skein of red silk about her neck.[1] Her work, as well as that of her mother, is specially commemorated by Taylor, the poet of the Thames and of the needle. "Certaine Sonnets in the Honourable Memory of Queenes and great Ladies, who have bin famous for the rare invention and practise with the Needle," form the second part of his book "The Needle's Excellency, a new boke wherein are divers admirable workes wrought with the Needle. Newly invented and cut in copper for the pleasure and profit of the industrious." (London: 12th edition, 1640.) Two of the sonnets have so special a bearing on the life of the first dwellers in Hampton Court as to be worth quoting entire.[2] They are the second and third of the series.
The second sonnet is to—
Katharine, first married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, and afterward to Henry, the 8. King of England.
I reade that in the seventh King Henrie's Raigne
In working with the Needle curiously,
Fair Katharine, Daughter to the Castile King,
Came into England with a pompous traine
Of Spanish Ladies which shee thence did bring.
She to the eight King Henry married was,
And afterwards divorc'd, where vertuously
(Although a Queene) yet she her days did passe
- ↑ See the Countess of Wilton's "Art of Needlework," p. 380, and Lady M. Alford's "Needlework as Art." Cf. Henry VIII., act iii. scene 1.
- ↑ I am indebted to the kindness of Miss Florence Freeman, herself skilled alike with the pen and the needle, for having called my attention to these quaint verses.
