Tudor

“ Thus day followed day, whilst in the great world without, England was preparing to see her premier lord arraigned before his peers on a charge of murder. And in one of the smaller chambers of her own private apartments at Hampton Court, Mary Tudor sat alone, praying and thinking, thinking and praying again.
Not a queen now, not a proud and wilful Tudor, passionate, cruel, or capricious, but only a middle-aged, broken-hearted woman, with eyes swollen with weeping, and brain heavy with eternally reiterated desires. ”

“ And now, after a reign of two years, as he had forced King Richard to fight for his crown against him, an adventurer and an invader in his realm, did Henry Tudor find himself in his adversary's position, about to risk life and kingdom on one cast of the die against troops as ill-assorted but as desperate and brave as his had been. Henry felt in his heart's core the thrilling pang, which a conviction that all is in the hands of fortune must ever impart to a human being who is her slave. ”

“ He, towards whose dust was attracted the fierce Norman, and the proud Plantagenet, and the grasping Tudor, and the fickle Stuart, even the Independent Oliver, the Dutch William, and the Hanoverian George, was one whose humble graces are within the reach of every man, woman, and child of every time, if we rightly part the immortal substance from the perishable form. ”

“ Mary Tudor was not quite forty then, a woman full of the passionate intensity of feeling, characteristic of the Tudors, neither beautiful nor yet an adept at women's wiles; but when she heard Wessex' footsteps on the flagstones of the terrace, her whole face lighted up with that radiance which makes every woman fair—the radiance of a whole-hearted love.
"Nay, my lord Cardinal," she said with sudden impatience, "Your Eminence has vaunted the beauties of Spain long enough to-day. ”

“ He had gone back to Tudor, and hidden with him for a week, living on wild fruits and the few pigeons and cockatoos he had been able to shoot with bow and arrow. Then he had journeyed down to Berande to bring the news. Tudor, he said, was very sick, lying unconscious for days at a time, and, when in his right mind, too weak to help himself. ”

“ Fertility and plenty would speedily efface the light wound he must inflict—nay, England would be restored to youth, and laugh through all her shores and plains, when grasping Tudor was exchanged for the munificient Plantagenet. ”

“ Tudor's tone was non-committal. He stood facing Piers, waiting to pass.
"What are you always going there for?" burst forth Piers, with heat. "He doesn't want you—never follows your advice, and does excellently well without it."
"Really!" said Tudor. He uttered a short, sarcastic laugh, albeit his thick brows met closely above his glasses. "Well, you ought to know—being such a devoted and attentive grandson."
Piers' hands clenched at the words. He looked suddenly dangerous. "What in thunder do you mean?" he demanded.
Tudor was nothing loth to enlighten him. He was plainly angry himself. ”

“ The eighth Henry chose ministers to create and carry out a policy for him, but always under his own control. The peculiarity of the Tudor genius, which he shared with his father and his daughter, lay in the unfailing skill with which they judged men, and their intuitive appreciation of popular feeling, which kept them from passing the bounds of acquiescence. ”

“ Wide-chested, full-armed, and pillared like a rock on lower limbs of ample and exact symmetry, he would have gladdened the critical eyes of Queen Elizabeth, whose Tudor taste led her to exult in “looking on a man.” ”

“ Long before the close of his reign, the first Tudor had made himself a person of very considerable importance, whom none of the continental Powers dreamed of ignoring, and with whom they treated on something very like equal terms. This, however, was in no small degree a matter of personal prestige. Henry’s reputation for astuteness stood so high, not to speak of his credit for accumulated wealth, that the Courts of the continent paid England’s king an amount of respect which they would not have rendered to the power of England. ”

“ Tudor said grimly.
Sheldon laughed, and for the first time with true spontaneity. The intrinsic ridiculousness of the situation was too much for his sense of humour. He made as if to repeat the blow, but Tudor, white of face, with arms hanging resistlessly at his sides, offered no defence.
"I don't mean a fight with fists," he said slowly. "I mean to a finish, to the death. You're a good shot with revolver and rifle. So am I. That's the way we'll settle it."
"You have gone clean mad. You are a lunatic."
"No, I'm not," Tudor retorted. "I'm a man in love. ”

