the correspondence between her and that young nobleman. The Cardinal, ready to gratify Henry's wishes, never dreaming that she wald rise higher than a royal mistress, severely reprimanded Percy fr making love to " a foolish girl," beneath him in rank, without ask s father's and the king's consent; and with the aid of the father, the Earl of Northumberland, he succeeded in terminating the court fr which he was afterwards regarded with no friendly feelings by either of the lovers. It may indeed be doubted whether Anne, thugh she suppressed her resentment, and even afterwards professed the warmest friendship towards him when she thought him willing and able to advance her schemes of ambition, ever fully forgave him fr the part he acted on this occasion. She was sent away from the cart to her father's house of Hever Castle, in Kent,' while Lord Perry, though permitted to remain at court, was forced to marry Lady Mary Talbot, daughter to George, Earl of Shrewsbury, which tarted out a most unhappy union. His marriage with that lady was solemnized in the autumn of the year 1523, as appears from a etter written by Anne's cousin, the Earl of Surrey, dated September that year, in which he says, "The marriage of my Lord Percy sal be with my lord steward's (Shrewsbury's) daughter, whereof I aglad. The chief baron is with my Lord of Northumberland to de the marriage." This letter fixes 1523 as the year in which Ae was thus crossed, in what appears to have been her first love. 8me time after Henry unexpectedly paid her a visit at Hever Castle, awing or suspecting his errand, she determined not to encouny is love advances, and, under pretence of indisposition, took to 4 amber, which she did not again quit till after his departure. * Ingratiate himself in her favour, he created her father Viscount Bard on July 18, 1525; and, to bring the whole family to the socrt, be appointed him treasurer of the royal household, and William The cutie is still in good repair. It is at present in possession of the Medleys. Lepard's History of England, vol. vi., p. 112. E Carey, her sister Ma But her high spirit her dismissal from c countess, as Lord I rather have been, th chagrin, that she wo her heart was not to he first avowed his pa stand that she was no she replied, falling on virtue, which shall b that I shall bring my But because you have a queen already, and your mistress I will not Even Sanders and Cardinal Pole, who have so fiercely defamed ber, admit that she had declared it to the monarch to be her resolutom to devote her virtue to her husband, and to no one else. But towing her to have possessed a single good quality, the interpretation they put upon this is, that she was ambitious of becoming ceen-consort; a dignity to which she would have had little chance bag raised had she been willing to be Henry's mistress. mprobable at that time was the prospect of her attaining such an teration, that nothing, save the most inveterate prejudice, would scribe the expression of her virtuous determination to a speculation of the contingency of her becoming queen. How does the case stand? The question of Henry's divorce from Katharine of Aragon had not then been moved. Were we, however, to grant that there had been Ke secret motions respecting it, its ever taking place was far from rain. It would be unpopular in England. It would meet with the most strenuous opposition from Charles V. That the Pope would at it was extremely doubtful. And even should it be obtained, that a high-minded monarch should set aside the considerations of state pry, which were repugnant to his marrying a subject, and adsend to wed one of Anne's comparatively humble rank, who was the servant of his own queen, was what she could hardly have These particulars are taken from the Sloane MS., Life of Henry VIII., from his Vaga love with Anne Boleyn to the death of Queen Katharine, in the British Mw No 249. This MS, was written in the 16th century, and as it takes the Prits testimony in her favour is the more valuable. Thaters, De Schum. Angl., p. 26.