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1Author:  Herbert Henry William 1807-1858Add
 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.
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