characterized as the stain of deepest dye on the fair fame of
Elizabeth,—the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586. It would be
foreign to the subject, to relate the circumstances which led that
princess to take refuge in England, trusting to Elizabeth’s promises of
protection and kindness. Her reception at first was as favourable as was
perhaps consistent with due attention to the public safety, considering
that the Roman Catholic portion of British subjects held her to be the
rightful sovereign, and Elizabeth an illegitimate and heretical usurper.
But feelings of habitual enmity, enforced perhaps by the arguments of
her political advisers, overpowered the sympathy of the first moments,
and suggested the advantages to be taken of a defenceless competitor.
Elizabeth, therefore, after having in the first instance ordered her to
be treated like a queen, afterwards committed her to close prison. On
the discovery of Babington’s plot, in which Mary was deeply implicated,
the queen of Scots was arraigned of high treason before commissioners
specially appointed by the crown. By that solemn tribunal, she was tried
and found guilty, and by Elizabeth was delivered over to execution. Even
Bohun, in his character of Elizabeth, though in general her panegyrist,
says on this occasion, “By this action, she tainted her reign with the
innocent blood of a princess, whom she had received into her dominions,
and to whom she had given sanctuary.” If the sentence was executed, not
in vindication of the offended laws, but as a sacrifice to personal
revenge, Elizabeth’s guilt was greatly aggravated by her extreme
dissimulation in the management of the affair. She no sooner received
intelligence of Mary’s decapitation, than she abandoned herself to
misery and almost despair: she put on deep mourning; her council were
severely rebuked; her ministers, and even Burleigh, were driven from her
presence with furious reproaches. Her secretary Davison was subjected to
a process in the Star-Chamber for a twofold contempt, in having revealed
her Majesty’s counsels to others of her ministers, and having given up
to them the warrant which she had committed to him in special trust and
secrecy, to be reserved for a case of sudden emergency. But Davison’s
apology, an extract from which was inserted by Camden in his Annals, has
since been found entire among the original papers of Sir Amias Paulet.
From this authentic source it appears, that Davison was made her
unconscious agent and instrument. Those who have endeavoured to
extenuate the apparent treachery of Elizabeth, have alleged that the
queen of Scots kept the queen of England in continual dread of
dethronement; and that if the necessity existed to take the life of the
queen of Scots, it was equally necessary that it should be done with a
show of reluctance, and the least possible odium to the queen of
England. Such has been the defence, both of the act itself, and of the
subsequent dissimulation. But it would be difficult to apologize for her
proceedings against Davison, an able and honest servant, whom she
disgraced and ruined, for the purpose of impressing the belief that Mary
was executed without her knowledge and contrary to her intentions. Right
and wrong must be differently estimated in sovereigns and ordinary
persons, if the sacrifice of such a victim to the shade of Mary or the
indignation of her son can be justified.
The reign of Elizabeth lasted forty-four years, four months, and six
days. It was distinguished by great actions; it raised the British name
to a high and glorious rank in the scale of nations: and we of the
present times are indebted to it for some of our greatest advantages.
But the sovereign herself closed her long and eventful life in a state
of deep melancholy. Her kinsman, Sir Robert Cary, relates, with the
quaintness of the time, the circumstances of his visit to her on her
death-bed. “She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said that
her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her
discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was
grieved at first to see her in this plight; for in all my lifetime I
never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.”
She died March 24, 1603, in her seventieth year. Few as are the
particulars of her life which we have been able to admit into our
narrative, they have perhaps been sufficient to give an outline, however
faint, of her character. It has been drawn out in form, and with
fairness, by Lord Bolingbroke, in the following passage from his Idea of
a Patriot King. “Our Elizabeth was queen in a limited monarchy, and
reigned over a people at all times more easily led than driven; and at
that time capable of being attached to their prince and their country by
a more generous principle than any of those which prevail in our days,
by affection. There was a strong prerogative then in being, and the
crown was in possession of greater legal power. Popularity was however
then, as it is now, and as it must always be in mixed government, the
sole foundation of that sufficient authority and influence which other
constitutions give the prince gratis and independently of the people,
but which a king of this nation must acquire. The wise queen saw it; and
she saw too how much popularity depends on those appearances that depend
on the decorum, the decency, the grace, and the propriety of behaviour
of which we are speaking. A warm concern for the interest and honour of
the nation, a tenderness for her people and a confidence in their
affections, were appearances that ran through her whole public conduct,
and gave life and colour to it. She did great things; and she knew how
to set them off according to their true value, by her manner of doing
them. In her private behaviour she showed great affability, she
descended even to familiarity; but her familiarity was such as could not
be imputed to her weakness, and was therefore most justly ascribed to
her goodness. Though a woman, she hid all that was womanish about her;
and if a few equivocal marks of coquetry appeared on some occasions,
they passed like flashes of lightning, vanished as soon as they were
discovered, and imprinted no blot on her character. She had private
friendships, she had favourites: but she never suffered her friends to
forget that she was their queen; and when her favourites did, she made
them feel that she was so.”
Our delineation of Elizabeth has been rather that of a very great
personage, than of a good woman; but it must be admitted on all hands,
that the poison of calumny has been largely administered, in proportion
to the invidiousness of her position. This general lot of greatness fell
the heavier on her, in consequence of the severe laws which she was
compelled to enact and execute against the papists. The libels against
Elizabeth’s good fame were put forth mostly by persons of that
proscribed sect, who have represented her, not as indulging the
frailties from which her most strenuous advocates cannot exonerate her,
but as a monster of cruelty, avarice, and lust. It is but justice to
place in contrast with so hateful a picture the noble character ascribed
to her even by a Jesuit, in a book published in the Catholic metropolis
of France. Père d’Orleans, in his ‘Histoire des Revolutions
d’Angleterre,’ speaks thus: “Elizabeth was a person whose name
immediately imprints in our minds such a noble idea, that it is
impossible well to express it by any description whatsoever. Never did a
crowned head better understand the art of government, and commit fewer
errors in it, during a long reign. The friends of Charles V. could
reckon his faults: Elizabeth’s enemies have been reduced narrowly to
search after hers; and they, whose greatest concern it was to cast an
odium upon her conduct, have admired her. So that in her was fulfilled
this sentence of the Gospel, that the children of this world are often
wiser in their views and designs than the children of light. Elizabeth’s
aim was to reign, to govern, to be mistress, to keep her people in
submission, neither affecting to weaken her subjects, nor to make
conquests in foreign countries; but yet not suffering any person to
encroach in the least upon the sovereign power, which she knew perfectly
well how to maintain, both by policy and by force. For no person in her
time had more wit, more skill, more judgment than she had. She was not a
warlike princess; but she knew so well how to train up warriors, that
England had not for a long time seen a greater number of them, nor more
experienced.”
[Illustration: [View of the Old Palace, Greenwich.]]
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Changed “Majolica” to “Maiolica” on p. 37.
2. Changed “and same other” to “and some other” on p. 48.
3. The “Z” was reversed in “CORTEZ” on p. 122 and in “LEIBNITZ” on p.
132.
4. Changed “Evénemens” to “Événements” on p. 170.
5. Changed “ed i” to “ei” on p. 176.
6. Did not correct the variant spellings of “Raphael”.
7. Silently corrected typographical errors.
8. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
9. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
10. Superscripts are denoted by a carat before a single superscript
character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in
curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}.