Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, Vol. 2. (of 3): Abridged and Fully IllustratedStrickland, Agnes
History
Agnes Strickland's Queens of England, Vol. 2. (of 3): Abridged and Fully Illustrated
Strickland, Agnes
Queens -- Great Britain -- Biography
The queen passed straight into the chapel; she was bowed down with
grief, though she did not shed a tear. That time was passed, and she
seemed stupefied. One of the nuns approached and asked in the words of
the psalmist, "My soul, will you not be subject to God?" {312}"His
will be done," replied the queen, in a tremulous voice. Prostrating
herself before the altar, she remained long in prayer. At last the
nuns begged her to eat, for she had partaken of no food since the night
before, and they feared she would faint. She was led to her bedroom,
but insisted on hearing more prayers, and complained that she could not
weep, saying "that even that solace was denied her."
Her attendants were sent to bed, but two of the nuns passed the night
with the queen, who moaned and sighed and prayed by turns with scarcely
a moment's repose. The next night the king's heart was conveyed to
Chaillot and placed near that of his mother; but by King Louis's order
it was received so quietly that Mary Beatrice was not excited by it.
However, a few hours later she assured the abbess that she felt it was
near her, and spoke a great deal about her dead husband. Among other
things, she said: "That he had felt his humiliation, and above all the
injustice he had experienced, very keenly; but that the love of God had
changed all his calamities into blessings."
Mary Beatrice would have liked to pass the rest of her days at Chaillot,
but she had other duties to perform and many more years to live.
In his will King James had directed that he should be buried with his
ancestors at Westminster Abbey; therefore the queen ordered that the
funeral service should be performed in France, but that the body should
remain unburied until the restoration of her son, which she fondly hoped
would soon take place.
It was therefore at the chapel of the Benedictine Monks that the corpse
of King James remained covered with the pall for many years, until all
hope for the Stuart family had vanished forever.
The queen remained at Chaillot only four days, for her {313}children
needed her at St. Germain, and she returned to them on the nineteenth of
September.
The next day King Louis called on her, and she received him in a
darkened room hung with black. He tried very hard to console the widowed
queen by kind offers of protection to her and her son, and insisted upon
her receiving the same courtesy from his ministers as though she had
been queen regent really and not only in name.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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