The Constable of the Tower by W. Harrison Ainsworth

“I am content, and humbly thank your Majesty,” replied the duke, bowing his head in resignation.

“I must repeat,” said Edward, preparing to depart, “that it will be your Grace’s own fault if you be not speedily liberated, and restored to favor.”

Norfolk shook his head mournfully, and bowed reverentially as the king and his attendants departed.

Soon afterwards, the door was barred on the outside by Tombs. On hearing the noise of the bolts shot into their sockets, the unfortunate prisoner heaved a deep sigh, and then took up his mallet and chisel.

“Men’s hearts are harder than this stone,” he muttered, as he resumed his sad and solitary task. “Something tells me that boy’s reign will be a short one. If it shall please Heaven to spare me to see the right succession restored in the person of Mary, and the old belief brought back, I shall die happy!”

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Chapter XI

SHOWING HOW SIR THOMAS SEYMOUR PROSPERED IN HIS SUIT

Towards evening, on the same day, the Princess Elizabeth and her escort, accompanied by her governess, Mistress Catherine Ashley, and the young king’s preceptors, Sir John Cheke and Doctor Cox, arrived at the Tower. Sir Thomas Seymour, who had been on the watch for more than an hour, and whose impatience by this time had risen almost to fever heat, no sooner beheld the troop of arquebusiers, with the princess at its head, crossing Tower Hill, than he flew to meet her, and continued by the side of her palfrey as she entered the gates of the fortress.

Elizabeth blushed deeply as her handsome suitor drew nigh, and exhibited a confusion from which Seymour drew a favorable augury. Moreover, his anticipations of success were confirmed by the glance he received from his esquire, who rode behind the princess with Mistress Ashley and the young king’s preceptors—a glance that proclaimed as plainly as words, that all had gone on smoothly and satisfactorily.

Never had Seymour looked more captivating to female eye than on this occasion. When he chose to exert the full force of his remarkable attractions, he was almost—as his esquire had described him—irresistible. Elizabeth now found him so.

Some months previously, during the late king’s lifetime, perceiving that the fair young princess deigned to cast her regards upon him, Sir Thomas, whose temerity was equal to his good looks, had not hesitated to declare his passion. The declaration, however, was but coldly received, and he subsequently yielded to the temptings of ambition which pointed out the queen-dowager as the better match. At the last moment, however, and when he was all but committed to Catherine, his passion for Elizabeth revived with greater intensity than ever, and, as we have seen, decided him, at the risk of losing the prize of which he felt secure, to make a final attempt to win her.

On the princess’s part, whatever prudent resolutions she might have formed, and however decided the refusal she designed to give, her determination failed her at the sight of her resistless admirer, and she listened to his honeyed words with a complacency that seemed to warrant the conclusions he drew as to her improved disposition towards him.

“Your esquire, Signor Ugo, is an Italian, it would seem, Sir Thomas?—at least, he chiefly spoke that language to me,” she observed, as they passed through the gateway of the By-ward Tower.

“Mezzo-Italiano, altezza,” replied Seymour, smiling. “A Tuscan on the mother’s side.”

“By my fay, a sprightly galliard she rejoined; and much devoted to you, I should judge. He could talk of little else save his lord’s merits and noble qualities, and harped so much upon the theme, that I was obliged at last to bid him change it, or hold his tongue.”

“I am sorry he has offended your Highness,” returned Seymour. “In future, his manners shall be amended, or he shall no longer continue esquire of mine. But he hath heard me speak so often of you, and in such terms, that he may have fancied himself in duty bound to extol me to your Highness. I gave him credit for more discretion.”

“Nay, I might have been content to listen to his praises of you, Sir Thomas,” observed the princess, blushing. “But when he repeated what you had said of me, I deemed it time to check him. Methinks you make too great a confidant of this galliard. They of his country are proverbially faith less.”