The legend, however, only relates their sufferings, their struggles, and their desperate purpose. It is silent as to whether these fatal intentions were ever carried into execution. It may be hoped, therefore, that these love-sick youths recovered in time from their love fit. The study of the law does not tend to foster romance, and hard work in most cases is an effectual panacea against the blighting effects of hopeless passion.
Standing in the old Hall, we can see, in fancy, the grand and picturesque entertainment. We can see the young and graceful, though somewhat stern-faced girl, queening it so royally amongst her enthusiastic admirers. How happy she is now in her consciousness of youth, and consequent beauty, in her royal dignity, a Queen at last in her glorious kingdom. Above all, especially happy in being at length free, no longer in daily terror of a prison or a scaffold. No longer dreading to have to seal by her blood her resolve to keep intact her royal position as heir to the throne, safe at last from the terror of being called on to lay down her life ere she would abjure her religion for that of her bigot sister Mary.
No wonder the young Sovereign was then bright and happy.
It is sad to think of the changes that years brought about. It is sad to think of the suspicious, cold-hearted, merciless old woman, signing not only the death warrant of the beautiful cousin of whom she was so jealous, but also the death warrants of the men whom she had professed to love.
Truly it may be said that envy, malice, and uncharitableness are the vices to which the great and prosperous are peculiarly exposed. Greatness and prosperity eventually produce the very whips that scourge those who have not been constantly chastened by care and sorrow; for the Almighty bestows His good gifts far more equally than we mortals can in general either perceive or understand.
There is a peace of heart in lowly stations that the great can but seldom enjoy. The biography of celebrated monarchs and statesmen sufficiently shows that no rank, however exalted, is exempt from mortifications and annoyances, trying alike to temper and to pride, and it is very evident from such histories that the noblest of all governments, the government of oneself, is far more difficult of attainment for the exalted than for the humbler inhabitants of earth.
Not only during Queen Elizabeth's reign, but at a much earlier period, the Inns of Court had been celebrated for the magnificence of their masques and revels.
The first entertainment of this kind, of which there is any certain record, took place at Gray's Inn in the year 1525.
Hall in his chronicle thus speaks of it: