Forget not yet when first began Forget not yet. Forget not yet the great assays, [trials,] Forget not yet. Forget not, oh! forget not this, Forget not yet. Forget not now thine own approved, The state of horticulture in England at this period may be traced by some very interesting items in the privy-purse expenses of Henry VIII. in the summer of 1532, in which are recorded rewards paid to sundry poor women, on various days, for bringing the king presents of apples, pears, barberries, peaches, artichokes, filberts, and other fruits. His gardeners from Beaulieu, Greenwich, and Hampton bring him grapes, oranges, cucumbers, melons, cherries, strawberries, pomegra nates, citrons, plums, lettuces, and, in short, almost every kind of luxury that could be supplied for the royal table in modern times. The first specimens of porcelain, or china, on record ever introduced into England, are mentioned by Henry Huttoft, surveyor of the customs at Southampton, in a letter to Cromwell about this period, announcing the arrival of a present of novelties for king Henry VIII., consisting of the following articles :-"Two musk cats, three little 'munkkeys,' a marmozet; a shirt, or upper vesture, of fine cambric, wrought with white silk in every part, which is very fair for a suchlike thing; a chest of nuts of India, containing xl. which be greater than a man's fist, [cocoa-nuts, of course]; and three potts of erthe payntid, called Porseland. Howbeit, the merchant saith, before they shall be presented, there shall be to every one of these things certain preparations, such as chains of gold and silver, with colours and other things according, for the furniture of the same." These dainty chains, we think, 1 1 Original Letters, edited by sir H. Ellis; third Series. must have been intended for the furniture of the cats, monkeys, and marmoset. In contradistinction to queen Katharine, who was fond of those animals, Anne Boleyn expressed the greatest abhorrence of monkeys. On On the 4th of October was paid, by Henry's orders, 561. for certain silks provided for apparel for Anne, who is styled my lady marques of Pembroke, and the same day 387. 10s. 10d. for furring the same. Probably she had her share, also, in the jewels, mercery, and millinery for which the royal privypurse accounts are charged, to the amount of more than 12,0007., at the same time. The following day, the only daughter of the sovereign receives the noble gift of 101.2 the 13th of October, Anne, attended by the marchioness of Derby and a chosen retinue of ladies, arrived at Dover in the royal train; and early on the following morning they all embarked for Calais, where they arrived at ten in the forenoon. On the 14th, the grand-master of France sent a present of grapes and pears to the fair Boleyn. The same day Henry gave her further marks of his favour, by granting her a settlement of lands in Wales, Essex, Herts, and Somersetshire. On the 21st, they progressed with great pomp to Boulogne, to meet the French king. Henry and Francis approached each other bare-headed, and embraced. Francis was not accompanied either by his queen, his sister, or indeed by any ladies,— a mortifying circumstance to Anne Boleyn, since nothing could afford a more decided proof of the questionable light in which she was regarded at this time by her old friends at the court of France. Hall gives an elaborate account of the munificence of Henry's entertainment at Boulogne, where Francis, in the capacity of host, furnished the cheer and paid all costs.3 Though Anne sojourned four days with Henry at Boulogne, the absence of the ladies of the French king's family prevented her from appearing at the festivities that were provided for her royal lover. On the 25th, she returned with the two kings to Calais, where, for the honour of his realm, our English Harry had caused preparations' to be made for 1 Privy-purse Expenses of Henry VIII. 3 MS. Harl., No. 303, p. 4. 2 Ibid. Herbert. Lingard. Tytler. Turner. Hall. the reception of the French sovereign and his court which can only be paralleled in the gorgeous details of Oriental romance; where, however, silver, and gold, and pearls are supplied by the writer cost-free, while Henry must have drained his exchequer to furnish the banqueting-chamber at Calais, which is thus described by Hall:-"It was hung with tissue raised with silver, and framed with cloth of silver raised with gold. The seams of the same were covered with broad wreaths of goldsmiths' work, full of stones and pearls. In this chamber was a cupboard of seven stages high, all plate of gold, and no gilt plate. Besides that, there hung ten branches of silver-gilt, and ten branches all white silver, every branch hanging by a long chain of the same sort, bearing two lights of wax. The French king was served three courses, dressed after the French fashion; and the king of England had like courses, after the English fashion. The first course of every sixty, the third eighty, kind was forty dishes, the second which were costly and pleasant. After supper on the Sunday evening, 28th of October, came in the marchioness of Pembroke, with seven ladies, in masquing apparel of strange fashion, made