“ Tudor was rather impressed with the transformation Cinderella in her brown schoolroom frock, with a smutty cheek and rumpled collar, was quite a different person:—presto—change—the young princess in the ruby dress has smooth locks and a thick gold necklace. She has big shining eyes and a happy child's laugh. Her little white teeth gleam in the lamplight. I do not wonder in the least that Mr. Tudor looks at Jill as he talks to me. It is a habit people have with me. ”

“ Tudor's face was very grave. "Yes, you're pretty bad," he said. "But you've pulled through so far. It's in your favour, that. And look here, you must lie flat on your back always. Do you understand? It's about your only chance."
"Of living?" whispered Piers. "But I don't want to live. I want to die."
"Don't be a fool!" said Tudor.
"I'm not a fool. I hate life!" A tremor of passion ran through the words.
Tudor laid a hand upon him. "Piers, if ever any man had anything to live for, you are that man," he said. ”

“ The Tudor time, more than any other in our history, lends itself to the study of character; a study which, although difficult, is the less difficult in that whatever of change may take place, old elements of character do not altogether disappear and entirely new elements do not make their appearance. ”

“ These fictitious supposititious letters are written in his own name, as often as in another's; for of all the impersonations, ancient and modern, historical and poetic, which the impersonated genius of the modern arts had to borrow to speak and act his part in, there is no such mask, no so deep, thick-woven, impenetrable disguise, as that historical figure to which his own name and person is attached;—the man whom the Tudor and the Stuart admitted to their secrets,—the man whom the Tudor tolerated, whom the Stuart delighted to honor. ”

“ This pale-faced, silent, sombre young man, busy about the realities of government, was far less to her taste than her rubicund, good-natured husband, her lord and servant, over whom she could queen it in Tudor fashion when the occasion served. The maker of the legend knew more of the 238 hearts of princesses than of emperors, and Mary, true to her upbringing, wore, no doubt, the pretty gowns she had had made for the meeting with the French Court, and would have been gratified had she seen the faintest desire in the eyes of her former suitor. ”

“ It is simply inconceivable that the growth within the realm of such an organisation as is here depicted would have been permitted; or that, if there, it would not have been sternly repressed by Henry VII.; or that if it had survived the first Tudor, the second would have suffered it to flourish unregarded for eighteen years of his reign. The exaggeration is so flagrant that we can hardly infer from it even a substratum of truth. ”

“ It has hardly, perhaps, been the custom to render full justice to the founder of the Tudor dynasty. His reign is stamped with a character sordid and unattractive. There is no romance in it, no clashing of arms, no valiant deeds, no suggestion of the heroic. The King's enemies are, for the most part, contemptible persons; the King himself is a cold-blooded, long-headed ruler, merciful indeed, but from policy, not from generosity, and of a meanness in money matters very far from royal. ”

“ In the centre, with all the pomp of mediæval heraldry, starred and spangled with the Tudor badges, the two bronze figures of Henry and his wife lay side by side upon their tomb. The guide read out the quaint directions in the king’s will, by which they were to be buried ‘with some respect to their Royal dignity, but avoiding damnable pomp and outrageous superfluities!’ There was, as Frank remarked, a fine touch of the hot Tudor blood in the adjectives. One could guess where Henry the Eighth got his masterful temper. Yet it was an ascetic and priest-like face which looked upwards from the tomb. ”

“ It all depends upon the picture. If Tudor's picture contains a benignant lord and master and a sweet little Alice Ben Bolt sort of wife who shall laugh with delight when he gives her a smile and wouldn't hurt his feelings for a farm; who does his bidding before he bids and is always content with what he is pleased, or able, to do for her; if this is the style of Tudor's mental picture he is certainly doomed to disappointment. ”

“ The Tudor times are often and justly thought of as being those in which modern history took its rise, in which the great inventions and the great discoveries—the revival of learning, the printing-press, the discovery of America—tended of themselves to evolve great ideas and to develop great men ”

