pity moved all men's hearts that beheld so heavy a countenance, and such abundance of tears in an old man of so reverend dignity. . . . And when the wood was kindled, and the fire began to burn near him, stretching out his arm, he put his right hand into the flame, which he held so steadfast and immovable that all men might see his hand burned before his body was touched. His body did so abide the burning of the flame with such constancy and steadfastness that, standing always in one place, he seemed to move no more than the stake to which he was bound; his eyes were lifted up unto heaven, and oftentimes he repeated his unworthy right hand' so long as his voice would suffer him; and using of the words of Stephen, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, in the greatness of the flame, he gave up the ghost."

38. Happily for England, Mary's reign was short. Her latter years were very miserable. Her husband left her and went away to his own dominions; for the English would never consent to promise, as she wished, that he should be king after her death; but he drew her and England into a war with France, which had a disastrous end. The city of Calais was the one little spot of French ground which, after all the centuries of fighting, had remained to the English, and they were bent upon at least keeping that. In this war, however, the French regained possession of it. England no longer had a foothold in France; and this loss, terrible as it was felt to be by all the country, seemed to be almost the queen's death-blow. "When I die," she said, "Calais will be found written in my heart."

The poor, proud, forsaken woman, loved by no one, hardly pitied as she deserved, died before that year was out. Cardinal Pole died at the very same time, and the Pope lost all power in England for

ever.

1558.

Loss of

Calais.

1558. Death of

Mary.

LECTURE XLIV.-THE TWO QUEENS.

Elizabeth. Her character. Her ministers. The Church and the Puritans. Mary, Queen of Scots. Babington's conspiracy. Trial and execution of Mary.

1558. Elizabeth.

1. WHEN Mary died it seemed as if a thick black cloud was rolled away from the sky, and Elizabeth shone out like a 66 bright occidental star," as she is called in our Bibles. The contrast between her and her sister seemed greater than ever. Mary had grown more and more morose, more and more cruel and bitter. Elizabeth was the people's hope and darling. Mary had been afraid of her, and persecuted her, which made them love her all the more. There was much that was attractive about her; she was as well educated as her brother and Lady Jane Grey; she knew Latin and Greek, French and Italian; she liked poetry, music, and dancing; she enjoyed everything gay and splendid. She had indeed a great many faults, but in spite of them all she was the pride and idol of the English nation throughout her long reign.

2. And why? Because to the bottom of her heart she loved her people. Outside she was vain, changeable, fickle, deceitful; but in her heart's core she loved England, and whatever she did or said, she was always seeking its peace, its glory, and its happiIn the very first speech made in her name to parliament she said that "nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, was so dear to her as the love and goodwill of her subjects." And this she had and deserved.

ness.

3. She was self-willed and arbitrary, like all her race; she could cow bishops and browbeat earls. "I will have here but one mistress, and no master," she said. But while her will was always for the good of the nation, the nation's will went with hers. If ever a time came that they clashed, which on certain points they sometimes did, then Elizabeth knew how to give way. And she would give way so frankly, so generously, so heartily that she made the people love her better than ever. If

they came before her full of anger and complaints and resentment, they left her with tears of joy, and shouting, “God save the queen."

4. The country was in a terrible state when she came to the throne. It was thus described in an address to the council : "The queen poor; the realm exhausted; the nobility poor and decayed; good captains and soldiers wanting; the people out of order; justice not executed; all things dear; . . . division among ourselves; war with France; the French king bestriding the realm, one foot in Calais, and the other in Scotland; steadfast enemies, but no steadfast friends."

This was how Elizabeth found England; how she left it we shall see.

Her ministers.

5. Everything depended on her choice of counsellors and ministers, and her wisdom in this main point was truly marvellous. Perhaps no sovereign was ever surrounded by such a body of statesmen as Elizabeth gathered around her, and kept around her to the end; for though she was perverse and capricious beyond all words in her treatment of them, they were nobly faithful to her and to the nation. These men she did not choose among the high aristocracy. Whether it was that she wished to carry on the policy of her grandfather, Henry VII., in humbling the nobles and bringing forward the middle classes, or whether she really found more talent and genius for governing in that station, true it is that most of her ministers, Cecil, Bacon, Walsingham, and others, were said to be "all sprung from the earth." This was rather an exaggerated way of putting it, however, since they were all gentlemen by birth and breeding.

Elizabeth and

Philip.

