3 JANUARY 1931, Page 28

A Woman of the Tudor Age

A Woman of the Tudor Age. By Lady Cecilio Goff. (John Murray. 18s.) LADY Ceeilie Goff has collected under the title A Woman of the Tudor Age, an immense amount of interesting material. The reader has a sense of picking his way among items of immense but disconnected interest. The Duchess of Suffolk stands among them a somewhat shadowy figure. During the first half of the book her husband is far more real to us. From the moment that we see him setting off on a distasteful errand to make Queen Katherine, the " Princess Dowager " as she refused to call herself, as uncomfortable as possible, we much enjoy his company. He wished, he said, that " some accident might happen to him on the road that should exempt him at once from accomplishing such a mission on such a journey."

The account which he wrote to the King of his visit is a masterpiece of clear description, tact, and just sentiment. IIcr servants are " stiffly standing in their conscience that she

was your Queen and no man sworn to serve her as Queen might change that oath without perjury." He desires to know what he had better do with such servants. " The Bishop of Llandaff (the Queen's Confessor) whom you have

appointed to depart we have suffered to remain for the present." He can speak Spanish and " is a man- of some

simplicity and will do no harm."

There are few pages and certainly no chapters in which we do not come across some delightful quotation from an " authority " in this charming miscellaneous treasure house of a book. A letter from Cardinal Chapuys to Granville is a specimen taken at random.

" The King has wonderfully felt the case of his wife, and has certainly shown greater sorrow at her loss than at the faults, love or divorce of his previous wives. It is like the case of the woman, who cried more bitterly at the loss of her eighth husband than at the death of all the others put together, though they had all been good men, but it was because she had never buried one of them before without being sure of the next, and as yet it does not seem that he has formed any new plan."