.

[53] Stow's Chronicle, p. 862.

[54] Green's Princesses, p. 92.

[55] Nichols. Vol. I. p. 573.

[56] Green's Princesses. p. 94.

[57] Funeral Sermon for Prs. Mary, by G. Leech, preached in Henry the
Seventh's Chapel, Sept. 23, 1607.

CHAPTER VIII.

HENRY FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES.

Among the Hampshire moors, covered with sheets of purple heather and
dark forests of Scotch firs, stands a grand old house built of red brick
with stone facings. It is a noble mansion, with its saloons and
libraries; its great hall where the Yule log burns at Christmas on the
hearth of a vast fireplace; its wide oaken staircases, secret doors and
passages; its "Long Gallery" running the whole width of the building;
its wonderful ceilings fretted with patterns and pendants of
plaster-work; its oak-panelled bedrooms; its attics big enough to house
a whole regiment. Outside there are terraces and lawns of finest turf,
where Troco and bowls used to be played nearly three hundred years ago;
and walled gardens opening one into the other with beautiful
wrought-iron gates of intricate pattern. The Virginian creeper climbs
over the house, and veils the stone mullions of the deep embayed windows
in a delicate tangled tracery of stems and leaves. Groups of tall red
brick chimneys rise above the gables of the roof. And crowning the
splendid western front--above the great entrance through a triple arched
porch, above the exquisite oriel window that hangs out from the walls of
the chapel-room--the Prince of Wales's three feathers, the badge that
Edward the Black Prince won at Cressy, are carved in stone.

It seems a long way from Westminster Abbey to Bramshill House. But the
two are connected in more ways than one with the young hero of our
story. For King James the First began to build that fine old house as a
hunting box for his son Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales. He brought
those giant fir-trees from Scotland, that stand like sentinels on
Hartford Bridge Flats and in Bramshill Park; and he planted them in
groups here and there as a memento of his northern home, little dreaming
that they would take so kindly to the soil, and that millions upon
millions of their self-sown children would turn the bleak moorland into
thick deep forest. Lastly it was in Bramshill Park that the writer's
worthy ancestor, George Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury, the dear
friend and adviser of Henry, Prince of Wales, met with the misfortune
that blighte