CHAPTER VIII.

Court Life.

1525-26.

I. ROCHFORD had his apartments in the palace, where his duties lay, and where his children and connexions were about him in their several posts. George was a gentleman-in-waiting, and George's wife a lady in attendance on the Queen. Carey, his son-in-law, was in the bed-chamber. Mary, his

daughter, had a youngster at her knee; that Henry Carey, who was afterwards Baron Hunsdon, Captain of the Guard, and Lord Chamberlain to his cousin, Queen Elizabeth. Frank Bryan, his sister Margaret's son, a bold and merry lad, was master of the henchmen and first cup-bearer. Save his daughter Anne, the victim of his Irish feuds, all Rochford's children were settled in the world.

2. Carey, a young and supple fellow, stood so high in favour that he was not unlikely to attain that part in Henry's daily life which Marney had enjoyed so long. Marney had been the King's man: his comrade in the saddle, at the butts, and in the hunting-field; the nearest to his ear and closest to his heart. When Marney died, Carey seemed the next of choice. Wolsey's sagacity was at fault in Carey, and the Cardinal failed to win him as a friend. When tossing Buckingham's lands to right

and left, Wolsey overlooked him in the press, though grooms and pages not so near the closet were secured. Three years elapsed before he tasted of the spoil; but when the rain began to fall, it came in floods. About the time of Marney's death, Carey received from his indulgent prince the manors of Stansford Rivers, the two Tracies, Sutton and High Ongar. Henry made him keeper of the great house and park at Wanstead. Yet his hand never tired of giving. Marney's manors were bestowed on Carey; Brickhill, Erringham, and Burton, the borough of Buckingham, and the seignorial rights attached to it, including a power of holding fairs and markets. Carey was now provided with an income to support a peerage; and except his comrade, Henry Norreys, no man in the chamber. seemed more likely to obtain that mark of royal grace.

3. This Norreys was a man of men: liked by the King his master, and by every one who had to do with him. A romance in his birth and fortune fixed men's eyes on him, as on a youth in whom two streams of history had met. His father, Sir William Norreys of Foljambe, was the son of Sir Edward Norreys and Frideswide Lovel, one of the co-heiresses of that Viscount Lovel who had lost at Stoke a peerage held by his fathers from the days of Richard the First. Sir William had been a staunch opponent of the cause in which his fatherin-law perished. Those unhappy days of strife were gone. The swords of York and Lancaster were crossed in peace above his fireplace, and in little

Harry the White Rose blossomed with the Red. Sir William had been dear to Richmond, and Harry was in turn a favourite with his son. Norreys had lived in France, and picked up many of the graces and accomplishments for which that country was renowned. In Paris he had known Anne Boleyn, and had left that capital with her father, in the splendid embassy sent by François to propose a match between the Dauphin and Princess Mary. On his coming over, Henry had named him Groom of the Stole, and from that moment Harry Norreys had been seldom absent from his master's side.

4. "Mr. Norreys," ran the Court regulations, "is to be placed in the room of Sir William Compton, and give attendance, not only as Groom of the Stole, but in the bed-chamber; no other of the six gentlemen to enter the bed-chamber unless called by the King." Norreys was a younger Compton, just as Carey was a younger Marney. Henry not only made him Keeper of Foljambe Park, an office held by his father, but granted him a dozen manors, parks, and lordships, in as many shires. He had his pensions and his perquisites of many kinds, and Henry deigned to visit him at his countryseat of Yattendon, in Berks. Yet Norreys was no carpet courtier, but a man of metal, worthy of the race of heroes who in after times were to renew the glory of his ancient name.

5. Two of the other six gentlemen of the bedchamber were Carey and Russell. Sir John Russell was Wyat's early friend. Wyat and his wife's brother, Sir George Brooke, were squires of the

King's body. William Brereton was a groom, and Francis Weston a gentleman of the privy chamber. Most of these men were married, and their wives had places in the palace; one in the wardrobe, another in the closet, a third in the ante-room. A merry set they made. These gentlemen were enjoined to live on friendly terms, and keep the secrets of their office; not to ask in the King's absence whither he was gone, and when he would return; not to gossip about his pastimes, and to let the King know if any one used unseemly language. Henry, with a sense of the ridiculous as keen as Wyat, drew a pen through these pedantic rules. High play was not allowed in the privy chamber, though the King had no objection to either cards or chess, if played at proper seasons and for moderate stakes. No one was to seek his own advancement, nor to tease his lord with people's suits. Such service was no burthen to the lightest head, and what with music, chess, and song, their in-door life sped merrily enough.

6. Men like Wyat, Carey, and Norreys, like to shine in ladies' eyes-not only as proficients with the lyre and tables, but the sword and lance. A tournament was proposed for Christmas-tide, in which Carey and Norreys were to fight on opposite sides. Four ladies of the court (no doubt Anne Boleyn foremost) were to give a castle, called the Castle of Loyalty, into the charge of certain knights, among the rest to Carey, Brooke, and Wyat. Carpenters and engineers prepared that castle of loyalty in the tilting grounds at Greenwich; and the King him

self, attended by the Duke of Suffolk, the Marquis of Exeter, Lord Montagu, Frank Bryan, and Harry Norreys, rode into the lists. Fierce was the fight before that castle gate. The battle opened on the morrow after the feast of St. John the Evangelist, and only ended on the festival of St. John of Matha. "Never was battle of pleasure better fought than this was," writes the chronicler of jousts; and nothing was so busy in men's brains, until the news arrived that François was a prisoner, and that Charles was master of the world.