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the old market-place at Rouen to hear her sentence. Two monks were sent to her cell to apprise her of her approaching fate. Human weakness again assailed poor Joan. "I had rather be beheaded seven times than burnt," she

1, and her shrieks and sobs filled the prison. Just then the Bishop of Beauvais entered, and Joan turned to him: " My death lies at your door," she said. "For your injustice to me I summon YOU before God." The Bishop trembled.

She was allowed to receive the sacrament, and, greatly comforted by it, she was calm when the time came to go forth.

At nine o'clock on the 30th of May, 1431, she left the prison clothed in a woman's long gown, and wearing a mitre with the words, "HERETIC, RELAPSED, APOSTATE, and IDOLATRESS upon it in large letters. When she reached the scaffold there was another long sermon to listen to. At its conclusion Joan prayed long, fervently, and aloud. All about her wept, even Beauvais. She forgave her enemies, prayed for the King, and then asked for a cross. An English soldier broke his staff and made her a rough cross from it. She kissed it and put it in her bosom, but begged some one to bring her the crucifix from a church harl by, and "to hold it lifted up straight before her eyes to the last steps of death, that the cross on which God had hung might, as long as she lived, be continually before her eyes." When it was brought she embraced it with tears, pray. ing to God, St. Michael, and St. Catherine.

She was then taken to the pile, and fastened high upon it, so that her death agony might be prolonged. When first the flames reached her she shrieked with terror and pain, and cried out for holy water; but soon she became her calm, grand, heroic self. Weakness fell away from her as death approached. When she saw that the flames came near the priest who was holding up the cross before her eyes, she bade him good-bye, and told him to stand further off, but adding, . Lift the cross higher that I may see it!" He could still hear her speak. She said: "Jesus! Jesus! Mary! My voices! My voices!" No more shricks of terror. No more groans of pain. She cried out triumphantly: "My voices have not deceived me they were from God;" and with one great cry," Jesus!" her head fell upon her breast, and Joan was free.

So ended her martyrdom. Thus closed the life of this wonderful girl.

AFTERWARDS.,

IN 1449, Normandy again became the property

of the French nation; and in 1453, with the sur. rendering of Bordeaux, the last of the conquests of triumphant France, peace, freedom, and independence were restored throughout the country. The work begun by Joan completed, people remembered her prophecy, and began to think that some kind of justice should be done to her memory.

Joan's father had died of a broken heart after his daughter's death, but her mother still lived, and had striven hard to have the sentence pronounced upon Joan set aside. The city of Orleans gave Isabeau Romée a pension, all of which, with a great part of her little property, she spent in trying to stir up the authorities to do justice to the memory of Joan.

In February 1450, letters patent were issued by the Crown, constituting a commission to inquire and report into all the circumstances of the trial and death of Joan of Arc. The consent of the Pope was obtained; but it was nearly five years before this second process began. On the 7th of November, 1455, Joan's aged mother, leaning on the arm of the son who had fought by Joan in the campaign of the Loire, entered the cathedral of Notre Dame at Paris, followed by a train of clergy, lawyers, nobles, and women of high dgree. Isabeau formally opened the proceedings by demanding that justice should be done to the memory of her daughter Jeanne. The proceedings were then removed to Rouen, as the fittest place to rehabilitate the memory of the poor girl and noble heroine who had there so unjustly suffered death. There were a hundred and twenty witnesses in all, and every one of them, without exception, testified to the truth, sincerity, and piety of her character.

On the 7th of July, 1456, in the great hall of the Archbishop's Palace at Rouen, the final sentence was pronounced. The twelve articles that had been drawn up against her at the former trial were declared to be false and calumnious, and condemned to be torn from the records and publicly destroyed. The whole trial and judgment were now pronounced to be false and calumnious, and thus null and void; and it was further declared that neither Joan nor any of her relatives had incurred any shadow of disgrace.

By order of the Commissioners this new judg ment was publicly read in all the cities of France. It was read on the spot where she had suffered death, and a stone cross was raised there to her memory. The people of Orleans established a yearly religious festival in her honour, and took care of Joan's mother, now called

Isabelle du Lis, until her death, which happened two years after the reversal of the sentence. The Duke of Orleans gave a grant of land to Joan's two brothers, in recognition of her services. All over France crosses, monuments, and statues were erected to the memory of the heroine of Orleans. Thus, after twenty-five years, tardy but full justice was done to the memory of this wonderful girl, who united so many womanly qualities with the gifts of a superior mind, and added to them a high courage and daring surpassing that of even the bravest men.

