Christina's route lay through the duchy of Würtemberg and along the valley of the Neckar. At Esslingen, the free imperial city on the banks of this river she met the new English Ambassador, Sir Richard Morosyne, on his way to Augsburg. In his train was a young secretary called Roger Ascham. He had been Lady Jane Grey's tutor, and had left his Greek studies and pleasant college life at Cambridge with some reluctance, but was keenly enjoying his first sight of foreign parts. The journey up the Rhine in a fair barge with goodly glass windows afforded him great pleasure. He gazed in admiration at the castles and abbeys perched on the crags, and the vines laden with purple grapes that grew in terraces along the banks, while the river at Spires--"broader a great deal than the Thames at Greenwich"--made him realize for the first time why the Greeks worshipped river-gods. In the Court chapel at Brussels he caught a glimpse of Queen Eleanor, "looking as fair and white as a dove in her embroidered linen robe, with her ladies clad in black velvet with gold chains, and white plumes in their caps, like boys rather than maidens." Then, as he rode through Tongres, he met the Queen of Hungary posting back from Augsburg, with only thirty courtiers in her train, "having outridden and wearied all the rest, and taken thirteen days to do a journey that men can scarce do in seventeen!" "She is a virago," the young Englishman remarked, "never so well as when she is flinging on horseback or hunting all day."[426] Now, at Esslingen, Ascham fell in with another noble lady, "the Duchess of Milan and Lorraine, daughter to the King of Denmark." Unlike Mary of Hungary, who posted so fast that no ladies could keep pace with her, Christina was always attended with a large retinue. Brantôme tells us that at Court she assumed a state which rivalled that of the Queen of France herself. On this journey she rode a white palfrey, and was followed by sixteen maids of honour on horseback and four chariots filled with ladies, escorted by a troop of 300 horse. Thirty-six mules and a dozen waggons, laden with chamber-stuff, brought up the rear, and a great crowd of "rascals belonging to her kitchen and stables came drabbling in the dirt on foot." Roger looked with admiration at the fine horses with their rich trappings, and was profoundly impressed by the tall stature and stately bearing of the Duchess. "I have never seen a lady of her port in all my life!" he exclaimed. His interest was heightened when he heard "that she should once have married King Henry VIII., before my Lady Anne of Cleves," and was told that she had now been with the Emperor at Augsburg, "where she was thought by some to have been a-wooing to the Prince of Spain."[427] [Sidenote: AUG., 1550] DISCORD IN IMPERIAL FAMILY]