CHAPTER I.

My Lords,

She is a gallant creature; and complete

In mind and feature.

HENRY VIII.

ISTORY is said to be a record

of the crimes and sufferings

of mankind.

It is indeed in

general little more. The peace

ful, home-bred affections, the useful, happy virtues, whose cultivation and exercise render human existence what it was meant to be, furnish but few materials for the historian.

Crime and suffering are more public things,

B

and their details are handed down to posterity and when in these annals we find the name of woman, whose position and character should give her no place in the page of history, our feelings revolt from her connexion with crime, and our interests and sympathies long linger round the tale of her sufferings.

The names of Mary of Scots, of Jane Grey, of Anne Boleyn, unlike as they were in character, have united in appealing to the interests and sympathies of many generations. To abstract from the voluminous details of History a subject for personal and practical instruction, may prove no useless attempt. If truth be often stranger than fiction, it is undoubtedly of safer and more enduring influence, and has this great advantage, that it tells its own moral.

It is easy to hold up a character for example, that is in all respects worthy of imitation; or to exhibit one for reprobation

which entirely deserves condemnation; but to present a character for warning, in the native materials of which we find much that was lovely, noble, generous, and calculated to excite admiration, is a far more difficult attempt. In our present state, genius, talent and beauty, though these were among our original attributes, prove too often fatal endowments to woman. The quiet routine of domestic life is her happiest sphere; the narrow path of piety and peace that which alone she can tread in safety.

To teach by example rather than by precept, is the object of this narrative; and the story of her who was said to be "the Star of the Court," may easily enable that object to be realized.

The venerable mansion of Blickling Hall, in the county of Norfolk, stands in a noble park, planted with long and stately avenues of ancient oaks and chestnuts, which have survived the changing fortunes of their

shorter lived possessors. In comparison of much that is termed the lower creation, how very insignificant is man if considered only in reference to his animal existence.

More than three centuries ago the giant trees that still shadow the bright greensward of Blickling Park might have spread the broad shade of their leafy arms over the young and joyous head of the lovely daughter of that house, the fair and fascinating Anne Boleyn.* Methinks the moral of her story even yet may reach the heart in the melancholy murmur of the breeze that sweeps those seared leaves around the wanderer's path.

In these our altered times, when a despot's power is happily unknown to England,

* Sundry birth-places are given to this renowned lady. Miss Benger ascribes the honour to Rochford Hall, in Essex; but as the author of the "Lives of the Queens of England" prefers Blickling, we may do so too, as a place more familiar to us.

neither ambition, giddiness, nor love of display are likely to cause young Englishwomen to lose their heads: but still how frequently do these causes lead, in the higher ranks, to domestic grief and misery, an unhappy life, an untimely, perhaps unhonoured, death; and, in the more lowly, to error, crime, remorse, dishonour.

The story of Anne Boleyn is fraught with interest and instruction to the young, the lovely, and aspiring, who may not indeed fear to fall into the power of another Henry, but may have to encounter, in their passage through life, circumstances as liable to make shipwreck of their hope here and their happiness hereafter, as any that beset the brilliant child of Blickling Hall.

Sir Thomas Boleyn was married to the Lady Elizabeth Howard, daughter of the Earl of Surrey and as her brother married the sister of Henry the Seventh's Queen, the Boleyn family became thus connected