Sophia, a royal rosebud, plucked by premature fate, and snatched away from her parents—James, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, and Queen Anne—that she might flourish again in the rosary of Christ, was placed here on the twenty-third of June, in the fourth year of the reign of King James, 1606.
The little creature was born on the twenty-first of June at Greenwich—a favorite palace of the English sovereigns. Great preparations had been made for her christening, and for the tourneys which were to be held at the same time in honor of her grandfather the King of Denmark's visit. But the baby only lived two days, and was hastily baptized "Sophia," after the Queen of Denmark. James the First gave orders that she should be buried "as cheaply as possible, without any solemnity or funeral."[49] Nevertheless he made a contract with Nicholas Poutrain, the royal sculptor, for her monument, the cost of which was not to exceed one hundred and forty pounds. And we find that her coffin was very solemnly conveyed up the river by barge, covered with black velvet, accompanied by three other barges covered with black cloth and bearing many nobles, lords, ladies, and the officers-of-arms, to the Parliament stairs at Westminster. Thence the procession went to the south-east door of the Abbey, where it was met by the great lords of the Council, the Heralds, and chief officers of the court, the
Dean and Prebends with the choir; and so they passed to King Henry the Seventh's chapel where there was an Antiphon sung with the organ; in the meantime the Body was interred in a Vault at the end of the Tomb then erecting for Queen Elizabeth.[50]
THE CRADLE TOMB.
The chief mourner was that unhappy Lady Arabella Stuart, king James' cousin, who, years after, ended her troubled life in the Tower, and was brought like little baby Sophia "by the dark river," and laid in the same grave as Mary, Queen of Scots, her kinswoman.
Upon the same altar step there is another monument to a little princess—Sophia's sister Mary. She was the third daughter of James the First: but the first princess of the new dynasty who was born in England, and the first royal child baptized in the Reformed Church. As "three quarters of a century had elapsed since a child was born to the Sovereign of England," great were the rejoicings on little Mary's birth upon the eighth of April, 1605. Bonfires were lighted, church bells were rung all day long, and there were scrambles for money in the streets.
There is a curious account of the clothes provided for this first princess of Great Britain, which shows us how royal babies were dressed then. She had
a carnation velvet cradle, fringed with silver fringe, and lined with carnation satin; a double scarlet cloth to lay upon the cradle in the night; a cradle cloth of carnation velvet with a train, laid with silver, and lined with taffety to lay upon the cradle; two small mantles of unshorn velvet, lined with the same velvet; one large bearing cloth of carnation velvet, to be used when the child is brought forth of the chamber, lined with taffety; one great head sheet of cambric for the cradle, containing two breadths, and three yards long, wrought all over with gold and colored silks, and fringed with gold; six large handkerchiefs of fine cambric, whereof one to be edged with fair cut work, to lay over the child's face; six veils of lawn, edged with fair bone lace, to pin with the mantles; six gathered bibs of fine lawn with ruffles edged with bone lace; two bibs to wear under them, wrought with gold and colored silks, etc.[51]
The total value of these fineries and of all the lace and cambric required for the baby's trousseau was estimated at three hundred pounds.