prison, and speedily forsook his new wife for the sake of mistresses new or old. The queen was obliged to solace herself with such reflections as were plentifully supplied in the pedantic Latin verses of the day, in which the world was told, that whereas the fair Helen of Troy had been a cause of war, the no less lovely Eleanor of Austria was a bond and pledge of peace. She bore her husband's neglect with heroic meekness: she was an affectionate mother to the children of her predecessor, and so far as her influence extended, an unwearied peace-maker between the houses of Valois and Austria. Since 1547, the year of her second widowhood, she had lived chiefly at the court of the emperor, whose last public act of brotherly unkindness had been to instigate his son to break his troth to her only daughter.

The other sister, Mary, queen dowager of Hungary, was five years younger than Eleanor, and a woman of a very different stamp. Her husband, Louis the Second, had been slain in 1526, fighting the Turk among the marshes of Mohacz. Inconsolable for his loss, Mary, then only twenty-three years of age, took a vow of perpetual widowhood, a vow from which she never sought a dispensation. In spite of this act of feminine devotion, she was, even in that age of manly women, remarkable for her intrepid spirit and her iron frame. To much of the bodily strength of her Polish ancestress, Cymburgis of the hammer-fist, she united the cool head and the strong will of her brother Charles. Hunting and hawking she loved like Mary of Burgundy, and her horsemanship must have delighted the knightly heart of her grandsire Maximilian. Not only could she bring down her deer with unerring aim, but tucking up her sleeves, and drawing her knife, she would cut the animal's throat, and rip up its belly in as good style as the best

of the royal foresters.' It was to her that the imperial ambassador in England made known Mary Tudor's desire for some wild-boar venison,' to grace the feasts which followed her coronation-a desire which was forthwith gratified by the arrival in London of the lieutenant of the royal venery of Flanders, with a prime six-yearold boar, as a gift from the queen of Hungary. Roger Ascham, meeting the sporting dowager as she galloped into Tongres, far ahead of her suite, although it was her tenth day in the saddle, recorded the fact in his notebook, with a remark which briefly summed up the popular opinion of her character. She is,' says he, 'a virago; she is never so well as when she is flinging on horseback and hunting all the night long." To the firm hand of this Amazon-sister the emperor very wisely committed the government of the turbulent Low Countries. For twenty-four stormy years she administered it with much vigour and tolerable success; now foiling the ambitious schemes of Denmark and of France; now repressing Anabaptist or Lutheran risings; and always gathering as she could the sinews of war for the imperial armies abroad. While she conducted in her cabinet a vast correspondence, she was also at all times ready for a gallop to any corner of her states, where there was need of her quick eye and bold hand. Guarding the northern outpost of the dominion of Austria, her experience in watching the designs of France on the one side, and England on the other, had sharpened to the finest acuteness her political sagacity. She it was who first penetrated the secret

Libro de la Monteria del Rey D. Alonso; fol. Sevilla: 1582. See the Discurso de G. Argote de Molina, fol. 19.

Papiers de Granvelle. iv. 121-135.

P. Fraser Tytler's Orig. Letters of the reigns of K. Edward VI. and Q. Mary, 2 vols. 8vo. London: 1839, ii. p. 127.

counsels of Maurice of Saxony, and obtained proof of his treason to the imperial cause. Charles, who soon discovered the value of her advice and assistance, was wont to call her his other self. In spite of the troubled times in which she reigned, her vice-regal court was not wanting in the splendour which had long distinguished the old court of Burgundy. The palace which she built at Binche in Hainault, and her beautiful adjacent gardens of Mariemont, with their marbles and fountains, were the pride of the Netherlands; and the festivities with which she had there entertained the emperor and prince Philip in the summer of 1549, were long remembered for their surpassing magnificence by the old courtiers of Vienna and Madrid. Binche was soon afterwards burned to the ground by the French, an injury for which Mary vowed to make all France do penance, and to leave no stone standing at Fontainebleau. Although she did not live to accomplish the latter threat, her latest exploit in arms was a foray, during the siege of Metz, which she led with so much spirit into Picardy, that Henry the Second found it necessary to come to the rescue of his province. She had, indeed, no reason to love the French, who not only carried fire and sword into her favourite bowers, but assailed her reputation with the poisoned arrows of their satire. The epigrammatists of Paris loved to rhyme of her as the huntress Dian, and to insinuate that in spite of her professed fidelity to her husband's memory, a love of the chase formed her sole title to the name of the chaste goddess. She was now in her fifty-second year -bronzed rather than broken by her toils, and though

