Lives of the last four princesses of the royal house of Stuart

146 MARY, PRINCESS-ROYAL. [1660.
Heroic nymph ! in tempests the support,
In peace the glory, of the British court ;
Into whose arms the Church, the State, and all
That precious is or sacred, here, did fall.
Ages to come that shall your bounty hear
Shall think you mistress of the Indies, were
Though straighter bounds your fortune did confine,
In your large heart was found a wealthy mine ;
Like the blest oil the widow's lasting feast,
Your treasure as you poured it out increased.
"While some your beauty, some your bounty sing,
Your native isle does with your praises ring ;
But, above all, a nymph of your own train,
Gives us your character, in such a strain
As none but she, who in that court did dwell,
Could know such worth, or worth describe so well.
Not even this eulogistic poem, of which the concluding
stanzas pointedly declared to whom Mary was indebted for
the revelation of her generosity to the exiled Cavaliers, could
reconcile her to the elevation of her late maid of honour,
Anne Hyde, to the rank of sistership to herself, and the
necessity of yielding precedence to her, in the British Court,
as the wife of the heir-presumptive of the crown. Fortu-
nately the new Duchess of York was not in a situation to
claim her rank, so she and the Princess-royal never met,
though the possibility of such a circumstance embittered
the delight, the Princess had anticipated, from her visit to
London.
The Princess-royal, had, meantime, attended the chapel
at Whitehall, and appeared at the fetes and entertainments
her brother, King Charles, had given for her amusement.
She was then in the perfection of her charms, of which her
portrait by Honthorst gives the best idea. There is no
likeness of her either in England or Holland, so good as
that picture.*
* Her majesty the Queen of the Netherlands, showed me Vandyck's
portraits of Mary and her consort, William II., Prince of Orange, in