Page:The Queens of England.djvu/296

 256 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. kingdom a visitor to the court of her brother in 15 17, where she was affectionately received by the king and queen, and once more found herself beneath the same roof with her sister Mary, the queen-dowager of France. The meeting between Margaret and Katharine must have reminded both of the death of the King of Scotland, the husband of one, and the brother-in-law of the other, had not Margaret found consolation in her mar- riage with the Earl of Angus, contracted too soon after the death of her royal spouse to admit a belief being entertained of her having felt any real grief for that tragical event. Mar- garet brought with her her infant daughter by the Earl of Angus, the Lady Margaret Douglas, who shared the nursery with her cousin, the Princess Mary, only a few months her junior. Both remained a year at the English court, at the ex- piration of which time a treaty with the Duke of Albany, who had replaced her as Regent of Scotland, enabled her to return thither. Margaret appears to have had as little control over her passions as her brother, Henry the Eighth, afterwards evinced over his ; for, having discovered that her husband, the Earl of Angus, had been unfaithful to her during her absence, she met him with undissembled anger and disdain, and an- nounced her intention of suing for a divorce from him. Prev- iously to the Queen of Scotland leaving the court of Henry, a riot of a grave character occurred in London, which furnished Katharine with an opportunity of displaying that clemency and good-feeling towards the subjects of her husband in which she was never found deficient. Some citizens and apprentices, ag- grieved by the patronage bestowed on foreign artisans, to the detriment of their own profit, and incited to commotion by the seditious sermons of a Doctor Bele and the persuasions of John Lincoln, a broker, seized on the pretext of some offense offered to them by the foreign artisans, to pillage houses, break open prisons, and injure and maim several strangers. Many lives were lost in the fray, and it was deemed expedient to punish with severity those who were arrested in it. No less than two hundred and seventy-eight persons were made prisoners, many of them mere youths, whose mothers and sisters sought the palace, and with loud cries and floods of tears implored the pity of Katharine, who, touched with compassion, presented herself, accompanied by the Dowager Queen of France and her sister Margaret of Scotland, before Henry, and besought pardon for the youthful insurgents. This appeal had more