CHAP. VI.

Coronation of Queen Anne. - Death of Mary of France. Birth of Queen Elizabeth. Treatise published by Henry. -Proceedings of Convocation-Resistance of Bishop Fisher. Parliament establishes the King's supremacy. -Act and oath of succession. Bishops of Salisbury and Worcester deprived of their benefices. The oath of succession exacted. Resistance of Sir Thomas More and of Fisher.- Bishop of Rochester sent to the Tower. Causes of the King's displeasure towards Sir Thomas More. Act of Parliament referring the regulation of all religious matters to the King. - Death of Firth of Tindall. Imprisonment of Sir Thomas More: his condemnation. Fisher's hard fate. State of parties at court with respect to the Lutherans.

Katharine. Jane Seymour.- Tilting

:

Death of Queen

match at Green

wich.-Apprehension of Anne Bullen's supposed paramours: her committal to the Tower. · Cranmer's letter to the King.- Trial of Smeton and the others: Anne Bullen addresses a letter to the King: she is tried with Lord Rochford: her sentence.-Lord Rochford executed.

Marriage between the King and Anne Bullen dissolved: her conduct after her trial: her execution. Sir Thomas Wyatt: his supposed attachment to Anne Bullen.

THE intricate and perplexing business in which Henry was engaged had not produced, in the disposition of the gay monarch, such an alteration as to destroy his love

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for those festivities and amusements by which the early part of his reign had been enlivened. So great, indeed, was the importance which Henry attached to the pomp and pageantry of his court, that, when we peruse the chronicles of his reign, it seems as if parade and amusement had been the real business of his life; and we are apt to forget, in the hero of almost childish revels, the promoter of the Reformation, the powerful ruler who acted a most important part in the affairs of Europe, and the tyrant who marred the happiness of his people, while he conferred upon them the greatest of benefits.

The coronation of Queen Anne was now determined on; and, by the splendour of its arrangements, the king no doubt intended at once to evince his contempt of the inveterate objections on the part of Clement to the marriage, and to display his fondness for a bride to whom he had remained faithful during six long years of courtship.

Early in May, the king caused proclamations to be issued, commanding all those persons who possessed the right of hereditary services to put in their claims before the Duke of Suffolk, high steward of England for the time, the lord chancellor and other commissioners. The Duke of Norfolk claimed to bear the staff of gold, and

to exercise his office as earl marshal.

This title

had been conferred on his father, the Duke, and his heirs, by Henry the Eighth. It had been, during some generations, held by the house of Howard, although it was first conferred by Richard the Second on Mowbray Earl of Nottingham, one of whose female descendants married into the Howard family. The other usual offices were filled according to hereditary right; but many claims were rejected, as not allowable at the coronation of a queen.

A few days previous to the ceremony, the

queen was brought with great state May 19, from Greenwich to the Tower by water; the mayor and aldermen of

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London having the charge of conveying her thither in their barges. The boat in which the queen was seated, was preceded by a wafter, full of ordnance, in which was a dragon casting wildfire around him; and about the dragon stood wild men casting fireworks: then followed the barges of the mayor and of the different companies, the awnings of which were of cloth of gold, in some instances hung with innumerable little bells, which danced in the wind. On one side of the mayor's barge was another wafter, on which was a mount, on the summit whereof stood a white falcon, crowned, standing upon a pedestal of gold, encircled with white and

red roses; and around the mount, were virgins, singing and playing sweetly. This was the device of Anne, who soon appeared in her own barge, attended by her father, by the Marquis of Dorset, the Earl of Arundel, and many other noblemen; and followed by most of the bishops, each in his barge. But the spectacle which most delighted the gay young queen, was the batchelors' barge, which sailed alongside of her own, containing trumpets and other melodious instruments, and richly decorated flags and escutcheons. This splendid band passed in this array to the postern of the Tower, leading down to the Thames, where the king received the queen with "loving countenance and kyssed her;" and after she had thanked the mayor and citizens "with many goodly words" for their courtesy, led her into the Tower; little foreseeing, flattered and beloved as she then was, that she should one day enter that edifice as a criminal, the object of disgust and of contempt to her capricious consort.

On the ensuing day, the king created a number of noblemen and of commoners knights of the Bath. The knights elect served the king

* Knights bachelors, or simple knights, or knights of the spur; so called in distinction to the knights banneret, knights of the garter, or of the bath. Selden's Titles of Honour, p. 770. chap. v.

at dinner; and, after that ceremony, in compliance with an old custom, they were taken to their chambers, and bathed and shriven. The next morning the queen was carried through the city in a litter, open at the top, in order that the innumerable crowds assembled might see the fair object of their sovereign's affections. The carriage was drawn by two white palfreys, covered with cloth of gold, and led by footmen; while over the head of the queen was borne a canopy, adorned with "silver bells," and supported alternately by sixteen knights. The beautiful Anne was attired in a circote of white tissue, with a mantle of the same furred with ermine; her hair hung down in tresses; and her head was bound with a rich circlet set with precious stones. The litter was followed by the queen's chamberlain; and by her master of the horse, leading a spare horse with a side-saddle: then came chariots, "all redde," as Hall describes them, "with ladies in crimsone velvet, and with ladies in white velvet," among whom was the old Duchess of Norfolk, the grandmother of the queen, and the old Marchioness of Dorset. These venerable and exalted personages, in whose veins flowed so much illustrious blood, were succeeded

*For an account of similar ceremonies, see Mills's Hist. of Chivalry.