thee, O Lord, who considerest my distress, are the eyes of thine handmaid lifted up. Thou, O King of kings, and Lord of lords, look upon the face of thine anointed, give empire to thy son, and save the son of thine handmaid, nor visit upon him the crimes of his father, or the wickedness of his mother.' Bold, and extraordinary language for that time! One could hardly have thought that a pope in the twelfth century might have been safely fulminated against after this manner. No wonder that in her last letter the queen should thus, beautifully, apologize for her violence. I beseech you, O father, let your benignity bear with that which is the effusion of grief, rather than of deliberation. I have sinned, and use the words of Job: I have said that which I would I had not said. But henceforth I place my finger on my lips, and say no more. Farewell.' We scarcely need say that this is at once tender and dignified. not particularly attractive in themselves, they are yet interesting as evidence both of the habits of their writers, and of the abilities to manage their own concerns, possessed by our countrywomen in the olden time. They manifest an amazing competency for this; we can scarcely imagine our modern noblewomen equal to them, albeit some, if report be true, are eminent in railway speculations. It is amusing to find royal and noble ladies, not only arranging state affairs, (we might instance the letter of Eleanor of Castile to her son, Edward I., as a model for a business letter-clear, curt, and to the point,) but showing so intimate an acquaintance with the various details in the management of their estates, as one would have supposed proper and peculiar alone to their stewards. Nay, surely, in those days it must have been-every woman her own steward! so deep do they seem in the mysteries of corn, The editor will perhaps forgive us if we and cattle, and rent, and every imaginable say that there appears to us no anachronism and unimaginable item about a property. (as she intimates in her note, page 20) in Jane Basset's letters to her step-mother, Eleonora's upbraiding Celestine with the Lady Lisle, for whom she acted as charge non-fulfilment of his promise, the sons d'affaires, are entertaining specimens. She of Ephraim, who bent and sent forth the seems to have been a spirited damsel, if we bow, have turned round in the day of bat- may judge from the complaints of Six tle.' The allusion being, not as Miss John Bond, to whom the young lady apWood supposes, to the sending of a bended pears to have been exceedingly distasteful. bow-an ancient mode of announcing war He was associated with her in her charge; -but to Psalm 78, 'like as the children of and what little liking he might have Ephraim, who, being armed and carrying for her at first, it pleased Heaven to debows, turned back in the day of battle.' crease on further acquaintance.' For after, And again starting aside like a broken at Michaelmas, 1535, simply announcing bow.' The pope's deceitfulness in prom- her arrival and establishment in the house, ising, and then failing of the performance, he thus writes Lady Lisle, in the January being here intimated. Will she further afterexcuse our suggesting that her emendation of corrigit, for 'corripit' (in the original), is not at all required by the sense,' he who corrects not,' &c. (page 23.) It would be too offensive to refer her to her dictionary for proof of this, but we may perhaps be allowed to present her with an instance of its use. Neque in ira tua corripias me' -neither chasten (or correct) me,' &c. Psalm 38th. It is a trifling matter, but we do not like to see documents of this nature altered one hair's-breadth without the most urgent necessity. It suggests a doubt whether liberties have not been taken with the text elsewhere; and other equally needless, but more important alterations effected, which may (as this does not) affect the sense. There is a fair proportion of mere business letters in these volumes; but though 'Touching Mistress Jane Basset, I wot not what to say. Her sisters cannot please her; her such things as I thought was necessary your ladyship hath commanded to deliver unto for her,' (the grammar in these old letters is really delightful, it is so bad, enough to make Lindley Murray's hair stand on end!) 'yet she will not be pleased. I have delivered unto her two feather-beds, and three pairs of sheets, with all that longeth thereto; also she hath she hath a greyhound lyeth upon one of the two cows, one horse, with other things; also beds, day and night,' (scarcely tidy of Mistress Jane,) but it be when she holdeth him in her hands, and that is every time when she goeth to the doors.' But it was diamond cut diamond;' the lady was not to be ruled by Sir John. She set him at nought, and added to her other offences that of buying a third cow, when her right of pasturage only extended usually tending to preserve the spirit they to two! Thus writeth she to my Lady enshrine. Whether the spirit animated Lisle 'Jesus. 