a necklace of great pearls, and upon her breast reposed a splendid
jewel of precious stones. "And as she passed through the city she kept
turning her face from one side to the other to greet the people, but,
strange to see it was, that there were hardly ten persons who greeted her
with 'God save your Grace,' as they used to do when the sainted Queen
Katharine went by."[100]

Lowering brows, and whispered curses of "Nan Bullen" from the citizens'
wives followed the new Queen on her way; for to them she stood for war
against the Emperor in the behoof of France, for harassed trade and lean
larders, and, above all, for defiance of the religious principles that
most of them held sacred; and they hated the long fair face with which, or
with love philtres, she had bewitched the King. The very pageants
ostensibly raised in her honour contrived in several cases to embody a
subtle insult. At the Gracechurch corner of Fenchurch Street, where the
Hanse merchants had erected a "merveilous connyng pageaunt," representing
Mount Parnassus, with the fountain of Helicon spouting racked Rhenish wine
all day, the Queen's litter was stayed a space to listen to the Muses
playing "swete instrumentes," and to read the "epigrams" in her praise
that were hung around the mount. But Anne looked aloft to where Apollo
sat, and saw that the imperial eagle was blazoned in the place of honour,
whilst the much-derided bogus arms of the Boleyns lurked in humble guise
below;[101] and for many a day thenceforward she was claiming vengeance
against the Easterlings for the slight put upon her. As each triumphal
device was passed, children dressed as angels, or muses, were made to sing
or recite conceited phrases of dithyrambic flattery to the heroine of the
hour. There was no grace or virtue of which she was not the true exemplar.
Through Leadenhall and Cornhill and so to Chepe, between lines of liveried
citizens, Anne's show progressed. At the cross on Cheapside the Mayor and
corporation awaited the Queen; and the Recorder, "Master Baker," with many
courtly compliments, handed her the city's gift of a thousand marks in a
purse of gold, "which she thankfully received." That she did so was noted
with sneering contempt by Katharine's friends. "As soon as she received
the purse of money she placed it by her side in the litter: and thus she
showed that she was a person of low descent. For there stood by her at the
time the captain of the King's guard, with his me