ony — vicious colony indeed! What says | for more ballads to be played and sung Carmelianus, or Peter Carmelian, poet and musician, was, in 1492, rector of St. George's, the church already referred to, exactly over against the entrance of the palace built some twenty-two years after wards. He appears to have held the office of rector nominally at least some twenty years. I don't suppose that the people of this outlying parish, much as they seem to have always needed it, had much of his religious ministrations. This court poet and musician must have been a very useful and agreeable man; he corre sponds with Erasmus, and with Bishop Waynflete upon education, and from the abundance of good things he picks up, must have spent most of his time about the courts of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. He is in documents of the time named as Peter the Luter, otherwise Peter the court musician. That he may the better attend to these and other pleasant and very lucrative duties, the pope grants him license of absence from his parish. In 1515 he is at Greenwich enjoying three hundred ducats a year for playing the lute, and wishing to be still more agreeable, he sends the people, and had destroyed nearly all their nobility. It became a serious problem how to stay this plague, as the small desultory conflicts of that time might have no end so long as a few knights with their followers were anxious for the fray. Carmelianus, by a bold poetic figure, shows us that nothing less than heavenly coun sels were equal to the occasion. He will tell his own story, which he does in this very ingenious way. In 1486 it was his duty as court poet to put forth a poem or rhapsody in honor of the birth of the Prince of Wales. Almighty God, compassionating the miserable state of England, lacerated by civil war, convokes a meeting of the saints in heaven, to ask their opinions as to how the long-standing dispute between the houses of York and Lancaster might be composed. The saints reply that if the omniscient Deity cared for their counsels, no one was better qualified to advise them than King Henry the Sixth, now in heaven, who knew all the circumstances they advised that he should be called upon. The king's spirit was summoned: he advised the marriage of the Earl of Richmond and the princess Elizabeth, and so to make the two houses one. The advice was approved and ordered to be carried into effect. The poem concludes, calling upon the people to rejoice at the birth of the prince.* Among the children of this marriage of the Earl of Richmond (Henry VII.) and the princess Elizabeth were Henry, afterwards the Eighth, and Mary, afterwards the French queen. The story of the French queen, exactly as it appears in the veritable histories and State papers of the times, can scarcely be exceeded in in * Caxton, by W. Blades. might be difficult and dangerous; but even in ordinary cases, with both the young people more than willing, when cannot opportunity be found? Much more, in this case, the knight, Charles Brandon, was the boy playfellow with the king and brother of Mary. He was the son of the Brandon who was the standard-bearer on the side of Richmond, and was cloven down by Richard at Bosworth Field. These fine men, notably Charles, were favorites at court, he, in splendid gar ments or in armor, always displaying at his best before the princess. terest. Some exquisite letters of hers are in existence, which from the handwriting as well as for the matter and manner of them, show a high state of education. Some of them are exceedingly naïve, kindly, and even humorous; one in the Record Office ends with, "Your lowying frynd, Marie, the Frenche quene." And a very loving friend she was. She was always doing good, and beseeching the kindly services of others who could help one time on her knees begging the forfeited lives of rebels, at another asking favors in touching manner for people forlorn and afflicted. She asks favors of Wolsey, "Be good to my servant, and provide for him some living, as I meant to be good to him;" to the king for a poor, honest man, Vincent Knight, "My dearest lord and brother, I pray you earnestly for my sake to do him some good and be gracious to him." These are, of course, but instances. There were not many kind hearts at the court of Henry VIII., but here was one at least who went a great way to redeem the character of that assemblage of cruel folk. The edu cation of the time was forced upon even the finest ladies by somewhat hard and cruel methods. Elizabeth Paston, 1454, "hath been beaten once or twice in the week, sometimes twice a day, and her head broken in two or three places." The Lady Jane Grey, the granddaughter of this Mary the French queen, is very sorely and frequently punished, chastised "in ways she will not name." The "Lady Mastres" of the princesses Mary and Elizabeth, complains to Cromwell that "at the table bord are dyvers