While our gallant young prince lay dying, the king showed himself as selfish and indifferent as we might expect. He came once to visit his son: but fearing that the fever might be contagious, he went away without seeing him, and retired to Theobalds, Lord Salisbury's estate. The Princess Elizabeth was kept away from the prince for the same reason. But she tried her best to see him, coming disguised in the evening to St. James's and endeavoring to gain access, but in vain, to her dearly-loved brother, who asked for her constantly during his illness--almost his last intelligible words being, "Where is my dear sister?"
But if his father showed want of feeling, the whole English nation mourned their young prince. He was buried at Westminster Abbey on the seventh of December, with all possible pomp. Prince Charles and the Elector Palatine were the chief mourners, attended by a train of two thousand mourners. Through the streets, thronged with weeping people, wound the great procession, with banners carried by nobles, led horses draped in black bearing the scutcheons of the prince's different titles and estates, all the notables of England and Scotland, clergy and peers, privy councillors and ambassadors. Then came the funeral car bearing the coffin, on which lay a beautiful effigy of the prince, dressed in his state robes; and the sight of it "caused a fearful outcry among the people, as if they felt their own ruin in that loss."[79]
Henry, Prince of Wales, was laid to rest in the south aisle of Henry the Seventh's Chapel, in the vault which had just been made to receive his grandmother, the unhappy Mary, Queen of Scots, whose body had been removed there a month before. Over Mary's grave King James erected a monument even more magnificent than Queen Elizabeth's in the north aisle. Yet not a thought did the selfish father give to the grave of his son.
But Prince Henry's memorial is a less perishable one than "brass or stony monument." He has left behind him a memory fragrant with all that makes youth lovely and manhood noble--the record of a pure and good life, which will last, as the memory of every good life must last, when stone and marble has crumbled to dust.
NOTE.--While writing the above words on Gunpowder Plot, Jan. 24, 1885, Westminster Hall, the House of Commons and the White Tower in the Tower of London, all closely connected with the histories of these children of Westminster, were partially wrecked by "forces"--to use the words of an Austrian writer--"such as to make those of Guy Fawkes' time look almost childish."