tact which taught her how to make the most of these advantages, enabled her to retain her empire over the fickle heart of Henry for a longer period than the fairest and most brilliant of her predecessors. But these charms were not the most powerful talismans with which the queen won her influence. It was her domestic virtues, her patience, her endearing manners, that rendered her indispensable to the irritable and diseased voluptuary, who was now paying the severe penalty of bodily tortures and mental disquiet for the excesses of his former life. Henry had grown so corpulent and unwieldy in person, that he was incapable of taking the slightest exercise, much less of recreating himself with the invigorating field sports and boisterous pastimes in which he had formerly delighted. The days had come unexpectedly upon him in which he had no pleasure. His body was so swollen and enfeebled by dropsy, that he could not be moved to an upper chamber without the aid of machinery. Hitherto the excitement of playing the leading part in the public drama of royal pomp and pageantry, had been, with sensual indulgences, the principal objects of his life. Deprived of these, and with the records of an evil conscience to dwell upon in the weary hours of pain, his irascibility and impatience would have goaded him to frenzy, but for the soothing gentleness and tender attentions of his amiable consort. Katharine was the most skilful and patient of nurses, and shrunk not from any office, however humble, whereby she could afford mitigation to the sufferings of her royal husband. It is recorded of her, that she would remain for hours on her knees beside him, applying fomentations and other pallatives to his ulcerated leg, which he would not permit any one to dress but her. She had already served an apprenticeship to the infirmities of sickness, in her attendance on the deathbeds of her two previous hus

bands, and had doubtless acquired the art of adapting herself to the humours of male invalids. A royally-born lady might have been of little comfort to Henry in the days of his infirmity, but Katharine Parr had been educated in the school of domestic life, and was perfect in the practice of its virtues and its duties. She sought to charm the ennui which oppressed the once magnificent and active sovereign, in the unwelcome quiet of his sick chamber, by inducing him to unite with her in directing the studies and watching the hopeful promise of his beloved heir, prince Edward. The following letter, addressed to Katharine by her royal step-son, bears witness to the maternal kindness of the queen, and the affection of the precocious student :

PRINCE EDWARD TO KATHARINE PARR.

"Most honourable and entirely beloved mother,

"I have me most humbly recommended to your grace with like thanks, both for that your grace did accept so gently my simple and rude letters, and also that it pleased your grace so gently to vouchsafe to direct unto me your loving and tender letters, which do give me much comfort and encouragement to go forward in such things, wherein your grace beareth me on hand that I am already entered. I pray God I may be able to satisfy the good expectation of the king's majesty, my father, and of your grace, whom God have ever in his most blessed keeping. "Your loving son,

"E. PRINCE."

There is extant a Latin and a French letter addressed to the queen, in the same filial style.

The arrival of the plenipotentiaries to negotiate a peace between England and France, in the commencement of the year 1546, caused the last gleam of royal festivity and splendour that was ever to enliven the once magnificent court of Henry VIII. Claude d'Annebaut, the admiral who had a few months previously attempted a hostile descent on the Isle of Wight, and attacked the English fleet, was the ambassador extraordinary on this

occasion. He was received with great pomp at Greenwich, where he landed, and on Hounslow-heath he was met by a numerous cavalcade of nobles, knights, and gentlemen, in king Henry's service, headed by the young heir of England, prince Edward, who, though only in his ninth year, was mounted on a charger, and performed his part in the pageant by welcoming the admiral and his suite in the most graceful and engaging manner. Annebaut embraced and kissed the princely boy, and all the French nobles were loud in their commendations of the beauty and gallant bearing of this child of early promise. Prince Edward then conducted the embassy to Hampton Court, where for ten days they were feasted and entertained with great magnificence by the king and queen. Henry, on this occasion, presented Katharine Parr with many jewels of great value, that she might appear with suitable éclat as his consort before the plenipotentiaries of France. He also provided new and costly hangings and furniture for her apartments, as well as plate, which she naturally regarded as her own property; but a long and vexatious litigation took place, with regard to these gifts, after the death of the king, as will be shewn in its proper place.

The increasing influence of Katharine with king Henry, and the ascendancy she was acquiring over the opening mind of the future sovereign, were watched with jealous alarm by the party most inimical to the doctrines of the Reformation. Wriothesley, the lord chancellor, who had been the base suggester to Henry VIII. of a breach of faith to Anne of Cleves, and afterwards pursued that monarch's fifth unhappy queen with the zest of a bloodhound,' till her young head was laid upon the block, waited but for a suitable opportunity for effecting the fall of Katharine Parr.

See the Memoirs of Anne of Cleves and Katharine Howard.

Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, was his confederate in this intention; but so blameless was the conduct, so irreproachable the manners of the queen, that, as in the case of Daniel, it was impossible for her deadliest foes to find an occasion against her, except in the matter of her religious opinions. In these she was opposed to Henry's arbitrary notions, who was endeavouring to erect the dogma of his own infallibility on the ruins of papacy. Every dissent from his decisions in points of faith had been visited with the most terrible penalties. In his last speech to parliament, he had bitterly complained of the divisions in religion which distracted his realm, for which he "partly blamed the priests, some of whom," he sarcastically observed, "were so stiff in their old mumpsimus, and others so busy with their new sumpsimus, that, instead of preaching the word of God, they were employed in railing at each other;' and partly the fault of the laity, whose delight it was to censure the proceedings of their bishops, priests, and preachers. If you know," continued the royal polemic, "that any preach perverse doctrine, come and declare it to some of our council, or to us, to whom is committed by God authority to reform and order such causes and behaviours; and be not judges yourselves of your own fantastical opinions and vain expositions. And although you be permitted to read Holy Scriptures, and to have the Word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand it is licensed you so to do only to inform your conscience, your children, and families, and not to dispute, and to make scripture a railing and taunting stock against priests and preachers. I am very sorry to know and hear how irreverently that precious jewel, the Word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every

! Hall.

alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same."

This speech was a prelude to the rigorous enforcement of the six articles. The most interesting victim of the fiery persecution that ensued in the spring and summer of 1546, was the young, beautiful, and learned Anne Askew. She was a lady of honourable birth and ancient lineage, and having become a convert to the new learning, was for that cause violently driven from her home by her husband, Mr. Kyme of Lincolnshire; she then resumed her maiden name, and devoted herself to the promulgation of the religious opinions she had embraced. It was soon known that the queen's sister, lady Herbert, the duchess of Suffolk, and other great ladies of the court, countenanced the fair gospellernay, more, that the queen herself had received books from her in the presence of lady Herbert, lady Tyrwhit, and the youthful lady Jane Gray, which might bring her majesty under the penalty of the statute against reading heretical works. The religious opinions of a young and beautiful woman might, perhaps, have been overlooked by men, with whom religion was a matter of party, not conscience; but the supposed connexion of Anne Askew with the queen, caused her to be singled out for the purpose of terrifying or torturing her into confessions that might furnish a charge of heresy or treason against her royal mistress. The unexpected firmness of the Christian heroine baffled this design; she endured the utmost inflictions of Wriothesley's vindictive fury without permitting a syllable to pass her lips that might be rendered subservient to this purpose.

2

Anne Askew had been supported in prison by money which had been conveyed to her, from time to time, by persons supposed to be in the service of the ladies of 1 Journals of Parliament.

2 Fox.