(Here was a sigh perhaps to the memory of his poor friend Anne):

I cannot wrest the law to fyll the coffer

With innocent blood to feed myselfe fat,

And do most hurt where that most help I offer;
I am not he that can allow the state

Of hye Cæsar, and damn Cato to die;

(an allusion probably to Sir Thomas More).
Affirm that favill (fable-lying) hathe a goodly grace
In eloquence, and cruelty to name

Zeale of justice, and change in time and place;
And he that suffreth offence without blame,
Call him pitiefull, and him true and playne
That raylest reckless unto each man's shame ;
Say he is rude, that cannot lye and fayne,
The lecher a lover, AND TYRANNY
TO BE RIGHT of a PRINCE'S RAIGNE;
I cannot, I;-no, no ;-it will not be :

This is the cause that I could never yet

Hang on their sleeves, that weigh, as thou maist see,
A chippe of chaunce more than a pound of wit;
This makes me at home to hunt and hawke,
And in foul weather at my book to sit;
In frost and snowe, then with my bowe stalke;
No man doth marke whereso I ryde or goe;
In lustie leas at libertie I walke.

Towards the conclusion, he says he does not spend his time among those who have their wits taken away with Flanders cheer and "beastliness:"

Nor I am not, where truth is given in prey
For money, and prison and treason of some
A common practice used night and day;
But I am here in Kent and Christendom,
Among the Muses, where I read and ryme;
Where if thou list, mine owne John Poynes, to come,
Thou shalt be judge how I do spend my time.

Among the poems of Surrey, is a sonnet in reproach of 'Sardanapalus,' which probably came to the knowledge of Henry, and may have been intended to do so.

It was in Whitehall that Henry made his ill-assorted marriage with Anne Bullen; Dr. Lingard says in a "garret ;" Stowe says in the royal "closet." It is likely enough that the ceremony was hurried and sudden; fit of will, perhaps, during his wine; and if the closet was not ready, the garret was. The clergyman who officiated was shortly afterwards made a bishop.

a

Henry died in Whitehall; so fat, that he was lifted in and out his chamber and sitting-room by means of machinery.

He was "somewhat gross, or, as we tearme it, bourlie," says time-serving Holinshed.*

"He laboured under the burden of an extreme fat and unwieldy body," says noble Herbert of Cherbury. †

"The king," says Lingard, "had long indulged without restraint in the pleasures of the table. At last he grew so enormously corpulent, that he could neither support the weight of his own body, nor remove without the aid of machinery into the different apartments of his palace. Even the fatigue of subscribing his name to the writings which required his signature, was more than he could bear; and to relieve him from this duty, three commissioners were appointed, of whom two had authority to apply to the paper a dry stamp, bearing the letters of the king's name, and the third to draw a pen furnished with ink over the blank impression. An inveterate ulcer in the thigh, which had more than once threatened his life, and which now seemed to baffle all the skill of the surgeons, added to the irascibility of his temper."‡

* Vol. iii. p. 862. Edit. 1808.

+Folio edit.

Ut supra, p. 347. Henry had been afflicted with this ulcer a long while. He was in danger from it during his marriage with Anne Bullen. It should be allowed him among his excuses of temperament; but then it should also have made him more considerate towards his wives. It

246

ADDITIONS TO WHITEHALL.

It was under this Prince (as already noticed) that the palace of the Archbishop of York first became the "King's Palace at Westminster," and expanded into that mass of houses which stretched to St. James's Park. He built a gate-house which stood across what is now the open

street, and a gallery connecting the two places, and overlooking a tilt-yard; and on the park-side he built a cockpit, a tennis-court, and alleys for bowling; for although he put women to death, he was fond of manly sports.

never enters the heads however of such people, that their faults or infirmities are to go for any thing, except to make others considerate for them, and warrant whatever humours they choose to indulge.

་

He was also a patron of the fine arts; and gave an annuity, and rooms in the palace, to the celebrated Holbein, who is said to have designed the gate, as well as decorated the interior. It is to Holbein we are indebted for our familiar acquaintance with his figure.

The reader is to bear in mind, that the street in front of the modern Banqueting-house was always open as it is now, from Charing-Cross to King Street, narrowing opposite to the south-end of the Banqueting-house, at which point the gate looked up it towards the Cross. Just opposite the Banqueting-house, on the site of the present Horse Guards, was the Tilt-yard. The whole mass of houses and gardens on the river side comprised the royal residence. Down this open street then, just as people walk now, we may picture to ourselves Henry coming with his regal pomp, and Wolsey with his priestly; Sir Thomas More strolling thoughtfully, perhaps talking with quiet-faced Erasmus; Holbein, looking about him with an artist's eyes; Surrey coming gallantly in his cloak and feather, as Holbein has painted him; and a succession of Henry's wives with their flitting groups on horseback, or under canopy;-handsome, stately Catherine of Arragon; laughing Anne Bullen ; quiet Jane Seymour ; gross-bodied but sensible Anne of Cleves; demure Catherine Howard, who played such pranks before marriage; and disputatious yet buxom Catherine Parr, who survived one tyrant, to become the broken-hearted wife of a smaller one. Down this road, also, came gallant companies of knights and squires, to the tilting-yard; but of them we shall have more to say in the time of Elizabeth.

We see little of Edward the Sixth, and less of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Mary, in connexion with Whitehall. Edward once held the Parliament there, on account of his sickly condition; and he used to hear Latimer

preach in the Privy garden (still so called), where a pulpit was erected for him on purpose. As there are gardens there still to the houses erected on the spot, one may stand by the rails, and fancy we hear the voice of the rustical but eloquent and honest prelate, rising through the trees.

Edward has the reputation usually belonging to young and untried sovereigns, and very likely deserves some of it; certainly not all, as Mr. Sharon Turner, one of the most considerate of historians, has shown. He partook of the obstinacy of his father, which was formalized in him by weak health and a precise education; and though he shed tears when prevailed upon to assign poor Joan of Kent to what he thought her eternity of torment, his faults assuredly did not lie on the side of an excess of feeling, as may be seen by the cool way in which he suffered his uncles to go to the scaffold, one after another, and recorded it in the journal which he kept. He would probably have turned out a respectable, but not an admirable sovereign, nor one of an engaging character. Years do not improve a temperament like his.

Even poor Lady Jane Grey's character does not improve upon inspection. The Tudor blood (she was granddaughter of Henry's sister) manifested itself in her by her sudden love of supremacy the moment she felt a crown on her head, and her preferring to squabble with her husband and his relations (who got it her), rather than let him partake her throne. She insisted he should be only a Duke, and suspected that his family had given her poison for it. This undoes the usual romance of "Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guildford Dudley;" and thus it is that the possession of too much power spoils almost every human being, practical or theoretical. Lady Jane came out of the elegancies and tranquillities of the schools, and of her Greek and Latin, to find her Platonisms vanish