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Henry died in the early morning on January 28th; the fact was not made public till the 31st; and in the meantime, Hertford had carried the Council, which forthwith nominated him Lord Protector. A couple of months later, that lady who had succeeded in surviving two husbands including Henry herself wedded Seymour of Sudeley,

Shepherds and shepherdesses, gods and goddesses, clowns and mummers, all took part in the play, and it may interest my readers to give an account of one of these pageants, which was performed before Queen Elizabeth when she visited the ancient and historic castle of Sudeley. The play is founded on the old classical story of Apollo and Daphne.

The old abbey tithe-barn at Littleton of the fourteenth century, Wickhamford Manor, the home of Penelope Washington, whose tomb is in the adjoining church, the picturesque village of Cropthorne, Winchcombe and its houses, Sudeley Castle, the timbered houses at Norton and Harvington, Broadway and Campden, abounding with beautiful houses, and the old town of Alcester, of which some views are given all these contain many objects of antiquarian and artistic interest, and can easily be reached from Evesham.

The acting may not have been very good; indeed Queen Elizabeth did not always think very highly of the performances of her subjects at Coventry, and was heard to exclaim, "What fools ye Coventry folk are!" but I think her Majesty must have been pleased at the concluding address of the players at Sudeley.

In the Cotswolds is the castle of Sudeley, its ruins being in rather good preservation. It was an extensive work, built in the reign of Henry VI., and was destroyed in the Civil Wars; it was a famous place in the olden time, and was regarded as one of the most magnificent castles in England when Queen Elizabeth made her celebrated progress thither in 1592.

We have the best and most undoubted authorities to assure us, that Edward's pre-contract or marriage, urged to invalidate his match with the lady Grey, was with the lady Eleanor Talbot, widow of the lord Butler of Sudeley, and sister of the earl Shrewsbury, one of the greatest peers in the kingdom; her mother was the lady Katherine Stafford, daughter of Humphrey duke of Buckingham, prince of the blood: an alliance in that age never reckoned unsuitable.

The union was not a happy one, owing mainly to Seymour's intrigues with the Princess Elizabeth, a circumstance that was thought to have shortened Katharine's life. The ci-devant queen died at Sudeley Castle, after having given birth to a daughter, in August 1548, aged thirty-six. After the one tragic episode in her life, the course of Anne of Cleves ran smoothly enough.

After the death of Henry VIII., his queen, Catharine Parr, married Lord Seymour of Sudeley, and she died and was buried in this castle: it is related that her leaden coffin was exhumed in 1782, two hundred and eighty years after her death, and the remains were found in excellent preservation.

As an illustration of the state of the roads in South Wales, which were quite as bad as those in the North, we may state that, in 1803, when the late Lord Sudeley took home his bride from the neighbourhood of Welshpool to his residence only thirteen miles distant, the carriage in which the newly married pair rode stuck in a quagmire, and the occupants, having extricated themselves from their perilous situation, performed the rest of their journey on foot.

It may be inferred that while they gave the book itself their sanction, they resisted its imposition on the clergy by lay authority. One other matter was to occupy the attention of Parliament before the close of the session, namely the treason of the Protector's brother, the Admiral, Lord Seymour of Sudeley.