the body over London Bridge through the city to St. Paul's. There the Bishop of Rochester sang a solemn Requiem Mass. On the following day the King's remains were conveyed in state through Fleet Street, the Strand, and Charing Cross, to their last resting-place in Westminster Abbey. The coffin was taken out of its chariot by six lords, and placed on a catafalque shaped like a pyramid, and surrounded by one hundred lights. On the top was stretched an effigy of the late King in his robes of state. This singular structure was surrounded by three sets of rails, within the first of which sat the mourners, within the second the knights, all bearing banners, the officers of arms and the Garter King-of-Arms occupying the third. A solemn service ensued. On the following day, after three Masses had been said by as many Bishops, the King's charger was brought into the church and "offered," together with his coat-of-arms, sword, helmet, and shield. The body was finally interred in the vault of the chapel which still bears this King's name. The Treasurer and the Comptroller broke their staves into the grave. All was now concluded, but, ere the mourners parted, Garter heralded the new monarch by proclaiming, "Vive le roi Henri le huitième, roi d'Angleterre et de France, et Sire d'Irland." The mourners, and all who had attended, then withdrew to Westminster Hall to dine.

In the social life of England, and especially of London, at this period, Henry the Seventh's mother, Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, widow of Edmund Tudor,-the eldest son of Owen Tudor and Queen Katherine of Valois,-held a very conspicuous place. She had a prodigiously long life, and the people were accustomed to seeing her, for she was conspicuous at all great Court functions, tournaments, and Passion Plays. This Princess was even as Torrigiano represented her on her superb monument in the Abbey, a little spare woman with an austere face much wrinkled by time and sorrow. She was a child of fourteen when she was first married; people in high life, as we have seen, married very young in those days, even as in low life they do to-day. At fifteen she was a widow, and the mother of a fatherless King of England. Thus her only child was her idol and sole preoccupation through many and many troubled years, during which she was thrice married, her

last husband being a Stanley, Earl of Derby, who brought the influence of his great house to bear upon the fortunes of her son, and decide, as Dr. Gairdner points out, the critical day of Bosworth. The Lady Margaret was a typical great lady of her time. Fisher, who was her confessor, relates many anecdotes of her austerity, her fastings, and her prayers; how she always wore a hair shirt, and how, from religious scruples, she separated from her husband, even as Queen Emma did from the Confessor. She was a cultured woman for the age in which she lived; she translated books of devotion from the French, patronised Caxton, and bequeathed a name honoured to this day both at Oxford and Cambridge. Her genius for intrigue was of infinite use to the King, who treated her with the utmost consideration, but not affection-of that sentiment he was quite incapable. To her he owed his marriage with Elizabeth of York, and she assisted him in most other important matters, making herself especially useful to him in his negotiations with the Spanish sovereigns. The Lady of Richmond and Derby's maternal care was not confined to promoting King Henry's glory, but paid attention also to his domestic comfort. She organised his household and attended to the arrangements for his queen's numerous confinements. After her death it was said of this strange little woman, so scrupulous in her devotions and so unscrupulous in politics, that she was-"Unkind to none, never forgetful of any kindness or service done to her. Neither was she revengeful or cruel." She died two months after her son's death, and was sumptuously buried in Westminster Abbey. In her day, she was only one of many. Claude of France and Katherine of Aragon were just such women, and so too, in another walk of life, was Margaret Paston. As we approach the era of the Reformation, such types of austere women become very rare, and are replaced by the brilliant and worldly ladies of the Courts of Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and of the Stuarts. No doubt "King Hal," when he mentioned his grandmother, spoke of her as a worthy but old-fashioned dame, and as one not at all up to date. Do we not at times think the same of our own grandmothers, and even of our mothers?

1 Funeral Oration of the Lady Derby, mother of King Henry VII.

Margaret, Countess of Richmond and
Edition Hymers, p. 109.

CHAPTER XIX

THE RIVERSIDE PALACES OF THE SIXTEENTH

CENTURY

I. FROM THE TOWER TO Whitehall

OTHIC London reached the apogee of its glory in the first years of the reign of Henry VIII. It may be described, at that moment, as complete; not a church, not a monastery, not a hospital, nor any ecclesiastical institution had been suppressed or demolished. The commercial prosperity of the country, which, notwithstanding adverse circumstances, had been very great during the previous hundred years, had enabled the wealthy classes not only to build fine houses, but to enrich the innumerable churches with countless works of art, pictures, carved and gilded Flemish triptychs, exquisitely wrought ironwork, gorgeous plate, noble chantries, altar-tombs, monumental brasses, and costly vestments. The inventories of the monastic churches taken at the time of the Dissolution,

1 There is good evidence that the majority of the pictures and carved triptychs in the London churches before the Reformation were either imported from Flanders or Italy, or executed by foreign artists established in England. Foreigners were not, however, the only artists who embellished our churches. The fine tomb of John IV. of Brittany was sculptured by Thomas Coyln, Thomas Holewell, and Thomas Poppehooe, all of them of London. It was sent to France in 1408. The splendid tomb in the parish church of Warwick, of the Earl of Warwick, who died in 1439, was the work of five artists, four of whom were English. John Purdde was a well-known maker of stained glass residing at Westminster in the reign of Henry IV. John Brentwood, in the same reign, was celebrated as a fresco painter; and Christian Coilburn, as a maker of images in stone and wood, which he coloured, painted, and gilt to the utmost satisfaction of his employers.