The panegyrists of royal houses in the sixteenth century were not
accustomed to do their work by halves.--Strada.]

She was the daughter of Prince Edward, and granddaughter of John the
Third. She was young and beautiful; she could talk both Latin and Greek,
besides being well versed in philosophy, mathematics and theology. She
had the scriptures at her tongue's end, both the old dispensation and the
new, and could quote from the fathers with the promptness of a bishop.
She was so strictly orthodox that, on being compelled by stress of
weather to land in England, she declined all communication with Queen
Elizabeth, on account of her heresy. She was so eminently chaste that
she could neither read the sonnets of Petrarch, nor lean on the arm of a
gentleman. Her delicacy upon such points was, indeed, carried to such
excess, that upon one occasion when the ship which was bringing her to
the Netherlands was discovered to be burning, she rebuked a rude fellow
who came forward to save her life, assuring him that there was less
contamination in the touch of fire than in that of man. Fortunately,
the flames were extinguished, and the Phoenix of Portugal was permitted
to descend, unburned, upon the bleak shores of Flanders.

The occasion, notwithstanding the recent tears of the Duchess, and the
arrogance of the Prince, was the signal for much festivity among the
courtiers of Brussels. It was also the epoch from which movements of a
secret and important character were to be dated. The chevaliers of the
Fleece were assembled, and Viglius pronounced before them one of his most
classical orations. He had a good deal to say concerning the private
adventures of Saint Andrew, patron of the Order, and went into some
details of a conversation which that venerated personage had once held
with the proconsul Aegeas. The moral which he deduced from his narrative