attention. Paris, which Suffolk described as 'lyke a stynkyng 'pryson,' had no further attractions for bride or bridegroom, who prepared for their return to the English shore. But, as Wolsey had anticipated, public feeling in England was unfavourable to the marriage. On his arrival in England, Suffolk scarcely ventured to quit the Royal residence; and he wrote to Henry, throwing himself on his mercy, and stating his conviction that all the members of the King's Council, with the exception of Wolsey, were determined on his death or imprisonment. In spite of this state of popular feeling, the marriage was again solemnised at Greenwich in May 1515, in the presence of Henry and Queen Katharine. But for once Henry showed some anxiety to avoid public scandal, and Sir W. Sidney was despatched by him to the Court of France with a view to secure the silence of Francis with respect to the secret marriage. With the information now available, the terms of Sidney's instructions are curious:- Considering that there be no man privy of the said secret marriage, but only the said French King and Henry to whom he had declared the same,' Sidney was desired to say that the King's Grace desireth and perfectly trusteth that for the honour of the said 'French Queen, and for avoiding of all evil bruits thereof, the French King will reserve and keep the same at all times hereafter secret to himself, without making any creature privy thereunto, like as the King shall do for his part.' The industry of modern research has, however, as we have seen, made fruitless any attempt at reticence in the matter.'

6

The price of Henry's acquiescence was all that now remained to be arranged. Even whilst Suffolk was in France, money transactions had already passed between Henry and his favourite in the shape of a loan from Henry secured on Suffolk's plate. But the King took care that he should be no loser, and full particulars are forthcoming as to the formal agreements into which he entered with Suffolk and Mary, securing the repayment of his advances and a very profitable interest in her property and dowry.

Yet Suffolk's position in his Sovereign's favour does not appear to have been shaken even by matters of this description, so often the cause of antipathies and estrangement. A few months subsequent to the marriage, Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, describes Suffolk as in the possession of authority scarcely less than that of the King, and mentions his name in connexion with the question of a successor to The following Henry were he to die without male issue. year (1516), Henry himself, with Wolsey as his colleague

acted as godfather to Henry Earl of Lincoln, Suffolk's eldest born. In 1517, Queen Katharine, with Henry's daughter Mary, stood as godmothers of Suffolk's daughter Frances in the church of Bishops Hatfield, hung with arras of the history ' of Holofernes and Hercules;' and later on a third daughter, Eleanor, was the last issue of this marriage.

It is curious to trace how this marriage between Mary and Suffolk has connected many of the existing families of the British aristocracy with the blood royal, and curious also to recall some of the subsequent historic incidents connected with the fortunes of their descendants. The Earl of Lincoln, the only son, died indeed unmarried, but the offspring of his sisters Frances and Eleanor were destined to hold a place in English history.

Of these ladies the first, Lady Frances, by her marriage with Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset, and afterwards by creation Duke of Suffolk, was the mother of three daughters, Lady Jane Grey, Lady Katharine, and Lady Mary. To mention Lady Jane is only to bring back the recollections of a touching nature, of rare accomplishments, and of a hard fate. Nor was the lot of her sister Katharine less sad, though its end was deferred for many subsequent years. She was married, in form only as it is said, at the time of the Northumberland conspiracy, to the son of Lord Pembroke, but the marriage was declared invalid, and she became an object of suspicion and dislike to Elizabeth, to whom, according to the terms of the will of Henry VIII., she stood next in succession. Mr. Froude gives us some curious details of communications which passed between Katharine and De Feria, Philip's ambassador in England, from which it is evident how much importance was attached to her position by the politicians of the day. And when in 1561, and after she was discovered to be enceinte, she declared herself to be the wife of Lord Hertford, eldest son of the Protector by his second wife, there were not wanting reasons for supposing that the marriage was connected with political objects. As such, at all events, it was treated by Elizabeth. Hertford was fined in the sum of 5,000l., and confined nine years in the Tower. His unfortunate wife was committed to the same prison. An Archbishop was summoned to pronounce the marriage invalid and the children illegitimate; and the subsequent death of Lady Katharine was attributed to the sufferings occasioned by a long imprisonment. From this marriage, however, the validity of which we learn from Burke's Extinct Peerages' was afterwards finally established at common law by the verdict of a

jury, there descended in direct order of lineage six Dukes of Somerset, and it was only in 1750 that on the death of Algernon seventh Duke, the ducal title reverted to Sir Edward Seymour as representing the descendants of the Protector by his first wife, and it is with this branch that the title has from that period vested.

Other ducal houses of the present day trace their descent to a like origin. In 1796, the widow of the last Duke of Chandos (of the extinct family of Brydges), being herself the sole representative of the marriage of Lady Frances and Dorset, married Richard, second Marquis of Buckingham and Chandos, who was subsequently created Duke. The House of Buccleuch is also connected by intermarriage through the Cardigans and Montagus; and the marriage of Elizabeth, daughter of Algernon seventh Duke of Somerset with Sir Hugh Smithson, to whom the Earldom of Northumberland reverted, has preserved to us in title at least the historic name of the Percies.