'Honorable Lady,-My duty remembered. &c., advertising you that I have received (your) amiable letters, by the which I perceive the contents of your mind. First, I have received the stuff of Sir John Bond by a bill, and will do my diligence in it according unto your mind, God willing. I have received your beds, both flock and feathers, with cushions and coverlets, as he received them, by his saying; but God knows in what case they be; some of them be not able to bide the handling of them to be carried unto the wind. . . . . . . And in my next letter, I will write unto you an inventory of every thing that I have received, and in what case that every thing standeth, God willing. There is much as yet that I have not received; and as for your cattle in the park, there is three heifers, and three kine, which kine I have, I thank One (heifer) the vicar will deliver me for the cow he sold at Allhallows'-tide, and the other heifer he will sell, as he saith. He hath spoken unto the parson to have the tithing-calf ready. you. 'You shall perceive that your miller hath been with me making his moan; except that the water be stopped in time, the mill shall stand still, which will be to the great hinderance of all your tenants, and others also. The vicar and John Davy saith it must be made; but there is no setting forth in it as yet. The miller hath done his good will, and doth daily, unto his great pain; but it is not one man's work, as you know. Write you unto me in your letter of this matter; for if you write any thing unto them that it please them not, it shall be hid long enough from me because I shall not call on them. There is but few letters that cometh unto me from you but is opened before it cometh unto my hands, and sometimes it shall be drowned in Bacus Lane, an if it be not pleasure unto all parties. Write you unto them by parables, as though you knew nothing of this, because of the saving of my writer harmless of displeasure. I pray you to commend me unto my brothers and sisters, all in general, as well as though I had rehearsed them by name. And thus I leave you and all yours in the keeping of Jesu.' This pious commendatory conclusion is common to almost all the letters, varied with God have you in his keeping,' 'Give you long life,' The Trinity preserve you life,'The with long life and increase of honor,' &c. In these matters, there was certainly more of the form of piety then, than now; and forms, it may be observed, are valuable as ✦ Jane Basset could not write. this form, it would, perhaps, not be prudent too curiously to inquire. And yet its air of simplicity and goodness is very pleasing, were it only as record of that habit of bringing our Christian faith to bear upon the common business and friendly intercourse of life in which it must have originated. Quaint as it is, and unthinkingly written, as we doubt not it might often be, there is yet something striking and monitory in the old devout preamble to testamentary documents; and in their first bequest of man's body to the dust, whence it sprang, and his spirit to God who gave it. Poachers, it would appear, were a plague not unknown to our landed ancestors; who, if they could have had their own way, would have put into execution some rather more stringent game-laws than those which we find so intolerable now-a-days. At least, we must thus judge if we allow a lady to be their spokeswoman. The Countess Dowager of Oxford, writing to Cromwell (A. D. 1534), regrets that certain circumstances should have prevented his doing her the favor of putting these unwelcome intruders to the torture, in order to make them confess their guilt, as the Lord Chancellor was obliging enough to do for her mother! The aggravation of the case must certainly be taken into account; still though the lady was obliged, by this sudden intrusion of ' hunters,' to cut short a friendly visit to Mr. Secretary, we must say that to us, of the nineteenth century, it sounds a little strange that one of the softer sex should indicate such a remedy for the evil. That patrician fingers should trace the characters recommending torture, because some deer had been killed! Nay, that a woman could thus coolly write of wrenching sinews, and tearing muscle, to wring confession of any offence! Say not that the former days were better than these.' We need not wonder at the pitiless cruelty of men to their fellow-men, when woman's heart was thus steeled. It is hard to conceive of such a state of public opinion and feeling, as must prevail where sentiments so revolting as these could exist in the mind of a high-born matron; and be so quietly and