Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, a disgraced and
decapitated Queen, wore the crown of England. If heredity had been as
much talked of then as now, England might have feared the child of a
faithless wife, and a remorseless, bloodthirsty King. But while Mary,
daughter of Katharine, the most pious and best of mothers, had left
only a great blood-spot upon the page of History, Elizabeth's reign was
to be the most wise, prosperous and great, the Kingdom had ever known.
In her complex character there was the imperiousness, audacity and
unscrupulousness of her father, the voluptuous pleasure-loving nature
of her mother, and mingled with both, qualities which came from
neither. She was a tyrant, held in check by a singular caution, with
an instinctive perception of the {83} presence of danger, to which her
purposes always instantly bent.
The authority vested in her was as absolute as her father's, but while
her imperious temper sacrificed individuals without mercy, she ardently
desired the welfare of her Kingdom, which she ruled with extraordinary
moderation and a political sagacity almost without parallel, softening,
but not abandoning, one of her father's usurpations.
She was a Protestant without any enthusiasm for the religion she
intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own
private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister
Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the
Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being
fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her
father's, more political than religious. The point she made was that
there must be religious uniformity, and conformity to the Established
Church of England--with its new "Articles," which as she often said,
"left _opinion_ free."
It was in fact a softened reproduction of {84} her terrible father's
attitude. The Church, (called an "Episcopacy," on account of the
jurisdiction of its Bishops,) was Protestant in doctrine, with gentle
leaning toward Catholicism in externals, held still firmly by the "Act
of Supremacy" in the controlling hand of the Sovereign. Above all else
desiring peace and prosperity for England, the keynote of Elizabeth's
policy in Church and in State was conciliation and compromise. So the
Church of England was to a great extent a compromise, retaining as much
as the people would bear of external form and ritual, for the sake of
reconciling Catholic England.
The large element to whom this was offensive was reinforced by
returning refugees who brought with them the stern doctrines of Calvin;
and they finally separated themselves altogether from a Church in which
so much of Papacy still lingered, to establish one upon simpler and
purer foundation; hence they were called "Puritans," and
"Nonconformists," and were persecuted for violation of the "Act of
Supremacy."
The masculine side of Elizabeth's {85} character was fully balanced by
her feminine foibles. Her vanity was inordinate. Her love of
adulation and passion for display, her caprice, duplicity, and her
reckless love-affairs, form a strange background for the calm,
determined, masterly statesmanship under which her Kingdom expanded.
The subject of her marriage was a momentous one. There were plenty of
aspirants for the honor. Her brother-in-law Philip, since the
abdication of Charles V., his father, was a mighty King, ruler over
Spain and the Netherlands, and was at the head of Catholic Europe. He
saw in this vain, silly young Queen of England an easy prey. By
marrying her he could bring England back to the fold, as he had done
with her sister Mary, and the Catholic cause would be invincible.
Elizabeth was a coquette, without the personal charm supposed to belong
to that dangerous part of humanity. She toyed with an offer of
marriage as does a cat with a mouse. She had never intended to marry
Philip, but she kept him waiting so long for her decision, and so
exasperated him with {86} her caprice, that he exclaimed at last, "That
girl has ten thousand devils in her." He little thought, that beneath
that surface of folly there was a nature hard as steel, and a calm,
clear, cool intelligence, for which his own would be no match, and
which would one day hold in check the diplomacy of the "Escurial" and
outwit that of Europe. She adored the culture brought by the "new
learning;" delighted in the society of Sir Philip Sidney, who reflected
all that was best in England of that day; talked of poetry with
Spenser; discussed philosophy with Bruno; read Greek tragedies and
Latin orations in the original; could converse in French and Italian,
and was besides proficient in another language,--the language of the
fishwife,--which she used with startling effect with her lords and
ministers when her temper was aroused, and swore like a trooper if
occasion required.
But whatever else she was doing she never ceased to study the new
England she was ruling. She felt, though did not understand, the
expansion which was going {87} on in the spirit of the people; but
instinctively realized the necessity for changes and modifications in
her Government, when the temper of the nation seemed to require it.