HISTORIC DOUBTS.

Of late some doubt has been thrown on the account given by historians of the fate of Joan of Arc. In an able article published in Household Words some twenty years ago, the following curious particulars are recorded :

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A few old records exist at Metz and Orleans, which tend to prove that she was alive long after the period of her martyrdom; and a short time ago these were collected and made the most of by Monsieur Delepierre, in an interesting tract entitled Doute Historique (Historic Doubt). When are we to take up again a fact in history and say to ourselves, This is settled beyond all doubt?' He begins by quoting the authority of the Père Vignier, an eminent antiquarian of the seventeenth century. This investigator, while examining the archives at Metz in the year 1687, found an entry to the effect, that on the 29th of May, 1436, ‘La Pucelle Jehanne, who had been in France,' came to that town, and on the same day came her two brothers, one of whom was a knight, and called himself Messire Pierre, and the other Petit Jehan, an esquire,' who thought she had been dead, but as soon as they saw her they recog nised her, as she did them. The document goes on to state that on the next day they took her to Boguelon, and procured for her a horse, a pair of leggings, a cap, and a sword, and the said Pucelle managed the horse very well, and said many things to the Sieur Nicole, so that he felt sure this was she who had been in France; and she was identified by many signs as La Pucelle Jehanne de France who had consecrated Charles at Rheims. After going to Cologne ani many other places, where she was looked upon as the genuine Maid, she reached Erlon, where she was married to Monsieur de Hermoise, a knight: ' and soon after this the said Sieur de Hermoise and his wife La Pucelle came and lived in Metz in the house which belonged to the said Sieur.'

"The Père Vignier did not set much value on

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this record (and we cannot blame his scepticism) until the next year, 1688, when he happened to dine with a Monsieur des Armoises, who after the entertainment gave him the keys of the family library, where, to his surprise and delight, he stumbled on a marraige contract between Robert des Armoises, knight, and Jeanne d'Arcy, called Maid of Orleans.' This confirmation of the Metz record satisfied him.

"Monsieur Delepierre then refers to some documents found at Orleans in 1740, which contain charges under the years 1435 and 1436 for mony given to a messenger who brought letters fr ra Jehanne la Pucelle,' and to Jehan de Lils (fi at being the title by which her brothers had been ennobled), to help him in returning to his sister.' There is a third entry, To Jehanne Darmoises, as a present made to her on August 1st. 1439, after the deliberation of the Council of this city, for the services rendered by her at the siege, 210 livres.'

"As a last documentary evidence, there is a petition from her brother, previous to his being ennobled in 1415,-a date contradicted by the Orleans charge which was made in 1436. This petition represents that he had left his native place to join the King's service in company with his sister Jeanne la Pucelle, with whom, up to the time of her absence, and since then till the present, he had risked his life.'

"Monsieur Delepierre also urges that at the time of Joan's reputed execution in the year 1431, there was a common talk that she was not dead, but that the English had put another victim in her place. Thus the chronicle of Metz, after relating the story of her imprisonment, trial, and burning, concludes, • Ainsi qu'en le raconte, car depuis la contraire à été proucé' (As they relate, for the contrary has since been proved).

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· He regards the period which elapsed between her condemnation and execution, and the extraordinary precautions which were taken to conceal her as calling for some explanation. He notices that several women who assume the name f the Maid of Orleans were tried and punishei as impostors, while no proceedings were taken against this Jeanne des Armoises, or De Hermoise or Darmoises. In conclusion, he considers that these various facts are only explicable on the supposition that some young woman was substituted for her at the burning pyre of Bon, and that she continued a captive until the death of the Duke of Bedford in 1435, when she was released from prison, and returned to pass many more years in the world." C. E. H.

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Birth and Baptism-Childhood's Promise-Her First Flirtation-Early Levity Rebuked-Elizabeth under Arrest-Love's Aftermath-Roger Ascham-His Plan of Teaching Influence over Elizabeth-Sunshine and Storm-From Puritan to Catholic-Sent to the Tower-Released-Prisoner at Woodstock-A Triumph on the Thames-Freedom at HatfieldAt Hampton Court-Accession to the Throne The Coronation-Elizabeth as a Statesman-The Last of the TudorsMary, Queen of Scots-The Armada-The Elizabethan Court-Her Last Days.