A full and entertaining account of the 'Fiestas de Bins,' for so the Spaniards called the place, will be found in J. C. Calvete; Viaje del principe D. Philippe, fol. 182-205.

2 Brantome; Œuvres, 8 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1787, ii. p. 547.

seeking retirement and repose, still fit for the council or the saddle. The reason for which she had demanded her release from power was a palpitation of the heart, to which she had been subject for many years. It was much against his will that the emperor accepted her resignation; and more than once before their departure both he and Philip the Second hinted their wish that she should resume the helm in the Netherlands, which had been meanwhile entrusted to the duke of Savoy. To these hints she not only turned a deaf ear, but she even refused to take any part in obtaining the supplies from the states-general, who had already displayed a disposition to economy extremely inconvenient to the paragon prince who now claimed their allegiance and their bounty. It is probable, therefore, that an unfavourable opinion of her nephew had as much weight in determining her retirement, as the state of her health and her advancing age.'

The fleet which had assembled at Flushing numbered fifty-six Spanish and Flemish sail, and was commanded by Don Luis de Carvajal. The vessel prepared for the emperor was a Biscayan ship of five hundred and sixtyfive tons, the Espiritu Santo, but generally called the Bertendona, from the name of the commander. The cabin of Charles was fitted up with green hangings, a swing bed with curtains of the same colour, and eight glass windows. His personal suite consisted of one' hundred and fifty persons. The queens were accommodated on board a Flemish vessel. Although the royal party embarked at Zuitburg on the thirteenth of September, the state of the weather did not allow them to put to sea until the seventeenth. The next day, as

'An excellent notice of queen Mary of Hungary, from the pen, I believe, of M. Th. Juste, will be found in the Revue Nationale de Belgique, tom. xvii. p. 13, 8vo, 1847.

they passed between the white cliffs of Kent and Artois, they fell in with an English squadron of five sail, of which the admiral came on board the emperor's ship, and kissed his hand. On the twentieth, contrary winds drove them to take shelter under the isle of Portland for a night and a day. The weather continuing unfavourable, on the twenty-second the emperor ordered the admiral to steer for the isle of Wight, but fair breeze springing up as they came in sight of that island, the fleet once more took a westerly course, and gained the coast of Biscay without further adventure. On the afternoon of Monday, the twenty-eighth of September, the good ship Bertendona cast anchor in the road of Laredo.

The gulf of Laredo is a forked inlet of irregular form, opening towards the east, and walled from the northwestern blast by the craggy and castled headland of Santoña. Laredo, with its fortress, stands at the mouth of the gulf on the south-eastern shore. Once a commercial station of the Romans, it became an important arsenal of St. Ferdinand of Castille. From Laredo, Ramon Bonifaz sailed to the Guadalquivir and the conquest of Seville; and a Laredo-built ship struck the fatal blow to the Moorish capital, by bursting the bridge of boats and chains which connected the Golden Tower with the suburb of Triana, an exploit commemorated by St. Ferdinand in the augmentation, of a ship, to the municipal bearings of Laredo. After some centuries of prosperity, the town was cruelly sacked, in 1639, by the archbishop of Bordeaux, the apostolic admiral of Louis the Thirteenth. Santander rose upon its ruins; its population dwindled from fourteen, to three, thousand; fishing craft only were found in its sand-choked haven ; yet, true to its martial fame, it sent a gallant band of seamen to die at Trafalgar.

This ancient seaport was now the scene of a debarka