At last the exiled queen made up her mind to return to England, and end her days in the land of her childhood.
Sophia, her youngest child, was married, and lived with her husband, the Prince of Hanover, in his own country. She was a beautiful and clever woman, and constantly went back to see her mother, and cheer her solitude. Sophia’s son was George I. of England, from whom is descended Queen Victoria. She and Prince Rupert came to bid farewell to their mother before she left their land for ever.
What a different return to England; no crowds lined the coast, no shouts resounded from the citizens as on her departure, forty years before, as a happy young bride. When the widowed queen stepped on English soil, her heart revived. She had lived to see Charles II., her nephew, restored to the throne of England—her son restored to the Palatinate. Craven, her faithful friend, took her to his home, but she did not live long. The passionate love of her son Rupert, the wild and daring royalist, comforted her to the end, and “Prince Rupert of the Rhine” was the only one of her many children who followed her to the grave. She was buried by night at Westminster. While the long torchlight procession moved up the Abbey, a fierce gale raged; some thought it was a foreboding of future troubles to England; some thought it was like the troubled life of the Bohemian Queen; the faithful Craven bowed his head, and thanked God that his lady was beyond the wild storms of the world.
LADY RACHEL RUSSELL (1636-1723).
England was in a troubled state when Lady Rachel Russell was born.
Charles I. was king, but the people were not happy under his rule. England became divided into two parties—some for him, and some against him. Among the king’s firmest and most staunch supporters was the Earl of Southampton, Rachel Russell’s father. He was a loyal Englishman, and when affairs came to a crisis, and civil war broke out—though he saw what must be the result—he stuck to his king, and fought manfully for him. He married a French lady of noble birth, and had two daughters, Elizabeth and Rachel.
When Rachel was yet a baby, her mother died. She never had much education, perhaps because her father was a great deal away, and she had no mother to watch over it; perhaps because the country was in too disturbed a state for any progress in learning; and the result is, that her letters are full of mistakes in spelling. She must have heard a great deal about politics as a child; for her father took his seat in the Long Parliament when his little daughter was only six; she must have heard him talk of the battle of Edgehill and the bravery of Prince Rupert; she must have heard about Oliver Cromwell; and when she was thirteen, all England rang with the news that Charles the king was beheaded. Her father was one of those faithful four, who, on that snowy winter day, bore the coffin of the king to the royal tomb at Windsor. Then he took his family away into Hampshire, while Oliver Cromwell was at the head of the English government.
When she was seventeen, her father chose her a husband in Lord Vaughan.