THE From the Gentleman's Magazine. DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES I. CRASHAW, the poet and protegé of Henrietta Maria, appears to have striven with much zeal and entire fruitlessness to catch the laureate crown, which Ben Jonson had worn with rough but glittering dignity. Never did any patented "Versificator Regis," from Gaulo to Davenant, so praise princes and princesses, born or expectant, as Crashaw did. The Carolinian births were the active stimulants of his muse. The coming of the heir apparent was hailed by his "In Sanctissimæ Reginæ partum hyemalem." The first wailing cry of the little Duke of York was celebrated in the "Natalis Ducis Eboracensis." His prophetic muse waxed bold during a later pregnancy of the queen, and the vates confidently predicted the addition of another prince to the family circle of Charles. Nor was he wrong; the ode "Ad Principem nondum natum, Regina gravidâ," was apt welcome for the unconscious Duke of Gloucester, who lived to be the simple "Master Henry" of the plain spoken Puritans. The zeal of Crashaw went so far that he even rushed into metre to make thankful record of the king's recovery from an eruption in the face. The rhymer's "In Faciem Augustissimi Regis a morbillis integram" pleasantly portrayed how his sacred majesty had been afflicted with pimples, and how he had been ultimately relieved from the undignified visitation. The poet would seem to have somewhat ungallantly neglected the daughters of Charles and Henrietta Maria. His poetic fire never blazed very brilliantly for the princesses. His inspiration, like the Salic law, favored only the heirs male. The young ladies, however, were not undeserving of having lyres especially strung to sound their praises. There were four of them-namely, Mary, born in 1631; the heroic little Elizabeth, born in 1635; the happy Anne, in 1636-7; and the celebrated Henrietta Anne, in 1644. Of these the Princess Anne was by far the happiest, for she had the inexpressible advantage of gently descending into the grave at the early yet sufficiently advanced age of three years and nine months. It was some time before the birth of "happy Anne" that Rochester Carr, brother of the Lincolnshire baronet, Sir Robert, publicly declared, in his half-insane way, that he would fain kill the king, if he might only wed with his widow. When this offensive sort of gallantry was reported to Henrietta, "She fell into such a passion as her lace was cut to give her more breath." Thus the storms of the world blew around "felix Anna," even before her little bark entered on the ocean over which, angelled, she made so rapid a passage to the haven of the better land. Mary, the eldest of the daughters of Charles, had something of a calculating disposition; she possessed a business-like mind, had much shrewdness, and contrived to secure, in her quiet way, as much felicity as she could or as she cared to secure. Her mother had an eager desire to rear this favorite child for the Romish communion. Charles himself is said by the queen's chaplain, Gamache, not to have cared much about the matter. The priest says of the king that the latter held that salvation did not depend on communion, and that, if he expressly desired a child of his to be a Protestant, it was in some sort because his people accused him of being too favorably disposed towards the faith of Rome. However this may have been, Gamache did his best to undo the teaching of Mary's orthodox instructors. He boasts of having impressed on this child-by command, if I remember rightly, of her mother-the necessity and the profit of knowing and practising all that was taught by Roman Catholicism. The little girl's eyes sparkled as the remarkably honest fellow suggested to her that she would probably marry a great Catholic potentate, the King of Spain, the Emperor of Germany, or, greater than both, the Grand Monarque of France. There were no other thrones, he intimated, much worth the having; and, if she hoped ever to hold a sceptre on one of them, the first necessary qualification was to become a Romanist at once, and to say nothing about it or the present! Our Mary did not choose | he better part. She stole to mass with the delight of Madame de Caylus, who told Madame de Maintenon that she would turn Koman Catholic at once if she might only once hear the royal mass, listen to the music, and smell the incense daily. It was "so nice," she remarked. Well, Mary had much the same opinion of all this, particularly as there was a choice selection of consorts at the end of it. A little "Catholic" maid was placed about her person, who received from Father Gamache instructions similar to those given by Brother Ignatius Spencer for the guidance of all Romish servants in Protestant families, and the little maid fulfilled her office admirably. Mary, though she outwardly wore the guise of