1534.] Carnivorous propensities! 495 Whether she had received any tokens or messages from the lady Mary; and what persons, at that time, visited her at Hunsdon ?" The replies are short and unequivocal—the language of one who felt she had done nothing wrong, yet was sensible of the danger incurred. She stated, "She had visited the lady Mary only once since the king had discharged her from Beaulieu, and that was when lord Hussey came up to parliament at the last Whitsuntide, and the visit then was altogether accidental." She owned "she had inadvertently called the lady Mary twice by the title of princess, not from any wish to disobey the law, but simply from her having been so long accustomed to it." She confessed having received a trifling present from the lady Mary. Among the persons who visited the disinherited princess at Hunsdon, she deposed, was lord Morley. He was the literary friend whose testimony to Mary's early attainments has been already quoted, and who, to the honour of literature, did not forsake the unfortunate, notwithstanding. He was grandson by legitimate descent from Edward IV.'s sister Anne, and was second cousin to the king. Lady Morley, Mr. Shakerley and his wife, and Sir Edward Baynton, were likewise among Mary's visitors. "The poor princess," says Heylin, "had at Hunsdon no comfort but in her books;" she was assisted in her studies by Dr. Voisie, whom Henry VIII. rewarded, for the pains he took, with the bishopric of Exeter. This passage leads to the supposition that Dr. Featherstone (who had been employed in Mary's education since her infancy) had been dismissed. A recent historian is shocked at her "voracity," because her breakfast and suppers, with meat, had to be allowed for in the young Elizabeth's compotus, at the enormous sum of 251. per annum. But Mary, although not heiress of the realm, did not make her own beds, or her own gowns, or wash her linen. She still had to feed a few maids and a groom, and a tailor or two, all carnivora. Her gentle sire's bouche of court, as we have shown, specifies even for the maids of honour that the chine and ale allowed for these delicate damsels' breakfast were to go in reversion to their maids and men, and to their lap-dogs. Meat for breakfast! yea, surely our worthy contemporary does not suppose she ought to have gone without until tea and toast were provided? If Mary when at Hunsdon was allowed to read, she certainly was not permitted to write, as afterwards she apologizes for "her evil writing, because she had not written a letter for two years." Her father muttered murderous threats against her, and his words were eagerly caught and re-echoed by those members of his council whose whole study it was to flatter his wilful wishes, however wicked they might be. If the expressions of king Henry had not been appalling to the last degree, would Fitzwilliam have dared to use the revolting terms he did regarding his master's once-idolized daughter? "If she will not be obedient to his grace, I would," quoth he, “that her head was from her shoulders, that I might toss it here with my foot," and "so put his foot forward, spurning the rushes,"1 a graphic exemplification, added by two witnesses of this horrible speech, which it seems was not resented, but received as a dutiful compliment by the father of the young female, whose head was thus kicked as a football in the lively imagination of the obedient satellite! Dark indeed were the anticipations throughout Europe regarding the future destiny, not only of the unfortunate daughter, but of the queen her mother, during the year 1535. The king's envoys wrote home, that all men viewed them, as Englishmen, with either pity or horror. Mason, who was resident in Spain, declared "that the people expected to hear every day of the execution of queen Katharine, and that the princess Mary was expected soon to follow her."2 These rumours are vaguely stated in general history; only one author, and he a foreigner, attempts to relate the particular circumstances which instigated Henry VIII. to meditate the astounding crime of filiacide. Gregorio Leti affirms that some fortune-teller had predicted the accession of the princess Mary to the crown after the death of her father. This report was quickly brought to queen Anne Boleyu, and threw her into great agitation. She flew to the king, and with tears and sobs told him " "how much afflicted she was at the thought that their child should be excluded from the throne for the sake of Mary, who was the offspring of a marriage solemnly pronounced illegal." Henry embraced her with all the tenderness possible, and, to assuage her tears, "promised not only to disinherit Mary, but even to kill her, rather than such a result should happen." Historians declare that Cranmer prevented the king from immolating his daughter; if so, this must have been the crisis. To the princess, the matter of her life or death was perhaps of little moment, for grief had reduced her to the most dolorous state of illness. Her mother was on her death-bed, desiring with a yearning heart, but with words of saintly meekness, to be permitted, if not to see her, merely to breathe the same air with her afflicted daughter. She promises, solemnly, that if Mary may be resident near her, she will not attempt to see her, if forbidden." She adds, that such measure was "impossible, since she `lacked provision therefor;" meaning, she had neither horse nor carriage to go out. Yet she begs the king may be always told, that the thing she most desires is the company of her daughter, " for a little comfort and mirth she would take with me, should undoubtedly be a half health unto her." Doleful would have been the mirth, and heart-rending the comfort, had such interview been permitted between the sick daughter and the dying mother; but it formed no item in the list of Henry's tender mercies. 1 State Papers, edited by Sir Frederick Madden. 2 Ellis's Letters. 1536.] Not permitted to see her dying mother. 