Page:The Queens of England.djvu/360

320 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. his throne. During the short period that Anne was Henry's wife, she certainly did study to please the capricious lord in whose power she had become placed by destiny. Even before her divorce was announced, she had made herself mistress of the English tongue, and soon after adopted the style of dress of her new countrywomen. After the divorce, however, was carried out, Anne sunk into apparent insignificance, "no more being said of her than if she were dead." Yet the accounts of contempor- aries show that she passed her time in a quiet and pleasant domesticity, extremely beloved wherever she was known, and truly kind to the poor. She possessed at first the manor of Bletchingly, which was afterward exchanged for that of Penshurst. Her time, at some seasons, was passed at Rich- mond, at others at Ham or Dartford, and she maintained her intimacy with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. She sur- vived her mother's death, which took place A. D. 1543, and that of the fickle-minded Henry the Eighth, who .terminated his existence in 1547. Katharine Howard's death must have caused Anne's tranquil heart to shudder at her own narrow escape ; and the king's subsequent marriage with Katherine Parr would further enlighten her upon her own good fortune of exemption from the caprices of so variable a character. She survived the young Edward the Sixth, and attended the coro- nation of Mary, on which occasion the Princess Elizabeth rode in her carriage in the royal cavalcade. The death of Anne of Cleves took place at her palace at Chelsea, July the 16th, 1557, in the fourth year of Mary's reign, and the forty-first of her own age ; and her funeral was solemnized in Westminster Abbey with royal splendor by the queen's orders. At the feet of King Sebert, the original founder of the edi- fice, lies the last remains of a queen who certainly merited better treatment ; for although not gifted with the mental at- tainments of Katharine of Arragon, the graces of Anne Boleyn, or of Jane Seymour, she possessed qualities which were calcu- lated to adorn her station had they not been blunted by adverse circumstances and the will of an imperious and arbitrary tyrant.