a thorough Protestant princess, wore also a rosary in her pocket; and nothing gave her greater glee, or more delight to Father Gamache, than when she could display it behind the back of her father's chaplain, and, after kissing it, hide the forbidden aid to devotion before the Protestant minister could divine why the queen and Father Gamache were smiling. But, after all, the mirth and the machinations of this worthy pair were all in vain. A wooer came in due time, not from the Romish pale, but from stout Protestant Holland; and before the warmth with which Prince William of Orange plied his suit the Catholicity of the lady melted like morning dew beneath a May sun. The princess was touched and her sire approved; and in 1643, when Mary was but twelve years old, she was conducted across the seas, by Van Tromp and an escort of a score of gallant ships-of-war, to the country of her future husband. The greatest joy she had after her early marriage was in 1648, when she welcomed at the Hague the Duke of York (who had escaped from St. James' in female costume) and her other brother the Prince of Wales, who had gone to Helvoetsluys, where there ensued much intrigue, little action, and less profit. A brief two years followed, and then this youthful wife found herself a widow, and a mother expectant. Her husband suddenly died of the scourge that then commonly destroyed princes and peasants-the small-pox. She remained in dignified retirement at her house near the Hague, where, says Pepys, "There is one of the most beautiful rooms for pictures in the whole world. She had here one picture upon the top, with these words, dedicating it to the memory of her husband: Incomparabili marito, inconsolabilis vi dua."" Poor thing! the "semper morens" promised by mourners has but a stunted eternity. Our last year's dead are beyond both our memory and our tears. At the Restoration Mary repaired to England to felicitate her worthless brother on his good fortune. She there once more met her mother; and the court was in the very high top-gallant of its joy, when the princess was suddenly seized with small-pox. Henrietta Maria was desirous that her daughter should at least die in the profession of the Romish faith; but she was deterred from entering the apartment of her sick child, either by the malignity of the disorder or the jealousy of the princess' attendants. Father Gamache takes it as the most natural and proper thing in the world that, conversion not having been realized, the disease had been made fatal by divine appointment! However this may be, the death of the princess (on the 21st December, 1660) was laid to the incapacity of Dr. Farmer and the other medical men to whose care she was entrusted; and we hear from Evelyn that her decease" entirely altered the face and gallantry of the whole court." Burnet, by no means so good authority in this particular case as Evelyn, gives a different view of the effect produced at court by the demise of the princess royal, following so swiftly as it did on the death, also by smallpox, of her young and clever brother, Henry Duke of Gloucester. Not long after him,' says Burnet, "the princess royal died, also of the small-pox, but was not much lamented." Burnet acknowledges, however, her many merits-that she had been of good reputation as wife and widow, had lived with becoming dignity as regarded herself and court, treated her brothers with princely liberality, and kept within the limits of her own income. The same writer says of her that her head was turned by her mother's pretence of being able to marry her to the King of France-a prospect that turned the heads of many ladies at that time, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin among various others. Burnet roundly asserts that to realize this prospect she launched into an extravagant splendor, the cost of which not only injured her own income, but tempted her to deal dishonestly with the jewels and estates of her son, held by her in a guardianship, the trusts of which she betrayed. He adds that she not only was disappointed in her expectations, but that she "lessened the reputation which she had formerly lived in," a strange epitaph to be written by him who found a benefactor in her son, and of her who is allowed to have been, with some faults, gentle, forgiving, patient, affectionate, and firm-minded. | and educated in, what discountenance or ruin soever might befall the poor church at that time under so severe persecution." She promised obedience to her father's counsel, and imparted joy by that promise, as she did two years subsequently, when, in 1649, she layon her sire's bosom a few hours before his execution, and made him alternately weep and smile at the impression which he saw had been made upon her by the calamities of her family, and at the evidence of advanced Of her younger sister, Elizabeth, Clarendon