Page:The Queens of England.djvu/368

328 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. Katharine married at a very early age the Lord Borough, a descendant of the de Burghs, celehrated in the reign of Henry the Third by the prominent part taken by one of its members, Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, in the transactions of those troubled times. Many years the senior of his youthful bride, and with children by a former marriage older than she, Lord Borough found no cause to regret having chosen a wife of such tender age. They are said to have lived har- moniously during their union, and he died when she was only in her sixteenth year, leaving her a large dowry, which, added to her personal charms and cultivation of mind, rendered her one of the most attractive women in England ; no wonder, then, that she had many suitors. Lord Latimer, although past his youth, and twice a widower, was the preferred ; nor can this preference be attributed to mercenary motives, for Katharine's own fortune precluded these, though the vast wealth and noble seats of Lord Latimer might have tempted a less-richly dowered bride. Lord Latimer was the father of a son and daughter by his. second wife, and such was the judicious and gentle conduct of Katharine towards them, and her unvaried kindness to their father, that she secured" the affection of and formed the happiness of the family. So admirable were the qualities of Lady Latimer, and so prudent and decorous were her manners, that she was looked up to with an esteem and veneration seldom accorded to so youth- ful a woman. She passed the greater portion of her time in the peaceful seclusion of the country, discharging with zeal and tenderness the duties of a wife and stepmother, proving herself the soother of the cares and infirmities of an elderly husband, and the friend and adviser of his son and daughter. Though of acquirements so superior to the generality of her sex, she was totally exempt from the pedantry and free from the pretension which so eften detract from superior knowledge in the young and beautiful. That she had already learned to think for herself may be concluded, when — -with a husband old enough to be her father, and a prejudiced if not a bigoted Roman Catholic — she, without embittering the peace and happi- ness of her conjugal life by a single argument on religious subjects, had sincerely turned her strong mind to the reformed religion, the seeds of which were now planted to bring forth their fruits at a later period. Of Lord Latimer's devotion to the Roman Catholic faith, a strong and to himself a dangerous proof was given by his