We greet her then once more as a rich and buxom widow of city fame. Her wealth, added to her comeliness--for she was still in the prime of life--brought many “a potent, grave, and reverend seignor” to her feet, and to sue for her hand. Nor did she long linger in her choice. The favoured suitor now was Sir John Perceval, goldsmith and usurer--that is to say, banker, in the phrase of that day; very wealthy, of high repute, alderman of his ward, and in such a position of civic advancement that he would have been described in modern language as next the chair. He wooed and won the “Golden Widow”--for so, because of her double inheritance of the wealth of two rich husbands, she was merrily named. Their wedding was a kind of public festival, and the bride, in acknowledgment of her own large possessions, was invested with a stately dower at the church-door. One year after their marriage her husband, Sir John, was elected to that honourable office which is still supposed by foreign nations to be only second in rank to that of the monarch on the throne, Lord Mayor of the city of London. Thus, by a strange succession of singular events, the barefooted shepherdess of a Cornish moorland became the Lady Mayoress of metropolitan fame; and the legend of Thomasine Bonaventure--for it was now well known--was the popular theme of royal and noble interest among the lords and ladies of the Court. She demeaned herself bravely and decorously in her ascent among the great and lofty ones of the land. Like all noble natures, her spirit rose with her personal elevation, and took equal place with her compeers of each superior rank. Nor did her true and simple woman’s nature undergo any depreciation or change. It breathes and survives in every sentence of her family letters, transcripts of which have been perpetuated and preserved to our own times. One part of her personal history is illustrative of a scene of life and manners when Henry VII. was king.