has given a perfect picture in a few expressive words. She was, says the parenthesisloving historian, "a lady of excellent parts, great observation, and an early understanding." The whole of her brief but eventful life gave testimony to the truth of this description. The storms of the times had swept her from the hearts of her parents, as they had indeed also divided those parents, and extin-judgment afforded by her conversation. As guished the fire at that hearth. She had successively been under the wardenship of Lady Dorset and of old Lady Vere, and was transferred from the latter to the custody of the Earl of Northumberland, who was already responsible for the safe-keeping of her broth ers York and Gloucester. In the good earl they had no surly jailer, and he shared in the joy of the children when, in 1647, they were permitted to have an interview with their unhappy father at Maidenhead, and to sojourn with him during two fast-flying days of mingled cloud and sunshine in Lord Craven's house at Caversham, near Reading. The house still stands, and is a conspicuous object seen from the Reading station. It is in the occupation of the great iron-master, Mr. Crawshay. Some of the touching interviews which were held in Caversham House are said to have been witnessed by Cromwell, and Sir John Berkeley states that Oliver described them to him as "the tenderest sight his eyes ever beheld." "Cromwell," adds Sir John, "said much in commendation of his majesty," and expressed his hope that "God would be pleased to look upon him according to the sincerity of his heart towards the king." the young girl lay on the father's heart-that heart that was so soon to be no longer conscious of the pulse of life-he charged her with a message to her mother, then in France. It was a message of undying love mingled with assurances of a fidelity strong unto death. The little message-bearer was never permitted to fulfil her mission, and the mother to whom she was to have borne it, found, it is said, a pillow for her aching head on the sympathizing breast of the Earl of St. Alban's. The wife of Cæsar stooped to a centurion. "If I were you I would not stay here," was the speech uttered one day by Elizabeth to her brother James. They were both then, with the Duke of Gloucester, in confinement at St. James'. The speech was at once an incentive and a reproach. Elizabeth urged him thereby to accomplish the flight which their father had recommended him to attempt. The young Duke of Guise, heir of the slayer who was slain at Blois, escaped from his prison by outwitting his keeper at a childish game. The royal captive children of the Stuart for the same end got up a game at "hide and seek," and they were still in pretended search of James, when the latter, The prison home of the Princess Elizabeth disguised as a girl, was awkwardly but sucand her brothers was Syon House at Isle-cessfully making his way to temporary safety. worth-the house of ill-omen from which For their share in this escapade the little conLady Jane Grey had departed by water for spirators were transmitted to Carisbrook, the Tower to seek a sceptre and to find an where they were kept in close confinement in axe. The monarch visited his children more the locality where their father had so deeply than once at the house of the Earl of North- suffered in the last days of his trials. The umberland, at Syon. With the boys he princess bore her captivity like a proudly-detalked, and to them gave counsel; but, if he sponding caged eaglet, whom grief and indigadvised Elizabeth, he also listened with nity can kill, but who utters no sound in marked and gratified attention to her descrip- testimony of suffering. The utilitarian govtions of persons and things, and to her clear ernment of the period designed, it is said, to ideas upon what was passing around her. have apprenticed this daughter of a line of His chief advice to her consisted in the re-kings to a needle or button maker in Newiterated injunction to obey her mother in all port! Providence saved her from the degra things except in matters of religion-" to dation by a well-timed death. Elizabeth which he commanded her, upon his blessing, Stuart" sickened, died, and was buried. The never to hearken or consent, but to continue very locality of her burial even perished with firm in the religion she had been instructed her from the memory of man. It was only discovered more than two centuries after, when kings were again at a discount and ultra-democracy was once more rampant. were fairly swept out of the house, the loyal audience in which celebrated their triumph over as loyal a subject as any there, by singIt is somewhat singular that, whereas ing God save the King and Rule Britannia. among the inhabitants of Newport it became Amid this noise of contending parties, royforgotten that the body of the young Eliza- alist