never saw an Eden more intricate in paths, or richer in flowers, interspersed in sunny oases amongst the shadows of the dark-green forest, or scattered, as nature called them forth, in the crevices of the rocks, and beside the pathways. Here we wandered long, between hedges of the blue hydrangea, burning often in this brilliant sunlight like flames of sulphur, and through small garden-plots hedged by orange and oleander, and gay within with far more and richer blossoms than decorate an English autumn. For here, as elsewhere, we noticed that the quantity, not the specific character of flowers, is the main difference between the gardens of England and Portugal. Then, by a fountain of clear water, running within a chamber of enamelled tiles, we passed from the more cultivated zone into the wilder region, and loitered through the hour of greatest heat among the innumerable columns of fir and pinaster sustaining a green heaven above us. The birds gave a few plaintive autumnal notes, and we heard the leaves whispering together beneath the light breezes, like children in presence of a stranger. "Early spring," I thought, "with its more varied sky, and running brooks, and the song of birds, and an English turf beneath the feet, would make this place almost perfect in its way; indeed, it wants little now in the outward circumstances of perfection. For Nature, the great artist, here, as everywhere, employs her limited means to the most advantage. She has only one sun, and sky, and sea-as some poet said of her-features which she cannot venture to decorate with the prodigality of a Turner; a few rocks and trees, slopes and summits. But with these elements she has done her best to make a little heaven on earth of Cintra. It is true that perhaps one should bring a touch of heaven in one's heart here to find it so— but this lies beyond Nature's province, or above it."

To be continued.

Life of Sir Thomas Seymour,

BARON SEYMOUR OF SUDELEY, LORD HIGH ADMIRAL OF ENGLAND.

BY JOHN MACLEAN, F.S.A.

CHAPTER I.

THE era of King Henry VIII., which was unsurpassed in splendour -perhaps, we may add, in meanness-by that of any other English sovereign, produced many men of great eminence, of whom little now is remembered. The king was endowed by nature with many excellent qualities. In his youth he was, to some extent, learned, or reputed to be learned; he was also frank, open, and chivalrous, and attained great popularity among his subjects, but as he advanced in years he became imperious, selfish, and sensual. On succeeding, in 1509, to the throne which his father had won, he found his coffers plethoric with wealth, extorted from the people through the agency of Empson and Dudley, whom, because of such extortion rendered. unpopular, he yielded to destruction, though he scrupled not to retain the fruits of their iniquities. The riches, however, which, in this manner, he inherited he quickly squandered in gorgeous pageants and costly continental wars. As an example of the first may be cited "the field of the cloth of gold," and in respect to the latter, the king's vanity led him to believe that he was the arbiter of the fate of Europe; nevertheless, his allies hesitated not to desert him with impunity when it served their purpose, leaving him to pay the lion's share of the cost of the expedition.

In his youth, Henry married his sister-in-law, the widow of his brother Arthur. This unhallowed union, although sanctioned by the Pope, disturbed the king's conscience for some years, as his studies of theology and ecclesiastical history showed him that such unions were contrary to Christianity, and eventually the attractions of Ann Boleyn rendered it no longer sufferable. The Queen was deposed from the heart and throne of her husband, and her rival became his second unfortunate partner. With her fate, or the fate of her successors in the transient affection of the King, it is not our intention to concern ourselves further than to observe that on the third occasion of entering into the estate of matrimony he took as his wife the eldest daughter of Sir John Seymour, of Wolf Hall, in the county Wilts; and that his sixth wife, a number unparalleled in history, was a widow lady, the

daughter of Sir Thomas Parr, of Kendal, who had been the wife of Nevil Lord Latimer.

The Seymours were descended from a long line of distinguished and wealthy ancestors, who, for many generations, had held a foremost place among the English gentry. Sir John Seymour, by Margery his wife, daughter of Sir Henry Wentworth, Knight of the Bath, had issue six sons and four daughters; and of these sons the fourth is the subject of the following pages. His public career, though a short one, left its mark on English history; yet little is known of his private life beyond a few incidental notices in our chronicles. The State papers, however, abound with documents concerning him; and as these documents shed much light upon English history and the manners and customs of the age, as well as illustrate the life and character of an eminent individual who held some of the very highest offices "under the Crown," and was the brother-in-law and intimate friend of the bluff King Hal and the uncle of his successor-who was accused of familiarity with a Royal Princess, and eventually wedded the Dowager Queen-it is believed that, embodied in a narrative of his life, they will prove not unacceptable to the readers of this magazine.

