e same.
Eternity is circular and round,
And Anna hath eternal glory found.[95]
In the same year, 1640, that little Anna found "eternal glory," her
brother Henry was born at Oatlands Park in Surrey.
There is a strong resemblance between this young prince, and his uncle
Henry, Prince of Wales, with whom we are so well acquainted. Both were
grave and studious beyond their years. Both were diligent and active in
whatever work came in their way to do. Both were strong Protestants.
Both cared for the society and friendship of older and wiser men, rather
than that of the gay, frivolous young courtiers of their own age. In
face and form they must have been somewhat alike; but the circumstances
of their lives were different.
Nothing could outwardly have been more happy and successful than the
life of Henry, Prince of Wales, the son of a poor Scotch king, raised
suddenly to the position of heir to the most prosperous kingdom in
Europe. Henry, Duke of Gloucester, on the contrary, was destined to take
his share from his earliest childhood in the disasters of his family.
Before he was two years old his troubles began. While his father, as an
old royalist writer expresses it, "was hunted from place to place like a
partridge upon the mountains," his mother was over in Holland, where she
gathered together an army with the proceeds of the crown jewels which
she sold or pawned. She landed in England in 1643, fought several
battles on her own account, and joined the king in Warwickshire on July
13, sleeping the night before in Shakespeare's house at
Stratford-on-Avon, which then belonged to the poet's daughter, Mrs.
Hall.
Henry of Oatlands, as the little Duke of Gloucester was called from his
birthplace, was left meanwhile by his parents at St. James's Palace,
with his sister Elizabeth. The Parliament on the outbreak of the Civil
War in 1642, secured complete possession of London, and the two children
remained in their hands in a sort of honorable captivity.
They were both of so tender years that they were neither
sensible of their father's sufferings nor capable to relieve
them; so that their innocent harmlessness on any account not
only protected them from the malice of their enemies, but
proved to be a meanes to work on their evil mindes to
provide for them not only an honorable sustenance, but a
royal attendance.[96]
Little Henry must have been a charming child; and we can well imagine
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