mets and freuts and wyne," that "it is hard to refryn their graces from it," and she adds Mary the princess was now about sixas one of her grievances that "there is no teen, one of the most charming, best-templace of corekcyon there." Highly edu- pered, and most handsome of women in cated for the time, and in her advanced Europe. She had, on account of her pergirlhood exceedingly comely, the Lady son and her position, suitors almost everyMary's grace is much about, much at where any one of perhaps a dozen huscourt, and present at the sports. The bands of the first rank might have been sports are such as to bring out the man-hers. What manner of man Charles Brandon was may be read in the chronicles of the time. Several of his portraits are known; they show him to be a man of some presence and dignity-notably the engraving by Vertue, in which he is presented hand in hand with his royal duchess. His effigy in splendid armor is in the Tower, evidence enough how comely and gallant a man he was. In finesse, scholarship, or as an ambassador, he was, so to speak, of no account whatever, his writing, his spelling, were curious even for that age, and a simple sum in arithmetic was quite beyond him; but he was brave and strong, often was he chosen by the king himself as his partner at jousts, and he mostly overthrows his man; he was brilliant at revels and masques, and had,, as we should now say, a devil-may-care sort of way with him. He was free, open-handed with his money, a gambler, and always in debt, but sufficiently a favorite with the king to have for the asking. When spoils of monasteries or of rich nobles attainted are going, his name is always in the front rank of recipients. liness and personal prowess of the knights The leaning towards Brandon, known and men-at-arms. There were always bril- as no doubt it must have been, apparently liant gatherings, jousts, and ruder sports gave no one any serious thought; disparon the bankside, such as bull and bear ity might seem to imply impossibility, baiting, to be easily got at by boat. The and would be taken as merely a touch of Brandons of Southwark were among the coquetry or a passing fancy allowable unmost manly and attractive of these joust-der the circumstances. Every one withers, and one of them, Charles, afterwards Duke of Suffolk, takes the fancy of the Lady Mary, in some surreptitious way it comes even to love passages between them. The approach of a mere knight and jouster to the king's favorite sister out doubt knows she is to marry one of her own condition, one of the great suitors whose names are before the English king and court. For State reasons the French king, Louis XII., is to be husband of the Lady Mary. Accordingly, 1 August 13, 1514, at the king's palace, | shall lacke yt." Touching the retorne of The queen writes in letters to the English court that the Lady Guildford must come back to her. She says that "yn Fraunce is not eny lady or gentill woman so necessary for me as sche ys. I had as lefe lose the wynnynge I schalle have yn France as to lose her counsell when I * For a likeness corresponding to this description, see Gentleman's Magazine, 1805, p. 697. young people was known or suspected, and if so, the sending this magnificent man-at-arms, an old flame too, so to speak, as special messenger and protector to the widowed queen, must on the part of some one, probably the king, have implied a sort of sanction to their tender proceedings. In February there are rumors of the marriage of Mary with Charles Brandon, but the audacious couple, it may be, denounce the rumors as "malicious inventions." The truth must, however, be told, and that speedily. Accordingly, many grievous and touching letters pass to and fro. The French queen screens the duke and thus excuses him. "I constrained which even Henry would have for a favorite sister, and partly from a surrender of money and, perhaps, valuable jewels, the young princess, now about seventeen, and her husband began to feel safe, and to turn their eyes towards England. Wolsey has counselled liberality; has sug. gested the payment of £4,000 a year to the king during the French queen's life a large peace-offering, which would now represent some thirty or forty thousand pounds. For the time they are willing to throw everything overboard so they may but be recognized by all as husband and wife, and be at home. In April they journey towards Calais, and remain there eleven days. In May, such is the change in the disposition of the English court, that the king and his ministers meet them at Dover. Now, excepting the attitude of the English people and perhaps some secret feelings at court adverse to Brandon, all goes merry as a marriage bell. The king is good brother to his sister; Wolsey is good friend to them both. Safe at last in the royal palace at Greenwich, that hurried and secret marriage in Paris is to be openly solemnized and sanctioned. The