GREENWICH PARK 109 



All through the earlier history of the Park this tower 

 must have been a conspicuous object. During Tudor 

 times Greenwich was much lived in by the Sovereign, and 

 many a gay pageant enlivened the Park. Jousts and tour- 

 naments, Christmas games and May Day frolics, were of 

 yearly recurrence in the early days of Henry VIII. 

 The Court moved there regularly to " bring in the 

 May." A picturesque account is given of one of these 

 merry-makings by the Venetian Ambassador and his 

 Secretary, The Ambassador was charmed with the King. 

 " Not only," he writes, is he '* very expert in arms and 

 of great valour, and most excellent in personal endow- 

 ment, but is likewise so gifted and adorned with mental 

 accomplishments of every sort." He joined in the May 

 Day proceedings, which must indeed have presented a 

 brilliant spectacle, with the oaks and hawthorn, and all 

 the wild beauty of Greenwich Park, as a background. 

 Katharine of Aragon, " most excellently attired and very 

 richly, and with her twenty-five damsels mounted on 

 white palfreys, with housings of the same fashion most 

 beautifully embroidered in gold," and followed by 

 " a number of footmen," rode out into the wood, 

 where " they found the King with his guard, all clad in 

 a livery of green with bowers [boughs] in their hands, 

 and about 100 noblemen on horseback, all gorgeously 

 arrayed." " In this wood were certain bowers filled pur- 

 posely with singing birds, which carrolled most sweetly." 

 Music played, and a banquet under the trees followed, 

 then the procession with the King and Queen together 

 returned to the Palace. The crowds flocking round them 

 the Venetian estimated "to exceed . . . 25,000 persons." 

 Queen Mary was born at Greenwich, and there she 

 was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. She resided 