naturally expressed, as though the horrid procedure were the merest thing of course. Thank heaven for the softening influence of modern refinement. Who does not retain a lively recollection of Henry VIII.'s favorite, Suffolk, the ac complished and chivalrous Brandon; who, | sire, our Creator to give you health and long in allusion to his romantic love-match with life.' Mary, sister to Henry, and widow of the French king, Louis XII., bore on his shield, at the celebrated Field of the Cloth of Poor soul! Louis, however, treated his reluctant bride with respectful attention and affection. The marriage was solemniz Gold, the whimsical but right sensible qua-ed by proxy, in September, 1514, and the train "Cloth of gold do not despise, Though thou art matched with cloth of frieze. Though thou art matched with cloth of gold." Some dozen letters, together with the prefixed notices, (which we must again remark as doing the greatest credit to the editor's zeal and pains,) give us the whole story, which is as interesting as it is romantic. The outlines of the sketch will be sufficiently familiar, but the filling up of the picture gives it its great charm. Betrothed when quite young to the Emperor Charles V., then Prince of Castile, the match was subsequently broken off; and Mary, whose affections had become engaged to Charles Brandon, was sought in marriage by Louis of France, who had fallen in love with her from a portrait that had been sent out to him-a union that could not have been particularly attract ive, under any circumstances; seeing the royal suitor was both old and sickly. Nevertheless, it was not one to be rejected for such trifles; neither is it always in the power of kings' daughters' to refuse the bestowal of their hand, merely because their heart cannot accompany it. There were political reasons for it, and so youth and beauty were sacrificed to age and decrepitude. Some letters passed between them before the ceremony of their marriage took place, and it must have cost the poor princess an effort, to write to her future magnificent but unloved spouse The thing which I now most desire and wish, is to hear good news of your health and good prosperity. . . . It will please you, moreover, my lord, to use and command me according to your good and agreeable pleasure, that I may obey and please you by the help of God....I have . . . heard what my cousin the Duke de Longueville has told me from you, in which I have taken great joy, felicity, and pleasure; for which, and for the honor which it has pleased you to do to me, I hold myself ever indebted and obliged to you, and thank you as cordially as I call. And because by my cousin you will hear . the very singular desire that I have to see you, and to be in your company, I forbear to write to you a longer letter, praying for the rest, same day he wrote to urge her immediate presence in France; whither she set out, in October, and was received with great interview, by riding forth, under pretence splendor. The king anticipated the desired Abbeville; and when they met, kissed her, of hunting, to meet her as she approached and whispered to her five or six good honest words.' Brandon, who followed her, as ambassador, informs his master that there was never queen in France that had demeaned herself more honorably and wiselier; . . . . and as for the king, there was never man that set his mind more upon woman than he does on her, because she demeans herself so winning unto him.' And she herself writes to Henry-' How lovingly the king, my husband, dealeth with me, the lord chamberlain . . . can clearly inform your grace.' ... But in yielding to her brother's wishes on the price of her acquiescence, stipulated that this occasion, it appears that Mary had, as after Louis's death she should be permitted to marry as she pleased; and Henry, who was aware of her affection for Suffolk, had given her a pledge to that effect. A permission of which she was at liberty to avail herself sooner, we should imagine, than she anticipated for her antique spouse only survived their union eighty-two days! Still, though she had Henry's promise, she doubted its fulfilment; for very soon after her becoming a widow, we find her thus addressing him :- "Sire, I beseech your grace that you will when I took my leave of you by the waterkeep all the promises that you promised me side. Sire, your grace knoweth well that I did marry for your pleasure at this time, and now, I trust, that you will suffer me to marry as me liketh for to do. . . . Sire, an if your grace will have granted me married in any place saving whereas my mind is, I will be there whereas your grace, nor no other, shall have any joy of me; for I promise your grace you shall hear that I will be in some religious house, the which, I think, your grace would be very