Unfortunately, so many physical advantages were not allied to an equal number of virtues; and here again, the resemblance between King Henry and his bosom friend is extraordinary. Both were equally cruel, selfish and unscrupulous, and both entertained the same loose ideas as to the sanctity of marriage—with this difference, however, that whereas King Henry usually divorced one wife before he took another, Charles had two wives living at one and the same time, from neither of whom was he properly divorced! What is most singular, too, is that he ventured to marry the king’s sister whilst his first wife was still living, and not as yet legally separated from him, whereby he might easily have been hauled before a justice as a bigamist, and his offspring by a princess of the blood royal of England, and dowager queen of France to boot, been declared illegitimate. In addition to his great strength and exceptional ability as a commander, both on land and sea, Suffolk possessed a luxuriant imagination, which delighted in magnificent pageantry. In the halcyon days of Henry’s reign, long before the fires of Smithfield had shed their lurid glow over the city, Suffolk and his master devised sports and pastimes, masques and dances, to please the ladies.[9] Once he entered the tilt-yard dressed as a penitent, in a confraternity robe and cowl of crimson velvet, his horse draped in cardinal-coloured satin. Assuming a humble attitude, he approached the pavilion in which sat the king and Queen Katherine, and in a penitential whine, implored her grace’s leave to break a lance in her honour. This favour being granted, he threw back his cloak, and appeared, a blaze of cloth of gold, of glittering damascened armour and sparkling jewels, to break sixteen lances in honour of the queen. Again, when Queen Mary was his bride, and the court went a-maying at Shooters Hill, he devised a sort of pastoral play, and with Jane Grey’s paternal grandfather, Thomas, Marquis of Dorset, disguised himself and his merry men as palmers, in gowns of grey satin with scallop-shells of pure gold and staves of silver. The royal guests having been duly greeted, the palmers doffed their sober raiment and appeared, garbed in green and gold, as so many Robin Hoods. They then conducted their Majesties to a glade where there were “pastimes and daunces,” and, doubtless, abundant wine and cakes. Much later yet, Brandon went, in the guise of a palmer, with Henry VIII, to that memorable ball given by Wolsey at Whitehall, at which Anne Boleyn won the heart of the most fickle of our kings.