Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/264

250 designs of France and Spain; and he assured him that he heard that the sisters of the Electress of Saxony, educated under the same wise mother, were equally attractive in person and in mind, and waited only a higher position to give them greater lustre, especially the Princess Anne.

Henry immediately caught at the idea, and desired to have the portraits of the two sisters sent over to him. Christopher Mount, who was employed to negotiate this matter, and who was probably a creature of Cromwell's, urged the Duke of Cleves to have the portraits done with all dispatch; but the duke, who, probably, had no faith in the result of the experiment, was in no hurry. He replied to Mount's importunities that Lucas, his painter, was sick; but he would see to it, and find some occasion to send it. This lukewarmness argued little hope or inclination in the Duke of Cleves; and, singularly enough, it appears that Anne, his daughter, was already engaged to the Duke of Lorraine. These pre-engagements, broken to oblige Henry, had always been used by him afterwards to get rid of the wife, and the duke might well pause upon it. Mount, however, who must have been no judge of beauty, or was destitute of judgment altogether, gave the business no rest. He reported that every man praised the beauty of the lady, as well for face as for the whole body, above all other ladies excellent, and that she as far excelled the duchess (of Milan?) as the golden sun excelleth the silver moon.

The Duke of Cleves died on the 6th of February, 1539, and Henry dispatched Hans Holbein to take the lady's portrait. Nicholas Wotton, Henry's envoy at the Court of Cleves, in a letter dated August 11th of the same year, reported both of the progress of the portrait and of the lady's character as follows:—"As for the education of my said ladye, she hath from her childhood been like as the Ladye Sybille, till she was married, and the Ladye Amelye hath been, and now is, brought up with the ladye duchess, her mother, and in manner never from her elbow—the ladye duchess being a very wise ladye, and one that straitly looketh to her children. All the gentlemen of the Court, and others that I have asked, report her to be of very lowly and gentle condition, by which she hath so much won her mother's favour, that she is very loth to suffer her to depart from her. She employeth her time much with her needle; she can read and write her own, but French and Latin, or other language, she knoweth not; nor yet can sing, or play on any instrument,—for they take it here in Germany for a rebuke and an occasion of lightness, that great ladies should be learned, or have any knowledge of music. Her wit is so good that, no doubt, she will in short space learn the English tongue, whenever she putteth her mind to it. I could never hear that she is inclined to the good cheer of this country; and marvel it were if she should, seeing that her brother, in whom it were somewhat more tolerable, doth well abstain from it. Your grace's servant, Hans Holbein, hath taken the effigies of my Ladye Anne and the Ladye Amelye, and hath expressed their images very lively."

This miniature of Anne of Cleves is still in existence, perfect as when it was executed, upwards of 300 years ago. Horace Walpole describes the box which enclosed it, as in the form of a white rose, delicately carved in ivory, and says that he saw it in the cabinet of Mr. Barrett, of Lee. I have myself seen it in the possession of my late friend Sir Samuel Meyrick, of Goodrich Court, where it yet remains, the property of his nephew. The box screws into three parts, and in each end is a miniature portrait, one of Anne of Cleves and the other of Henry VIII. The portrait of Anne certainly is that of a very comely lady. Unfortunately, it was more lively than the original; and this box became to Cromwell, who had thus succeeded in accomplishing the marriage, fatal as the box of Pandora herself.

Henry, being delighted with the portrait—which agreed so well with the many praises written of the lady by his agents—acceded to the match; and in the month of September the count palatine and ambassadors from Cleves arrived in London, where Cromwell received them with real delight, and the king bade them right welcome. The treaty was soon concluded; and Henry, impatient for the arrival of his wife, dispatched the Lord Admiral Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton, to receive her at Calais, and conduct her to England. Anne set out from her native city of Dusseldorf in the first week in October, 1539, attended by an escort of 400 horse, and the chief personages of the household of her brother, the Duke of Cleves. She arrived, on the 11th of December, on the English frontiers of Calais, and was received by the Lord Lisle, deputy of Calais, the lieutenant of the castle, the knight porter, and the marshal of Calais, and by the cavalry of the garrison, all freshly and gallantly appointed for the occasion, with the men-at-arms in velvet coats and chains of gold, and all the king's archers. About a mile from the town she was received by the lord admiral, the Lord William Howard, and many other lords and gentlemen. In the train which conducted Anne of Cleves into Calais there were kinsmen of five out of the six queens of Henry VIII.

Henry beguiled the tedium of his waiting for his expected bride by the executions of the venerable abbot of Glastonbury, the abbot of Tending, and others. It was not enough that he suppressed the monasteries, and took possession of them—he must quench his blood-thirst in the lives of the superiors. The abbot of Glastonbury, Richard Whiting, aged, and sinking under divers ailments, was executed on the charge of endeavouring to conceal the plate of the abbey, with John Thorne, his treasurer, and Roger James, his under-treasurer. Lord John Russell declares that the jury which condemned the abbot and his monks showed a wonderful devotion to the king's will; and that ferocious will was certainly carried out in a truly savage style. The venerable abbot and his two officers were conducted to the top of Tor Hill, and here, in full view of the grand old abbey, and the noble parks and farms over which he had so long presided, they were hanged and quartered. The abbot's head was stuck upon the gates of the abbey, and his four quarters were sent to be exposed on the gates of Wells, Bath, Rochester, and Bridgewater. About the same time, the abbot of Reading and the abbot of Colchester were executed, and exposed in the same barbarous manner.

Whilst these horrible atrocities were every day spreading wider over Europe the terrible fame of Henry VIII., he was impatiently awaiting his new wife. On the 27th of December, 1539, Anne landed at Deal, having been escorted across the Channel by a fleet of fifty ships. She