Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/239

This page has been validated.

indeed, she was everywhere reported to be dead. The parting interview took place on 29 Jan. When Elizabeth saw her father so sadly changed since they had parted only fifteen months before, she burst into a passion of tears, and it was some time before she could listen calmly to his last instructions. The conversation that ensued has been recorded by herself. 'Most sorrowful was this parting writes Sir Thomas Herbert, who was present, 'the young princess shedding tears and crying lamentably, so as moved others to pity that formerly were hard-hearted' (Two Last Years of Charles I, ed. 1702, p. 125). Elizabeth was taken back to Syon House. She never recovered from the effects of her father's death. In April she renewed her request to be allowed to join her sister in Holland without success. In June parliament assigned her to the care of the Earl and Countess of Leicester at Penshurst, Kent.

Here she was again fortunate in the choice of a tutor, a descendant in the female line of the Sydneys, named Lovel, who proved also a faithful friend. Lady Leicester, while complying in the main with parliamentary instructions, treated her ward with kindness, even tenderness. 'Her forlorn situation, combined with her reputation for learning, her profound melancholy and meek resignation,' remarks her biographer, 'interested many a heart in her fate.' John Quarles, son of Francis Quarles of emblematic fame, dedicated to her in April 1649 his 'Regale Lectum Miseriæ' as to 'that patronesse of Vertue...the sorrowfull daughter to our late martyr'd Soveraigne.' A more elaborate panegyric occurs in the dedication by Christopher Wase of a translation of the 'Electra of Sophocles: presented to her Highnesse the Lady Elizabeth; with an Epilogue, shewing the Parallell in two poems. The Return, and the Restauration,' 1649, to which an anonymous friend of the author, H. P., added some verses strongly expressive of his abhorrence at what he considered to be her unworthy treatment. When in the summer of 1650 the news came of Charles II having landed in Scotland, it was resolved to remove the royal children to Carisbrooke Castle. Horrified at the prospect of passing her days in what had been her father's prison, Elizabeth vainly petitioned the council of state to be allowed to remain at Penshurst on the plea of her bad health (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1650, p. 261). Within less than a week after her arrival at Carisbrooke she was struck down by fever, the result of a wetting, and died on the afternoon of 8 Sept. 1650. On the 24th she was buried in St. Thomas's Church, Newport, in a small vault near the communion-table. For two centuries the initials 'E. S.' cut in that part of the wall nearest to it served to mark the spot; but in 1856 a white marble monument by Marochetti was placed in the church to her memory by command of the queen. Three days before she died the council of state had agreed to recommend the parliament to accede to her request to go to her sister in Holland, and to allow 1,000l. a year for her maintenance 'so long as she should behave inoffensively' (ib. pp. 327-8).

The only authentic portrait of Elizabeth now known to be in existence is at Syon House. An engraved portrait of her, in the mourning which she never laid aside from the day of her father's death, is prefixed to Wase's translation of the 'Electra;' it is without name, but is believed to be by Francis Barlow. There is also a quarto engraving by Robert Vaughan, representing her at the age of five, at p. 13 of 'The true Effigies of ... King Charles,' &c., 4to, London, 1641; and another by W. Hollar.

[Green's Lives of the Princesses of England, vi. 335-92; Kelly's Hampshire Directory (1885), p. 1049; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1649-50; Granger's Biog. Hist, of England (2nd ed.), ii. 100, iii. 4; Bromley's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, p. 67; Evans's Cat. of Engraved Portraits, i. 113, ii. 141; Lowndes's Bibl. Manual (Bohn), i. 415.]

G. G.


ELIZABETH (1596–1662), queen of Bohemia, eldest daughter of James VI of Scotland (afterwards James I of England) and his consort Anne of Denmark, was born at Falkland Castle in Fifeshire 19 (according to others 15 or 16) Aug. 1596. To the great indignation of the presbyterian ministers, the care of the infant princess was at first entrusted to Lord Livingstone, soon afterwards Earl of Linlithgow, whose wife was a Roman catholic [see Anne of Denmark], and under his care she and her younger sister, Margaret, were brought up, chiefly at the palace of Linlithgow, during the remainder of their parents' residence in Scotland. At the beginning of June 1603 Elizabeth accompanied her mother on her progress into England, where the Countess of Kildare was immediately appointed governess to the princess. In the course of the remainder of her journey south Elizabeth paid her first visit to Combe Abbey, near Coventry, which was soon afterwards to become her home. The interval she spent at court and at Oatlands in the company of her much-loved brother, Henry, prince of Wales. But when the discovery of the plots known as the Main and the Bye led to the arrest of Lord Cobham, Lady Kildare's second husband, it was decided to relieve her of the