cerity and the goodness of her heart, and her perseverence in piety showed that it was founded upon charity and the Glory of God and not upon the judgments and the approbation of men*."

Kateryn too was as learned as she was goodlearned without pride, and sublime without presumption; her learning, like her religion, was not a philosophy of life, but a life—a living process. The wisest enjoyed her discourse; Divines courted her for her wisdom; Coverdale, Latimer, Parkhurst, and Udal were devoted to her; Cranmer loved her; Gardner feared her; "The Defender of the Faith" asked counsel of her. She was the Instructor of Prince Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, of Jane and Katherine Gray. She was the nursing Mother of the Reformation; she was the daring Pilot that rescued the University of Cambridge from the wreck of the greater monasteries; and she was THE FIRST PROTESTANT QUEEN OF ENGLAND.

Kateryn was born, as already stated, at Kendal. Castle, and in the year 1513; some say in 1510; but the reasoning of Agnes Strickland on this point is as conclusive as it is able. She was the eldest born of Sir Thomas Parr, Squire of the King's body, Master of the Wards and Comptroller to Hen. viiith., and of Maude, daughter of Sir Thomas Greene of Green Norton in the County of Northampton+. Kateryn therefore was sister to William Parr, Marquis of Northampton," the last

*Flechier.

+ See Fuller's Worthies Tit. Westmorland and Northampton.

of the wis stok of the Pars* ;" and also sister to Ann wife of William Herbert Earl of Pembroke; all of whom were born "where adders now hiss and owls sing the strains of melancholy to the midnight moonshine that sleeps upon its mouldering battlements. Fuller in one page suggests Northamptonshire as the venue of her birth, in another Kendal Castle. It has been said of this Author, that he always strives to make men more witty than wise: He is certainly no great authority on any point of sober history. It is not unworthy of remark that the accurate and learned Brydge in his History of Northamptonshire puts forward no claim to the honor of her birth. In a word, we need not hesitate to pin our faith to the assertion that she was born at Kendal Castle.

Sir William Dugdale traces her pedigree from the reign of Richard ii. asserting its antiquity even at that time. Others again trace it to the Royal House of Anjout. But as the tenor of her life rather than the pride of her race is the object of our present enquiry, we will at the outset hand over the parchment of her pedigree to the Dugdales and Monkbarns of the age, with whom the courteous reader may disport himself with for a while.

Biographical History not unfrequently records * William Parr her uncle left two daughters, married into the families of Tressame and Lane of Northamp. Ib. In Mr. Lane's family there is a beautiful portrait of her.

+ Nicolson's Annals of Kendal, 81.

See also Burn's Hist. of West. and Nicolson's Annals of Kendal.

the minutest incidents of childhood; and if it be true, that the child is but the mute prophecy of the coming man*, every trifle may be material to a just knowledge of character; and so indeed here; but seeing how the moths of time fret things more durable than human actions, we ought rather to rejoice at what we have, than repine at what we have not of her early life. Besides in admiring the chrysalis we ought not to forget the beauty of the butterfly. Certain it is, if aught be so, that in her childhood she had (amongst other gifts) a good sound classical education. Need we then lament the loss of her nursery tales, and the Shipton-like prophecies of her future Royalty? Indeed, under the Tudor Princes, Polite Literature was general amongst Ladies of noble family. The beauties of Homer, of Virgil, and of Euripides, the Divine discourses of Plato, and the moral essays of Plutarch and Seneca were as familiar to them as at present to the Common or Combination-rooms of our Universities. It was for the wits and fools under the Stuart dynasty, to chill again these noble aspirations to a level of their own knowledge. Cease, vain man, to imagine that thy help-mate-she who was created with thee, and of thee, and for thee, and like thee, is but a silkworm born to lay her egg and die. Fraternize with her (if Fraternity is to be thy trade) and together proclaim the Republic of Letters! England knows no such thing as the Salic Law in any shape! But hold—

*S. T. Coleridge.

few had the advantages Kateryn had in early youth; for she was not, at a time when the tender mind is most susceptible of good or bad impressions, inconsiderately consigned to others whose cares are but too often measured by their fees, whose purchased stripes are but too often substitutes for the admonitions of kindness, and where the moral faculties are too often sacrificed to the acracadabra of the schools; but she was kept under her own Mother's eye; never was woman more able, none more willing: with wealth for the wealthiest, with family appointments in the State for the most ambitious, Dame Parr became the Teacher of her own family. Truly blessed is such a family! Parents are ordained by Nature for this high office; with them rests the tuition of the heart so much more important than that of the head. In schools and colleges the learned languages and the abstract sciences may be acquired, but the foundations of self-knowledge are laid at home it is on the hearth of our homes that the moral energies are warmed into active life and let Cynics and Schoolmasters talk as they please, the earliest smile which responds to the maternal caress is the first lesson in the rudiments of life, "Il n'y a qu'une science à enseigner aux enfans, c'est celle des devoirs de l'homme*." It was in this glorious task that Dame Parr spent her hours of widowhood; it was thus that her fatherless children's earliest forms were moulded; it was thus

* Rousseau.

As regards her education all seem agreed in saying that she was fit to instruct at an age when others are scarcely capable of receiving it. This early developement may partly account for the story we are now about to tell; the true date of which undoubtedly is before she was twelve years of age*. The affair alluded to is a Love-scene in which one Lord Scroop and one Lord Dacre are the principal dramatis persona, marriage à la mode the plot, and the catastrophe such as one might look for in a scheme conducted, as our strange neighbours in Paris say, selon la science du monde et le secret de parvenir. If true (and there seems no reason to doubt it) the story teaches us, that before Wilberforce lived traffic in human flesh was not confined to color nor to the Corsair, and that before the abolition of Wardships, natural love and affection formed as small a part of the consideration of the marriage-contract, as they seem to do now-a-days. As the story runs, Lord Scroop "had need of money, and had nothing to make it of but the marriage of his son," and his modest kinsman Lord Dacre knowing the desperate state of things at Bolton, undertook (kind soul!) to make a match between Scroop's eldest son and Kateryn Parr. He opens the pleadings thus to

* See Miss Strickland's Life and Nicolson's Annals of Kendal.