From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.Bates, Katharine Lee
General
From Gretna Green to Land's End: A Literary Journey in England.
Bates, Katharine Lee
England -- Description and travel
Another princely association, hardly less pathetic, haunts these
arched portals and embattled towers. The heir of Henry VII, Prince
Arthur, in whom the greatness of Britain's legendary hero was to live
again, passed his delicate childhood here, and here, shortly after his
marriage to Catherine of Arragon, died suddenly on a spring day of
1502, a lad of sixteen summers. An unknown contemporary tells how
letters were hastily despatched from Ludlow to His Majesty's Council,
and they, seeking the gentlest bearer of such grievous news, "sent for
the King's ghostly father.... He in the morning of the Tuesday
following, somewhat before the time accustomed, knocked at the King's
chamber door; and when the King understood it was his Confessor, he
commanded to let him in. The Confessor then commanded all those there
present to avoid, and after due salutation began to say, _Si bona de
manu Dei suscepimus, mala autem quare non sustineamus?_ and so showed
his Grace that his dearest son was departed to God. When his Grace
understood that sorrowful heavy tidings, he sent for the Queen, saying
that he and his Queen would take the painful sorrows together. After
that she was come, and saw the King her lord and that natural and
painful sorrow, as I have heard say, she with full great and constant
comfortable words besought his Grace that he would, first after God,
remember the weal of his own noble person, the comfort of his realm
and of her ... over that how that God had left him yet a fair prince,
two fair princesses; and that God is where he was.... Then the King
thanked her of her good comfort. After that she was departed and come
to her own chamber, natural and motherly remembrance of that great
loss smote her so sorrowful to the heart, that those that were about
her were fain to send for the King to comfort her."
We saw on a Sunday, in the beautiful Church of St. Lawrence, a dole of
bread for the poor, a row of twelve goodly loaves set out on a Tudor
monument which is believed to commemorate Prince Arthur, and possibly
to cover the ashes of his boyish heart, although the body was buried
in Worcester Cathedral, where his chantry stands at the right of the
High Altar.
Among the tombs in the rich-windowed choir is one whose inscription
reads:
"Heare lyethe the bodye of Ambrozia Sydney, iiii doughter of
the Right Honourable Syr Henry Sydney, Knight of the moste
noble order of the Garter, Lord President of the Counsell of
Wales, etc. And of Lady Mary his wyef, doughter of the famous
Duke of Northumberland, who dyed in Ludlow Castell, ye 22nd
of Februarie, 1574."
We paused there a moment in reverence to Sir Philip Sidney's mother,
"a full fair lady" who lost her beauty by nursing Queen Elizabeth,
from whom she took the contagion, through an attack of smallpox, and
afterwards "chose rather to hide herself from the curious eyes of a
delicate time than come upon the stage of the world with any manner of
disparagement."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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