The Girls' Book of Famous QueensFarmer, Lydia Hoyt
History
The Girls' Book of Famous Queens
Farmer, Lydia Hoyt
Queens -- Biography -- Juvenile literature
The walls between Greenwich Palace and the Convent of the Grey Friars
were hung with tapestry, and the way strewn with green rushes. The
baptismal font was of silver; it was placed in the middle of the
church, raised three steps high, the steps being covered with fine
cloth, surmounted by a square canopy of crimson satin fringed with
gold, enclosed by a rail covered with red ray, and guarded by several
gentlemen with aprons and towels about their necks. Between the choir
and body of the church a closet was erected with a pan of fire in it,
that the child might be dismantled for the ceremony without taking
cold. When all these things were ready, the child was brought into the
hall of the palace, and the procession proceeded to the Grey Friars’
church. The citizens led the way, two and two; then followed gentlemen,
esquires, and chaplains; after them the aldermen, then the mayor by
himself, then the privy council in robes, then the gentlemen of the
king’s chapel in copes, then barons, earls; then the Earl of Essex,
bearing the gilt covered basin; after him the Marquis of Exeter with a
taper of virgin wax, followed by the Earl of Dorset bearing the salt,
and the Lady Mary of Norfolk, bearing the chrism, which was very rich
with pearls and precious stones; lastly, came the Dowager-Duchess of
Norfolk, bearing in her arms the royal infant, wrapped in a mantle of
purple velvet, having a long train furred with ermine, which was borne
by the Countess of Kent, assisted by the Earls of Wiltshire and Derby.
The Duchess was supported on the right side by the Duke of Norfolk,
with his marshal’s rod, and on the left by the Duke of Suffolk—the
only dukes then existing in the peerage of England—and a rich canopy
was borne over the babe by the Lords Rochford, Hussey, and William and
Thomas Howard.
At the church door the child was received by the Bishop of London, who
performed the ceremony, and a grand cavalcade of bishops and mitred
abbots. The sponsors were Archbishop Cranmer, the Dowager-Duchess of
Norfolk, and the Marchioness of Dorset.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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