Tea at Trianon: Queen Victoria's Memorial to Princess Elizabeth Stuart

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, April 17, 2024

Queen Victoria's Memorial to Princess Elizabeth Stuart

"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."

Princess Elizabeth was the daughter of Charles I and Henrietta Maria who died in prison with her head cushioned on her father's Bible. From The Victorian Web:

The daughter of Charles I of England, Princess Elizabeth (1635-1650) was imprisoned, together with her young brother Henry, Duke of Gloucester, after the execution of their father. From Penshurst Place, the children were sent in August 1650 to Carisbrooke Castle, where Elizabeth immediately fell ill and died on the 8 September. She was buried in the old St Thomas Church, Newport. A plain stone engraved with her initials, E. S., was the only indication of her burial place beneath the chancel. In 1793, workers, who were digging a grave, discovered her vault with her coffin bearing the following inscription: "ELIZABETH, 2nd daughter of the late King CHARLES, deceased September 8th, MDCL." A brass plaque was then placed on the stone covering the vault below the main altar. On the rebuilding of the church, Queen Victoria signified to the Mayor that she would erect a monument to the memory of the Princess Elizabeth "if an appropriate place could be found in the new Church" (Isle of Wight Observer, 5 August 1854: 4). (Read more.)