ps
because he had not had the pleasure of cutting off her head. Here he
married his sixth wife, Lady Catherine Parr, widow of Neville, Lord
Latimer, and sister of the Marquis of Northampton. This lady, who had the
hardihood to marry this royal Bluebeard, after he had divorced two wives
and chopped off the heads of two others, narrowly escaped the fate she so
rashly hazarded. The very warrant for her committal to the Tower, whence
she was only to be brought forth to be burned at the stake for heresy, was
signed, and on the point of execution, when she accidentally became aware
of it, and managed to soothe the ferocious tyrant by the most artful
submission to his conceit of his theological learning, and by rubbing his
ulcerated leg.

Here, as we have said, Edward VI. was born; and three days after he was
baptized in the king's chapel in the palace in great state--Cranmer,
archbishop of Canterbury, and the Duke of Norfolk, being god-fathers.
Hampton Court was appropriated by the guardians of Edward as his
residence, and he was residing here when the council rose against the
authority of the Protector Somerset, and was removed by him hence to
Windsor Castle, lest the council should obtain possession of his person.
Here Bloody Mary, and her husband, Philip of Spain, passed their honeymoon
in great retirement; and here--when they were desirous of effacing from
the mind of their sister, the Princess Elizabeth, the recollection of her
imprisonment at Woodstock, and the vain attempts of their arch-rascal
priest Stephen Gardiner, Lord Chancellor and Bishop of Winchester, to
coerce her into popery, or to convict her of heresy, and probably bring
her to the flaming stake--they invited her to spend some time with them,
and set on foot banquets, maskings, and all sorts of revelries.

Here they kept Christmas with her as royally as the father, Henry VIII.,
had kept it in his day; Elizabeth being seated at the royal table with
their majesties, next the cloth of state, and, at the removal of the
dishes, served with a perfumed napkin and plate of confect by the Lord
Paget. Here, too, during her stay, they gave a grand tournament, wherein
two hundred spears were broken by contending knights. Here Elizabeth also,
when she was become the potent queen instead of the jealously-watched
sister, continued occasionally to assemble her brilliant court, and to
hold merry Christmas, as Mary, Edward, and her father had done before.
Here also the esp