It was enormous common-sense and tact which converted Elizabeth into a
liberal Sovereign. Her instincts were despotic. When she bowed
instantly to the will of the Commons, almost apologizing for seeming to
resist it, it was not because she sympathized with liberal sentiments,
but because of her profound political instincts, which taught her the
danger of alienating that class upon which the greatness of her Kingdom
rested. She realized the truth forgotten by some of her successors,
that the Sovereign and the middle class _must be friends_. She might
resist and insult her lords and ministers, send great Earls and
favorites ruthlessly to the block, but no slightest cloud must come
between her and her "dear Commons" and people. This it was which made
Spenser's adulation in the "Faerie Queen" but an expression of the
intense loyalty of her meanest subject.
Perhaps it was because she remembered {88} that the whole fabric of the
Church rested upon Parliamentary enactment, and that she herself was
Queen of England by Parliamentary sanction, that she viewed so
complacently the growing power of that body in dealing more and more
with matters supposed to belong exclusively to the Crown, as for
instance in the struggle made by the Commons to suppress monopolies in
trade, granted by royal prerogative. At the first she angrily resisted
the measure. But finding the strength of the popular sentiment, she
gracefully retreated, declaring, with royal scorn for truth, that "she
had not before known of the existence of such an evil."
In fact, lying, in her independent code of morals, was a virtue, and
one to which she owed some of her most brilliant triumphs in diplomacy.
And when the bald, unmitigated lie was at last found out, she felt not
the slightest shame, but only amusement at the simplicity of those who
had believed she was speaking the truth.
Her natural instincts, her thrift, and her love of peace inclined her
to keep aloof {89} from the struggle going on in Europe between
Protestants and Catholics. But while the news of St. Bartholomew's Eve
seemed to give her no thrill of horror, she still sent armies and money
to aid the Huguenots in France, and to stem the persecutions of Philip
in the Netherlands, and committed England fully to a cause for which
she felt no enthusiasm. She encouraged every branch of industry,
commerce, trade, fostered everything which would lead to prosperity.
Listened to Raleigh's plans for colonization in America, permitting the
New Colony to be called "Virginia" in her honor (the Virgin Queen).
She chartered the "Merchant Company," intended to absorb the new trade
with the Indies (1600), and which has expanded into a British Empire in
India.
But amid all this triumph, a sad and solitary woman sat on the throne
of England. The only relation she had in the world was her cousin,
Mary Stuart, who was plotting to undermine and supplant her.
The question of Elizabeth's legitimacy was an ever recurring one, and
afforded a {90} rallying point for malcontents, who asserted that her
mother's marriage with Henry VIII. was invalidated by the refusal of
the Pope to sanction the divorce. Mary Stuart, who stood next to
Elizabeth in the succession, formed a centre from which a network of
intrigue and conspiracy was always menacing the Queen's peace, if not
her life, and her crown.
Scotland, since the extinction of the line of Bruce, had been ruled by
the Stuart Kings. Torn by internal feuds between her clans, and by the
incessant struggle against English encroachments, she had drawn into
close friendship with France, which country used her for its own ends,
in harassing England, so that the Scottish border was always a point of
danger in every quarrel between French and English Kings.
In 1502 Henry VIII. had bestowed the hand of his sister Margaret upon
James IV. of Scotland, and it seemed as if a peaceful union was at last
secured with his Northern neighbor. But in the war with France which
soon followed, James, the Scottish King, turned to his old ally. He
was killed at {91} "Flodden Field," after suffering a crushing defeat.
His successor, James V., had married Mary Guise. Her family was the
head and front of the ultra Catholic party in France, and her counsels
probably influenced James to a continual hostility to the Protestant
Henry, even though he was his uncle. The death of James in consequence
of his defeat at "Solway Moss" occurred immediately after the birth of
his daughter, Mary Stuart (1542).
This unhappy child at once became the centre of intriguing designs;
Henry VIII. wishing to betroth the little Queen to his son, afterwards
Edward VI., and thus forever unite the rival kingdoms. But the Guises
made no compromises with Protestants! Mary Guise, who was now Regent
of the realm, had no desire for a closer union with Protestant England,
and very much desired a nearer alliance with her own France. Mary
Stuart was betrothed to the Dauphin, grandson of Francis I., and was
sent to the French Court to be prepared by Catharine de Medici (the
Italian daughter-in-law of Francis I.) for her future exalted position.
