“The Queen!” exclaimed Alva, sheathing his sword. “Nay, then, we must needs obey. Your excellency will excuse this momentary interruption. Pray pass on.”
As may be supposed, the ambassador was not slow to avail himself of the permission.
BOOK II.
THE ROYAL NUPTIALS.
CHAPTER I.
OLD WINCHESTER FROM SAINT CATHERINE’S HILL.
Know you the fair hill, crowned by a clump of trees, with a zone around its waist, and a carpet of smooth turf spread out upon its banks, arising from the well-wooded and well-watered meads in the immediate vicinity of the ancient city of Winchester? If you are a Wykehamist, you know it well. Graven on the brow of the hill is a labyrinth, or maze, the work of a poor student, who, being debarred from the delights of home during the holiday season, occupied his weary hours in this strange task, while his heart-sickness found relief in a ditty, still sung by his successors at Wykeham’s famous school. The legend goes on to relate that the hapless youth, who thus carved a memorial on the hill, pined away and died beneath one of the trees on its summit. If so, his gentle spirit must still haunt the spot! Lower down, an entrenchment, deeply cut in the chalk, and attributed to the Dane, encompasses the hill. The base of the mount is washed by the silver Itchen—a stream dear to old Izaak Walton, whose remains have rested, ever since his “ninety years and more” were told, in the adjacent cathedral. Other hills there are hard by—as Saint Giles’s, whereon the greatest fair in England was annually held from the period of the Conquest to the reign of Henry VI.; and Saint Mary Magdalene’s, on which the Empress Maud and the valorous prelate Henry de Blois, brother of King Stephen, met to treat—but neither of these eminences are comparable in beauty of form, or in charm of situation, to fair Saint Catherine’s Hill.
If you are a Wykehamist, we repeat, you well know Saint Catherine’s Hill. Oft, in happy, bygone days—far too soon flown—have you wended, with a joyous band of your schoolfellows, across the meadows and by the brink of the meandering Itchen towards your favourite hill. Oft, in summer-tide, have you plunged into the deep pool hard by the mill—oft have you thrown the line upon the glassy water and dragged forth the speckled trout—oft have you lingered on the rustic bridge and watched the light skiff, rowed by a comrade, shoot swiftly under it—oft have you joined the merry groups seated on the banks at the foot of the hill, or started in the mimic chase with the fleetest runners of the crew—oft have you climbed the steep sides of the eminence, have tracked its circling trench, threaded the intricacies of its maze, or, reclining beneath the shade of its tree, enjoyed the glorious prospect of the ancient city commanded from the point. Oft thence have you gazed upon the turrets and crocketed pinnacles of the venerable pile, erected by your benefactor, the revered William of Wykeham. Deep is the debt you owe him. Nobler seat of learning there cannot be than Winchester College; second only in architectural beauty to regal Eton. Well-nigh five hundred years has your famous school endured. May it last five hundred more!
Beautiful, most beautiful, is, now-a-days, the view from Saint Catherine’s Hill; but in the middle of the 16th century, when we must now regard it, it was infinitely more so. From this height, the fine old city, skirted on the south by lordly trees, was beheld in its highest perfection. Thronged with convents, colleges, hospitals, churches, and other buildings of ancient date, and great beauty of architecture, and boasting one of the grandest cathedrals in the kingdom, Winchester had then a grave, monastic air—something of which it yet retains, despite the many and grievous changes it has undergone. True, its religious communities and charitable establishments had been suppressed by Henry VIII., and their revenues seized upon, but the spoiler had spared the edifices. Most of these monasteries and convents were restored by Mary, and the long exiled monks and nuns had just got back to their old abodes.