. Elle avoi raillé quelques uns des domestiques du roi, d'une manière qui ne lui convenoit pas."-Tind, Rapin, page 377.

2 "La mort d'Ann de Bollen fit renoitre les esperances de Marie, fille du roi et de Catherine, sa première femme. Son attachement pour la reine sa mère, et son refus obstiné de se conformer aux actes de parlement qui avoient été faits depuis quelques temps, l'avoit très mal mise dans l'esprit du roi, qui ne pouvoit supporter d'être contredit."-Rapin, page 384.

have been deterred from showing kindness to the child by any dread of offending her stern husband; for Henry had Elizabeth brought up under his own eye, and invariably evinced great affection for her, while towards her elder halfsister he behaved with coldness, if not dislike, angered by her long resistance to sign her acknowledgment of his supremacy, the renunciation of the power of the pope, and of the invalidity of the marriage of her mother with Henry, and consequently of the illegitimacy of her own birth. It cannot be wondered at that the Princess Mary, then of an age to comprehend her own position, resisted to sign articles alike contrary to her conscience and interest, until finding that nothing else would conciliate her hard-hearted and stubborn father, she was compelled to yield. Perhaps it was to this obedience to Henry's wishes, rather than to the queen's interference in her favour, that she owed her toleration by him, even though Jane Seymour gave proofs of kindness towards her, for which Mary expressed her sense of gratitude not only by applying the endearing epithet of mother to her, but by praying God to grant her a prince -a prayer the sincerity of which we cannot help doubting, as its fulfilment must shut herself from her chance of the throne.

Unlike her two predecessors, Jane Seymour was never crowned. This ceremony had been postponed owing to the plague, then prevalent in London, and most of all in Westminster, where it greatly raged; and when its violence had abated, the queen was in a state that promised to give Henry the longed-for heir, and rendered him fearful of exposing her to the fatigue of a coronation. He announced her condition with no less pride than satisfaction; but even then did not conceal that he took a much more lively interest in the unborn child than in its mother. One passage in his letter

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to the Duke of Norfolk furnishes a proof of this, as well as of the coarseness of the writer. It is that in which he expresses his intention of remaining near her. He writes:Considering that, being but a woman, upon some sudden and displeasant rumours and broils that might, by foolish or light persons, be blown abroad in our absence, she might take to stomach such impressions as might engender no little danger or displeasure to the infant with which she is now pregnant (which God forbid), it hath been thought by our council very necessary that, for avoiding such perils, we should not extend our progress further from her than sixty miles." The substitution of taking to stomach, instead of taking to heart, shows how much more Henry was sensible of physical than moral effects, and that he thought more of his future heir than of his wife, and leads us to believe the reported assertion that when the dangerous labour of the queen induced her attendants to ask the king whether the infant or mother were to be saved, he answered, without a moment's hesitation," "The child, by all means, for other wives could be easily found." On the 12th of October, 1537, Jane gave birth to Prince Edward, in Hampton Court Palace; an event which filled the king with transport, and consequently delighted his courtiers. His joy was manifested by noisy hilarity, and theirs by an affectation of irrepressible rapture.

This turbulent joy, however gratifying to the newly-made mother's feelings, was very injurious to her in the weak state to which she had been reduced; and the christening, which followed only three days after, from a portion of which splendid but tedious ceremony she was not exempted from appearing, proved too much for her exhausted frame. This solemn rite took place at midnight in the chapel of Hampton Court, with all the etiquette peculiar to such occasions; 1 Sanders, page 89. 2 Strickland's Queens, vol. iv. page 308.