e appears to have attended the
celebration of these august nuptials. The fondness of the king for pomp
and pageantry was at all times excessive, and on this occasion his love
and his pride would equally conspire to prompt an extraordinary display.
Anne, too, a vain, ambitious, and light-minded woman, was probably
greedy of this kind of homage from her princely lover; and the very
consciousness of the dubious, inauspicious, or disgraceful circumstances
attending their union, might secretly augment the anxiety of the royal
pair to dazzle and impose by the magnificence of their public
appearance. Only once before, since the Norman conquest, had a king of
England stooped from his dignity to elevate a private gentlewoman and a
subject to a partnership of his bed and throne; and the bitter
animosities between the queen's relations on one side, and the princes
of the blood and great nobles on the other, which had agitated the reign
of Edward IV., and contributed to bring destruction on the heads of his
helpless orphans, stood as a strong warning against a repetition of the
experiment.

The unblemished reputation and amiable character of Henry's "some-time
wife," had long procured for her the love and respect of the people; her
late misfortunes had engaged their sympathy, and it might be feared that
several unfavorable points of comparison would suggest themselves
between the high-born and high-minded Catherine and her present
rival--once her humble attendant--whose long-known favor with the king,
whose open association with him at Calais, whither she had attended him,
whose private marriage of uncertain date, and already advanced
pregnancy, afforded so much ground for whispered censures.

On the other hand, the personal qualities of the king gave him great
power over popular opinion. The manly beauty of his countenance, the
strength and agility which in the chivalrous exercises of the time
rendered him victorious over all competitors; the splendor with which he
surrounded himself; his bounty; the popular frankness of his manners,
all conspired to render him, at this period of his life, an object of
admiration rather than of dread to his subjects; while the respect
entertained for his talents and learning, and for the conscientious
scruples respecting his first marriage which he felt or feigned, mingled
so much of deference in their feelings towards him, as to check all
hasty censures of his conduct. The protestant party, now