Page:The Queens of England.djvu/295

 KATHARINE OF ARRAGON. 255 affection, that prove the feelings of the victorious queen were almost forgotten in those of the loving wife. Henry returned to England at the close of October, and his meeting with Katharine was marked by great affection on both sides. In August, 1 5 14, the contract between the Princess Mary, sister of.Henry, and Louis the Twelfth of France, being signed, on September 14, the ceremony of contraction took place at the church of the Celestines in Paris ; on hearing which, Henry, accompanied by his queen and a numerous train of nobility, con- ducted the Princess Mary to Dover, and having consigned her to the care of the Duke of Norfolk, saw her depart for Bou- logne, where she was met by the French nobles deputed by Louis the Twelfth to attend her to Abbeville. Gratified by this marriage, and free from troubles at home and abroad, Henry indulged his taste for pleasure by a series of courtly fetes, which were however interrupted by the accouche- ment of the queen, who again gave birth to a son in November, 15 14, who unfortunately lived but a few days. The festival of the new year was marked by a splendid pageant, in which Henry himself bore a conspicuous part. It consisted of a masque, in which the king and three nobles of his court, with four ladies magnificently attired, danced in the queen's presence, and removed not their masques until the dance was finished, when Katharine, recognizing the king, rewarded him for the agreeable surprise he had occasioned her by a kiss. The death of Louis the Twelfth, a few months after his ill- assorted marriage, left his queen at liberty to contract a union more suitable to her age and taste. Her choice fell on the ob- ject of her former love, the Duke of Suffolk, who had been sent to France by Henry as the bearer of a letter of condolence to the widowed queen, and whom she privately married with an indecent precipitancy that somewhat shocked the French court. Mary and Suffolk returned to England in the latter end of April, and were publicly married on the 13th of May at Green- wich, Henry and Katharine treating them with great kindness and affection, and celebrating their nuptials by a romantic fete, in which Robin Hood and his merry men were personated by the archers of the royal guard, who invited the king and the two queens, and their court, to a repast spread in a thicket near Shooter's Hill. TbQ. troubles of Scotland brought Queen Margaret of that