"Adieu, my dear child. Serve your creator in the days of your youth. Consider virtue as the greatest ornament of your sex. Follow close the great pattern of it, your mother, who has been, no less than myself, over-clouded with calumny. But time, the mother of truth, will, I hope, at last make her virtues shine as bright as the sun."--advice from James II to his young daughter Louisa Maria Teresa Stuart
Louisa Maria Teresa Stuart was born on June 28, 1692 to James II, King of England and Mary of Modena. She was born in France, as by 1692 King James had been forced to flee there following the "Glorious Revolution". James himself said that Louisa had been sent by God to him as a consolation in his distress. The young princess in exile became very popular with the French for her kind nature. There were plans for her to marry Charles XII of Sweden, but they fell through.
A French noble wrote this to a friend: "My Lord, I send to you by these the sad and deplorable news of the much lamented death of the Princess Royal of England who died of the smallpox the 18th of this month at St Germains who as she was one of the greatest ornaments of that afflicted court, so she was the admiration of all Europe; never Princess was so universally regretted. Her death has filled all France with sighs, groans and tears. She was a Princess of a majestical mien and port; every motion spoke grandeur, every action was easy and without any affectation or meanness, and proclaim'd her a heroine descended from the long race of so many paternal and maternal heroes..."
Even Louis XIV himself, the "Sun King", personally wrote a letter to Queen Anne to inform her of the death of her sister. Lord Dartmouth records that the letter contained "the highest character that ever was given to any princess of her age."
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