When the long funeral procession passed through the streets "there was a great outcry among all people," and it was to the sounds of weeping and wailing that the boy-prince, who had won so much love and respect, was carried to Westminster Abbey. There, close to him, was laid more than forty years later, his dearest sister, Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, who, after a sadly adventurous life, spent her last few years peacefully in London, cared for and watched over by Lord Craven, whose devotion to her had been lifelong, as unchanging as it was chivalrous.
Another brother and sister are buried here, Anne, the little daughter of Charles I., and Prince Henry, his third son. Anne died before all those troubles began, which saddened the childhood of her brothers and sisters, and made them prisoners in the hands of their father's enemies, as she was only four when she fell into a fast consumption.
"I am not able," she said wearily, the night she died, "to say my long prayer, but I will say my short one. 'Lighten mine eyes, O Lord, lest I sleep in death.'"
Little Henry, the Duke of Gloucester, was extraordinarily like his uncle Henry in every way, old for his age, clever, thoughtful, "with a sweet method of talking, and a judgment much beyond his years." He was taken from his father almost before he knew him, and was, with his sister, also a Princess Elizabeth, kept practically a prisoner in London by the Puritan party. But he was not unkindly treated, for so engaging was he both in conversation and in manners, that many of the Puritans thought he would make a good ruler for England if only he were strictly brought up, and kept away from the influence of his mother or the court.
When the sentence of death was passed on King Charles, he asked to see the two of his children who were in London, and after some delay the request was granted. Awe-struck, the little couple came into his presence, and the king seems to have grasped what was likely to happen. He lifted the Duke of Gloucester on to his knee. "Sweetheart," he said, "they will cut off thy father's head, and mark, child, perhaps they will make thee a king. But you must not be a king while your brothers Charles and James be living."