The magnificence
of her equipage and the crowd of persons who formed her retinue are
noticed by contemporary writers, and the effect upon English manners was
instantaneous. Her beauty, sweetness of manners, and culture rendered
her at once not merely the idol of her husband, who, says Walsingham,
"could scarcely bear her to be out of his sight," but universally
beloved by all the English nation.
To her the first English writer on heraldry, John of Guildford dedicated
his book, and the artists who came with her from her luxurious home at
Prag would naturally become the leaders of taste in their adopted
country. After a while, indeed, the numbers of countrymen of the Queen
were looked upon as the cause of extortions practised on the English
people in order to supply the money lavished on these foreigners. More
than once is this grievance referred to. In an old MS. in the Harley
Library (2261), containing a fifteenth-century translation of Higden's
Polychronicon, these foreigners are made responsible for at least one
fashionable extravagance: "Anne qwene of Ynglonde dyede in this year
(1393) at Schene the viith day of the monethe of Janius, on the day of
Pentecoste: the dethe of whom the Kynge sorowede insomoche that he
causede the maner there to be pullede downe, and wolde not comme in eny
place by oon yere folowynge where sche hade be, the churche excepte;
whiche was beryede in the churche of Westmonastery, in the feste of
seynte Anne nexte folowynge, with grete honoure and solennite.
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