As in the Towre, and places more beside,
Her excellent memorialls may be seene:
Whereby the Needles prayse is dignifide
By her faire Ladies, and her selve a Queene.
Thus for her paines, here her reward is iust,
Her workes proclaime her prayse, though she be dust.
The third runs thus:—
Mary, Queene of England, and wife to Philip, King of Spaine.[1]
Her Daughter Mary here the scepter swaid,
And though shee were a Queene of mighty power,
Her memory will never be decaid;
Which by her workes are likewise in the Tower,
In Windsor Castle, and in Hampton Court,
In that most pompous roome call'd Paradise;
Who e'er pleaseth thither to resort,
May see some workes of her's, of wondrous price.
Her greatness held it no dis-reputation,
To take the Needle in her Royall hand:
Which was a good example to our Nation,
To banish idlenesse from out her Land:
And thus this Queene, in wisdome thought it fit,
The Needles worke pleased her, and she grac'd it.
The memorials of Mary Tudor's happier hours have perished, and the tyranny and gloom of her reign, with the intrigue and unscrupulousness of Edward's, have left no permanent mark on the buildings. As we wander through the gardens or the courts, we think, after Wolsey and Henry VIII., of Elizabeth.
- ↑ This is rather different from the reading in Lady M. Alford's book. I think she may have taken the lines from Miss Strickland's "Life of Mary Tudor."
