THE CORONATION CHAIR.
But all else was of slight interest—Duke and Earl, belted knight and high-born gentleman—beside the lady for whom the parade was ordered. She was seated in an open litter covered with cloth of gold shot with white. Her robe was silver tissue under a mantle of ermine, auburn ringlets flowing on her shoulders below the ruby crown. The ladies attending were mounted on palfreys with trappings that shone with gold and crimson. It was in bridal June, when merry England is merriest, and with shoutings and trumpetings Anne entered Westminster, and was crowned at the high altar of the Abbey. Royal purple took the place of crimson robes, and the unholy marriage was preceded by the Holy Sacrament, and made a sinful mockery with vows solemn and binding. Countesses and marchionesses were the Queen's train-bearers, and the world seemed at her feet. No warning prophet was there to foretell that the triumph would pass like a vision of the night, and when the blossoming hedges had showered their snows three times she would slip from her high place and, for her sweet lord's pleasure, fall a headless corpse.
Bluff King Harry was highly pleased with the coronation show, and the bride, radiant with bloom and happiness, held his fickle fancy for a time. She was used to admiration, and knew the art of pleasing. Studying the moods and tenses of her fitful master, she bent her finer nature down to his. Did he wish to ride, she could try the mettle of his best jennet, her glossy brown hair mingling with the floating plumes of her hat, making a sunlit picture. Would his Majesty walk, in banquet-hall or bower, on greensward or under silken pavilion, she was ready to trip with fairy tread. Did he want music, she charmed with lute and song. If the stormy ruler preferred silence, she could sit still as chiselled marble till his varying temper brought her lord to her side again.
Her study was difficult, for absolute power makes tyrants, and the King subdued to his humor every one about him. No man ever ventured to ask why do you so. He varied court gayeties, and maintained them also, by plundering churches and abbeys; and burning at slow fires sainted men as high above him as the heavens are above the earth, because they presumed to differ from him in opinion of the body and blood of Christ. He grew meaner and more cruel every day, fattened and bloated into a hateful beast, and to this most Christian King belongs the fame of being the first to torture women with machines made expressly to grind and twist human bones. In London Tower to-day you may see these infernal devices, and the rack where an undaunted woman was stretched till the tormentor refused to turn the wheels again; then she was carried in a chair to a fire and burned alive.
And this was free and merry England three hundred years ago!
Where were the people?
The strangest part of history is their submission to bloody despotism. The time was rich in heroes—nobles come of generations born to command, who had looked death in the face on land and sea, and knew no fear; they were as silent slaves. Thoughtful men grown gray in the service of the state were tortured, maimed, and crippled. The princely Buckingham was sent to the block, and gallant chiefs and captains were racked for heresy, and the pleasure of the King was the pain of dying men.
It was not the oppression of an army or a mob of enraged persecutors, as in France two centuries later, but a one-man power, a Tudor reign of terror. So the years went by, and King Henry went on fattening till he could hardly see.
It was written of him a generation afterward: "If all the patterns of a merciless tyrant had been lost to the world, they might have been found in this Prince." Royal blood was precious in those evil days; all below the highest were mere worms. The court poet wrote verses that made Henry the brightest star of a constellation composed of Hector, Cæsar, Judas Maccabæus, Joshua, Charlemagne, King Arthur, Alexander, David, Godfrey de Bouillon; and the satisfied monarch believed whatever was said or sung in his praise, and loaded minstrel and troubadour with costly presents, jewelled badges, and decorations.