{92}
In 1561, Mary returned to England. Her boy-husband had died after a
reign of two years. She was nineteen years old, had wonderful beauty,
rare intelligence, and power to charm like a siren. Her short life had
been spent in the most corrupt and profligate of Courts, under the
combined influence of Catharine de Medici, the worst woman in
Europe,--and her two uncles of the House of Guise, who were little
better. Political intrigues, plottings and crimes were in the very air
she breathed from infancy. But she was an ardent and devout Catholic,
and as such became the centre and the hope of what still remained of
Catholic England.
Elizabeth would have bartered half her possessions for the one
possession of beauty. That she was jealous of her fascinating rival
there is little doubt, but that she was exasperated at her pretensions
and at the audacious plottings against her life and throne is not
strange. In fact we wonder that, with her imperious temper, she so
long hesitated to strike the fatal blow.
Whether Mary committed the dark crimes {93} attributed to her or not,
we do not know. But we do know, that after the murder of her wretched
husband, Lord Darnley, (her cousin, Henry Stuart), she quickly married
the man to whom the deed was directly traced. Her marriage with
Bothwell was her undoing. Scotland was so indignant at the act, that
she took refuge in England, only to fall into Elizabeth's hands.
Mary Stuart had once audaciously said, "the reason her cousin did not
marry was because she would not lose the power of compelling men to
make love to her." Perhaps the memory of this jest made it easier to
sign the fatal paper in 1587.
When we read of Mary's irresistible charm, of her audacity, her
cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding
Elizabeth's--when we read of all this and think of the blood of the
Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her
heart, we realize what her usurpation would have meant for England, and
feel that she was a menace to the State, and justly incurred her fate.
Then again, when we hear of her gentle patience in her {94} long
captivity, her prayers and piety, and her sublime courage when she
walked through the Hall at Fotheringay Castle, and laid her beautiful
head on the block as on a pillow, we are melted to pity, and almost
revolted at the act. It is difficult to be just, with such a lovely
criminal, unless one is made of such stern stuff as was John Knox. The
son of Mary by Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley) was James VI. of Scotland.
His pretensions to the English throne were now seemingly forever at
rest. But Philip of Spain thought the time propitious for his own
ambitious purposes, and sent an Armada (fleet) which approached the
Coast in the form of a great Crescent, one mile across. The little
English "seadogs," not much larger than small pleasure yachts, were led
by Sir Francis Drake. They worried the ponderous Spanish ships, and
then, sending burning boats in amongst them, soon spoiled the pretty
crescent. The fleet scattered along the Northern Coast, where it was
overtaken by a frightful storm, and the winds and the waves completed
the victory, almost annihilating the entire "Armada."
{95}
England was great and glorious. The revolution, religious, social and
political, had ploughed and harrowed the surface which had been
fertilized with the "New Learning," and the harvest was rich. While
all Europe was devastated by religious wars there arose in Protestant
England such an era of peace and prosperity, with all the conditions of
living so improved that the dreams of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" seemed
almost realized. The new culture was everywhere. England was
garlanded with poetry, and lighted by genius, such as the world has not
seen since, and may never see again. The name of Francis Bacon was
sufficient to adorn an age, and that of Shakespeare alone, enough to
illumine a century. Elizabeth did not create the glory of the
"Elizabethan Age," but she did create the peace and social order from
which it sprang.
If this Queen ever loved any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man
who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive
hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion
{96} that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that
she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!--and sometimes wonder if the
memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when
sated with pleasures and triumphs, lovers no more whispering adulation
in her ears, and mirrors banished from her presence, she silently
waited for the end.
She died in the year 1603, and succumbing to the irony of fate,--and
possibly as an act of reparation for the fatal paper signed in
1587,--she named the son of Mary Stuart, James VI. of Scotland, her
successor.--James I. of England.
{97}