Again the Tower guns sounded—the signal for death, not life. The solemn knell was music of wedding-bells in the listening ear of Henry. Dressed for the chase, he had stood under a spreading oak waiting impatiently till the sun-dial told noon, when the heavy booming filled the air. "Ha! ha!" he cried, with unnatural joy. "The deed is done. Uncouple the hounds, and away!" And mounting his horse, he rode at fiery speed to his bride expectant at Wolf Hall. The peerless Seymour, the pure white lily-bud, in the freshness of life's morning married Bluebeard the very next day.
The wedding feast was spread, the coronation a cloudless splendor; submissive courtiers held to the ancient proverb that the crown covers all mistakes, and they kissed the bloody hand of their master and hung on the smiles of the youthful Queen.
The sins of Anne Boleyn lie lightly on her now. Whatever her vanity and follies, she was a thousand thousand times too good for her "merciful Prince."
The fair Seymour, happily for herself, died the next year after her marriage, and Henry made offers to several royal ladies, and to an Italian Princess who had the shrewdness to decline, saying she might consider the proposal if she had two heads, but could not afford to lose her only one by the axe. And it was a good answer. A German Princess married him, and was divorced for Catherine Howard, who was murdered as Anne Boleyn had been; and then came the last wife, Catherine Parr, widow of Lord Latimer. By that time the King was grown a beast, with savage will unbroken, ready to kill, kill, kill whatever opposed caprice or whim. She lived to nurse him, this proud lady, till his bloated body almost rotted; he became a loathsome object, polluting the air (I may say the world), fearful to approach; and she paid a high price for her diamond coronet and whatever else came by the death of the despot she outlived. Of the latter days of Henry the Eighth the less said the better.
Beloved, these are sorry tales to tell young readers, but the Tower is a dreary place, and the greater portion of its history was made in barbarous ages. The historian mousing through the records of a terrible past has little pleasure, except in the thought that these murderous old days are ended forever. It is now a government store-house and armory.
One more little story, and we say good-by to the famous Tower whose foundations were laid by Julius Cæsar.
Not every reader of its history remembers that the greatest of England's rulers was once prisoner there. When Bloody Mary, daughter of Henry the Eighth and Katherine of Aragon, was Queen, she had Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, arrested for conspiracy. The Princess, who could look down a lion, clad herself in white to proclaim her innocence, and rode to her prison in an open litter, that she might be seen by the people. A sick girl, faint and pale, her mien was lofty and defiant. It was but eleven days since Lady Jane Grey had been beheaded, and no one, high or low, knew when he might be marched to the dungeon or the block.
At the Traitors' Gate the Princess Elizabeth refused to land. One of the lords attending told her she must not choose, and, as it was raining, offered her his cloak. She dashed it from her "with a good dash," and setting her foot on the stairs, exclaimed: "I am no traitor! Here lands as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs. Before Thee, O God, I speak it, having no other friend but Thee." Instead of passing through the opened gates, she sat on a cold wet stone, determined not to enter the prison of her own mother. However, the dauntless maid was forced to yield. The death of her half-sister made her Queen, and she reigned long and wisely, with a strange mixture of weakness in the midst of her wisdom and strength.