Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/682

668 the queen to the Tower being come, the king took a walk in his garden, with only two gentlemen of the bed chamber, and sent for the queen, who instantly came to him: he seemed in high spirits. But in the midst of their mirth, the lord chancellor approached his presence, with forty guards. The king looked upon him with a very stern countenance, and walking a little distance from the queen, called the chancellor to him, who, upon his knees, spoke softly to his majesty. The king, in a rage, called him knave, arrant knave, beast and fool, and commanded him instantly to be gone from his presence. On his departure, Henry returned to the queen, who perceiving him to be greatly moved, used all her eloquence to soften his displeasure, entreating his majesty, if his fault was not too great, to pardon him for her sake.

'Ah, poor soul (replied the king) thou little knowest how evil he deserveth this grace at thy hands. Of my word, sweet-heart, he hath been toward thee an arrant knave, and so let him go.'

She was convinced that the principles of the religion in which she had been brought up were not founded on holy writ; yet she would not trust wholly to her own reason in an affair of such importance; for she kept several eminent divines constantly with her, to solve her doubts, and instruct her, in quality of chaplains. With these she had frequent conferences in private concerning the reformation, and the abuses crept into the church: but particularly in Lent, she had a sermon preached in her chamber, at which the ladies and gentlewomen of her privy chamber and others, were present. She was likewise very assiduous in studying books of divinity, and especially the scriptures. Being thus qualified, she began to commit some of her own thoughts to writing. Her first composition seems to have been that, intituled, Queen