sorry of, and all your realm.' Doubtful of Henry's keeping faith with her, and alarmed by rumors of a design to marry her into Flanders, the young queen, 'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin !" after being greatly distressed and harassed are ours; and they stand before us, 'bone in various ways, at last took the matter into of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.' her own hands, and settled it by a private marriage with Suffolk; a step which plunged them into considerable embarrassment, owing to the difficulty of concealing it from But the much desired pardon was at Henry, whose anger was much to be dread-length obtained-bought, we should say, ed. In this dilemma they made a friend of by the sacrifice of the whole of the queen's Wolsey; who, after giving the duke a dower, and some of her French property hearty scolding, and telling him that the beside; and cloth of gold and cloth of king was so incholered,' that he did not frieze,' as the story-books say, lived happily know how to help them, suggests that a ever after. Occasionally, it must be said, large bribe out of the princess's dower somewhat inconvenienced by the heavy might be the most acceptable peace-offer- price at which they purchased their happiing. And the queen, dear, silly woman-ness. We will venture to engage, it was kind!' lays all the blame upon herself; as- never regretted ! suring her irate brother, that she had put it to Suffolk, either to marry her in four days or lose her for ever. grace. 'Whereby I know well that I constrained him to break such promises as he made your And now your grace knoweth the both offences of the which I have been the only occasion. I most humbly, and as your most sorrowful sister requiring you to have compassion on us both, and to pardon our of fences, and that it will please your grace to write to me, and to my lord of Suffolk, some comfortable words." Bless her innocent heart! But we can scarcely forgive Brandon for following it up in the same style, and, Adam-like, screening himself behind his Eve, when it comes to his turn to make his apologies. And yet his letter to his incensed master affords touching evidence of the sincerity and strength of their attachment. 'She said that Charles, the emperor-the monk, again saw his betrothed at the court of England, the wife of him for whom she had dared so much. Surely he too had loved her; for amid festivities that celebrated his visit to our shores, we are told that he was too much moved to share in them, but sat, silently and moodily, apart. The system of wardship which existed in the good old times' is well known to have been an oppressive one. But it has generally been considered as one chiefly, if not altogether, confined to the higher classes, the nobility and gentry; so that we were scarcely prepared for such an illustration of it as that which these volumes afford us. 'Pleaseth your good lordship,' says Mrs., Joanna Creke, to Cromwell, 'to understand bans, that then was in those days, had wrongthat fourscore years past, the abbot of St. Alfully my husband's grandfather to his ward; when he was fourteen years old, the abbot sold him to a fishmonger of London, and he kept an she went into Eng-him two years.' land she should go into Flanders, to the which she said that she would rather to be She goes on to narrate the subsequent torn to pieces than ever she would come fate of this child, to whom the abbot at there, and with that weeped. I never saw length made sundry gifts, as acknowledgwoman so weep .. and so I granted ment of, and amends for, the injuries he had thereunto, and so she and I was married.' done him. But, unjustly acquired, and We are too much in the habit of regard- harshly exercised as had been the power of ing historical personages as we do figures this guardian, the curious part of it is, that in an historical painting: they seem as ut- his authority seems to have been regarded terly removed beyond the circle of our sym-as heritable, by his successors; for this pathies. But how such life-like scenes and details do away with all this! A chord of our common nature is struck, and we feel that heart sounds in unison with heart. We feel that we are all bound in one common bond of humanity with those whose 'thick, small, dust' has, ere this, half effaced the perishing records of their mortality. Their hopes, their fears, and cares strange statement is but the preamble to the poor woman's petition that Cromwell would protect her children from a similar fate, with which they were threatened. She entreats his assistance, or else the abbot that now is will do my children wrong; for he will not show his records, but doth say he will have my son to his ward, and I am not able to go to the law with him.' So help. had she none, unless my lord privy seal's