and to be imprisoned during his pleasure. Sir Thomas More, by explaining what he knew, and submitting to the King, escaped the punishment of the time; though doubtless his communications with the Nun and others stood him ill after.

XXVIII.

CONSPIRACIES.

There is a something cheering in old Winter, something hearty in his cold. He grasps you by the hand, and pinches it till the blood tingles in your finger ends; he blows you about sometimes, or pelts you with snow; and though he freezes up the waters, your blood runs all the brisker, for you leap and dance the more for the cold, and speak in a brave voice, and brave voices answer you. Oh!. there is nothing like Winter for drawing man to man within the house, or out in the fields. Abroad, the earth looks sleeping in its white coverlet; it has borne fruits and flowers; it has pleased the eye and the palate of man; it has passed through its morning, its noon, its eve, and now it rests. Its night is winter, and it will sleep till spring comes, when the flowers shall peep out of the ground, and the earth awake to its duty once more. The flowers we know are gone to rest, and the old oaks and the beeches are bare, but not dead; they are taking their repose waiting patiently for the time when they shall bud and put forth leaves once more, for the many hundredth time-green old patriarchs as they shall be when the summer comes. The wind roars and bellows perhaps through the forest, but 'tis only a lullaby; you would not have the wind pipe and murmur to the sleep of these great fellows of the woods and glades; and if old Boreas rages about the house at times, why let him rage, so long as there be no storms within.

In doors the fire burns bright, and the flames spring up the chimney, and the great logs crackle and throw out myriads of sparks, and seldom other but the faces round the fire reflect the fire's warmth. Hail to thee, Winter: we forget the slippery tricks thou often playest our feet, remembering us of thy cheeriness and thy hearty shakes of the hand.

But a few days, scarce a score, after the death of Catha

rine, and the eyes of Anne Boleyn were more fully opened to the intrigues of Jane Seymour. The scene of the mask, in which Henry and Jane were the principal actors, she had not forgotten, nor, it may be presumed, forgiven. But Henry had from that period paid a greater attention to his Queen than before, and in so doing, much allayed the suspicions arising from the event in question. To Anne's requests for the dismissal of Jane, Henry turned a deaf ear; and the Queen dared not proceed so far with the fierce Monarch as to dismiss her attendant without permission. Thus time had run on, till the Queen was in expectation of becoming a second time a mother, when Anne one day discovered Jane sitting upon the knee of Henry; angry words and angry feelings ensued, and Anne, seized with sudden pains of labour, gave birth to a male child, which lived but to breathe and die. It was at this moment, that, if historians are to be credited, the tyrant Henry showed his true nature; bursting into the room where the suffering Queen lay, he poured a torrent of savage invectives upon her for the loss of his son, concluding-when Anne replied that his conduct with Jane was the cause of all-with the covert threat, 66 you shall have no more boys by me." If this be true, and its mention by the friends and enemies of Anne gives it credit, then, so early as the latest of January of the year was Anne's fate determined. It might not have been death at that time, but simply divorce; Henry's ardent wish to have a son, that the succession might not be troubled, is well known, therefore if he put not Anne aside, after his threat, that wish could never be gratified. Simply, then, the Queen had become distasteful to the King, but pretext he had not then found or formed, to rid him of his burden.

A sage went about, in days gone by, with a lantern, seeking for an honest man, and history tells he found none. But let a simpleton of the present time require an aid to a good action, and he turns to his friends? No. To his acquaintance? No. To strangers? No. What does he? why, being so simple as to think of good, he does the work himself, or it is never done. They say the days are altered, since the cynic philosopher lived; I cannot see how. For let any man want help to evil, and is he at a loss? ay! to choose. The number of friends, acquaintance, and strangers

perplex. Of a verity, the devil is ever at one's elbow. Guardian angels are culpably remiss in their attendance, and so the assiduity of the fiend triumphs.

I think the employment of Mephistopholes to resemble somewhat to that of a gentleman who fishes. It is not necessary in elucidating that the angler be a gentleman; the natural consequence is, a gentleman is not an anglerthe pursuit is too dirty and cruel. But Mephistopholes angles for man-by his carelessness of woman, it would appear she is not worth catching or is already caught, and to be considered as bait. Oh! master poets, master poets! The other fisherman, the thing of Dr. Johnson's definition—he will catch some fish or other, if he only wait long enough. Mephistopholes wants to catch Faust; the angler wishes to catch a particular fish, I dont know what, something from a few inches to a foot long. So, as Mephistopholes baited with youth, and pleasure, and plenty, and love, so the angler puts on a fresh worm or gentle, or impales a frog or a little fish, or does some brutality to dumb creation that the" gentle art," the wretched hypocrite, Isaac Walton, wrote of, advocates; and Mephistopholes hooks Faust, and the angler lands his fish.

