design upon her person. And it is observable, of that strange and capricious tyrant, that he rarely indulged in promiscuous amours, but always palliated the inconstancy of his disposition, by the respectable sanction of matrimony. It would have been happy, perhaps, for his first wives, if he had allowed himself a greater latitude in this respect and, instead of making them suffer for his own caprice, had sought, among the willing beauties of the court, an occasional relief to his domestic disgust and jealousies. Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry the Eighth, was born in the year 1507. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas Boleyn, afterwards Earl of Wiltshire and Ormond, by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. She was thus allied to all the principal nobility of the kingdom, and might, possibly, through her mother, claim a remote descent even from the crown itself. But her father, though employed by the King on several embassies, does not appear to have been opulent. At the age of seven she was carried over to France, with Mary, the sister of Henry, who was married to Louis the Twelfth. When, upon the death of Louis, the QueenDowager returned to England, Anne remained attached. to the court of France, being many years in the service of Claude, the Queen of Francis the First; and afterwards passed into the family of the Duchess of Alençon, his sister, a woman of singular merit. Her beauty and accomplishments, from her earliest years, were admired in the gay and splendid court of Francis. Many of the French writers, and the amusing Brantôme among the rest, have mangled her fair fame in the most outrageous manner. Not content with consigning her to the arms ENGLAND.] ANNE BOLEYN. of Francis himself, they represent her as the common wanton of his courtiers; and seem pleased that a woman, whose morals were thus decried, should have been permitted to share, and disgrace, the throne of England. But accusations so general as these, and for the veracity of which not the slightest proof has been adduced, have been disregarded, by English historians, as unworthy of refutation. The exact time when she returned to England is not certainly known, but it was, probably, in 1527, and she was soon after appointed maid of honour to the Queen. The Lord Percy, eldest son of the Earl of Northumberland, and notwithstanding his high rank, a domestic of Wolsey, paid his addresses to her. Her consent to a marriage with him may prove that her design upon the heart of the King was not so early formed as has been supposed; and that she, at that time, little thought of aspiring to the honours of royalty. But this union was opposed by the cardinal, for some private reasons which have not been satisfactorily explained. That a woman, educated in all the elegant accomplishments of the French court, should have excited peculiar admiration in the court of Henry, where the manners still retained all the grossness of the age, cannot be wondered at; and that, thus endowed, she should have attracted the notice of the King, may be considered equally natural. Henry's scruples had made him break off all conjugal commerce with his Queen, but as he still maintained an intercourse of civility and friendship with her, he had occasion, in the frequent visits which he paid her, to observe the youth, the beauty, and the charms, of Anne Boleyn. Finding the accomplishments of her mind not inferior to her personal graces, he entertained But the design of raising her to the throne, and was, per- The eagle's force subdues eache byrde that flyes, If we admit him to be the author of these lines, it may be considered as not among the least singularities in the incomprehensible character of Henry, that he was, perhaps, not the most contemptible poet of his time, and possessed a soul susceptible of the charms of music*. His * He was skilled in music, could sing his part, and used to compose services for his chapel.-Vide English Worthies, page 12. A service composed by him is still performed in some cathedrals. In the British Museum is preserved, a missal, which belonged to Henry the Eighth, after his breach with the church of Rome;-in the Kalendar he has blotted out all the saints that had been Popes. There is a song, said to have been written by Anne Boleyn, in Sir John Hawkins's History of Music. ! ENGLAND.] ANNE BOLEYN. letters to Boleyn have been preserved, and are now in the Public Library of Paris. They are much superior, both for style and sentiment, to his miserable polemical productions. The hand writing is strong and clear, and might be easily decyphered, but for the numerous abbreviations. How the French became possessed of these letters is an historical fact which was not explained to the writer of this memoir, when he visited that celebrated literary establishment; but it may be presumed that they found their way to France upon the death of Charles the First, when his papers and libraries were sold and dispersed. When the cause itself was evoked to Rome for the decision of the church, and the ingenuity of Cranmer had secured to the King the means of obtaining his divorce, in defiance of the pope's authority, he determined to stand all consequences, and give a loose to his new attachment. In September, 1532, he created Boleyn Marchioness of Pembroke, that he might raise her by degrees to the elevation he designed for her; and on the 25th of January following, he privately celebrated his marriage. Rowland Lea, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, officiated at the ceremony, in the presence of the Duke of Norfolk, uncle to the new Queen, her father, mother, and broth er. The early pregnancy of Anne, while it added to the satisfaction of the King, was considered, by the people, as a strong proof of her former modesty and virtue. It also, necessarily, accelerated the measures of Henry, who, in order to evince his disregard to the pope, publicly avowed his marriage; and, to remove all doubts of its legality, he prepared measures for declaring, by a formal sentence, the invalidity of his former marriage with Katharine-a declaration which ought naturally to have preceeded his union with Anne. Cranmer accordingly pronounced the sentence which annulled the former marriage, as unlawful and invalid, and ratified the nuptials of Boleyn,-who was, on the 1st of June, publicly crowned Queen, with all the pomp and solemnity which corresponded with the magnificence of Henry's temper. To complete his satisfaction on the conclusion of this intricate and vexatious affair, the Queen was safely delivered, on the 7th of September, of a daughter, who received the name of Elizabeth, and who afterwards swayed the sceptre with so much renown and felicity. He was so much delighted with the birth of this child, that he soon after conferred on her the title of Princess of Wales; a step somewhat irregular, as she could only be presumptive, not apparent heir to the crown. His regard for his new Queen appeared rather to increase than to diminish by his marriage, and all men expected to see the entire ascendant of one who had thus mounted a throne, from which her birth had seemed to exclude her; and who, by a proper mixture of severity and indulgence, had managed so untractable a spirit as that of Henry. In order to efface, as much as possible, all marks of his former marriage, Lord Mountjoy was sent to the unfortunate and divorced Katharine, to inform her that she was thenceforth to be treated only as Princess-Dowager of Wales; and all means were employed to make her acquiesce in that determination. The Queen soon became extremely popular with the nation, and she was universally admired and beloved for the sweetness of her temper, and a spirit of munificence that uniformly characterised her. In the last nine months |