Page:Hutton, William Holden - Hampton Court (1897).djvu/87

Rh passed they forth the night with banqueting, dancing, and other triumphant devices, to the great comfort of the King, and pleasant regard of the nobility there assembled.

"All this matter I have declared largely, because ye shall understand what joy and delight the Cardinal had to see his Prince and Sovereign Lord in his house so nobly entertained and placed, which was always his only study, to devise things to his comfort, not passing upon the charges or expenses. It delighted him so much to have the King's pleasant and princely presence, that nothing was to him more delectable than to cheer his Sovereign Lord, to whom he owed so much obedience and loyalty; as reason required no less, all things well considered."

How pleasantly the dramatist uses the description we well remember, with the "Shepherds' Dance" sounding in our ears as we think of it. He brings Anne Bullen so happily into it— though Cavendish tells the tale of the masque as though it happened some while before the King fell before "Venus, the insatiate goddess," that we may