of cloth of gold slashed with crimson tinsel satin, puffed with cloth of silver, and knit with laces of gold.1 These ladies were led into the state chamber just described by four damsels dressed in crimson satin, with tabards of pine cypress. Then the lady marchioness took the French king, the countess of Derby the king of Navarre, and every lady took a lord. In dancing, king Henry removed the ladies' visors, so that their beauties were shown." The French king then discovered that he had danced with an old acquaintance, the lovely English maid of honour of his first queen, for whose departure he had chidden the English ambassador ten years before. He conversed with her some little time apart, and the next morning sent her as a present a jewel valued at 15,000 crowns.3 On the 30th of this festive month, "the two sovereigns mounted their horses, and Henry having conducted his royal guest to the verge of his dominions, they dismounted on French ground; and there they joined hands with loving behaviour and hearty words, embraced each other, 1 Hall, v. 794. Le Grand. Lingard. 2 Ibid. and so parted." The weather was so tempestuous, that Anne and her royal lover were detained a fortnight at Calais after the departure of Francis I. On the 14th of November they safely crossed the Channel, and landed at Dover. The favourite diversion of Anne Boleyn and the king seems to have been cards and dice. Henry's losses at games of chance were enormous; but Anne, with the single exception of the sum she lost to the serjeant of the celiar at bowls, appears to be a fortunate gamester. On the 20th of November we observe the following entry in Henry's privy-purse expenses: "Delivered to the king's grace at Stone 91. 6s. 8d., which his grace lost at pope Julius's game to my lady marques [Anne Boleyn], Mr. Bryan, and maister Weston." On the 25th, Henry loses twenty crowns to the same party at the same game; and the following day, 187. 13s. 4d. On the 28th, Anne again wins, 117. 13s. 4d., in a single-handed game of cards with her royal lover. The next day Henry is the loser of 41. at pope Julius's game; and also, on the 31st, sixteen crowns at the same to Anne and young Weston. Such entries are little to the credit of any of the persons concerned. Pope Julius's game, which was at this time so greatly in vogue in the court of Henry VIII., was probably the origin of the vulgar round-game called in modern times 'PopeJoan.' The various points in that game, such as matrimony, intrigue, pope, and the stops, appear to have borne significant allusion to the relative situations in the royal drama of the divorce, and the interference of the pope and his agents in preventing the king's marriage with his beautiful favourite, Anne Boleyn. It is well known that the Observant-friars of Greenwich rendered themselves highly obnoxious to Henry, by their determined opposition to his divorce from their royal patroness, queen Katharine; but even in this house Anne Boleyn had a 1 Hall. * Young Weston, one of the gamblers at these orgies, was among the unfortunate victims of Henry's jealousy of Anne Boleyn. 3 In the Privy-purse Expenses of Henry VIII. it is called pope July's game, in evident mockery of Julius II., the copy of whose breve of dispensation had been lately produced by Katharine of Arragon as an important document in favour of the legality of her marriage with Henry VIII. partisan. Her charity to the mother of one of the laybrothers, Richard Lyst, led him warmly to espouse her cause, "for which," he assures "her grace," as he styles her in a letter addressed to her soon after she was created marchioness of Pembroke, "he suffered oftentimes rebukes and much trouble." "Also, madam," continues he, "oftentimes in derision I have been called your chaplain; howbeit, as yet I never took no orders to be priest, but with the grace of Jesu I do intend in time, and I trust within this ij year and less, to say an hundred masses for your prosperous state, both spiritual and corporeal; for now I am at liberty to be a priest, whereas before I was bound to the contrary, by the reason that I was made sure to a young woman in the way of marriage before I came to religion, but now she is departed to the mercy of God." Can any one suppose that the writer of this letter, who is no babe in point of worldly wisdom, would have mentioned his hope of saying one hundred masses as an acceptable service to a person who did not profess a belief in their efficacy? But, however Anne Boleyn might, for her own personal interests, ally herself politically with the rising party who supported the Reformation, she continued, to the end of her life, to conform to the ceremonials and ritual authorized by king Henry's church, which retained every dogma, every observance, every superstition believed and practised by Romancatholics, save the supremacy of the pope. Anne's future mass-sayer, Richard Lyst, goes on to extol her beneficence to his poor mother, adding significant hints how acceptable additional donations would be, and intimating the channel through which she could transmit them. 1 Original Letters, edited by sir Henry Ellis; vol. ii. p. 248, third Series. |