497 The emperor Charles V. remonstrated sternly on the treatment of his aunt and young kinswoman, and the whole ingenuity of the privy council was exerted to hammer out words in reply. "Our daughter, the lady Mary, we do order and entertain as we think expedient. We think it not meet that any person should prescribe unto us how we should order our own daughter, we being her natural father." The rumour at the imperial court is indignantly denied "that it was the king's intention to marry Mary to some person of base blood." The death of Mary's tender and devoted mother opened the next year with a dismal aggravation of her bitter lot. The sad satisfaction of a last adieu between the dying queen and her only child was cruelly forbidden. Mary was informed of the tidings of her mother's expected dissolution, and with agonizing tears and plaints implored permission to receive her last blessing; but in vain, for Katharine of Arragon expired without seeing her daughter. Again the continent rang with reprobation of such proceedings. The English resident at Venice wrote to Thomas Starkey, a learned divine at Henry's court, February 5, 1536, "that queen Katharine's death had been divulged there, and was received with lamentations, for she was incredibly dear to all men for her good fame, which is in great glory among all exterior nations." He concludes, in Latin, "Great obloquy has her death occasioned; all dread lest the royal girl should briefly follow her mother. I assure you, men speaketh here tragice of these matters, which are not to be touched by letters." Happy would it have been for Mary, happy for her country, if her troublous pilgrimage had closed, even tragically, before she had been made the ostensible instrument of wrong and cruelty unutterable to conscientious Protestants! CHAPTER II. AT the very time when all Europe anticipated the destruction of the princess Mary, a change took place in the current of events. Her father's male heir by Anne Boleyn was still-born, and indications were soon perceptible that Anne herself had lost Henry's capricious favour; her fall and condemnation followed with rapidity. The wrongs inflicted on Mary proved to be the chief weight on the conscience of Anne Boleyn; for, the day before her tragical death, after placing lady Kingston in the royal seat as the representative of Mary, she fell on her knees before her, and implored her to go to Hunsdon, and in the same attitude to ask, in her name, pardon of the princess for all 1 Cardinal Pole's Letters. 2 K VOL. II. the wrongs she had heaped upon her while in possession of a step-dame's authority. Lady Kingston had been in the service of Katharine, and she was afterwards in that of the princess. Anne Boleyn evidently spoke to her as one of Mary's best friends. Although the unfortunate Anne Boleyn, in her passionate repentance took upon herself the blame of the ill-treatment her step-daughter had experienced, yet it is an evident truth that she was not the sole instrument in the persecution, since, two months after she had lost all power, the cruel system of restraint and deprivation continued to afflict Mary at Hunsdon. But this was artfully relaxed directly Anne Boleyn was put to death, in order that the princess might lay the whole blame of her sufferings on the unhappy queen. Meantime, some kind of friendly acquaintance had previously subsisted between the princess Mary and the new queen, Jane Seymour, but when this originated is one of the obscure passages in the lives of both, which no ray has as yet illuminated. Be that as it may, Mary was encouraged to commence the following correspondence, in the hopes that her new mother-in-law was favourably disposed to her reconciliation with her father. The event proved that, notwithstanding all fair seeming, there was no restoration to Henry's good graces but by her utter abandonment of her place in the succession a result which Mary had, even while Anne Boleyn held the ascendant, hitherto successfully avoided. The first letter of this series1 was addressed to Cromwell, at the very time when lady Kingston had arrived at Hunsdon to deliver the dying confession of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. Mary, according to her own words at the conclusion, took advantage of lady Kingston's presence to obtain writing materials, of which she had been long deprived. The letter is dated only one week after the execution of Anne Boleyn. LADY MARY TO CROMWELL. "MASTER SECRETARY, "I would have been a suitor to you before this time, to have been a means for me to the king's grace, my father, to have obtained his grace's blessing and favour, but I perceived that nobody durst speak for me as long as that woman lived which is now gone (whom I pray God of his mercy to forgive). Wherefore, now she is gone, I am bolder to write to you, as one which taketh you for one of my chief friends. And therefore I desire you for the love of God to be a suitor to me of the king's grace, to have his blessing and licence [leave] to write unto his grace, which shall be of great comfort to me, as God knoweth, who have you evermore in his holy keeping. Moreover, I must desire you to accept mine evil writing, for I have not done so much for this two years or more, 1 Hearne's Sylloge. 1536.] Congratulation on her father's marriage. 499 nor could have had the means to do it at this time, but my lady Kingston's being here.-At Hunsdon, 26th of May. "By your loving friend, "MARY." An intimation followed this epistle, that the king permitted his daughter to write to him; and she accordingly penned a letter, chiefly compounded of supplicating sentences. Mary soon after wrote a second, in which she ventured to congratulate him and Jane Seymour on their marriage: "In the lowest manner that I can, I beseech your grace to accept me your humble daughter, who doth not a little rejoice to hear the comfortable tidings (not only to me, but to all your grace's realm) concerning the marriage which is between your grace and the queen [Jane Seymour], now being your grace's wife and my mother-in-law. The hearing thereof caused nature to constrain me to be an humble suitor to your grace, to be so good and gracious lord and father to me as to give me leave to wait upon the queen, and to do her grace such service as shall please her to command me, which my heart shall be as ready and obedient to fulfil (next unto your grace) as the most humble servant that she hath Trusting to your grace's mercy to come into your presence, which ever. hath and ever shall be the greatest comfort that I can have within this world, having also a full hope in your grace's natural pity, which you have always used as much, or more, than any prince christened, that your grace will show the same upon me, your most humble and obedient daughter, which daily prayeth to God to have your grace in his holy keeping, with long life and as much honour as ever had king; and to send your grace shortly a prince, whereof no creature living shall more rejoice or heartilier pray for continually than I, as my duty bindeth me. -From Hunsdon, the 1st day of June (1536). "By your grace's most humble and obedient daughter and handmaid, 66 MARY." Another letter to Cromwell, dated the 30th of May, thanks him for having obtained leave of writing to her father, and praying him "to continue his good offices till it may please his grace to permit her approach to his presence, but this favour was not granted till after a compliance was extorted from the princess to sign the cruel articles which stigmatised her own birth and her mother's marriage with as many opprobrious terms as Henry and his satellites chose to dictate. LADY MARY TO KING HENRY VIII. "In as humble and lowly a manner as is possible for me, I beseech your most gracious highness of your daily blessing; and albeit I have |