There is no congruity betwixt the little episode of Diogenes' labours and the Walton business. I admit I am writing, à propos, of nothing; but I do indeed think that Goethe's Faust," Byron's "Manfred," Bayley's "Festus," and Alexander Smith's "Life Drama," to be each and every of them, à propos, of the same thing.

66

And now was the pretext found. Anne's enemies, who had long determined upon the course, had not succeeded in the means; but in the Lady Rochford they met one by whose instrumentality the King's ear was arrived at, and the destruction of Anne ensured. The King willingly listened to the accusation, although 'tis incredible he believed the same; his violent nature, his savage passions had never waited the interval of the secret and the public accusations. Had he believed? Henry was proud, and had not submitted to the indignity of dishonour in silence, even from the first week in April, when the Parliament was dissolved according to Miss Strickland, " as if for the purpose of depriving her (the Queen) of any chance of interference from that body in her behalf." From the same authority we gather, that "a

I

secret committee was appointed of the privy council, to inquire into the charges against her. Among the commissioners were her uncle and enemy, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Suffolk, a creature of the King's, the Lord Chancellor, her father, yet knew she nothing of her danger, several earls, and some of the judges. It has been supposed her father did not attend knew he what he was summoned for? William Brereton was summoned before this committee, on Thursday, the 28th of April, and after his examination, committed to the Tower."

Is it not singular that, during these machinations, no word, no whisper ever seems to have reached the ear of the Queen? we may take it for granted, that until the day on which Rochford and Norris were arrested, Anne had no knowledge of the danger in which she was placed. Like a storm cloud, it came upon her, when the sky looked serene, and she saw not the black spot gathering in the distance; then of a sudden the winds raged, and the rain fell, and the lightnings parted, and there was no roof to shelter her from the bitterness of the storm.

But passing these events, which filled the winter months, and gave occupation to the conspirators through the spring, even to the date last specified, we arrive at the first day of May, an "evil May day" to Anne, when a jousting match was to be held at Greenwich.

Tournaments and jousts, pageants and masks, bearbating and cockfighting-these were the usual amusements of the English gentleman and noble in the reign of the eighth Henry. The Monarch's love of splendour met its object in masks, tournaments, and pageants. Strong, and skilled in the use of arms, the King shone in the lists, especially when knights showed consideration to the royal opponent, very few did not, his success gratified his vanity. In masks and pageants, Henry's love of dress was satisfied; and in these amusements was first wasted the immense revenue left by his fatherwitness "the Field of the Cloth of Gold," and his subsequent interviews with Francis of France; and secondly, the spoil of the monasteries, a greater sum, but spent as the former, one scarce knows how. A word respecting the difference of tournaments and jousts-the latter being simply a combat of two, in which the knight ran his course, or as the phrase went, "broke a lance" with an adversary. In

the tournament, numbers contended; two parties formed, and ten, twenty, or more gallants fought of a side, and at a time. The tournament was held the more honourable, being attended with more danger, but it was of rarer occurrence, and jousting the general order of the day.

XXIX.

THE JOUSTS AT GREENWICH.

The queer old town of Greenwich was alive and merry; men were running to and fro, and women gossiping, and children as usual in the way, and out of it. There were to be rare doings at the jousts, and the maidens had decked themselves at sunrise, in eager anticipation of the moment, which would not come sooner for all their looking at the sun, and consulting of the town clock. The jousts were held where is now the High Street, and a flight of balconies had been erected on the east side for the accommodation of the royal party and the gentry, while the west was left open to the general spectators. Barriers, running the length of the street, denoted the space where the knights were to do their devoirs, and at each end were tents pitched for them, and shelter for their steeds; armourers' forges were set up, to rivet the gallants' harness, or patch and piece, where an awkward blow had been; all this space was railed off from the crowd, and was now scantily filled with 'squires and others, in the service of the knights' challengers. The length of the lists was finely gravelled, that the horses' hoofs might take firm hold, and the course should not miscarry from an untimely fall, or a swerve. At the south

end of the lists was a small flag, or pennon, of white, the opposite end being vacant, the stranger knights not supposed to be arrived; Lord Rochford and his knights being challengers against all comers. The balcony reserved for the Queen and her suite, was hung with purple and cloth of gold; a rich cloth of scarlet, with the cyphers H. and A., surrounded by roses, and sumounted with the crown, hung over the front of the balcony. The Queen's compartment, or box, was divisioned off by gilt poles and silken ropes, the seats covered with piled velvet, and the whole furnished in the most voluptuous style of the period; flowers were not wanting to grace the royal position. The two sides of this