ELIZABETH (1635-1650), English princess, second daughter of Charles I.,
was born on the 28th of December 1635 at St James's Palace. On the
outbreak of the Civil War and the departure of the king from London,
while the two elder princes accompanied their father, the princess and
the infant duke of Gloucester were left under the care of the
parliament. In October 1642 Elizabeth sent a letter to the House of
Lords begging that her old attendants might not be removed. In July 1644
the royal children were sent to Sir John Danvers at Chelsea, and in 1645
to the earl and countess of Northumberland. After the final defeat of
the king they were joined in 1646 by James, and during 1647 paid several
visits to the king at Caversham, near Reading, and Hampton Court, but
were again separated by Charles's imprisonment at Carisbrooke Castle. On
the 21st of April 1648 James was persuaded to escape by Elizabeth, who
declared that were she a boy she would not long remain in confinement.
The last sad meeting between Charles and his two children, at which the
princess was overcome with grief, and of which she wrote a short and
touching account, took place on the 29th of January 1649, the day before
his execution. In June she was entrusted to the care of the earl and
countess of Leicester at Penshurst, but in 1650, upon the landing of
Charles II. in Scotland, the parliament ordered the royal children to be
taken for security to Carisbrooke Castle. The princess fell ill from a
wetting almost immediately upon her arrival, and died of fever on the
8th of September. She was buried in St Thomas's church at Newport, Isle
of Wight, where the initials "E.S." alone marked her grave till 1856,
when a monument was erected to her memory by Queen Victoria. The
princess's sorrowful career and early death have attracted general
interest and sympathy. She was said to have acquired considerable
proficiency in Greek, Hebrew and Latin, as well as in Italian and
French, and several books were dedicated to her, including the
translation of the _Electra_ of Sophocles by Christopher Wase in 1649.
Her mild nature and gentleness towards her father's enemies gained her
the name of "Temperance."
See _Lives of the Princesses of England_, by M.A.E. Green (1855), vol.
vi.; _Notes and Queries_, 7th ser., ix. 444, x. 15.
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