was declared by the Archbishop's court at Canterbury null and void, and invalid from the beginning. Catharine was henceforth to be treated no longer as Queen but only as still Princess-dowager. She was unable to realise the things that were happening around her. That she was expected to renounce her rank as Queen awoke in her quite as much astonishment as anger. 'For she had not come to England,' she said, 'on mercantile business at a venture, but according to the will of the two venerated kings now dead: she had married King Henry according to the decision of the Holy Father at Rome: she was the anointed and crowned Queen of England; were she to give up her title, she would have been a concubine these twenty-four years, and her daughter a bastard; she would be false to her conscience, to her own soul, her confessor would not be able to absolve her.' She became more and more absorbed in strict Catholic religious observances. She rose soon after midnight, to be present at the mass; under her dress she wore the habit of the third order of S. Francis; she confessed twice and fasted twice a week; her reading consisted of the legends of the saints. So she lived on for two years more, undisturbed by the ecclesiastico-political statutes which passed in the English Parliament. Till the very end she regarded herself as the true Queen of England. Immediately after the sentence on Catharine followed Anne's coronation, which was performed with all the ancient ceremonial, all the more carefully attended to because she was not born a princess. On the Thursday before Whitsuntide she was escorted from Greenwich by the Mayor and the Trades of London, in splendidly adorned barges, with musical instruments playing, till she was greeted by the cannon of the Tower. The Saturday after she went in procession through the City to Westminster. The King had created eighteen knights of the Order of the Bath. These in their new decorations, and a great part of the nobility, which felt itself honoured in Anne's elevation, accompanied her:[118] she sat on a splendid seat, supported by and slung between horses: the canopy over her was borne by the barons of the Cinque Ports; her hair was uncovered, she was charming as always, and (it appears) not without a sense of high good fortune. On Sunday she was escorted to Westminster Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops, the Abbot of Westminster and twelve other abbots in full canonicals: she was in purple, her ladies in scarlet, for so old custom required; the Duke of Suffolk bore the crown before her, which was placed on her head by the hands of the archbishop. Nobles and commons greeted her with emulous devotion, the ecclesiastics joined in; they expected from her an heir to England.--Not a son, but a daughter, Elizabeth, did she then bear beneath her heart.