Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/236

222 the throne, and both of them were crowned by Dr. Warham, then archbishop of Canterbury, July 5, 1505. Her beauty, sweet disposition, and other excellent qualifications, kept her almost for twenty years in the king's good graces. She was not only learned herself, but also a patroness of learned men; more particularly of Ludovicus Vives, and the celebrated Erasmus.

But though the king never discovered, during all this time, the least disaffection to her; yet not having a son to succeed him, and the affronts offered to his daughter Mary by the courts of France and Spain, by declining an alliance on pretence of her illegitimacy, might make an impression on his mind; and, some scruples of conscience on a marriage which had been partly approved, partly condemned, by his father and counsellors, but more, perhaps, his becoming enamoured with the charms of Anne Boleyn, made him resolve to be divorced from his queen. When the cause was brought into court, she threw herself on her knees before him, appealing to him for the affection, faithfulness, and obedience of her conduct, during their union: beseeching him to protect her, a powerless and injured stranger, who had been the wife of his brother only by title, from the malice of her enemies: then, rising, she left the court, before which she would never again consent to appear. She accused cardinal Wolsey, as the author of her calamities, because she could not always tolerate his vices, and her nephew, the emperor, had disappointed his views of the papacy.

The affair of the divorce being determined; without submitting to a sentence not sanctioned by the pope, or renouncing her pretensions, she retired to Kimbolton castle, in Huntingdonshire; where she led a life of stant