ROMANTIC HISTORY
MARY TUDOR, QUEEN OF FRANCE

ANYONE who writes the life of Mary Tudor,daughter of Henry VII., must owe a debt ofgratitude to Mrs Everett Green, who first drovea wedge through the mass of documents dealing withthe subject. Since that date, however, new evidencehas come to light and fresh readings of mutilated documentshave been possible. Here and there a detail hasbeen verified, nothing in itself, but when fitted insuggesting a new meaning to the whole; for thisromantic history, dealing as it does with personal detail,is a very jig-saw puzzle. The date of the princess's birth,now at last definitely ascertained, is one of these details;the fact that in France she was twice married to CharlesBrandon is another; and, to give a third instance, thedetailed evidence shows that in the question of the dismissalof her English train from the French Court, Marywas as much sinner as sinned against. But after all issaid, the difference between a book written fifty yearsago, and one of to-day lies not so much in the matternewly discovered, as in the method of handling the samedocuments, and in the present incorrigible habit ofvaluing personality above ceremony, in this case lookingfor the woman in the princess and finding her. So whilefifty years ago Princess Mary "penned many epistles,"now she writes letters; then "she was advanced to VImaternal honours," now her first child is born. It allmeans the same thing set to differing measures. We jigalong: they walked solemnly.