In the Days of Queen Elizabeth. Eva March Tappan

      “The wine would have choked me,” said Clarice, “but go on, Ralph. What next?”

      “One of the party slipped on the root of the oak, and his glass fell on a rock at his feet. The jesting stopped for an instant, and just at that moment came the boom of a cannon from the Tower. King Henry had forbidden the hour of the execution to be told, but every one guessed that the cannon was the signal that the head of Queen Anne had been struck off by the foreign swordsman. The king turned white and then red. I was nearest him, and I saw him tremble. I followed his eye, and he looked over the shoulder of the master of the hunt far away to the eastward. There was London, and up the spire of St. Paul’s a flag was slowly rising. It looked very small from that distance, but it was another signal that the stroke of the executioner had been a true one.”

      “It is an awful thing to take the life of one who has worn the crown,” murmured Clarice. “Did the king speak?”

      “He half opened his lips and again closed them. Then he gave a laugh that made me shiver, and he said, ‘One would think that the royal pantry could afford no extra glass. That business is finished. Unloose the dogs, and let us follow the boar.’ Greeting, Lady Margaret,” said Ralph to a lady who just then entered the room. He bowed before her with deep respect, and said in a low, earnest tone:—

      “May you find comfort and courage in every trouble that comes to you.”

      Lady Margaret’s eyes filled with tears as she said:—

      “I thank you. Trouble has, indeed, come to me in these last few years. Where was the king yesterday—at the hour of noon, I mean? Had he the heart to stay in London?”

      “He had the heart to go on a hunt, but it was a short one, and almost as soon as the cannon was fired, he set off on the hardest gallop that ever took man over the road from Epping Forest to Wiltshire.”

      “To the home of Sir John Seymour?”

      “The same. Know you not that this morning before the bells rang for noon Jane Seymour had taken the place of Anne Boleyn and become the wife of King Henry?”

      “No, I knew it not,” answered Lady Margaret, “but what matters a day sooner or later when a man goes from the murder of one wife to the wedding of another?”

      “True,” said Ralph. Clarice was sobbing softly, and Lady Margaret went on, half to Ralph and half to herself:—

      “It was just two years ago yesterday when Lady Anne set out for London to be crowned. I never saw the Thames so brilliant. Every boat was decked with flags and streamers, edged with tiny bells that swung and tinkled in the breeze. The boats were so close together that it was hard to clear a way for the lord mayor’s barge. All the greatest men of London were with him. They wore scarlet gowns and heavy golden chains. On one side of the lord mayor was a boat full of young men who had sworn to defend Queen Anne to the death. Just ahead was a barge loaded with cannon, and their mouths pointed in every direction that the wind blows. There was a great dragon, too, so cunningly devised that it would twist and turn one way and then another, and wherever it turned, it spit red fire and green and blue into the river. There was another boat full of the fairest maidens in London town, and they all sang songs in praise of the Queen.”

      “They say that Queen Anne, too, could make songs,” said Ralph, “and that she made one in prison that begins:—

      ‘Oh, Death, rock me asleep.

       Bring on my quiet rest.’”

      “When Anne Boleyn went to France with the sister of King Henry, she was a merry, innocent child. At his door lies the sin of whatever of wrong she has done,” said Lady Margaret solemnly, half turning away from Clarice and her brother and looking absently out of the open window. The lawn lay before her, fresh and green. Here and there were daisies, gleaming in the May sunshine. “I know the very place,” said she with a shudder. “It is the green within the Tower. The grass is fresh and bright there, too, but the daisies will be red to-day with the blood of our own crowned queen. It is terrible to think of the daisies.”

      “Pretty daisies,” said a clear, childish voice under the window.

      “Let us go out on the lawn,” said Clarice, “it stifles me here.”

      “Remember,” bade Lady Margaret hastily, “to say ‘Lady,’ not ‘Princess.’”

      The young man fell upon one knee before a tiny maiden, not yet three years old. The child gravely extended her hand for him to kiss. He kissed it and said:—

      “Good morrow, my Lady Elizabeth.”

      “Princess ’Lizbeth,” corrected the mite.

      “No,” said Lady Margaret, “not ‘Princess’ but ‘Lady.’”

      “Princess ’Lizbeth,” insisted the child with a stamp of her baby foot on the soft turf and a positive little shake of her red gold curls. “Princess brought you some daisies,” and with a winning smile she held out the handful of flowers to Lady Margaret and put up her face to be kissed.

      “I’ll give you one,” said the child to the young man, and again she extended her hand to him.

      “Princess ’Lizbeth wants to go to hear the birds sing. Take me,” she bade the attendant. She made the quaintest little courtesy that can be imagined, and left the three standing under the great beech tree.

      “That is our Lady Elizabeth,” said Lady Margaret, “the most wilful, winsome little lassie in all the world.”

      “But why may she not be called ‘Princess’ as has been the custom?” asked Ralph.

      “It is but three days, indeed, since the king’s order was given,” answered Lady Margaret. “When Archbishop Cranmer decided that Anne Boleyn was not the lawful wife of Henry, the king declared that Princess Elizabeth should no longer be the heir to the throne, and so should be called ‘Lady’ instead of ‘Princess.’ It is many months since he has done aught for her save to provide for her safe keeping here at Hunsdon. The child lacks many things that every child of quality should have, let alone that she be the daughter of a king. I dare not tell the king her needs, lest he be angry, and both the little one and myself feel his wrath.”

      The little daughter of the king seems to have been entirely neglected, and at last Lady Margaret ventured to write, not to the king, but to Chancellor Cromwell, to lay before him her difficulties. Here is part of her letter:—

      “Now it is so, my Lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore, and what degree she is at now, I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I know not how to order her myself, nor none of hers that I have the rule of, that is, her women and grooms, beseeching you to be good Lord to my good Lady and to all hers, and that she may have some raiment.” The letter goes on to say that she has neither gown, nor slip, nor petticoat, nor kerchiefs, nor neckerchiefs, nor nightcaps, “nor no manner of linen,” and ends, “All these her Grace must have. I have driven off as long as I can, that by my troth I can drive it off no longer. Beseeching ye, mine own good Lord, that ye will see that her Grace may have that which is needful for her, as my trust is that ye will do.”

      The little princess had a good friend in Lady Margaret Bryan, the “lady mistress” whom Queen Anne had put over her when, as the custom was, the royal baby was taken from her mother to dwell in another house with her own retinue of attendants and ladies in waiting. In this same letter the kind lady mistress ventured to praise the neglected child. She wrote of her:—

      “She is as toward a child and as gentle of condition as ever I knew any in my life. I trust the king’s Grace shall have great comfort in her Grace.” Lady Margaret told the chancellor that the little one was having “great pain with her great teeth.” Probably the last thing that King Henry thought of was showing his daughter to the public or making her prominent in any way, but the lady mistress sturdily suggested that if he should wish it, the Lady Elizabeth would be so taught that she would be an honor to the king, but she must not be kept too