And left thee but a very prey to time;
Having no more but thought of what thou wert,
To torture thee the more, being what thou art.”
What thoughts must have chased each other in lightning rapidity through the mind of beautiful, brilliant, witty Anne Boleyn, during those short seventeen days she passed in the Tower before she was led out to execution. What experience of life had she not compressed into those three little years of usurpation, during which she spurned “heads like foot balls,” laughed, danced, and jested away her poor, butterfly life? What remorse must have been hers when the sad, pale face of Katharine arose before her! What unspeakable anguish when the coquettish features of Jane Seymour swam before her weeping eyes!
On the 19th of May, 1536, when hedge and field were bursting into bloom, when birds sang and soft breezes played, when all nature must have breathed of beauty, hope and life—Anne Boleyn went forth the second time from the Tower to receive her crown; not this time an earthly diadem, glittering with jewels, but the thorny crown of martyrdom. Not in cloth of gold and blazing with gems, but in sable robes went she to this coronation, and her only salute was the dull boom of the cannon which announced to the royal ruffian waiting at Richmond that he was free.
The Tower of London has been used not alone for a fortress and prison, but also for a palace. All of the kings from William to Charles II. held occasional court in the Tower. A palace occupied a space in the inner ward, between the southwest corner of the White Tower and the Record, Salt and Broadarrow Towers. The queens had a suite extending from the Lanthorn to the southeast of the White Tower. And near the Record Tower was a great hall which demanded forty fir trees to repair it at the time of the marriage festivities of Henry III. and Eleanore of Provence.
When Edward the Black Prince took prisoner King John of France, he lodged his royal captive in this palace, and King John gave an entertainment for his captor in this great hall. The beautiful Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV., and queen of Henry VII., resided for a time in this palace, and passed from thence to her coronation. Sixteen years later she lay in state twelve days in the royal chapel in the White Tower, where her knights and ladies kept solemn vigil beside her bier. What an impressive scene it must have been! The windows all ablaze with lights, and an illuminated hearse holding the royal dead.
Queen Mary held court in the Tower directly after she had defeated Northumberland and the Dudleys. The ancient custom of a state procession from the Tower to Westminster was observed for the last time at the coronation of Charles II.
Very near the Devereux Tower is a plain, unpretentious building—the chapel of St. Peter Ad Vincula. It is small, having but one nave and one side aisle, and is quite without ornamentation. But marvelous interest invests it. Here Lady Jane was buried; here the body of poor Anne Boleyn was thrust into an old chest and hastily interred in the vaults; here lies the dust of Northumberland, Thomas Cromwell, Somerset, Surrey, and Essex, teaching the terribly solemn lesson that ambition, talents, fame, form no sure bulwark against death.
“To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow