CHILDREN OF CHARLES I
Look at the picture (Children of Charles I.) of these three children with their pet dog. You can tell that the dog is their playfellow and that he loves them, by the way he has taken his place at their side, and by the loving, trustful manner in which he looks up into the face of the boy whose hand rests on his head. The baby (Baby Stuart), whose picture alone you often see, and whom you hear called “Baby Stuart,” clasps a big red apple in his chubby hands.
These things would make us think that these are ordinary children, just like you, with a love for fun and frolic, and an eye for bright things and a taste for goodies.
Let us look at their clothes. This picture is a copy of a fine painting in rich colors. If we could go to the big gallery where the painting hangs, we should see that Mary, the sister, is dressed in beautiful white satin; Charles, the elder brother, has on an elegant scarlet gown; while the dear little baby, James, wears a dainty blue gown. The quaint, rich dresses of stiff, costly goods, covered with fine needle-work, would convince us that these are not ordinary children. Indeed, they are the children of a great king.
Charles and Mary and James lived three hundred years ago. Their grandfather had been King of England, and then their father was king. Next Charles ruled his country, and finally James.
Their grandfather was one of the kings who tried to force all of the people to go to one church and to give their money to no other. He forbade them to have a church of their own, and treated pretty roughly those who would not obey him.
In one part of England there were a number of people who did not like the church of the king’s choice, and were set on having one that suited their way of thinking. They had heard of another country, just a little way across a small sea, where people might go to any church that they liked. So they left their good farms and fled from England to this other country, called Holland, the home of the Dutch[1].
Here everything seemed very strange to them. There were no high hills in Holland. The land was low, as the land sometimes is beside the creek or down by the pond. In some places it was so low that the sea came right up into some of the streets, and when the people wished to leave their houses they had to go down the street in row-boats. Of course, the little children in those houses could not go out to play, for there were no yards and the streets were full of water.
Most of you boys have sometimes made little dams, to dam up water along the ditch or slough. That is what these Dutch people did. They built dams (or dikes, as they called them) to keep the water off the land, so that they might have farms and cities.