—Pol. ad Reg. Scotl., p. 176. Turner, in his Fury of the Reign of Henry VIII. (vol. ii., p. 191), speaking of Sanders's libels Ate and her family, says, "More wilful calumnies, I believe, never issued the pen or the press. He has a command of Latin style, but a most bitter agst the English Reformation. The very next sentence after his defamation of A te shows us why he inserted it: 'She was addicted to the Lutheran heresy."" - Sr., p. 25. Pole, in his work Pro Ecclesiastica Unitatis Defensione, a work womrred to the revisal of the Roman pontiff, and the first edition of which was we at Bome, heaps upon her the vilest slanders, and never mentions her name applying to her some deeply defamatory sobriquet, as "meretricula," p. 390; * wt, jeri, am," p. 266 ; *meretricio amore," p. 336; "scortum," p. 280; "nova Jeze dreamed of, even in the enchanting moments when fancy most g geously painted the future. Can her becoming answers to the k be then justly represented as intended to cloak over ambiti designs with the semblance of virtue, as the cool and crafty calcu tion of the chances of dispossessing Katharine of Aragon, and s ceeding her as Henry's wife and queen? It is more natural, as w as more just, to regard them as the unsophisticated utterances of heart which trembled at the thought of sullied virtue and a d honoured name. In his endeavours to induce her to return to the court, Henry co tinued unremitting, and wrote her several entreating letters, breat ing professions of the most ardent affection. But still she could n be prevailed upon to revisit the spot where her dearest and earlie hopes lay buried. After remaining for some time in her father house, sorrowfully ruminating on her blighted prospects, she is su posed by Bishop Burnet to have gone again to France, and enter the service of her old friend and patroness, Margaret of Valo Duchess of Alençon. This journey, if it took place, would be abou the beginning of the year 1526, when Francis I. had been release from his captivity in Spain, to the great joy of France, and especiall of his sister, the Duchess of Alençon. Anne is supposed by the sam historian to have returned to England with her father in 1527, whe he was recalled from France, whither he had been sent that year along with Sir Anthony Brown, to take the oath of the French kin to a solemn league not long before concluded betwixt the crowns England and France.1 The cause of Anne's final return from France to England may hav been the marriage of her mistress, Margaret, with Henry d'Albret King of Navarre, in the beginning of the year 1527. That even having rendered it necessary for Margaret to leave France for the family residence of the kings of Navarre, in Gascogne or Bearn, Si Thomas Boleyn, naturally preferring that his daughter should retur 1 Heylin's History of the Reformation, edit. London, 1561, p. 86. England and to the English court, rather than retire to that seeded residence among the Pyrenees, brought her home to England. By some Roman Catholic writers, as Sanders and Cardinal Pole, Anne is represented as having sunk, when in France, to the lowest th of hackneyed and shameless profligacy. So extravagantly are their scandalous accusations, that to extract them would be pate our pages; but this extravagant grossness is in itself a nt proof that they are malignant slanders.' The court of Free during the period of Anne's residence in it was a school of fate, and not that hotbed of licentiousness which it became during the later years of the reign of Francis I.; and this her father knew, Les diplomatic engagements had given him an opportunity of な ng acquainted with its manners and habits. Had she been #toriously abandoned as to become a bye-word and a proverb ng all classes of Paris, as these Popish writers would have us to ve, a queen of the strict virtue of Claude would not have conted to retain her around her person. Besides, it is incredible, soch a supposition, that her father, who must have known what everydy in Paris knew, would have permitted her to remain in a ataria where her virtue had been lost and her character ruined. Ne, the case supposed, would Katharine, queen of Henry VIII., acan of unimpeachable moral purity, though superstitious, have ed to receive her as one of her maids of honour. Henry, viragh Wolsey and his ambassadors was minutely acquainted every court of Europe, must have known it well, had she been teams character described by these scandalmongers. And Hetry, after his marriage, speaks to the Pope of "her approved and exent virtues; that is to say, the purity of her life, her conat virginity, her maidenly and womanly pudicity, her soberness terest with defaming Anne, they are equally zealons in assailing the repuofer mother and sister.-See these slanders combated in Burnet's Reformation, 4,33 74-78, and in Turner's Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., pp. 191, 430. Miss Wood, #trength of an old MS., vindicates the mother, but surrenders the defence of Janguter Mary.—Letters of Royal and Illustrious Ladies, vol ii., p, 193. |