Commonwealth
The next residence for Elizabeth and her brother was Penshurst Place, under the care of Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester and his wife Dorothy. Parliamentary instruction was that the children should not be indulged; however, the Countess of Leicester treated Elizabeth with great kindness, and was the recipient of a jewel from the Princess's own collection. The valuable jewel was later the centre of conflict between the Countess and Parliamentary commissioners appointed to oversee the late king's personal estate.
In 1650, Elizabeth's brother, the now titular Charles II journeyed to Scotland to be crowned king of that country. Elizabeth was moved to the Isle of Wight as a hostage, and placed in the care of Anthony Mildmay with a pension of £3000 a year. This move from Penshurst was probably the cause of her death. The Princess complained that her health was not equal to moving, but it went ahead anyway; she caught a cold, which quickly developed into pneumonia, and died on 8 September 1650. Some accounts say that Elizabeth was found dead with her head on the Bible her father had given her. In her last days, she was described as a sad child by those who had been around her. Three days after she was found dead, the Council of State granted permission for the princess to join her sister Mary in the Netherlands. She was buried at St. Thomas's Church, Newport, on the Isle of Wight.
Following her death, her grave was largely unmarked until the 19th century, with the exception of her carved initials: E S. Queen Victoria, who made her favourite home at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, commanded that a suitable monument be erected to her memory. In 1856, a white marble sculpture by Queen Victoria's favorite sculptor Carlo Marochetti was commissioned for her grave that depicted Elizabeth as a beautiful young woman, lying with her cheek on a Bible open to words from Gospel of Matthew: "Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Above the sculpture is a grating, indicating that she was a prisoner, but the bars are broken to show that the prisoner has now escaped to "a greater rest." The plaque marking the sculpture reads: "To the memory of The Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Charles I, who died at Carisbrooke Castle on 8 September 1650, and is interred beneath the chancel of this church, this monument is erected as a token of respect for her virtues and of sympathy for her misfortunes, by Victoria R., 1856."
The concluding lines from The Death of The Princess Elizabeth in the 1866 book Lays of the English Cavaliers by John Jeremiah Daniel commemorated Victoria's actions: "And long unknown, unhonoured, her sacred dust had slept/When to the Stuart maiden's grave a mourner came and wept./Go, read that Royal Martyr's woe in lines the world reveres/And see the tomb of Charles's child wet with Victoria's tears."
Read more about this topic: Princess Elizabeth Of England
Famous quotes containing the word commonwealth:
“Was I not born in this Realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country?... Is not my Kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? Whom have I enriched to other’s harm? What turmoil have I made to this Commonwealth that I should be suspected to have no regard of the same?”
—Elizabeth I (1533–1603)
“While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“By this unprincipled facility of changing the state as often, and as much, and in as many ways as there are floating fancies or fashions, the whole chain and continuity of the commonwealth would be broken. No one generation could link with the other. Men would become little better than the flies of a summer.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)