Elizabeth, full of excitement, listened open-mouthed as princess Mary
told her that they had a little brother, and were to ride next morning
to London to see him in the palace. Like her father Henry VIII., whom
she resembled in many ways, the little princess loved movement of any
kind, and all her life was never so happy as in journeying from place to
place, as the number of beds she is supposed to have slept in testify.
Like the king also, she loved fine clothes; and the old chroniclers
never fail to describe what the king wore in the splendid pageants in
which he delighted. His taste seems to have been very showy and rather
bad. At one time he is dressed in crimson turned up with green, at
another he is gorgeous in a mixture of red and purple. Elizabeth, we may
be sure, was arrayed in something very fine, as she proudly carried the
chrisom containing the holy oil, with which the baby was to be anointed.
Princess Mary, his godmother, held him at the font, and when the
ceremony was over, and they left the chapel, the king's two daughters
went into the room where lay the dying queen.
---------------------
From that day Elizabeth had a new interest in life. She felt as if the
little prince belonged to her, and when he gave signs of talking, she
was sent for to London by the king 'to teach and direct him.' She made
him a little shirt as a birthday present, and as he grew older she
taught him easy games, and told him stories out of books. By-and-by she
begun to repeat to him simple sentences in French, or Latin, or Italian,
and when his tutors took him away, or she grew tired of being governess,
she would practise her music on the viols, or try some new stitch in
needlework.
In this way time slipped by, and Elizabeth had passed her sixth
birthday, when it became known at Court that the king was about to wed a
fourth wife, and that his choice had fallen on princess Anne of Cleves.
This new event was of the deepest interest to Elizabeth, and she at
once, with her father's permission, wrote the bride a funny stiff note,
'to shew the zeal with which she devoted her respect to her as her
queen, and her entire obedience to her as her mother.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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