6. Queen Mary's husband, Philip of Spain, had been much disappointed that the English people would not hear of making him King of England, and successor to his wife; but he was determined not to lose his hold on the country altogether; his earnest wish still was to keep it under the Roman Church, as Mary had (outwardly) left it. He took care to be on good terms with Elizabeth, and tried to make her subservient, and a sort of tool of his own. He thought this would be quite easy, as she was young and inexperienced, and her country poor, weak, and friendless. He, on the other hand, was the richest and most powerful king in Christendom.

7. But he little knew with whom he had to deal, and that this untried queen and poor little island would baffle and defy him, and triumph over him in the end. The contest went on for a

great many years, and its end, so glorious to England, even now makes us thrill with pride and wonder. For the present it was carried on very quietly and cunningly on both sides. Elizabeth was cautious and prudent; she did not openly quarrel with her brother-in-law, but she just took her own way. The Spanish ambassadors, who knew how weak she was, and how strong their master was, were absolutely bewildered to see how little she cared for his opinion and advice. Sometimes they thought she was a mere blind, reckless fool; at other times they thought she was possessed by the devil, or indeed by a hundred thousand devils.

Philip, at one time, thought of marrying her; not out of love, but for the sake of getting a firmer hold on her and the country, and, as he said, “maintaining that realm in the religion which by God's help has been restored in it;" but she would not consent, though for the present she wished to keep on fair terms with him. 8. The matter of her marriage was a most important one. She was the last of her family, and it was a very grave question who was to come after her if she died leaving no child. The question All the country shuddered at the thought of a disof Elizabeth's puted succession. It would be worse now than even marriage. in the old days of the Wars of the Roses, because of the state of religion. There were two great religious parties, each of whom had bitter reasons to hate the other. The true heir after Elizabeth, according to the laws of inheritance, was the young Queen of Scotland, who was descended from Henry VII.'s eldest daughter. But there were strong objections to her as possible Queen of England. In the first place, she was married to the Dauphin of France, and in all likelihood would be Queen of France in due course; then England might become a mere province of France, as it had been feared it might become a province of Spain when Mary married the Spanish king. Moreover, both France and Scotland were, as usual, quarrelling and fighting with England, and there was an old and deep antipathy between them both and this country.

9. But worse than all this, she was a decided Romanist. Not that, judging by her actions, she was in the least religious at heart, but that was the religion she professed and would favour and protect. This was enough to set all the Protestants against wishing for her as queen. Everybody implored Elizabeth to marry somebody, and kept on imploring the same in vain for the next twenty years. She never would say No, and she never would say Yes. This was her usual way in all matters. No one ever knew where

to have her; she seemed to enjoy playing with everybody; keeping them on the tenter-hooks, wondering, hoping, fearing; whilst all the time she would hold her own plans secret as long as she chose. She had crowds of suitors-kings, dukes, archdukes ; sometimes she appeared to favour one, and sometimes another, but in the end she would have none of them. She was the "Virgin Queen" to the last.

10. It is impossible quite to judge why she would not marry. The only man she seems to have really loved was Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, a fine, handsome, flattering courtier; him she favoured, and evidently liked so much that it was universally believed and feared that she meant to marry him. But his character was bad, and he had a wife already, who died in a very mysterious way; and though it could never be proved that he had her murdered to make room for the queen, it looked very like it. The story is told in Scott's novel of 'Kenilworth,' but though that tale gives a very vivid picture of Elizabeth, Leicester, &c., and in that sense is perhaps poetically true, it is not historically true, and the real facts about Amy Robsart were quite different.

11. One reason for Elizabeth's refusing to marry may very likely have been that there were those two strong religious parties in the kingdom, and she could not marry to please both. If she chose a Protestant husband she offended the Catholics; if she chose a Catholic then she offended the Protestants. She contrived in a most wonderful way all through her long reign to keep both parties more or less loyal to her, and would have succeeded still more fully had it not been for her dangerous rival, Mary, Queen of Scots.

12. Elizabeth herself was a Protestant, though, at any rate at first, not what we should call a very decided Protestant, except on the one grand point of the supremacy of the crown, and its absolute independence of the Pope. She was as determined as ever her father had been to be head of the Church. But she rather approved of several things in the Roman Catholic Church to which the Protestants objected. She liked the celibacy of the clergy just as much as she liked her own; she liked crucifixes, lighted candles, vestments, and an ornate service. By this time a great many of the Protestants bitterly objected to all these. Because they said they wished for a purer service, The Puritans.

these extreme Protestants received the nickname of

Puritans.

13. The rules of the Church of England had been framed in a large and liberal spirit, allowing a good deal of liberty in

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