banns are accordingly asked publicly, and on the 13th of May the marriage of Suffolk and the French queen is solemnized at Greenwich, but without any outside demonstrations, there being as yet much anger in the public mind and some danger to the duke. him," she says, and she tells her brother | trouble, and was indeed one of those who that he knew when he urged her to marry bore hardest against him. Restored to Louis of France, a man "aged and favor, partly from some natural affection sickly," that she consented only on expressed condition that if she survived she should marry whom she liked, and now she cannot alter. She will remain in France till she hears: knowing her brother's weakness, she tells him she will give up her dote, and even her jewels. "Suffer me," she says, to marry as me liketh for to do." Had she come to England first, "the friars would have hindered her." She was afraid of these friars, and would not put herself in their hands. Further, she pleads "most humbly and as your most sorrowful sister have compassion on us both, and write to me and to my lord of Suffolk some comfortable words, it should be of the greatest comfort to us both." There is much more tender pleading with "the kynge's grace, me brodar." Suffolk himself writes that the queen was short with him; how she was in hand with him the first day he came, and showed him her pleasure and mind that she was a good lady to him, and if he would be ordered by her she would never have none but him. "I showed her," he says, "to write to your grace and obtain your good will, else I durst not. Upon this she gave me four days to accomplish the marriage or else never: she would go into Flanders and never have me. She would not come to England, she would be torn in pieces than ever she came there, and with that she weeped. I never saw woman so weep. For the passion of God," Suffolk says to the king, "turn not your heart against me, mistrust me not, rather stryke of me hed and lyet me not lyef." March 5, 1515, he writes (to Wolsey), "The queen would never let me be in rest till I had granted her to be married; and, to be plain with you, I have married her heartily," he touchingly adds, "nhow me lord you know hall and in you es hall me trest." Mary also beseeches Wolsey that he will not abandon her and Suffolk in their extreme trouble. Wolsey stands their fast friend. There was a council on the 22nd of April, and all but my lord of York were determined to have Suffolk put to death or imprisoned. At this time Suffolk was in great peril, not only from the court, but from the people. The duke, even after his return and the court sanction to the marriage, dared not leave the king's house, "the people would have killed him for marrying Queen Mary." For all this, in after Sufyears, folk abandoned Wolsey in his extreme Mary is now the second lady at the court, is constantly at jousts, feasts, and public rejoicings. Foreign ambassadors note that Suffolk is at Greenwich with little less authority than the king himself in fact, that Wolsey and Suffolk between them manage the king. It must be supposed that such a man as Henry was willing to be managed. In a contemporary rare tract is a notice of the sumptuous palace built for Suffolk and Mary. "Suffolk Place," which was one of the names of the palace, "is of the left hand as we enter Southwark coming from Hampton Court, which place was made by the old Duke of Suffolk immediately after he married the godly and virtuous Mary Queen Dowager of France." In Wyngrerdes' map at the Bodleian, 1546, is an elaborate and no doubt somewhat pictorial representation t John Elder's letter, "Chronicle of Queen Jane," Camden Society. † Copied in Brayley's "Surrey." 1 WILLIAM Rendle. of this Gothic structure. In these our in the side, a common result of persistent A scene from "Henry VIII.: ""KING. Charles, I will play no more to-night. SUFF. Sir, I did never win of you before. KING. But little, Charles, nor shall not when my fancies on my play." † 1521, a note of "£23,900 due from Suffolk and Mary, his wife." From Nature. A BEAR FESTIVAL AMONG THE AINOS. ALTHOUGH it is well known that the Ainos of Yeso worship the bear, and have a festival known as the "bear festival," at which that animal is killed, no foreign writer, except the one whom we are about to mention, has ever actually beheld this ceremony. Dr. Scheube, of Kioto, in a paper recently published in the Mitthei lungen der deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur und Völker-kunde Ostasiens, describes one at which he was an honored guest. He observes that these celebrations are becoming rarer every day; in the various villages which he visited there had not been one for some years. The motives assigned for this cessation of an old custom, is that the Ainos are becoming Japanized, and that the expenses are too great. In those parts of the island where Japanese habits have penetrated |