In tracing these descents, it is curious to find other instances of the inconvenient results which have attended matrimonial connexions with the blood royal. In the reign of James I., the Marquis of Hertford, who was afterwards by reversal of attainder to become Duke of Somerset, having attempted without the previous consent of his sovereign to marry Lady Arabella Stuart, was compelled to fly the kingdom, and it was only by distinguished military services that he was again restored to royal favour. The weaker delinquent was as usual the victim: Lady Arabella was committed to the Tower, where she died in 1660.

So far as the issue of Lady Frances were concerned, the ill fate of Lady Jane and Lady Katharine had not yet deserted the blood. Nor was Lady Mary, the third sister, more fortunate. According to the authorities quoted by Mr. Froude she got herself married in the Palace itself by an old priest in a short gown' to Thomas Keys, the Serjeant Porter. Lady Mary was the smallest woman in the Court, and Thomas the largest man, so much is reported of the contracting parties. On the marriage being discovered the Serjeant was sent to the Fleet, and Mary to some place of private confinement; and the officials undertook the steps necessary for the dissolution of the marriage.

Such was the fate of these ladies, who might at one time in the event of Elizabeth's death without heirs have been in succession to the Crown of England. We must not, however, quit the subject without mention of Eleanor, the third child

of Mary and Suffolk. This lady married Henry Clifford, second Earl of Cumberland, a lofty alliance for him, but the expense of which, as Hartley Coleridge tells us, involved the alienation of his oldest manor. Those who are familiar with the Northern Worthies'-the book to which we allude-will scarcely need to be reminded of the eventful life of Lady Eleanor's son, George third Earl, with its varied adventures by sea and by land; nor yet of the still more interesting biography of his daughter Anne, successively the wife and widow of the Earls of Dorset and of Pembroke, and her struggles to restore the fortunes of her house and to maintain the family rights. She did not, however, persevere in establishing her right to the Barony of Clifford, and it was not till 1775 that the succession to that honour was restored to her descendants, with whom it has since remained vested in the family of De Clifford.

But we must hasten to a conclusion, and only add that Margaret, the daughter of Lady Eleanor by the Earl of Cumberland, married Henry Stanley, fourth Earl of Derby; and it is owing to their descent from this source that many families of our existing aristocracy, including the noble houses which represent the Bridgewater peerage, the Earl of Jersey, the Duke of Athol, and the Marquis of Hastings, found their right to quarter the royal arms of England.

ART. XI.—A Safe and Constitutional Plan of Parliamentary Reform. In two letters to a Member of the Conservative Party. By Sir JOHN EARDLEY WILMOT, Bart. London:

1865.

ON the eve of the General Election, last summer, we remarked

that the public affairs of this country had reached a point which could hardly be termed a Crisis, but might justly be described as an Epoch of more than common solemnity and importance. In using this expression we referred not only to the renewal of the national representation, then about to occur after a long interval, but also to the probability, already manifest, that before the New Parliament could assemble in February, important changes would have taken place in the Administration, and that questions of unusual gravity would await the decision of the Legislature. The death of Lord Palmerston has verified our anticipations in one respect; and the supreme direction of the government has passed from his

hands to that of a Ministry, consisting entirely of his former colleagues, who are the first to recognise the magnitude of the loss sustained by the country and by themselves. On the other hand, the question of Parliamentary Reform has again assumed the most prominent position in the business of the ensuing Session, and the House of Commons will be called upon, at the very outset of its existence, to pronounce a judgment on its own relations to the constituencies by which it is elected. We shall therefore proceed to take a retrospective view of the career of the eminent Statesman whose loss we deplore; and we shall then hazard a few remarks on the engrossing subject of the Extension of the Franchise.

The death of Lord Palmerston is an event full not only of sentiment but of practical moment. On no single life, unless we except-although on widely dissimilar groundsthat of the Emperor of the French, did so many interests and results depend. Under any circumstances, the loss of one so pleasant and popular, so wise and yet so tolerant, so resolute and fearless, yet so kindly and so true, would have touched the sensibilities of Englishmen to their heart of hearts. He was, as has been often said, the type of what an Englishman loves. An enemy alike to trifling and to solemnity, to pedantry and to idleness, doing what he had to do with a will, but throwing his harness off the moment work was over, steel to his friend, stern to his country's foe-for he had not one of his own-good-tempered, unpretending, covering with a perennial glow of genial humour deep and earnest thought, he had become to us a familiar institution, a peculiar possession, which time only rendered more our own, but never warned us we were to lose. It was a strange thrill, a shock of incongruous emotion, which trembled through the nation with the telegraphic words- Lord Palmerston is dead.'

The saying runs, and in some sense it is true, that no man is ever missed. The world turns round, its seasons come and go. Fortune pursues her accustomed game in the lottery of life, and the new events of this year eclipse and obscure the catastrophes of the last. One year we see a king-next year an exile. In 1864 Jefferson Davis is the ruler of a nation: in 1865 he is a powerless, afflicted, pining prisoner. But each day finds its work to be done, and finds hands to do it, although princes and thrones vanish from the scene. Yet when Palmerston died, in a ripe old age indeed, but in the full vigour of his powers and the full blaze of his renown, it was felt that we had lost an anchorage which gave moorings to ourselves and to Europe. The long political career which had made