In vain other swains claimed her for a dance.  Dick refused to surrender his prize.  They breakfasted together in a little bower made of green boughs, the most delightful and lover-like retreat imaginable.  Dick’s appetite, furious an hour ago, was now clean gone.  He could eat nothing.  He subsisted on love alone.  But as she was prevailed upon to sip from a foaming tankard of Whitsun ale, he quaffed the remainder of the liquid with rapture.  This done, they resumed their merry sports, and began to dance, again.  The bells continued to ring blithely, the assemblage to shout, and the minstrels to play.  A strange contrast to what was passing in the Puritan’s garden.

CHAPTER XIX.

Theobalds’ Palace.

The magnificent palace of Theobalds, situated near Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire, originally the residence of the great Lord Treasurer Burleigh, and the scene of his frequent and sumptuous entertainments to Queen Elizabeth and the ambassadors to her Court, when she “was seen,” says Stow, “in as great royalty, and served as bountifully and magnificently as at any other time or place, all at his lordship’s charge; with rich shows, pleasant devices, and all manner of sports, to the great delight of her Majesty and her whole train, with great thanks from all who partook of it, and as great commendations from all that heard of it abroad:”—­this famous and delightful palace, with its stately gardens, wherein Elizabeth had so often walked and held converse with her faithful counsellor; and its noble parks and chases, well stocked with deer, wherein she had so often hunted; came into possession of James the First, in the manner we shall proceed to relate, some years before the date of this history.

James first made acquaintance with Theobalds during his progress from Scotland to assume the English crown, and it was the last point at which he halted before entering the capital of his new dominions.  Here, for four days, he and his crowd of noble attendants were guests of Sir Robert Cecil, afterwards Earl of Salisbury, who proved himself the worthy son of his illustrious and hospitable sire by entertaining the monarch and his numerous train in the same princely style that the Lord Treasurer had ever displayed towards Queen Elizabeth.  An eyewitness has described the King’s arrival at Theobalds on this occasion.  “Thus, then,” says John Savile, “for his Majesty’s coming up the walk, there came before him some of the nobility, barons, knights, esquires, gentlemen, and others, amongst whom was the sheriff of Essex, and most of his men, the trumpets sounding next before his highness, sometimes one, sometimes another; his Majesty riding not continually betwixt the same two, but sometimes one, sometimes another, as seemed best to his highness; the whole nobility of our land and Scotland round about him observing no place of superiority, all bare-headed, all of whom alighted from their horses at their entrance into