* * * * *


HAMPTON COURT:

BIRTH OF EDWARD THE SIXTH, AND DEATH OF QUEEN JANE SEYMOUR.

(_For the Mirror_.)


Every hint, every ray of light, which tends, in the most distant manner,
to illustrate an obscure passage in the history of our country, cannot we
presume, while it affords great pleasure and satisfaction to the student
attentively employed in such researches, be deemed either insignificant or
uninteresting by the general reader.

The birth of Edward the Sixth must always be regarded as a bright star in
the horizon of the Reformation, and one, which tended greatly to blast the
prospects of those who were inimical to that glorious change in our
religious constitution.

The marriage of Henry the Eighth, with the Lady Jane Seymour,[3]
immediately after the death of his former Queen, Anne Boleyn, is so well
known as to render it superfluous, if not presuming in us to enlarge upon
it in this place: suffice it to say, that the nuptials were celebrated on
the day following the execution of Anne, the twentieth of May, 1536, the
King "not thinking it fit to mourn long, or much, for one the law had
declared criminall."[4] Old Fuller says, "it is currantly traditioned,
that at her [Jane's] first coming to court, Queen _Anne Bolen_ espying a
jewell pendant about her neck, snatched thereat, (desirous to see, the