ELIZABETH. A.D. 1558--1587.
All through Queen Mary's time, her sister Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's
daughter, had been in trouble. Those who held by Queen Mary, and
maintained Henry's first marriage, said that his wedding with Anne
was no real one, and so that Elizabeth ought not to reign; but then
there was no one else to take in her stead, except the young Queen
Mary of Scotland, wife to the French dauphin. All who wished for
the Reformation, and dreaded Mary's persecutions had hoped to see
Elizabeth queen, and this had made Mary much afraid of her; and she
was so closely watched and guarded that once she even said she wished
she was a milkmaid, to be left in peace. While she had been in the
Tower she had made friends with another prisoner, Robert Dudley,
brother to the husband of Lady Jane Grey, and she continued to like
him better than any other person as long as he lived.
When Mary died, Elizabeth was twenty-five, and the English were mostly
willing to have her for their queen. She had read, thought, and
learnt a great deal; and she took care to have the advice of wise men,
especially of the great Thomas Cecil, whom she made Lord Burleigh, and
kept as her adviser as long as he lived. She did not always follow
even his advice, however; but, whenever she did, it was the better
for her. She knew Robert Dudley was not wise, so, though she was so
fond of him, she never let him manage her affairs for her. She would
have wished to marry, but she knew her subjects would think this
disgraceful, so she only made him Earl of Leicester: and her liking
for him prevented her from ever bringing herself to accept any of
the foreign princes who were always making proposals to her.
Unfortunately he was not a good man, and did not make a good use of
her favor, and he was much disliked by all the queen's best friends.
She was very fond of making stately journeys through the country. All
the poor people ran to see her and admire her; but the noblemen who
had to entertain her were almost ruined, she brought so many people
who ate so much, and she expected such presents. These journeys were
called Progresses. The most famous was to Lord Leicester's castle
of Kenilworth, but he could quite afford it. He kept the clock's
hands at twelve o'clock all the time, that it might always seem to
be dinner time!
Elizabeth wanted to keep the English Church a pure and true branch of
the Church, free of the mistakes that had crept in before her father's
time. So she restored the English Prayer-book, and cancelled all that
Mary had done; the people who had gone into exile returned, and all
the Protestants abroad reckoned her as on their side. But, on the
other hand, the Pope would not regard her as queen at all, and cut
her and her country off from the Church, while Mary of Scotland and her
husband called themselves the true queen and king of England; and such
of the English as believed the Pope to have the first right over the
Church, held with him and Mary of Scotland. They were called Roman
Catholics, while Elizabeth and her friends were the real Catholics,
for they held with the Church Universal of old: and it was the Pope
who had broken off with them for not accepting his doctrines, not
they with the Pope. The English who had lived abroad in Mary's time
wanted to have much more altered, and to have churches and services
much less beautiful and more plain than they were. But Elizabeth
never would consent to this; and these people called themselves
Puritans, and continued to object to the Episcopal form of worship.
Mary of Scotland was two years queen of France, and then her husband
died, and she had to come back to Scotland. There most of the people
had taken up the doctrines that made them hate the sight of the clergy
and services she had brought home from France; they called her an
idolater, and would hardly bear that she should hear the old service
in her own chapel. She was one of the most beautiful and charming
women who ever lived, and if she had been as true and good as she
was lovely, nobody could have done more good; but the court of France
at that time was a wicked place, and she had learnt much of the
wickedness. She married a young nobleman named Henry Stuart, a
cousin of her own, but he turned out foolish, selfish and head-strong,
and made her miserable; indeed, he helped to kill her secretary in her
own bedroom before her eyes. She hated him so much at last, that
there is only too much reason to fear that she knew of the plot, laid
by some of her lords, to blow the poor man's house up with gunpowder,
while he lay is his bed ill of smallpox. At any rate, she very soon
married one of the very worst of the nobles who had committed the
murder. Her subjects could not bear this, and they rose against her
and made her prisoner, while her husband fled the country. They shut
her up in a castle in the middle of a lake, and obliged her to give
up her crown to her little son, James VI.--a baby not a year old.
However, her sweet words persuaded a boy who waited on her to steal
the keys, and row her across the lake, and she was soon at the head of
an army of her Roman Catholic subjects. They were defeated, however,
and she found no place safe for her in Scotland, so she fled across
the Border to England. Queen Elizabeth hardly knew what to do. She
believed that Mary had really had to do with Henry Stuart's death,
but she could not bear to make such a crime known in a cousin and
queen; and what made it all more difficult to judge was, that the
kings of France and Spain, and all the Roman Catholics at home,
thought Mary ought to be queen instead of Elizabeth, and she might
have been set up against England if she might had gone abroad, or
been left at large, while in Scotland she would have been murdered.
The end of it was that Elizabeth kept her shut up in different
castles. There she managed to interest the English Roman Catholics
in her, and get them to lay plots, which always were found out.
Then nobles were put to death, and Mary was more closely watched.
This went on for nineteen years, and at last a worse plot than all
was found out--for actually killing Queen Elizabeth. Her servants
did not act honorably, for when they found out what was going on
they pretended not to know, so that Mary might go on writing worse
and worse things, and then, at last, the whole was made known. Mary
was tried and sentenced to death, but Elizabeth was a long time
making up her mind to sign the order for her execution, and at last
punished the clerks who sent it off, as if it had been their fault.
So Queen Mary of Scotland was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle, showing
much bravery and piety. There are many people who still believe that
she was really innocent of all that she was accused of, and that she
only was ruined by the plots that were laid against her.