Then followed a series of expensive entertainments. The treasures which the nobility had long concealed from fear of the old king, were now brought out; the ladies glittered with gold and diamonds; and the king and queen, whom the people never grew tired of admiring, amused themselves like children with the splendour of their royal robes. Henry VIII was the forerunner of Louis XIV. Naturally inclined to pomp and pleasure, the idol of his people, a devoted admirer of female beauty, and the husband of almost as many wives as Louis had adulterous mistresses, he made the court of England what the son of Anne of Austria made the court of France,--one constant scene of amusements. He thought he could never get to the end of the riches amassed by his prudent father. His youth--for he was only eighteen--the gaiety of his disposition, the grace he displayed in all bodily exercises, the tales of chivalry in which he delighted, and which even the clergy recommended to their high-born hearers, the flattery of his courtiers[237]--all these combined to set his young imagination in a ferment. Wherever he appeared, all were filled with admiration of his handsome countenance and graceful figure: such is the portrait bequeathed to us by his greatest enemy.[238] "His brow was made to wear the crown, and his majestic port the kingly mantle," adds Noryson.[239] [237] Tyndale, Obedience of a Christian man (1528). [238] Eximia corporis forma præditus, in qua etiam regiæ majestatis augusta quædam species elucebat. (Sanderus de Schism., p. 4.) He was endowed with uncommon gracefulness of person, in which there shone forth a certain august air even of kingly majesty. [239] Turner. Hist. Engl. i. p. 28. [Sidenote: HENRY'S DANGER.]