Hundreds of spectators, from all parts of Christendom, attired with great magnificence, crowded the church, and made the sight one of dazzling splendour. When the bride and bridegroom reached their respective _traverses_, says the chronicler, they were shriven,[463] and afterwards stood up together by the rood, the Bishops of Winchester, London, Durham, Chichester, Lincoln and Ely, preceded by their croziers, having come from the choir to that place. But before the ceremony began, Don Juan Figueroa, Regent of Naples, and a member of the Emperor’s Council, handed to the English Chancellor two instruments, by which Charles V. made over to his son his sovereignty over the kingdom of Naples, and the Duchy of Milan, so that, as Gardiner at once declared to the assembly, “it was thought the Queen’s Majesty should marry but with a prince; now it was manifested that she should marry with a king”.[464] Then the banns were bidden, in Latin and in English, and the marriage was solemnised, the Queen standing on the right side, the King on the left, while the Marquis of Winchester, the Earls of Derby, Bedford and Pembroke gave her to her husband, in the name of the whole realm. The nuptial blessing was pronounced by Gardiner, who was the officiating prelate in default of the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Then all the people gave a great shout, praying God to send them joy, and the ring being laid upon the book to be hallowed, the Prince laid also upon the said book, three handfuls of fine gold, which the lady Margaret[465] seeing, opened the Queen’s purse, and the Queen smilingly put up in the same purse. And when they had enclosed their hands, immediately the sword was advanced before the King, by the Earl of Pembroke.”[466] The marriage ring was a plain hoop of gold without any stone, for the Queen had said: “she would be married as maidens were in the old time, and so she was”.[467]