HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

VOL. VIII.

CHAPTER XXI.

On the Continent the news of Mary’s death excited variousemotions. The Huguenots, in every part of Europe to whichthey had wandered, bewailed the Elect Lady, who had re-trenched from her own royal state in order to furnish bread andshelter to the persecuted people of God.* In the United Pro-vinces, where she was well known and had always been popular,she was tenderly lamented. Matthew Prior, whose parts andaccomplishments had obtained for him the patronage of themagnificent Dorset, and who was now attached to the Embassyat the Hague, wrote that the coldest and most passionless ofnations was touched. The very marble, he said, wept. ** Thelamentations of Cambridge and Oxford were echoed by Leydenand Utrecht. The States General put on mourning. The bellsof all the steeples of Holland tolled dolefully day after day.***

* See Claude's Sermon on Mary's death.

** Prior to Lord and Lady Lexington, Jan. 1605. The letter isamong the Lexington papers, a valuable collection, and well edited.

*** Monthly Mercury for January 1695. An orator who pronounced aneulogium on the Queen at Utrecht was so absurd as to aay that she spenther last breath in prayers for the prosperity of the United Provinces: —“Valeant et Batavi;” — these are her last words — “sint incolumes; sintflorentes; sint beati: stet in {eternum, stet immota prjeclarissima illorumcivitas, hospitium aliquando mihi gratissimum, optime de me meritum.”See also the orations of Peter Francius of Amsterdam, and of John Ortwi-nius of Delft.

Macaulayj History. VIII.

CHAP.

XXI.

1695 .Effect ofMary’sdeath onthe Con-tinent.

l