CONTENTS FOURTH VOLUME. ANNE BOLEYN, Second Queen of Henry VIII. JANE SEYMOUR, Third Queen of Henry VIII... ANNE OF CLEVES, Fourth Queen of Henry VIII... ADVERTISEMENT THE NEW EDITION. THE rapidity with which the large impression published of this Volume of the Lives of the Queens of England has been disposed of, by rendering an immediate reprint necessary, has afforded an opportunity of effecting a careful revision of this portion of the work. Very considerable additions have been made of new matter connected with the personal history of Henry VIII. and his Queens, which has been elicited since the publication of the First Edition. Much care has also been bestowed in authenticating those curious facts in the lives of Katharine of Arragon and Anne Boleyn, which have been preserved in the writings of foreign chroniclers, whose works are at present little known to English readers, and have certainly never been rendered familiar by translation. The grateful feelings excited by the favour with which these royal female biographies have been received, cannot be better acknowledged than by increasing efforts to render them still more deserving of popularity. October 5, 1843. 1* (5) PREFACE. THE Volume which we have now the honour of introducing, embraces a new and important era in the annals of this country. It opens with the eventful history of the heiress of the Plantagenet kings, Elizabeth of York. This princess, as the consort of Henry VII., commences the modern series of the queens of England, and forms the connecting link between the regal lines of Plantagenet and Tudor. Elizabeth of York occupies a different position from any other queen-consort of England. According to the legitimate order of succession, she was the rightful sovereign of the realm; and, though she condescended to accept the crown matrimonial, she might have contested the regal garland. She chose the nobler distinction of giving peace to her bleeding country, by tacitly investing her victorious champion with her rights, and blending the rival roses of York and Lancaster in her bridal-wreath. It was thus that Henry VII., unimpeded by conjugal rivalry, was enabled to work out his enlightened plans, by breaking down the barriers with which the pride and power of the aristocracy had closed the avenues to preferment against the unprivileged classes. The people, tired of the evils of an oligarchy, looked to the sovereign for protection, and the first stone in the altar of civil and religious liberty was planted on the ruins of feudality. The effects of the new system were so rapid, that in the succeeding reign we behold, to use the forcible language of a popular French writer, two of Henry VIII.'s most powerful ministers of state, Wolsey and Cromwell, emanating, the one from the butcher's shambles, the other from the blacksmith's forge. Extremes are, however, dangerous; and the despotism which these and other of Henry VIII.'s parvenu statemen contrived to establish was, while it lasted, more cruel and oppressive than the tyranny and exclusiveness of the feudal magnates; but it had only an ephemeral existence. The art of printing had become general, and the spirit of freedom was progressing on the wings of knowledge through the land. The emancipation of England from the papal domination followed so immediately, that it appears futile to attribute that mighty change to any other cause. The stormy passions of Henry VIII., the charms and genius of Anne Boleyn, the virtues and eloquence of Katharine Parr, all had, to a certain degree, an effect in hastening the crisis; but the Reformation was cradled in the printing-press, and established by no other instrument. In detailing the successive historic tragedies of the queens of Henry VIII., we enter upon perilous ground. The lapse of three centuries. has done so little to calm the excited feelings caused by the theological disputes with which their names are blended, that it is scarcely possible to state facts impartially, without displeasing those readers whose opinions have been biassed by party writers. It is to be lamented that the pen of the historian has been too often taken up rather for the purpose of establishing a system than to set forth the truth. Hence it is that evidences have been suppressed or shamefully garbled, and more logic wasted in working out mere matters of opinion than is commonly employed by barristers in making the best of a client's brief, or in mystifying a jury. To such a height have some prejudices been carried, that it has been regarded as a species of heresy to record the evil as well as the good of persons who are usually made subjects of popular panegyric; and authors have actually feared in some cases to reveal the base metal which has been hidden beneath a meretricious gilding, lest they should provoke a host of assailants. It was not thus that the historians of holy writ performed their office. The sins of David and of Solomon are recorded by them with stern fidelity and merited censure, for with the sacred annalists there is no compromise between truth and expediency. Expediency! perish the word, if guilt have to be covered, and moral justice sacrificed to such considerations! It is not always possible, in general history, to diverge into personal details; but in historical biography it becomes the author's duty to enter within the veil, and, without reservation or one-sided views, to bring forward every thing that tends to display character in its true Light. The records of the Tudor queens are replete with circumstances of powerful interest, and rich in the picturesque costume of an age of |