The boy on whom the hopes of England were to be centered, was born at Stirling Castle in 1594. He was christened six months later at Edinburgh—a guard of the youths of the city, well dressed, standing on either side, as Lord Sussex, who had been sent by Queen Elizabeth to the ceremony with a present of plate, valued at three thousand pounds, carried the baby to the chapel. The child was named by his father, "Frederick Henry and Henry Frederick;" and the Bishop repeating these names over three times, they were proclaimed by heralds to the sound of trumpets. The little fellow was confided to the care of Lady Mar until he was five years old, and a very hard time he must have had. For "the severity of her temper, as well as the duty of her office, would not permit her to use any indulgence towards the prince."[59] But already, baby as he was, he gave signs of the sweetness of his disposition; for he showed not only reverence, but affection for the fierce old dame, and for Lord Mar, her son, who was his governor. When the Prince was taken from Lady Mar's severe care, he was given over to a tutor, Mr. Adam Newton, to whom he became greatly attached; and Lord Mar, Sir David Murray, and several lords, knights, and gentlemen made up his body of attendants. King James lost no time in teaching this little prince the duties and responsibilities of his station. The boy was scarcely six years old before his father wrote his book of "instructions to his dearest son, Henry the Prince," the best of all his works according to Bacon, who pronounced it "excellently written." These instructions are divided into three books;
the first instructing the prince in his duty toward God; the second in his duty when he should be King; and the third informing him how to behave himself in indifferent things, which were neither right nor wrong, but according as they were rightly or wrongly used.[60]
Before he is seven years old we find the child writing a letter in French to the States General of Holland, in which "he expresses his great regard for the States, and gratitude for the good opinion, which they had so early conceived of him, and of which he had received an account from several persons."[61] And on his ninth birthday he writes a letter to his father in Latin, beginning "Rex serennissime et amantissime pater," in which he tells the king what progress he has made, and how that "since the king's departure he had read over Terence's Hecyra, the third book of Phædrus's Fables, and two books of Cicero's Select Epistles; and he now thought himself capable of performing something in the commendatory kind of Epistles."[62] This is a good deal for a little boy of eight years old to accomplish. How would boys of our day like to do as much? They would probably prefer the other part of young Prince Henry's education. In 1601, when he was seven years old, he
began to apply himself to, and take pleasure in, active and manly exercises, learning to ride, sing, dance, leap, shoot with the bow and gun, toss the pike, etc., being instructed in the use of arms by Richard Preston, a gentleman of great accomplishments both of mind and body,
who was afterwards made Earl of Desmond in Ireland. Prince Henry was devoted to these manly pursuits as we shall see further on; and his fondness for them and his disregard of fatigue or exposure, helped, some thought, to bring about his untimely death.
In 1603, at Queen Elizabeth's death, the prince was nine years old. Before King James left Scotland, which he did immediately upon receiving the proclamation that raised him to the throne of Great Britain, he wrote a sensible letter to his son, telling him of the immense change in their fortunes, but warning him not to let this news make him "proud or insolent; for a king's son and heir was ye before, and no more are ye now. The augmentation that is hereby like to fall unto you, is but in cares and heavy burthens. Be therefore merry, but not insolent: keep a greatness, but sine fastu: Be resolute, but not wilfull: keep your kindness, but in honorable sort."[63] Excellent maxims; and it would have been well for the writer of them to lay them to heart as earnestly as his little son did.