MARY TUDOR AND OTHER ENGLISH PRINCESSES.* THE five English princesses
whose story is pleasantly told in Miss Woodward's book are Margaret and Mary Tudor, daughters of Henry VII.; Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I.; Mary and Henrietta Stuart, daughters of Charles I. Their foreign consorts were James IV'. of Scotland, Louis XII. of France, Frederic, Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, William Prince of Orange, and Philippe, Duke of Orl6a.ns. Not one of the princesses can be said to have led a, peaceful life, free of romance and of tragedy. Sometimes their adven- tures were brought on by themselves, sometimes they were the natural result of the wars and revolutions among which they lived ; sometimes the state of society may have been responsible both for their conduct and their sorrows. The noblest woman among them, with all her faults, was "the Winter Queen"; the sweetest, and the most truly unfortunate, was her niece Henrietta. Much has been already written on these two, and their names will fascinate writers and readers for many a year to come; they have the united charm of the Stuarts and the seventeenth century. On the other hand, Mary of Orange, in spite of the tragic moment of her marriage (1642), the sadness of her early widowhood, and the difficulties of her political position, has never inspired much personal interest, and will continue to be best known as the mother of William III.
As a study of stormy temperament and romantic adventure, Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scotland, certainly takes the lead. And considering that she, notwithstanding her brother Henry's intention to disinherit her, was the mother of kings and queens of England to be and "the source from which • (1) Fivo English Coneorts of Foreign Princes. By Ida Woodward. With six Illustrations. London: Methuen and Co. [12s. Od. not.]—(2) Mary Tudor, Queen of France. By Mary Croom Brown. With 12 Illustrations. London: Methuen and Co. [105, ad. not.j the union of England and Scotland sprang," it is rather remarkable that, so far as we know, she has not yet been made the subject of a popular biography. Margaret's plain, homely, rather melancholy face, as we have it here reproduced from the picture in the National Portrait Gallery, does not somehow suggest. the woman who by her passionate foolish- ness added so much to the confusion of Scottish affairs after the death of James IV. on Flodden Field. "It was the fate or the folly of that Queen to form rash marriages," wrote Sir Walter Scott ; and we need only remind our readers how James V.'s mother, the Regent of his kingdom, married Douglas, Earl of Angus, divorced him, married young Harry Stuart, afterwards Lord Ilifethven, for his good looks, and tried to be divorced again at fifty years old that she might marry another Stuart who had taken her fancy. Henry VIII. was not the only one of his family who welcomed any excuse for a matrimonial change. And Margaret had her will in these affairs in spite of her son and all the Scottish power, escaping in disguise to the mountains when they threatened her liberty. Here indeed is matter for "romantic history."
Of all the princesses mentioned above Mary Tudor has at this moment the largest share of attention. Her story is told not only by Miss Woodward. Another agreeable and well- informed writer—Miss Croom Brown—devotes a volume to the details of her little-known life. Henry VII.'s younger daughter was a happier woman than her sister Margaret, yet she had her share of Tudor sentiment and adventurousness. She missed a groat position in Europe by the breaking off of her early engagement with the Prince of Castile, after- wards Charles V. The political arrangement which made her Queen of France—Louis XII, being fifty-six, an old man for his age, and she nineteen—was not displeasing to Princess Mary. The death of her husband and very sincere admirer soon set her free to marry Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, the man she really loved ; and so the Queen of France settled down into a life in England as peaceable as the temper of Henry VIII. would allow. She died in 1533, four years before the birth of her granddaughter, Lady Jane Grey.
Miss Croom Brown has made great and admirable use of the manuscripts in the Record Office, and especially of the
foreign and domestic letters and papers of the reign of Henry VIII. The homely quaintness of these materials, worked up in her own fresh and lively style, has enabled her to make a most convincing picture of English and French royal life in the early sixteenth century.
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