il and winter sleet drove "continually in her Grace's face"; but she
would hear of no delay in her journey forward, "so desirous was her Grace
of reaching the King's presence." At Canterbury the citizens received her
with a great torchlight procession and peals of guns. "In her chamber were
forty or fifty gentlewomen waiting to receive her in velvet bonnets; all
of which she took very joyously, and was so glad to see the King's
subjects resorting to her so lovingly, that she forgot all the foul
weather and was very merry at supper."[197]

And so, with an evident determination to make the best of everything, Anne
rode onward, accompanied by an ever-growing cavalcade of sumptuously
bedizened folk, through Sittingbourne, and so to Rochester, where she was
lodged at the bishop's palace, and passed New Year's Day 1540. News daily
reached the King of his bride's approach, whilst he remained consumed with
impatience at Greenwich. At each successive stage of her journey forward
supple courtiers had written to Henry glowing accounts of the beauty and
elegance of the bride. Fitzwilliam from Calais had been especially
emphatic, and the King's curiosity was piqued to see the paragon he was to
marry. At length, when he knew that Anne was on the way from Sittingbourne
to Rochester, and would arrive there on New Year's Eve, he told Cromwell
that he himself, with an escort of eight gentlemen clad in grey, would
ride to Rochester incognito to get early sight of his bride, "whom he
sorely desired to see." He went, he said, "to nourish love"; and full of
hopeful anticipation, Henry on a great courser ambled over Gad's Hill from
Gravesend to Rochester soon after dawn on New Year's Day 1540, with Sir
Anthony Browne, his Master of the Horse, on one side, and Sir John Russell
on the other. It was in accordance with the chivalrous tradition that this
should be done, and that the lady should pretend to be extremely surprised
when she was informed who her visitor was; so that Anne must have made a
fair guess as to what was coming when Sir Anthony Browne, riding a few
hundred yards ahead of his master, entered her presence, and, kneeling,
told her that he had brought a New Year's gift for her. When the courtier
raised his eyes and looked critically upon the lady before him,
experienced as he was in Henry's tastes, "he was never more dismayed in
his life to see her so far unlike that which was reported."[198]

Anne was about twenty-four years of ag