AT

BIRTH AND BAPTISM.

T the palace of Greenwich, on the 7th of
September, 1533, the young and giddy

queen of "the haughty lord that broke the bonds of Rome," gave birth to a daughter. The child received the auspicious name of her grand

mother, Elizabeth, whose marriage to the first of the Tudor kings had united the two Roses, and for ever ended the bloodshed of the civil wars; and the infant now born, though destined to be the last of her proud line, was to accomplish infinitely more for the peace and unity of the great awakened Commonwealth of England.

...

She was not Henry's first child, nor Anne Boleyn his first wife. A daughter named Mary, a courageous girl, born to him by his divorced wife Catharine of Arragon, was now seventeen years of age. That only "a fair young maid" should have been presented him by his beautiful and brilliant queen, for whom he had cut himself and his kingdom adrift from pope and cardinal, sorely vexed the heart of the imperious sovereign. In the play of Shakspeare, the King turns to the lady who announced it, "I guess thy message Say ay, and of a boy!" and she walks away grumbling because she had received no more than a groom's fee. Nevertheless the ceremony of christening was brilliantly pompous. The church was hung with tapestry, and the way to it from the palace was strewn with rushes, the ancient and filthy substitute for the carpets that were to come into familiar use during the reign of the child who was the subject of all this show. The ceremony was witnessed by many lords and ladies of high degree, a strange gathering when we regard it in the light of the fates of its components. In the middle of the church stood a silver font, adorned with a crimson canopy; the innocent babe, in a mantle of purple velvet with a long train furred with ermine, was borne by the Duchess-Dowager of Norfolk, mother of a lady who was destined by-and-by to be Henry's queen, and to perish on the scaffold for her own dishonour; and a splendid canopy was held above the infant by her uncle, who afterwards died upon the block, by two Howards and Lord Hussey, the great Lincolnshire chief, who was also to suffer execution in a few years. The Bishop of London performed the ceremony of baptism; and Thomas Cranmer, the moulder of the English Reformation, administered the sacrament of confirmation,-the very man who, in three short years, was to pronounce the sentence which branded the infant as a bastard. On the same day, and at the same hour, said an untrue rumour of the age, as those which gave birth to Elizabeth, a son was born to Sir John Dudley (afterwards Duke of Northumberland), who now assisted in carrying from the church the gorgeous presents of the sponsors. That boy became in after years the favourite of this young

princess, and the superstition of the sixteenth century in this way explained the mysterious fondness of the Maiden Queen for the lord of Kenilworth. To make the ceremony doubly historic, the bard of Avon, full seventy years later. when the princess had finished her majestic and lonely life, put into the lips of Cranmer a prophecy, which was fulfilled because it was then no prophecy :

"This royal infant (heaven still move about her!)
Though in her cradle, yet now promises
Upon this land a thousand thousand blessings,
Which time shall bring to ripeness.

*

She shall be loved and feared: her own shall bless her;

Her foes shake like a field of beaten corn,
And hang their heads with sorrow: good grows
with her.

In her days every man shall eat in safety
Under his own vine what he plants, and sing
The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.

She shall be, to the happiness of England,
An aged princess; many days shall see her,
And yet no day without a deed to crown it.
Would I had known no more! but she must die,-
She must, the saints must have her,—yet a virgin;
A most unspotted lily shall she pass

To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her.”

CHILDHOOD'S PROMISE.

But the child was born to trouble, born to be steeled in the school of political scandal, court intrigue, and wearisome persecution, that she might make England strong and prosperous by her cold, keen genius. Her sorrows began ere she was three years old. The love of Henry for the other sex-like his daughter's-had little chance against his self-will and state-craft; and when Anne Boleyn approached him one summer day in 1536, as he stood by a window of that palace where Elizabeth had first seen the light, and in supplicating attitude held out to him the bright little thing who must even then have possessed some of that magical fascination which struck all men in her elder girlhood, the relentless husband dismissed her from his presence with stern mien. In a few hours the accused queen was landed from the Thames, and passed beneath the gloomy and ominous portals of the Traitor's Gate into the Tower of London, ber last earthly abode. She was condemned by the peers; and on the nineteenth day of that same month of May, her "small" neck was severeu on Tower Green. At that moment, however, there was at least one good and true heart which pitied the "motherless and worse than fatherless child; " for only six days before her arrest,

Queen Anne had enjoined her chaplain, Matthew Parker, to instruct her little daughter in the principles of true religion. This learned priest had to pass through persecution and poverty during the reactionary reign of Mary, but when Elizabeth ascended the throne she summoned him to the primacy of the English Church.