Jane, the eldest daughter of Sir John Seymour, had been introduced at Court as a Maid of Honour to Ann Boleyn, where her great beauty made such an impression on the inconstant monarch that he conceived a passion for her which became irresistible. The unhappy Ann ended her life on the scaffold, and the unscrupulous widower, on the following day, profaned the altar by solemnising a marriage with Jane Seymour.

The fortune and future success of the sons of Sir John Seymour could not fail to be affected by the advancement of their sister to the dignity of Queen Consort. Not that they were previously unknown to fame, for Edward Seymour, the elder brother, had accompanied the Duke of Suffolk in his expedition to France in August, 1523, where he behaved with so much gallantry that he was knighted by that nobleman at Roye, on All-Hallows Day, in the same year. At Christmas, the year following, we find him taking part, as one of the challengers, in a grand feat of arms. In the year 1527 he was one of the chosen party which graced Wolsey's splendid Embassy to the Court of France, and we find him in attendance on the King in the honourable, though now obsolete, office of Esquire of the Body, at his celebrated interview, in 1532, with Francis the First.

There is no reason to believe that the Seymour family took any part in promoting the marriage, which took place on 20th May, 1536; but the brothers quickly profited by their sister's sudden elevation. On the 5th June the elder brother was created Viscount Beauchamp; and although we have no record of the immediate advancement of Thomas Seymour, in the following year we find him one of the Gentlemen of

the Privy Chamber. He was also, in 1537, granted, for life, by letters patent, in conjunction with one George Cotton,* the offices of Chief Masters and Constables of the Castles of Lyons, otherwise Holte Bromfield, Yale, and Chirk; and Constables and Receivers of the Manors or Lordships of Lyons, or Holte, Bromfield, Yale, Chirk, Chirkland, Kenloth, and Owen, in the marches of Wales, with fees amounting to about £50 a year.t

The untimely death of Queen Jane, which occurred on the 24th October, 1537, twelve days after the birth of her son, Edward VI., seems to have caused no diminution of the royal favour; for, in the following year, we find Sir Thomas Seymour is knighted, and sharing largely in the distribution of the plundered property of the Church. By letters patent dated the 23rd March, 1538, he was granted the site of the Monastery of Coggeshall, in the county of Essex, including the manors of Coggeshall, or Coxhall, Childerdish, Tyllyngham, Kewton Hall, Lyons, Great Tolsham, Chedingsell, Tutwyke, Bonseys, Holfield Grange, and Busby Gatehouse, in that county, together with other manors and lands in the county of Suffolk and in the city of London.

The favour shown by the King to the young Knight made an alliance with him courted by some of the greatest nobles in the land. Mary, only daughter of Thomas Howard, third Duke of Norfolk, had been married to the young Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, natural son of Henry VIII. by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blount. This young nobleman died on the 22nd July, 1536, in the seventeenth year of his age. In consequence of the youth of the parties, after his death the validity of the marriage was at first questioned, and the lady's dowry withheld. Cranmer was required to call his "doctours unto him, and to propone the same caase amongst them, whether such mariage be matrymony or no ?" and he says, in his letter to Cromwell, dated 14th January, 1538,-"I assure your Lordeship that, withoute farther convocation of doctours, I am fully persuaded that suche marieges as be in lawful age contracted, per verba de presenti, are matrimoney before God, and the same caase is (as I remember) playnly opened and declared in the Kinge's Grace's book of his own. cawse of matrimoney."§ This argument was conclusive. The validity of the marriage was fully recognised.

The Duke of Norfolk now sought to unite his daughter to Sir Thomas Seymour, as shown in the following letter from

Cotton held an appointment in the household of Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, natural son of Henry VIII., by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Blount, afterwards the wife of Gilbert, first Baron Tailboys.

+ Pat. Rolls, 28 Hen. VIII. p. I.

Pat. Rolls, 29 Hen. VIII. p. 5.

§ Letter from Cranmer to Cromwell's State Papers, vol. i. p. 575.