inflicted, and the violent death which she must have known would follow, to make place for her on the throne, thought only of gratifying her own pride and ambition.

Of all the acts of cruelty of Henry-and they were neither "few nor far between"-there is no one more revolting than these blood-stained nuptials, the unseemly haste of which have led many impartial readers to disbelieve the crimes of which Anne Boleyn was accused, and to attribute the charges brought against her to Henry's desire to possess her unfeeling rival.'

Like Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour is said to have resided some years in the French court, and to have filled a similar position in the regal retinue of Princess Mary of England, queen to Louis the Twelfth. A portrait of her, in the royal collection at Versailles, simply labelled as maid of honour to that queen, appears to be the proof adduced of her residence in France; and as this portrait is a pendant to one of Anne Boleyn, both painted by Holbein, and in similar habiliments, the evidence, if not quite conclusive, may be received as probable.

Jane Seymour descended from an ambitious, as well as a noble family, at least, on the maternal side, claimed alliance even with kingly blood. Whether Henry really believed in the truth of this claim, disputed by able genealogists, or that he wished to give distinction to the object of his choice, certain it is that he applied for and obtained a dispensation, on the ground of kindred, for his marriage with his third queen. It was not only on this occasion that Henry sought to make it appear that the object of his affection had claim to

1 “Henri avoit acquis un tel empire sur ses sujets, que la justice et les loix ne se mesuroient plus qu'à sa volonté. Il prenoit même si peu de soin de ménager le public et sa propre réputation, qu'il épousa Jeanne Seymour dès le lendemain de la mort d'Anne de Bollen; en quoi il marqua une passion qui ne servit peu à justifier la défuncte reine."—Rapin, livre xv. page 384.

royal blood, for when he ennobled Anne Boleyn by creating her Marchioness of Pembroke,' he took care that the patent should contain an allusion to this point, by its stating that a sovereign should surround his throne with many peers, the worthiest of both sexes, especially those who are of royal blood. There is no doubt this creation was but a preface to the regal dignity to which he was bent on elevating her, and the terms of the patent a sort of excuse to his subjects for the inequality of the future queen he meant to give them; for, blinded as he was by his passion, he could not but be sensible that his wedding a subject must give dissatisfaction. How must the heart of the unfortunate Anne Boleyn have trembled, and her conscience smote her, when she discovered that one of her own maids of honour was enacting towards her the treacherous part that she had played towards her royal mistress Catherine! And yet, although both Anne and Jane were alike culpable in listening to the guilty vows of a married man—the husband, too, of their good queen-Anne Boleyn was less blameable than Jane, for Anne sought not the love of Henry-nay, more, retired from the court to avoid it, and had it not been for the efforts and interference of Cardinal Wolsey, urged on by Henry, would have become the wife of Percy, the object of her affection. Long did she cherish this passion, and resist all the vows with which Henry pursued her; while Jane Seymour secretly laid herself out to attract the king and win him from Queen Anne, conscious, as she must have been, of the destruction it must bring down on her unhappy mistress. It is said, that such faith did Anne place in the love of the king, that no suspicion of his growing tenderness for another dawned on her mind until the fearful truth broke on it by detecting her rival in so familiar a

'Strickland's Queens of England, vol. iv. page 221.

position with Henry,' and so unresistingly receiving his caresses, that no doubt could be left that this habit of dalliance had been of some date. Other authors assert that the discovery was made by Anne's seeing a valuable ornament worn by Jane, which, wishing to examine more closely, Jane betrayed so much embarrassment, that the queen, growing suspicious, snatched it, and found it contained the portrait of the king: but we incline to the first statement. The queen was then about to become a mother; and such was the shock her frame sustained by the discovery of the infidelity of her husband, that a premature labour came on, during the pangs of which her life was in great danger, and, instead of presenting an heir to his crown, so longed for by Henry, she gave birth to a still-born son, whose life was destroyed by the mental anguish of his mother. This last event-the consequence of his own conduct—instead of exciting any pity in the breast of the selfish Henry, broke the tie that bound him to his slighted wife. Had she given him a living heir to his throne, she might have lived on a neglected wife, spared for the sake of their son; but now he saw in her but the obstacle to the gratification of his passion for a newer flame, and while not yet two years his wife, he felt impatient to drive her from the throne to which he had raised her. There is something peculiarly dreadful in the fact, that while this lately-cherished object of his passionate love was enduring all the misery of a fallen favourite and a degraded wife, deserted by those who had flattered and hourly bent the knee before her-nay, more, denied the solace of solitude, and continually harassed by the presence of her triumphant enemies 2-Henry was impatiently waiting the condemnation

1 Strickland's Queens of England, vol. iv. page 252.

2 "On fit coucher dans sa chambre Madame Bollen, femme de son oncle, avec Jaquelle elle étoit extrêmement brouillée."-Rapin, page 378.

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.