The Duchess was supported on the right side by the Duke of Norfolk, with his marshal’s rod, and on the left by the Duke of Suffolk—the only dukes then existing in the peerage of England—and a rich canopy was borne over the babe by the Lords Rochford, Hussey, and William and Thomas Howard.
At the church door the child was received by the Bishop of London, who performed the ceremony, and a grand cavalcade of bishops and mitred abbots. The sponsors were Archbishop Cranmer, the Dowager-Duchess of Norfolk, and the Marchioness of Dorset.
The future queen was carried to the font, and with the ceremony of the Catholic church christened Elizabeth, after her grandmother, Elizabeth of York; and that done, Garter King-at-Arms cried aloud, “God, of his infinite goodness, send prosperous life and long to the high and mighty Princess of England, Elizabeth. Then the trumpets sounded, the princess was carried up to the altar, the Gospel read over her, and she was confirmed by Archbishop Cranmer and presented with the following gifts:—A standing cup of gold by Cranmer; a similar cup fretted with pearls, by the Duchess of Norfolk; three gilt bowls, pounced, with covers, by the Marchioness of Dorset; and three standard bowls graven and gilt, with covers, by the Marchioness of Exeter. Then, after wafers and comfits had been served in abundance, the procession returned to the palace in the same order as it had set out, excepting that the Earl of Worcester, Lord Thomas Howard, the Lord Fitzwalter, and Sir John Dudley, preceded by the trumpeters, carried the gifts of the sponsors before the princess. Five hundred staff torches carried by the yeomen of the guard and the king’s servants, lit up the way homeward; and twenty gentlemen, bearing large wax flambeaux, walked on each side of the princess, who was carried to the queen’s chamber-door, when a flourish of trumpets sounded and the procession dispersed.”
The tiny infant, christened with all this ceremony, was created Princess of Wales when three months old; and when in her thirteenth month, an attempt was made to betroth her to the Duke D’Angoulême, the third son of Francis I., of France. Rather a strange proceeding concerning the spinster queen of England.
The tragic death of Anne Boleyn left this babe motherless at three years of age.
The first public ceremony in which Elizabeth participated was the christening of Edward the Sixth. She was then just four years of age, and was borne in the arms of the Earl of Hertford, brother to the queen, Jane Seymour. Elizabeth carried in her tiny hands the chrism for her new-born half-brother; and after the ceremony she walked with infant dignity in the procession, being led by the hand by the Princess Mary.
For some time, Elizabeth was allowed to reside in the same palace with the infant Edward, and she displayed the greatest affection for him. When she was seven years old she made the little prince a birthday gift of “a shyrte of cam’yke of her owne woorkynge,” which was quite precocious, considering her tender years.
The Princess Mary evinced great regard for her sister Elizabeth; and when the brutal King Henry deposed both these princesses from their rights of succession, and stigmatized them as illegitimate, and sent word to Mary that she should no longer treat Elizabeth as princess, Mary wrote a letter to her father, the king, in which she kindly mentioned Elizabeth thus: “My sister Elizabeth is in good health, and such a child, too, as I doubt not but your Highness shall have cause to rejoice of in time coming.”
Anne of Cleves was granted permission to see Elizabeth, even after her divorce, providing Elizabeth did not address her as queen; and all of the wives of Henry VIII. evinced great love for the Princess Elizabeth; and through the influence of Catherine Parr, Henry VIII. restored Elizabeth to her right of succession, although the act which pronounced her illegitimate remained forever unrepealed; and after she had become queen of England, she refrained from requiring Parliament to repeal those acts of her father which had declared his marriage with Anne Boleyn null and void; and she contented herself with an act of Parliament which declared in general terms her rights of succession to the throne.
While the youthful Edward VI. was king, the Princess Elizabeth was involved in certain questionable relations with the Lord High Admiral Seymour, who had married the Queen-Dowager Catherine, a few weeks after the death of Henry VIII.