ueen Claude. She
was probably about nineteen years old when she was recalled to the English
Court and began her round of revels and love intrigues. Certainly she was
a born leader of men; many have denied her actual beauty, but she had the
greater quality of charm, the power of subjugating, the beckoning eye. An
accomplished dancer, we read of her "as leaping and jumping with infinite
grace and agility." "She dressed with marvellous taste and devised new
robes," but of the ladies who copied her, we read that unfortunately "none
wore them with her gracefulness, in which she rivalled Venus." Music, too,
was added to her accomplishments, and Cavendish tells us how "when she
composed her hands to play and her voice to sing, it was joined with that
sweetness of countenance that three harmonies concurred."

It is difficult to speak with unalloyed admiration of Anne's virtue. At
the most charitable computation, she was an outrageous flirt. It would
seem that she was genuinely in love with Lord Percy, and that Wolsey was
ordered by the then captivated and jealous King to put an end to their
intrigue and their desire to marry. Anne is supposed never to have
forgiven Wolsey for this, and by a dramatic irony it was her former lover,
Percy, then become Earl of Northumberland, who was sent to arrest the
fallen Cardinal at York. It is said that he treated Wolsey in a brutal
manner, having his legs bound to the stirrup of his mule like a common
criminal. When Henry, in his infatuation for the attractive
Lady-in-Waiting to his Queen, as she was then, wished Wolsey to become the
aider and abettor of his love affairs, Wolsey found himself placed in the
double capacity of man of God and man of Kings. In these cases, God is apt
to go to the wall--for the time being. But it was Wolsey's vain attempt to
serve two masters that caused his fall, which the French Ambassador
attributed entirely to the ill offices of Anne Boleyn. This is another
proof that courtiers should always keep on the right side of women.

Nothing could stop Henry's passion for Anne, and she showed her wonderful
cleverness in the way she kept his love alive for years, being first
created Marchioness of Pembroke, and ultimately triumphing over every
obstacle and gaining her wish of being his Queen. This phase of her
character has been nicely touched by Shakespeare's own deft hand. She was
crowned with unparalleled splendour on Whit Sunday of 1533. At the banquet
held after t