Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/445

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were forced upon her by the council. At the coronation of Queen Mary she rode in the procession along with the Princess Elizabeth, with whom she was also seated at the banquet at the end of the table. She died on 16 July 1557, and was buried with considerable ceremony at Westminster Abbey on 3 Aug. following. Her will is dated on 12 and 15 July immediately before her death.

[Hall's Chronicle; Wriothesley's Chronicle (Camden Soc.); Chronicle of Calais; Machyn's Diary (Camden Soc.); State Papers; Ellis's Original Letters; Kempe's Loseley MSS.; Excerpta Historica (S. Bentley); Herbert's History of Henry VIII. Miss Strickland's life of this queen contains also some particulars derived from original researches.]

ANNE OF DENMARK (1574–1619), queen consort, according to the style adopted by her husband, King James I, of Great Britain (France) and Ireland, was born at Skanderborg, in Jutland, 12 Dec. 1574 (not 1575, as sometimes stated; see Resen, Kong Friderichs II Krönjcke, 278). Her father, King Frederick II of Denmark and Norway (of the Oldenburg line of the dukes of Schleswig-Holstein), belonged to a family that had early thrown in its cause with that of the Lutheran Reformation, and was himself an orthodox and persecuting Lutheran. Anne's mother was Sophia, daughter of Ulric III, duke of Mecklenburg, and at that time bishop of Schwerin, and she also came from an orthodox Lutheran stock (Rudloff, Handbuch der Mecklenburgischen Geschichte, part iii. vol. ii.). Queen Sophia was a highly gifted princess, and took an interest in the scientific researches of Tycho Brahe, who was protected by her husband; and after her forced retirement from public life soon after her husband's death (1588), she devoted part of her leisure to the study of astronomy, chemistry, and other sciences. Writing from Roeskilde, 10 Aug. 1588, Daniel Rogers speaks of her to Burghley as ‘a right vertuous and godlie princesse, which, with a motherlie care and great wisedome, ruleth the children’ (Ellis, Original Letters, 2nd series, iii. 149. As to Queen Sophia, see also E. C. Werlauff, Sophia af Meklenborg, Copenhagen, 1841). These children were seven in number. Of the four daughters the eldest, Elizabeth, married Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who played a more memorable part in literary than in political history; the second was Anne; the third, Augusta, married Duke John Adolphus of Holstein-Gottorp; and the fourth, Hedwig, the Elector Christian II of Saxony, after having missed the hand of the future Emperor Ferdinand II (see Gindely, Geschichte des dreissigjährigen Krieges, i. 183). The eldest son was Christian IV of Denmark (1588–1648), the most famous of her kings. Anne's second brother, Ulric, bishop of Schwerin and Schleswig, is found at the English court in 1604–5, when he urges renewal of the war with Spain (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James I, 9 Jan. 1605), and is described as ‘not very rytche any way’ (Lord Lumley to Earl of Shrewsbury in Nichols's Progresses of James I, i. 466), a circumstance which may be connected with his speculations upon the hand of Lady Arabella Stuart (see Miss Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, vii. 416). The third brother, John, died young at Moscow, ‘when about to marry.’

If the absurd story be authentic, according to which the Princess Anne was carried about in the arms of her attendants without being allowed to walk alone till after she was nine years old, the etiquette of the Danish court must have been as rigorous as the pride of the Danish royal family was high; fortunately, however, as Miss Strickland points out, no ill came of it, since its victim ‘was afterwards very famous for her agile dancing.’ There appear to be no traditions as to the more advanced stages of the training of the Princess Anna (it was thus that she always spelled her name). She probably received a fair education, though her innate frivolity was in some respects proof against its influence. Either in her youth or later she learned to write a singularly beautiful hand; and she had a sprightliness of style which may or may not have come by nature.

Before her childhood had ended, negotiations concerning her marriage had begun. In the year 1585, according to Sir James Melville, Queen Elizabeth of England was, by her intelligence from Denmark, advertised ‘of a gret and magnifik ambassade send be the King of Denmark in Scotland; thre ambassadours, with a sexscore of persones, in twa braue schippis.’ Melville adds that he cannot tell whether she suspected a marriage to be the ultimate purpose of the embassy; but it is obvious that the English council feared that the Danes intended a close alliance with Scotland, and that accordingly Wotton was sent into that country to counteract any such design. From a comparison of Melville's account (in which as usual Melville plays the leading part) with that in the ‘Historie and Life of King James the Sext,’ it seems clear that the primary object of this Danish embassy, sent in July 1585, was to negotiate the restitution of the Orkney and Shetland isles to the Danish crown, which had been pledged as security for the dowry of Margaret, daughter of King