Her distress was the town talk; nevertheless, the fleet arrived in the autumn, and brought the youthful Maria to the provinces.
This young lady, if the faithful historiographer of the Farnese house is to be credited, was the paragon of princesses.
[This princess, in her teens, might already exclaim, with the venerable Faustus: "Habe nun Philosophie Juristerei and Medicin Und leider ach: Theologie Durch studirt mit heissem Bemuhen," etc.
The panegyrists of royal houses in the sixteenth century were not accustomed to do their work by halves .-- Strada.] She was the daughter of Prince Edward, and granddaughter of John the Third.

She was young and beautiful; she could talk both Latin and Greek, besides being well versed in philosophy, mathematics and theology.

She had the scriptures at her tongue's end, both the old dispensation and the new, and could quote from the fathers with the promptness of a bishop.
She was so strictly orthodox that, on being compelled by stress of weather to land in England, she declined all communication with Queen Elizabeth, on account of her heresy.

She was so eminently chaste that she could neither read the sonnets of Petrarch, nor lean on the arm of a gentleman.

Her delicacy upon such points was, indeed, carried to such excess, that upon one occasion when the ship which was bringing her to the Netherlands was discovered to be burning, she rebuked a rude fellow who came forward to save her life, assuring him that there was less contamination in the touch of fire than in that of man.