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their flocks "to resort more diligently to common prayer than they had done, and especially to refrain their greedy appetites from that insatiable serpent, covetousness," and warning them that the sweating sickness had been sent as a punishment for their sins. It is amusing to note the effrontery here exhibited by the very men who were daily helping themselves in the coffers of the State, and were characterized by the Protestant preacher, Thomas Lever, "as fishers of money instead of men."

Heading the names attached to the proclamation is that of the Duke of Somerset, who was still allowed to be present at the deliberations of the Council on affairs of State; and he was present again on the 4th of October, on which occasion the King announced his intention of raising Warwick to the dignity of Duke of Northumberland, and of conferring the dukedom of Suffolk on the Marquis of Dorset. On the 11th of the same month, Somerset had the mortification of witnessing, in the Great Hall of Hampton Court, the sumptuous ceremonies that attended these promotions in the peerage.

But more crushing troubles were in store for him. On the 7th Sir Thomas Palmer had preferred in secret his charges against Somerset ; and on the 13th the King was informed of them, and hastily removed to Westminster.

Suffice it

We will not inquire here into the truth of the accusations, nor into the fairness of the trial that followed. to say that, after unsuspectingly attending the Councils at Hampton Court on October the 11th, 12th, and 13th, he was arrested in the Council Chamber on the 16th of the same month, instantly sent to the Tower, and six weeks after found guilty of felony, and condemned to death. On the 22nd of January following, the King laconically notes in his diary, that his uncle "had his head cut off upon Tower Hill, between eight and nine o'clock in the morning."

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THE PRISON, SO CALLED, IN THE ROUND KITCHEN COURT.

CHAPTER VIII.

QUEEN MARY, KING PHILIP, AND THE
PRINCESS ELIZABETH.

EDWARD VI.'s last visit to Hampton Court took place in September, 1552; and two years after this, on the 23rd of August, Queen Mary and Philip II., five days after they had made their public entry into London, and exactly a month after his arrival in England, retired to Hampton Court to spend their honeymoon. The King's reception had not been very cordial, and he was, doubtless, not sorry to remove from the capital, where the hostility universally exhibited to his attendants and followers, and the brawls which continually occurred, indicated what a deep ill-feeling existed between the two nations.

Though Mary, even at this early period of their married life, was, if not repugnant, at any rate an object of indifference to him, he appears to have behaved, for a short time at least, with some outward show of deference. A contemporary writer, who wrote to Spain from the spot, and whose report has been recently published, declares that he never left her side, always assisted her to mount and dismount, dined with her continually in public, and never failed to attend the services of the Church with her on feast days. Yet the account he gives of her shows what an unattractive bride she must have been. He describes her as "ugly, small, lean, with a pink and white complexion, no eyebrows, very pious and very badly dressed."

The visit must have been a gloomy one for both of them, for they remained in great retirement, allowing very few members of the Court to accompany them, and indulging in none of that magnificence, profusion, and pageantry which constantly followed the Tudor Court. This was set down by the people to Philip's haughty Spanish exclusiveness, complaining that "the hall-door within the court was constantly shut, so that no man might enter unless his

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(From the picture by Antonio More at Woburn Abbey.)

errand were first known; which seemed strange to Englishmen that had not been used thereto." No less disgust was excited by the niggardly table kept by the happy pair. Instead of celebrating their marriage, as was the good old English custom, with feastings and festivities, to which all were welcome, they dined in private on maigre dishes-fish, buttered eggs, and oatmeal-another instance, so said the English, of morose churlishness.

The King's Spanish attendants, however, who accompanied him to England, naturally looked at the question from a different point of view. They regarded the English as hopeless barbarians and incorrigible heretics, with whom it was impossible to associate as equals, and yet whom they dared not treat as inferiors. Even the ladies disgusted them. According to the Spaniard quoted above, their dresses were of common and coarse material, and ill-made; they wore black stockings, and showed their legs even as far as the knee; they were ugly and very ungraceful, especially when dancing, which with them consisted only of constrained gestures, and shuffling gait. "There is not a single Spanish gentleman," he concludes, "who would give a farthing for any of them, and they care equally little for the Spaniards. The English, in fact, hate us as they do the devil, and in that spirit they treat us. They cheat us in the town, and anyone venturing in the country is robbed."

This John Bull feeling was a constant cause of complaint by foreign visitors to England in Tudor days. "The English," says a Frenchman who travelled here a year or two after, "are great lovers of themselves and everything belonging to them, and think there are no other men like themselves, and no other world but England. Whenever they see a handsome foreigner, they say that 'he looks like an Englishman, and that it is a great pity he should not be an Englishman.'

As to banquets, our Spanish critic remarks, that "the English have no other idea of a feast than eating and drinking; they understand no other way of enjoying themselves." And then he goes on to comment severely on the eighteen kitchens in the royal palace, and on the hundred sheep, twelve oxen, eighteen calves, and the tuns of beer-"so abundant that the winter flow of the river at Valladolid is not greater in quantity"—that were daily consumed on the

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