Queen Anne Boleyn was
educated in her court, and was doomed to consume a large portion of
her time in the occupation of the needle. It was an employment little
suited to her lively disposition and coquettish habits, and we do not
hear, during her short occupation of the throne, that she resorted to
it as an amusement.

"Ai lavori d'Aracne, all'ago, ai fusi
Inchinar non degno la man superba."

The practice of devoting some hours to embroidery seems to have
continued in the French court. When the young Queen of Scots was
there, the French princesses assembled every afternoon in the queen's
(Catherine of Medici's) private apartment, where "she usually spent
two or three hours in embroidery with her female attendants."

It is also said, that Katharine of Arragon was in the habit of
employing the ladies of her court in needlework, in which she was
herself extremely assiduous, working with them and encouraging them by
her example. Burnet records, that when two legates requested once to
speak with her, she came out to them with a skein of silk about her
neck, and told them she had been within at work with her women. An
anecdote, as far as regards the skein of silk, somewhat more
housewifely than queenly.

In this she differed much from her successor, Queen Catherine Parr,
for having had her nativity cast when a child, and being told, from
the disposition of the stars and planets in her house, that she was
born to sit in the highest seat of imperial majesty; child as she was,
she was so impressed by the prediction, that when her mother required
her to work she would say, "My hands are ordained to touch crowns and
sceptres, not needles and spindles."

When the orphaned daughter of this lady, by the lord admiral, was
consigned to the care of the Duchess of Suffolk, the furniture of "her
former nursery" was to be sent with her. The list is rather curious,
and we subjoin it.

"Two pots, three goblets, one salt parcel gilt, a maser with a band of
silver and parcel gilt, and eleven spoons; a quilt for the cradle,
three pillows, three feather-beds, three quilts, a testor of scarlet
embroidered with a counterpoint of silk say belonging to the same, and
curtains of crimson taffeta; two counterpoints of imagery for the
nurse's bed, six pair of sheets, six fair pieces of hangings within
the inner chamber; four carpets for windows, ten pieces of hangings of
the twelve months within the outer chamber, two quishions of cloth