The care of the infant princess and her elder sister devolved on Lady Margaret Bryan at Hunsdon, in Hertfordshire, who seems to have done her best for the neglected child of her deceased friend and queen. "My Lord," wrote sbe to Thomas Cromwell, the right-hand man of Henry, “when my Lady Mary's Grace was born, it pleased the King's Grace to appoint me Lady Mistress, and made me a Baroness, and so I have been governess to the children His Grace have had since. Now it is so, my Lady Elizabeth is put from that degree she was afore, and what she is at now I know not but by hearsay. Therefore I know not how to order her nor myself, nor none of hers that I have the rule of, that is, her women and grooms, beseeching you to be good Lord to my Lady and to all hers, and that she may have some raiment. She hath neither gown, nor kirtle, nor petticoat, nor no manner of linen, nor forsmocks, nor kerchiefs, nor rails, nor body stichets, nor handkerchiefs, nor mufflers, nor bizgens. All these Her Grace must take. I have driven off as long as I can, that by my truth I can drive it off no longer. . . . God knoweth my Lady (Elizabeth) hath great pain with her great teeth, and they come very slowly forth, which causeth me to suffer Her Grace to have her will more than I would. I trust to God, an her teeth were well graft, to have Her Grace after another fashion than she is yet, so as I trust the King's Grace shall have great comfort in Her Grace. For she is as toward a child, and as gentle of conditions, as I ever knew any in my life. Jesu preserve Her Grace ! ”

Mary had not been treated well by Anne Boleyn. Brought up in the same house with Elizabeth, she had been compelled to behold the pomp that surrounded the infant's cradle, while -be herself did not even enjoy the privilege of writing. But no Tudor bore a long-lived rancour. Now that her baby-sister was degraded in her turn, she continued to address her as - Her Grace;" nay, she even ventured to beseech their father's kindness, just two months after the execution of the Queen. "My sister Elizabeth," she wrote from Hunsdon, "is in od health (thanks to Our Lord), and such a child toward, as I doubt not but Your Highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming, as

knoweth Almighty God." Elizabeth was a proper and charming child,-proper, when her sister Mary led her in the summer of 1537 to the baptismal font of their baby brother Edward; charming, when she, a mere child of six years, addressing the Chancellor whom Henry had sent down to Hunsdon with his "blessing" for the girls, gave her humble thanks, and asked after His Majesty's welfare "with as great a gravity as she had been forty years old." From the hour she learned to lisp, she conquered all by her brightness and fascination. Each of the royal Bluebeard's successive wives was charmed by her winning ways: poor dull Anne of Cleves, content to receive a pension and be called the King's "sister," was pleased with her; Catharine Howard honoured the child of seven with a conspicuous place at her own wedding feast; Catharine Parr, the last and luckiest of Henry's brides, desired the company of Elizabeth, for whom already there was predicted on every hand a brilliant future; and for a time the Princess lived and learned at Court with her little brother. For some unknown reason she was sent away for an entire year (1543-4); but a letter in Italian to her step-mother, full of love and obedience, cleared the air, and she was released from her banishment. Further on, we shall have occasion to speak of the intellectual drill she went through; but here it may be mentioned that by the time she was eleven years of age, she had prepared a translation of Marguerite de Valois's "Le Miroir de l'Ame Pécheresse," which she dedicated to the Queen. Elizabeth and Edward were sweetly intimate; they cried bitterly together at Enfield when told of their father's death, but her sorrow vanished quickly under the current of her cold prudence; and the young King complimented her by letter on the equanimity with which she had borne the trial.

Here for the first time we touch the core of England's great Queen. We have seen her charms of manner and intellect; now we see the cold glitter of her prudence, which permitted her to fold her arms and serenely survey the future over her father's grave. There was no girlish abandon. Probably she thought more of the annuity of £3,000 bequeathed by the selfish despot she so strangely resembled, and of the will which left her the crown of England in succession to Edward and her elder sister. She was now almost within measurable distance of a throne. This wise little woman was only thirteen years of age. To complete her picture, one feature has still to be added to the canvas,

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