Showing posts with label Westminster Abbey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Westminster Abbey. Show all posts

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Today in Queen Bess's Life

Elizabeth was laid to rest at Westminster Abbey, 1603.

John Stow, English Historian and Antiquarian, was in attendance and wrote of the funeral:
"Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man."
One of the two inscriptions on her tomb says:
"To the eternal memory of Elizabeth queen of England, France and Ireland, daughter of King Henry VIII, grand-daughter of King Henry VII, great-grand-daughter to King Edward IV. Mother of her country, a nursing-mother to religion and all liberal sciences, skilled in many languages, adorned with excellent endowments both of body and mind, and excellent for princely virtues beyond her sex. James, king of Great Britain, France and Ireland, hath devoutly and justly erected this monument to her whose virtues and kingdoms he inherits."