| | 1 | Author: | Herbert
Henry William
1807-1858 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | England was happy yet and free under her Saxon kings.
The unhappy natives of the land, the Britons of old time, long
ago driven back into their impregnable fastnesses among the
Welsh mountains, and the craggy and pathless wilds of Scotland,
still rugged and hirsute with the yet uninvaded masses of
the great Caledonian forest, had subsided into quiet, and disturbed
the lowland plains of fair England no longer; and so
long as they were left free to enjoy their rude pleasures
of the chase and of internal welfare, undisturbed, were content to
be debarred from the rich pastures and fertile corn-fields which
had once owned their sway. The Danes and Norsemen, savage
Jarls and Vikings of the North, had ceased to prey on the
coasts of Northumberland and Yorkshire; the seven kingdoms
of the turbulent and tumultuous Heptarchy, ever distracted by
domestic strife, had subsided into one realm, ruled under laws,
regular, and for the most part mild and equable, by a single
monarch, occupied by one homogeneous and kindred race,
wealthy and prosperous according to the idea of wealth and
prosperity in those days, at peace at home and undisturbed
from without; if not, indeed, very highly civilized, at least
supplied with all the luxuries and comforts which the age knew
or demanded—a happy, free, contented people, with a patriarchal
aristocracy, and a king limited in his prerogatives by the
rights of his people, and the privileges of the nobles as secured
by law. “My dear wife—farewell! Bless my boy—pray for me, and
let the true God hold you both in his arms. “I received your letter with judignation, and with scorn
return you this answer, that I cannot but wonder whence you
gather any hopes that I should prove, like you, treacherous to
my sovereign; since you cannot be ignorant of my former
actions in his late majesty's service, from which principles of
loyalty I am no whit departed. I scorn your proffers; I disdain
your favor; I abhor your treason; and am so far from
delivering up this island to your advantage, that I shall keep
it to the utmost of my power for your destruction. Take this
for your final answer, and forbear any further solicitations: for
if you trouble me with any more messages of this nature, I will
burn the paper, and hang up the messenger. This is the immutable
resolution, and shall be the undoubted practice of him
who accounts it his chiefest glory to be his majesty's most loyal
and obedient subject. It would have been a difficult thing, even in England, that
land of female loveliness, to find a brighter specimen of youthful
beauty than was presented by Rosamond Bellarmyne, when
she returned to her home, then in her sixteenth year, after witnessing
the joyful procession of the 29th of May, which terminated
in the installation of the son in that palace of Whitehall
from which his far worthier father had gone forth to die. “We hereby grant free permission to the Count de Grammont
to return to London, and remain there six days, in prosecution
of his lawful affairs; and we accord to him the license
to be present at our palace of Whitehall, on the occasion of
his betrothal to our gracious consort's maid-of-honor, the beautiful
Mistress Elizabeth Hamilton. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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