This will account for the piggish habits and propensities so conspicuous in the inhabitants of certain places in England, and whose partiality for swine's flesh, is proverbial. The sheepish manners of our students and school-boys, may also be attributed to the mutton so generally alloted to them. I might continue my observations, ad infinitum. I might say, that the wisdom of the goose was discoverable in—whose love of that, "most abused of God's creatures," is well known: and that the sea-side predilections of a certain Bart., of festive notoriety, were occasioned by his partiality for turtle.
QUÆSITOR.
WHITEHALL.
MARRIAGE OF ANNE BOLEYN
(For the Mirror)
The extraordinary revolution which took place in our religious institutions in the time of Henry VIII., has rendered his reign one of the most important in the annals of ecclesiastical history. For the great changes at that glorious æra, the reformation, when the clouds of ignorance and superstition were dispelled, we are principally indebted to the beauteous, but unfortunate Anne Boleyn, whose influence with the haughty monarch, was the chief cause of the abolition of the papal supremacy in England; one of the greatest blessings ever bestowed by a monarch on his country. Intimately associated with, and the principal scene of these important events, was the ancient palace of Whitehall,[3] which Henry, into whose possession it came on the premunire of Wolsey, considerably enlarged and beautified, changing its name from that of York Place, to the one by which it is still designated.
In this building, an event, the most important, in its consequences, recorded in the history of any country, took place,—the marriage of Anne Boleyn, who had been created Countess of Pembroke, with the "stern Harry." The precise period of these nuptials, owing to the secrecy with which they were performed, is involved in considerable obscurity, and has given rise to innumerable controversies among historians; the question not being even to this hour satisfactorily decided as to whether they were solemnized in the month of November, 1532, or in that of January, 1533. Hall,[4] Holinshed,[5] and Grafton, whose authority several of our more modern historians[6] have followed, place it on the 14th of November, 1532, the Feast Day of St. Erkenwald; but Stow[7] informs us, that it was celebrated on the 25th of January 1533; and his assertion bears considerable weight, being corroborated by a letter from Archbishop Cranmer, dated "the xvij daye of June," 1533, from his "manor of Croydon," to Hawkyns, the embassador at the emperor's court. In this letter the prelate says, "she was marid muche about St. Paules daye last, as the condicion thereof dothe well appere by reason she ys now sumwhat bygg with chylde."[8] This statement, coming as it does from so authentic a source, and coinciding with the accounts of Stow, Wyatt,[9] and Godwin[10] may, we think, be regarded as the most correct. Her marriage was not made known until the following Easter, when it was publicly proclaimed, and preparations made for her coronation, which was conducted with extraordinary magnificence in Whitsuntide. Her becoming pregnant soon after her marriage "gave great satisfaction to the king, and was regarded by the people as a strong proof of the queen's former modesty and virtue."[11] This latter circumstance, however, has not met with that consideration among historians which it appears to merit; for we must remember that Elizabeth was born on the 7th of the following September, an event, which would perhaps rather tend to confirm the opinion of Hall, in contradiction to that of Stow, if, indeed, Anne had been proof against the advances of Henry, previous to their marriage, which some writers have doubted.
Lingard, whose History is now in the course of publication, intimates that the ceremony was performed "in a garret, at the western end of the palace of Whitehall;"[12] this, however, when we consider the haughty character of Henry, is totally improbable, and rests entirely on the authority of one solitary manuscript. There is no reason, however, to doubt but that they were married in some apartment in that palace, and most probably in the king's private closet.[13] Dr. Rowland Lee, one of the royal chaplains, and afterwards Bishop of Coventry officiated, in the presence only of the Duke of Norfolk, uncle to the Lady Anne, and her father, mother, and brother. Lord Herbert,[14] whose authority has been quoted by Hume, says, that Cranmer was also present, but this is undoubtedly an error, as that prelate had only just then returned from Germany, and was not informed of the circumstance until two weeks afterwards, as appears from the following passage in his letter to Hawkyns, before quoted:—"Yt hath bin reported thorowte a greate parte of the realme that I married her; which was playnly false, for I myself knew not thereof a fortenyght after it was donne."
It may not, perhaps, prove uninteresting to our readers, or quite irrelevant to the subject, to close this brief account of the marriage of Anne Boleyn, with the copy of a letter from that queen to "Squire Josselin, upon ye birth of Q. Elizabth," preserved among the manuscripts in the British Museum.[15]