Part 13 (1/2)

Bonae Memoriae Et spei aeternae.

FOOTNOTES:

[94] ”Fuller's Worthies.” Vol. II. p. 108.

[95] ”English Princesses.” M. A. Greene, p. 395.

[96] Short view of the Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester, 1661, p. 16.

[97] Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester. p. 17.

[98] ”Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester.” p. 19.

[99] ”Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester.”

[100] ”Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester.”

[101] ”Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester.”

[102] ”Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester.” p. 26.

[103] Ibid.

[104] Ibid.

[105] ”Life of Henry, Duke of Gloucester.” p. 39.

[106] ”Somers' Civil Tract.” p. 316.

[107] ”Somer's Civil Notes.”

[108] ”Bishop Burnet's History of his own Time.” Vol. I. p. 248.

CHAPTER XII.

WILLIAM HENRY, DUKE OF GLOUCESTER.

From our childhood up we have all heard of ”Good Queen Anne.” When we were small tots in the nursery we sang little rhymes about

Queen Anne, Queen Anne, she sat in the sun.

I send you three letters, you don't read one.

Then as we grew older we succ.u.mbed more or less to the rage for the eighteenth century which has laid hold on so large a section of English and Americans during the last few years. And we began to use Queen Anne's name in season and out of season--to talk glibly of Queen Anne architecture, Queen Anne furniture, and Queen Anne plate. The subject is doubtless an interesting one. And I for one am grateful to Queen Anne--or rather to the architects of her reign. Those stately red brick houses of her time, though they are far less graceful than Elizabethan mansions, and less romantic than the French chateaux of the same period with their high roofs, and charming tourelles with extinguisher tops, are among the most comfortable, homelike, lovable dwelling-places we can find in England.

The plate too of Queen Anne's reign is justly esteemed as the handsomest and richest that can be found. As I write a bit of veritable Queen Anne plate stands beside me on the table--a graceful little candlestick five inches high, of plain, solid silver. No need to look at its Hall-mark, or puzzle over its history; for the only ornament on its foot is an open-work pattern formed of roughly cut letters, ”Queen Anne. 1702”; and on the rim above is engraved ”His Highness Prince George. S.^{L}S. Anno Dom. 1702.”

The candlestick was a present from Queen Anne on her coronation, to a certain old ancestress of ours, who had been one of the ladies in attendance on the Queen's young son, William Henry, Duke of Gloucester--the only one of her numerous children who lived beyond his babyhood.