“ Born about the middle of the fifteenth century, she lived—when the Plantagenets had been displaced by the Tudors, and the Tudors succeeded by the Stuarts—to affirm, in the seventeenth century, that, in her youth, she had danced with Richard at his brother's court, and that he whom historians had, in deference to Tudor prejudices, represented as a monster of ugliness, was in reality the handsomest man in the room except his brother Edward, and that he was very well made. ”

“ THE FLODDEN CAMPAIGN
INDEX ENGLAND UNDER THE TUDORS INTRODUCTION THE TUDOR PERIOD, 1485-1603 [Sidenote: An era of Revolutions]
The historian of the future will, perhaps, affirm that the nineteenth century, with the last years of the eighteenth, has been a period more fraught with momentous events in the development of the nations than any equal period since the Christian era commenced. Yet striking as are the developments witnessed by the last four generations, the years when England was ruled by Princes of the House of Tudor have a history hardly if at all less momentous. ”

“ That Tudor race, in their quick understanding, in their fiery temper, the true representatives of their ancient Celtic lineage, were the instruments raised up by God’s providence at the critical season of the new birth of England in the Reformation, for guiding, stimulating, freshening the Church and the nation to the performance of new duties, the fulfilment of new hopes, the application of new truths. ”

“ Indeed, so gratified was the Queen with the demeanor and the mental quality of Mr. William Shakespeare, that, as a signal mark of her favor, he was commanded to sit in her presence. The sovereign was prone to carry her Tudor sense of importance to ridiculous lengths, but there was some subtle instinct lurking within her which sought equality between “the fair vestal throned by the west” and the monarch of an empire infinitely wider than her own. ”

“ All discontented men, who felt themselves looked coldly on by Tudor, to whom they had yielded the throne of their native land; many, whom it grieved and vexed to see the world stagnate in changeless peace, desirous of novelty and glad of any pretence that called them into activity, dashed headlong into revolt; nor were there few, chiefly indeed among the nobility, who had lamented the fall of the House of York, and hailed gladly this promise of its resuscitation. The common adventurers and soldiers of fortune acted on their single separate resolves ”

“ Let us look round, then, and see into what sort of a country, into what sort of a world, the young adventurer is going forth, at seventeen years of age, to seek his fortune.
Born in 1552, his young life has sprung up and grown with the young life of England. The earliest fact, perhaps, which he can recollect is the flash of joy on every face which proclaims that Mary Tudor is dead, and Elizabeth reigns at last. As he grows, the young man sees all the hope and adoration of the English people centre in that wondrous maid, and his own centre in her likewise. ”

“ It is a pleasing speculation to conceive that, if some character other than a Tudor had been upon the throne, not all at least of this national inheritance would have been dissipated. One can imagine a character—tenacious, pure, narrow and subtle, intent upon dignity, and with a natural suspicion of rivals—which might have saved some part of the estates for posterity. ”

“ She feels he is her son, and will give him the welcome of a parent.' Tudor will meet here many kinsmen, more friends than kinsmen, more soldiers than friends, more servants than all; for those will serve him with their hearts and their purses, their prayers and their means, who have not strength to draw a sword nor power to raise a force. ”

“ A people ready—fairly and throughout all strata ready—for that which they demand will not long demand in vain. Our fathers, under the Tudor Henrys and the Tudor Elizabeth, had the rule which was best fitted for them, which they asked for, which they deserved—a significant morsel, by the bye, of racial circumstance. It by no means follows, let it be noted, that what people and king together approved of was the ideal or the wisest. It is with policies as with all things else, the fittest, not the best, continue to hold the field. ”

“ Not only plan escape, but ally yourself, and give the sanction of your untarnished name, to one whom Tudor brands as an impostor, and abhors as a rival. His vengeance will fall heavily for this deed, if he reach you. While a few years, like the many already gone by, may lead him to his grave, and you to liberty. I have too often met danger to be frightened by him: and I endure worse than death, each day I pass of youth, apart my sweet White Rose. ”