Page:The Queens of England.djvu/290

 250 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. landed at Plymouth, where she was received with every demon- stration of joy by all classes in that neighborhood. The king dispatched some of the highest of his nobility to attend on her, and set out in a few days after to meet her on the road, as did Prince Arthur. The first interview took place at Dogmersfield, and on the following day the royal procession, set out for Chertsey, where they rested at the palace for one night, re- ceiving as they progressed every possible mark of respect which the subjects of Henry could lavish on them. The third night the party stopped at Kingston, and reached Lambeth on the fol- lowing day, trave 1 ing so slowly as to have taken as many days to accomplish a journey of two hundred and sixteen miles as might now suffice to traverse the whole kingdom. The personal appearance of Katharine seems to have pleased her future husband, as well as his parents. What she, ac- customed to the sunny clime of Granada, must have thought of the murky one of an English November, we have no clue to discover ; but all who have lived in a southern land, and en- tered ours in that dreary month, may imagine her feelings. On the 14th of November the nuptials were celebrated. The Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by nineteen bishops and "abbots mytered," joined their hands, and performed all the religious rites on that occasion. Great was the splendor ex- hibited at the marriage, a detail of which may be found in Stowe by those who take pleasure in such descriptions ; nor were the fetes and nuptial feast which followed it, given in the bishop's palace of St. Paul's, less gorgeous. A tilting match with quaint devices, in which the grotesque and magnificent were mingled, took place the succeeding week ; and after this display of chivalry, an entertainment on a scale of right regal grandeur was given in Westminster Hall, at which the bride and bridegroom danced, as did others of the royal family. Prince Arthur and Katharine departed for Ludlow Castle, in Shropshire, where they were to hold a court, as Prince and Princess of Wales, attended by the lords and ladies comprising their suite, where they so conducted themselves as to win the affections of all around them. Short-lived, however, was the happiness of the youthful pair ; for in the April that followed his marriage, Prince Arthur expired, leaving Katharine a lonely stranger in that distant castle, where he closed his life in the sixteenth year of his age. The young widow proceeded to the palace at Croydon, there