All these things and a great many more having been prepared for her
benefit, Philippa set out to pay some farewell visits to the friends and
relations she was never likely to see again. Between each visit she went
back to her father at Eltham, for she wished to spend as much time as
possible with him and the queen, who was now very lonely, as her own two
daughters had returned to Brittany. Philippa's very last visit was to
the bishop of Durham, and after that was ended the king and his four
sons, together with the Swedish ambassadors who had been sent to escort
the bride, took her to Lynn in Norfolk. From here, says the chronicler
Stow, 'in the month of May, 1406, dame Philip, the youngest daughter of
king Henry, accompanied by divers lords spiritual and temporal, was
shipped to the North and so conveyed to Denmark, where she was married
to the king of that country in a city called London.' The vessel in
which Philippa sailed was, of course, very different from anything _we_
can imagine, and even when fitted up for a princess must have been very
uncomfortable. It was the largest in the English navy, but would have
looked very small in our eyes, and must have rolled terribly. The
admiral of the North Sea was in command, and he placed on board some of
the unwieldy cannon then used, in case pirates or foreign ships should
be met with; but no mishap of any sort occurred, and Philippa landed
safe in Sweden, where queen Margaret and the young king Eric gave her a
hearty welcome. After a short rest they journeyed to Lund (or 'London'
as Stow calls it), the old Swedish Capital in the very south of the
country, where Philippa's marriage and her coronation took place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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