The Girls' Book of Famous QueensFarmer, Lydia Hoyt
History
The Girls' Book of Famous Queens
Farmer, Lydia Hoyt
Queens -- Biography -- Juvenile literature
The future queen was carried to the font, and with the ceremony of the
Catholic church christened Elizabeth, after her grandmother, Elizabeth
of York; and that done, Garter King-at-Arms cried aloud, “God, of
his infinite goodness, send prosperous life and long to the high and
mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth. Then the trumpets sounded, the
princess was carried up to the altar, the Gospel read over her, and she
was confirmed by Archbishop Cranmer and presented with the following
gifts:—A standing cup of gold by Cranmer; a similar cup fretted with
pearls, by the Duchess of Norfolk; three gilt bowls, pounced, with
covers, by the Marchioness of Dorset; and three standard bowls graven
and gilt, with covers, by the Marchioness of Exeter. Then, after wafers
and comfits had been served in abundance, the procession returned to
the palace in the same order as it had set out, excepting that the Earl
of Worcester, Lord Thomas Howard, the Lord Fitzwalter, and Sir John
Dudley, preceded by the trumpeters, carried the gifts of the sponsors
before the princess. Five hundred staff torches carried by the yeomen
of the guard and the king’s servants, lit up the way homeward; and
twenty gentlemen, bearing large wax flambeaux, walked on each side
of the princess, who was carried to the queen’s chamber-door, when a
flourish of trumpets sounded and the procession dispersed.”
The tiny infant, christened with all this ceremony, was created
Princess of Wales when three months old; and when in her thirteenth
month, an attempt was made to betroth her to the Duke D’Angoulême,
the third son of Francis I., of France. Rather a strange proceeding
concerning the spinster queen of England.
The tragic death of Anne Boleyn left this babe motherless at three
years of age.
The first public ceremony in which Elizabeth participated was the
christening of Edward the Sixth. She was then just four years of age,
and was borne in the arms of the Earl of Hertford, brother to the
queen, Jane Seymour. Elizabeth carried in her tiny hands the chrism
for her new-born half-brother; and after the ceremony she walked with
infant dignity in the procession, being led by the hand by the Princess
Mary.
For some time, Elizabeth was allowed to reside in the same palace with
the infant Edward, and she displayed the greatest affection for him.
When she was seven years old she made the little prince a birthday gift
of “a shyrte of cam’yke of _her owne woorkynge_,” which was quite
precocious, considering her tender years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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