ANNE'S CROWN.
here was once a King of England whose family name should have been Bluebeard, but it happened to be Henry Tudor, and a proud old name it was too. Born in 1501, Prince Henry was just eighteen when he came to the throne, and his subjects were well pleased to see an end to the long Wars of the Roses, because in him were united both lines, the White and the Red, and that meant peace. He had a most fortunate start—riches, power, health, friends. Life lay fair before; what would he do with it? His unpopular father's avarice had massed an immense fortune, and the son was quite ready to spend it. He was well educated, a bold huntsman and dashing rider, full of spirit and energy, and with a turn for letters and business. He must have had wonderful strength, for his armor weighed ninety-two pounds. It is in London Tower yet, is of German-work, silvered and engraved over with saintly legends and scroll-work, and the initials H. and K. for Henry and Katharine of Aragon.
The King was exceedingly attractive. An Ambassador from Italy, the land of beauty, wrote: "Nature could not have done more for him. He is much handsomer than any other sovereign of Christendom—a good deal handsomer than the King of France—very fair, and his whole frame admirably proportioned. He is fond of hunting, and never takes his diversion without tiring eight or ten horses, which he has stationed beforehand along the line of country he means to take; and when one is tired he mounts another, and before he gets home they are all exhausted. He is extremely fond of tennis, at which game it is the prettiest thing in the world to see him play, his fair skin glowing through a shirt of the finest texture."
HENRY VIII.
Bluebeard had six wives. The second is the one whose woful tale I have to tell. Early in his reign he married Katharine of Aragon, a noble Princess, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, whose girlhood had been spent among the orange gardens and tinkling fountains of the Alhambra.
She had a maid of honor named Anne Boleyn, a light-hearted damsel, skilled in music, singing delightfully, full of repartee, with a laugh gay as her costumes and dances. Her favorite dress was blue velvet starred with silver, a mantle of watered silver lined with minever, and on her little feet blue velvet shoes flashing each with a diamond star; around her head a gold-colored aureole of gauze above a fall of ringlets rich and rare. A toilet that well became her dimples, her fresh lips, her teeth like hailstones, and her witching glance. Tall and slender was she, a true daughter of the Howards, and so "passing sweet and cheerful" that every man who looked on her was her lover.
At the midnight ball given to the French Ambassador, the King chose her for his partner in the dance, and Mistress Anne's pretty head was wellnigh turned by the royal flatterer's whispers of sparkling eyes and twinkling feet and the fairest hand he ever touched, and then he kissed her.
Soon he began to write letters, beginning "Mine own Sweetheart," and sent her a jewel valued at fifteen thousand crowns. Then he would ride out to visit her in the chestnut avenues of Hever Castle, gallantly prancing along the greenwood, and sounding his bugle to announce his approach, for he went unattended.