Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/300

292 The chap-book gives us a more romantic version of the wooing. On their return from Normandy, the King and Prince of Wales are entertained at a grand banquet at Dover. The Countess Joan is present, and the Prince, fascinated by her beauty, can scarcely withdraw his eyes from her for a moment. Afraid of offending his father by too open a manifestation of his passion, the Prince departs with the royal train, gives it the slip on the road, hurries back to Dover, and seeks a private interview with Joan, which she accords. In a “cool harbour,” he avows his affection, and the lovers plight troth together. Affairs of state call the Prince back to France, but he keeps up a correspondence (not, I fear, to be found in the Record-office) with his fair mistress, “who often bedewed her rosy cheeks for his absence.” The letter of the Prince which is given in the narrative is rather a vapid production for so heroical a personage, and looks as if, in the hurry of a campaign, he had helped himself to a leaf from the “Complete Letter Writer.” The lady’s epistle is equally common-place, merely urging the dear man to take care of himself, and to keep out of danger for her sake, which is just what one might expect Sukey the cook to say to Policeman X. during a garotting epidemic, when bidding adieu for the night on the area steps. Soon after the Prince comes home in triumph, and the King in a fit of good-nature accepts Joan as a daughter-in-law. Although no mention is made of it in this rosy legend, Joan was married to the Prince only three months after her first husband’s death, and in that and some other respects was by no means better than she should have been. The funeral baked meats did not, however, coldly furnish forth the wedding feast, for the nuptials were celebrated with great state and splendour at Windsor.

The next Prince of Wales who married was Edward of Westminster, son of Henry VI. There are some romantic, but rather apocryphal passages in the story of his courtship. It is said that when a fugitive with his mother in Paris, he met the Lady Ann Neville, daughter of Warwick the King-maker, then a little girl of about his own years; that the two playmates conceived a deep affection for each other which did not pass away with childhood; and that Edward, after his return to England, escaped from home, and crossed to Calais to have another interview with his sweetheart, much to the alarm of his mother, who thought he had been spirited away or murdered by some of the opposite faction. The young couple seem to have been very well content with each other; but there is no doubt that the match was made purely for political reasons and to cement the alliance between the powerful earl and the house of Lancaster. The wedding took place at Amboise.

The marriage of a lad of 16 to a girl of 17, in the first year of the sixteenth century exercised, indirectly, a momentous influence on the destinies of this country, and indeed of Europe—that was the union of Arthur of Winchester, eldest son of Henry VII., to Catharine of Aragon. The negotiations in regard to the alliance lasted for eight years, and the boy-prince had no sooner mastered the conjugation amo, than he began, with the help of his tutor, to indite love letters in precise, pedantic Latin to his little mistress, whom he never ventured to address more familiarly than as “most illustrious and excellent lady,” “your Highness,” and “your Excellency.” When at length the terms of the dowry and settlement had been agreed upon by the punctilious and exacting parents, the princess quitted the Alhambra in May to proceed to England, but, owing to stormy weather, did not reach her adopted country till early in the russet days of October.

It was in foggy November that she first saw the capital. The Princess’s attendants made at first a great fuss about allowing the Prince to speak to her, and only conceded an interview after much entreaty. As neither could speak the other’s language, the young pair had to discourse in Latin as best they could, with the intervention of bishops and learned doctors to help them over the sentences. In this way they managed to say very handsome things of each other; and then they plighted troth. A supper and a dance closed the evening; but Arthur seems to have been rather afraid of his intended, for he did not venture to dance with her, but led out his sister’s governess. The marriage itself was celebrated in St. Paul’s Cathedral, on the 12th November, at nine o’clock in the morning. The court, attended by the great dignitaries of the church in “pontificabilus,” and the city authorities, went by water from Westminster Palace to St. Paul’s. The cathedral was hung with arras, and a grand stage was erected for the chief performers in the drama. We are told that it took nineteen bishops and abbots, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, to solemnise the marriage. The Prince and Princess were attired in pure white, and attended by a “great estate” of the first ladies and gentlemen in the land. There were two circumstances connected with the ceremony which were afterwards thought by many to be significant. In order “to do more honour to the said marriage” when the banns were put up, they were denied by a doctor of laws, specially appointed by the King to act as a sort of devil’s advocate; then another “famous doctour” was heard on the other side, and finally the Master of the Rolls gravely gave judgment in favour of the legitimacy of the marriage. The other incident was, that when the ceremony was over, the Duke of York (afterwards Henry VIII.), stepped forward and led off the bride, just as if she had been his own, the real bridegroom walking humbly behind. The rejoicings lasted for a fortnight, Sundays not excepted. During that period there was a continuous succession of magnificent masques, banquets, and tournaments, at which the Prince and Princess had to assist as spectators, and sometimes, too, as performers, for we hear of their dancing “bass dances” in Westminster Hall, to the great delectation of their Majesties and the court. Prince Arthur did not survive the marriage more than five months; but it was