HENRY MEETS ANNE 117 



departing for " Stiborne," and resting the night at 

 Ospringe. Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, passed 

 through " Rotschetter " in 1416, with a retinue of a 

 thousand knights, on a visit to Henry the Fifth, and 

 Henry the Seventh was here in 1492, 1494, and 1498, 

 crossing over from Strood in a ferry-boat for which 

 he paid £2, an expense which would have been quite 

 unnecessary had the authorities kept the Bridge (then 

 of stone, and about a century old) in decent repair. 

 A few months later than his last visit, the King sent 

 the Mayor of the town £5 toward its restoration, for 

 funds were low, and the indulgences — to say nothing 

 of the forty da3^s' remittances from Purgatory for all 

 manner of sins — offered by Archbishop Morton to any 

 one who would give towards the work, were but little 

 in request. 



Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, was the 

 next considerable personage here, and of how great a 

 consideration he was may be gathered from the fact 

 that he came up the road from Dover with a train of 

 two thousand attendants. He and Henry the Eighth, 

 who had gone down to Dover to meet him, stayed 

 at Rochester on the night of Sunday, June 1, 1522, and 

 went on to Gravesend the following day. Eighteen 

 years later, the King, already a much-married man, 

 came here to have a private view of his new matrimonial 

 venture. 



Two accounts are given of this meeting of Henry the 

 Eighth and Anne of Cleves. They agree neither with 

 themselves nor with that other account in which the 

 King is made to call her a " Flanders mare " : — 

 " As she passed toward Rochester," writes Hall, the 

 Chronicler, " on New Yeres Even, on Reynam Down, 

 met her the Duke of Norffolke, and the Lord Dacre 

 of the South, and the Lord Mount joye, with a gret 

 company of Knyghtes and Esquiers of Norffolke and 

 Suffolke, and the Barons of thxchequer, (sic) all in 

 coates of velvet with chaynes of golde, which brought 

 her to Rochester, where she lay in the Palace all 