tion, which she did not long endure alone; interference could avail her. It is some for within a year of James's death, she es improvement on such a state of things, even to be in the lord chancellor's hands! Widows were almost as unfortunately circumstanced, as the king would occasionally marry them, according to his pleasure rather than their own. So that we find one noble lady applying, as usual, to Cromwell, for redress in a case of this sort, concerning one who appears to have been sent for the purpose of making himself agreeable to her, and of whom of all creatures alive, she could not find in her heart to make a husband.' Her hope is, that the king' will be so much good and gracious lord to give me liberty to marry, if ever it be my chance, such one as I may find in my heart to match me unto.' A wish so moderate, that we trust my Lady Audelay had it gratified. poused a Douglas, Earl of Angus; and by so doing, raised a storm in the country which was not easily laid, and from which she suffered severely. Many and varied were the difficulties into which it brought her, she had even to contend with actual poverty; and in all her troubles, her appeals for assistance to her brother, and his minister, Wolsey, are incessant. I am at great expenses,' she writes to the former, . . . and my money is near hand wasted; if you send not the sooner other succors of men, or money, I shall be super-expended, which were to my dishonor.' And again, two months after, she puts it more strongly: "I pray you to send me some money, as you think necessary; for it is not your honor that I or my children should want.' During the commotions to which the quesBut of all the busy lady scribblers of that tion of the regency gave birth-whether she busy-sixteenth century, commend us to or Albany should have it-we find this vigMargaret of Scotland, as the most intermi- orous-minded woman unweariedly at work; nable. From our very heart we pity Harry scheming, plotting, acting, till at length, the Eighth for those everlasting begging touched by her distress, Henry sent for her letters, produced by the unwearied hand, into England, promising to provide for her and inexhaustible brain, and particularly there. By stratagem she got out of Scotempty exchequer, of his royal sister. The land; and after a tedious detention by illstereotyped plague of 'poor relations' seems ness at Harbottle, she set out for London, to have fallen on his head with a vengeance. where she remained some time with her She deluges him with missives; it is a posi- brother. But even here, she was so much tive hailstorm of paper petitions-two, three, pressed by poverty as to have to beg Wolfour, and even five printed pages long, and sey to borrow money for her of the king, most of them in her own eminently evil till her own rents, &c., should be paid her, hand.' No wonder that her requests were being loth to speak to him about it herself. treated, as she often complains, with so lit- She remained nearly two years in England, tle regard; and that she occasionally got and then, finding things rather quieter at snapped at in reply. But still, despite neg- home, returned thither; being met on the ligence and rebuffs, she kept on her un- borders by an escort of nobles and soldiers, daunted course; perpetually backing her to the number of three thousand. She endemands with intimations of the damaged tered Edinburgh, June, 1517, and seemed respectability that would accrue to Henry, satisfied with her reception, except in one were she denied this, that, and the other particular-that there was an attempt to money or goods, as the case might be. She prevent her having access to her son, the persecuted him from a pure desire to up-young king, which was a severe trial to her hold the family credit! It was well for him that those were not the days of Rowland Hill and pennypostages, else (supposing that possible) she had worried him still more extensively. But her position was a distressing one, and it was rendered worse by her own imprudence and disreputable conduct. Widowed at an early age, by the death of her husband at the disastrous Flodden Field, she very soon found herself guardian of the infant prince, and regent of his turbulent kingdom. An anxious and perilous posi maternal feelings. It has been said that her widowhood was a brief one. But her attachment to Angus, so hastily and imprudently gratified, was not destined to be a lasting one. Jealousy, and dissatisfaction with his assuming a right to interfere in the disposal of her revenues, made her as vehement against him as she had been for him, and she seems early to have contemplated a divorce, as the best means of getting rid of him and his impositions: while, as usual, the want of money, added its irritating influence to her chafed spirit. In one of her |