and republican, a quiet sexton was tranbeth lay in their church, the villagers of quilly engaged, in October, 1703, in digging Church Handborough, near Whitney, boasted a grave in the chancel of Newport church for of possessing the mortal remains of her father, the body of Septimus Henry West, the youngCharles I. This boast was founded on a very est brother of Lord Delaware. The old delver magniloquent inscription on a tablet within was in the full enjoyment of his exciting occuthe church, and which the parishioners took pation when his spade struck against a stone, for an epitaph. He was a hearty old cava- on which were engraven the initials "E. S." lier who wrote it, and though the villagers Curiosity begat research, and in a vault percomprehend nothing of the robust Latin of fectly dry was found a coffin perfectly fresh, which it is constructed, they understand the on the involuted lid of which the wondering sentiment, and to this day consider it as tes-examiners read the words " Elizabeth, 2d timony to the fact that they are as guardians round the grave of the Charles-who is not there interred.* The young Elizabeth died about a year and a half after her father's execution. In the year 1793, the year of the decapitation of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette, ultrademocracy was again raising its head in England where Charles had been stricken. Gentlemen like Dr. Hudson and Mr. Pigott drank seditious healths at the London Coffee House, and rode in hackney coaches to prison, shouting Vive la Republique. Libels against the Queen of France, like those of mad Lord George Gordon, were flying about our streets "thick as leaves in Valambrosa." The Reverend Mr. Winterbottom was fined and imprisoned for preaching treasonable sermons, and so high did party spirit run that good Vicesimus Knox had well-nigh got into serious trouble for delivering from the Brighton pulpit a philippic against going to war. The discourse so ruffled the plumage of some officers, who happened on the following evening to meet the reverend doctor with his wife and family at the theatre, that they created a patriotic riot, before the violence of which the celebrated essayist, his lady, and children * The following is the inscription. It might have been written between a volume of Walker's Lachrymæ Ecclesiæ on the one hand and a flask of Canary on the other. Thus rolls its thunder and thus sighs the strain:-"M. S. sanctissimi regis et martyris Caroli. Siste viator; lege, obmutesce, mirare, memento Caroli illius nominis, pariter et pietatis insignissimæ, primi Magnæ Britanniæ regis, qui rebellium perfidia primo deceptus, et in perfidiorum rabie perculsus inconcussus tamen legum et fidei defensor, schismaticorum tyrannidi succubuit, anno servitutis nostræ, felicitatis suæ, primo, corona terrestri spoliatus, cœlesti donatus. Sileant autem perituræ tabellæ, perlege reliquias vere sacras Carolinas, in queis sui mnemosynem ære perenniorem vavicius exprimit: illa, illa" (sic) “Eikon Basilike." daughter of y late King Charles, dece Sept. 8, MDCL." Thus the hidden grave of her who died of the blows dealt at monarchy in England was discovered when like blows were being threatened, and at the very moment when the republicans over the channel were slaying their hapless queen. The affrighted spirit of Elizabeth might well have asked if nothing then had been changed on this troubled earth, and if killing kings were still the caprice of citizens. The only answer that could have been given at the moment would have been, in the words of the adjuration "Vatene in pace alma beata e bella." Turn we now to the sister, who was of quite another complexion. On the site of Bedford Crescent, Exeter, there once stood a convent of Black or Dominican friars. At the Reformation the convent property was transferred to Lord John Russell, who made of the edifice thereon a provincial town residence, which took the name of "Bedford House," when the head of the Russells was advanced to an earldom. As further greatness was forced upon or achieved by the family the old country mansion fell into decay. There are still some aged persons, verging upon ninety, whose weary memories can faintly recall the old conventual building when it was divided and let in separate tenements. It was taken down, to save it from tumbling to pieces, in 1773, and on the site of the house and grounds stands, as I have said, the present "Bedford Crescent." "Friars' Row" would have been as apt a name. In the year 1644 the shifting fortunes of Charles compelled his queen, Henrietta Maria, to seek a refuge in Exeter, in order that she might there bring into the world another, and the last, heir to the sorrows of an unlucky sire. The corporation assigned Bedford House to her as a residence, and made her a present of two hundred pounds to provide against the exigencies of the coming time. In this house was born a little princess, who was the gayest yet the least happy of the daughters of Charles. The day of her birth was the 16th of June, 1644. She was shortly after christened in the cathedral (at a font erected in the body of the church under a canopy of state), by the compound name of Henrietta Anne. Dr. Burnet, the chancellor of the diocese, officiated on the occasion, and the good man rejoiced to think that he had enrolled another member on the register of the English Church. In this joy the queen took no part. It is said that the eyes of the father never fell upon the daughter born in the hour of his great sorrows; but as Charles was in Exeter for a brief moment on the 26th July, 1644, it is more than probable that he looked for once and all upon the face of his unconscious child. as wonderful and as welcome as that built by fairy hands for the lady of the glass slipper, out of a portly pumpkin. The fugitive princess had scarcely reached Paris when Henrietta Maria resolved to undo what Dr. Burnet had so well done at Exeter, and to convert Henrietta Anne to Romanism. Father Gamache attempted the same with Lady Morton, but as the latter, though she listened, would not yield, the logical Jesuit pronounced her death by fever, many years subsequently, to be the award of Heaven for her obduracy! He found metal far more ductile in the youthful daughter of the King of England. For her especial use he wrote three heavy octavo volumes, entitled "Exercises d'un Ame Royale," and probably thought that the desired conversion was accomplished less by the bonbons of the court than the reasoning of the confessor. The royal exiles lived in a splendid misery. They were so magnificently lodged and so pitiably cared for, that they are said to have The Queen Henrietta Maria left Exeter for often lain together in bed at the Louvre durthe continent very soon, some accounts say a in a winter's day, in order to keep themselves fortnight, after the birth of Henrietta Anne. warm; no fuel having been provided for them, The young princess was given over to the and they lacking money to procure it. They tender keeping of Lady Morton; and when experienced more comfort in the asylum afopportunity for escape offered itself to them, forded them in the convent of St. Maria de the notable governess assumed a somewhat Chaillot. Here Henrietta Anne grew up a squalid disguise, and with the little princess graceful child, the delight of every one save (now some two years old) attired in a ragged Louis XIV., who hated her mortally, until costume, and made to pass as her son Peter, the time came when he could only love her she made her way on foot to Dover, as the criminally. Mother and daughter visited wife of a servant out of place. The only peril England in the autumn of the year of the that she ran was from the recalcitrating ob- Restoration. Pepys has left a graphic outjections made by her precious and trouble- line of both. "The queen a very little, plain some charge. The little princess loved fine old woman, and nothing more in her preclothes, and would not don or wear mendicant sence, in any respect, nor garbe, than any rags but with screaming protest. All the way ordinary woman. The Princess Henrietta is down to the coast "Peter" strove to intimate very pretty, but much below my expectato passing wayfarers that there was a case of tion; and her dressing of herself, with her abduction before them, and that she was being haire frized short up to her eares, did make carried off against her will. Had her expres- her seem so much the less to me. But my sion been as clear as her efforts and inclina- wife standing near her with two or three tion, the pretty plot would have been be- black patches on, and well-dressed, did seem trayed. Fortunately she was not so preco- to me much handsomer than she." Death, cious of speech as the infant Tasso, and the as I have before stated, marred the festivities. passengers on board the boat to Calais, when Love mingled with both; and Buckingham, they saw the terrible "Peter" scratching the who had been sighing at the feet of Mary, patient matron who bore him, they only Princess of Orange, now stood pouring unthought how in times to come he would utterable nothings into the ear of her sister, make the mother's heart smart more fiercely Henrietta Anne. When the latter, with her than he now did her cheeks. Peace of mother, embarked at Calais on this royal course was not restored until Lady Morton, visit to England, they spent two days in soon after landing, cast off the hump which reaching Dover. On their return they went marred her naturally elegant figure, and, on board at Portsmouth, but storms drove transforming "Peter" into a princess, both them back to port, and the princess was rode joyously to Paris in a coach-and-six-attacked by measles while on the sea. |