About

ELIZABETH, queen of England and Ireland, born on Sunday the 7th of September 1533, and, like all the Tudors except Henry VII, at Greenwich Palace, was the only surviving child of Henry VIII by his second queen, Anne Boleyn. With such a mother and with Cranmer as her godfather she represented from her birth the principle of revolt from Rome, but the opponents of that movement attached little importance to her advent into the world. Charles V's ambassador, Chapuys, hardly deigned to mention the fact that the king's amie had given birth to a daughter, and both her parents were bitterly disappointed with her sex. She was, however, given precedence over Mary, her elder sister by sixteen years, and Mary never forgave the infant's offence. Even this dubious advantage only lasted three years until Elizabeth's mother was beheaded.

Elizabeth thus lost all hereditary title to the throne, and her early years of childhood can hardly have been happier than Mary's. Nor was her legitimacy ever legally established; but after Jane Seymour's death, when Henry seemed likely to have no further issue, she was by act of parliament placed next in order of the succession after Edward and Mary and their issue; and this statutory arrangement was confirmed by the will which Henry VIII was empowered by statute to make. Queen Catherine Parr introduced some humanity into Henry's household, and Edward and Elizabeth were well and happily educated together, principally at old Hatfield House.

They were there when Henry's death called Edward VI away to greater dignities, and Elizabeth was left in the care of Catherine Parr, who married in indecent haste Thomas, Lord Seymour, brother of the protector Somerset. This unprincipled adventurer, even before Catherine's death in September 1548, paid indelicate attentions to Elizabeth. Any attempt to marry her without the council's leave would have been treason on his part and would have deprived Elizabeth of her contingent right to the succession. Accordingly, when Seymour's other misbehaviour led to his arrest, his relations with Elizabeth were made the subject of a very trying investigation, which gave Elizabeth her first lessons in the arts of self-defence. She proved equal to the occasion, partly because she was in all probability innocent of anything worse than a qualified acquiescence in Seymour's improprieties and a girlish admiration for his handsome face. He or his tragic fate may have touched a deeper chord, but it was carefully concealed.

For the rest of Edward's reign Elizabeth's life was less tempestuous. She hardly rivalled Lady Jane Grey as the ideal Puritan maiden, but she swam with the stream, and was regarded as a foil to her stubborn Catholic sister. She thus avoided the enmity and the still more dangerous favour of Northumberland; and some unknown history lies behind the duke's preference of the Lady Jane to Elizabeth as his son's wife and his own puppet for the throne. She thus escaped shipwreck in his crazy vessel, and rode by Mary's side in triumph into London on the failure of the plot. For a time she was safe enough; she would not renounce her Protestantism until Catholicism had been made the law of the land, but she followed Gardiner's advice to her father when he said it was better that he should make the law his will than try to make his will the law.

It was not so much Elizabeth's religion as her nearness to the throne and the circumstances of her birth that endangered her life in Mary's reign. While Mary was popular Elizabeth was safe; but as soon as the Spanish marriage project had turned away English hearts Elizabeth inevitably became the centre of plots and the hope of the plotters. Had not Lady Jane still been alive to take off the edge of Mary's indignation and suspicion Elizabeth might have paid forfeit for Wyat's rebellion with her life instead of imprisonment. She may have had interviews with French agents who helped to foment the insurrection; but she was strong and wary enough to avoid Henry II's toils; for even in case of success she would have been the French king's puppet, placed on the throne, if at all, merely to keep it warm for Henry's prospective daughter-in-law, Mary Stuart. This did not make Mary Tudor any more friendly, and the Spaniards cried loud and long for Elizabeth's execution.

She was sent to the Tower in March 1554, but few Englishmen were fanatic enough to want a Tudor beheaded. The great nobles, the Howards, and Gardiner would not hear of such a proposal; and all the efforts of the court throughout Mary's reign failed to induce parliament to listen to the suggestion that Elizabeth should be deprived of her legal right to the succession. After two months in the Tower she was transferred to Sir Henry Bedingfield's charge at Woodstock, and at Christmas, when the realm had been reconciled to Rome and Mary was expecting issue, Elizabeth was once more received at court. In the autumn of 1555 she went down to Hatfield, where she spent most of the rest of Mary's reign, enjoying the lessons of Ascham, and planting trees which still survive.

She had only to bide her time while Mary made straight her successor's path by uprooting whatever affection the English people had for the Catholic faith, Roman jurisdiction and Spanish control. The Protestant martyrs and Calais between them removed all the alternatives to an insular national English policy in church and in state; and no sovereign was better qualified to lead such a cause than the queen who ascended the throne amid universal, and the Spaniards thought indecent, rejoicings at Mary's death on the 17th of November 1558. "Mere English" she boasted of being, and after Englishmen's recent experience there was no surer title to popular favour. No sovereign since Harold had been so purely English in blood; her nearest foreign ancestor was Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V, and no English king or queen was more superbly insular in character or in policy.

She was the unmistakable child of the age so far as Englishmen shared in its characteristics, for with her English aims she combined some Italian methods and ideas. "An Englishman Italianate," ran the current jingle, "is a devil incarnate," and Elizabeth was well versed in Italian scholarship and statecraft. It is clear enough that, although, like her father, she was fond of ritual, she was absolutely devoid of the religious temperament, and that her ecclesiastical preferences were dictated by political considerations. She was sincere enough in her dislike of Roman jurisdiction and of Calvinism; a daughter of Anne Boleyn could have little affection for a system which made her a b*****d, and all monarchs agreed at heart with James I's aphorism about "no bishop, no king." It was convenient, too, to profess Lutheran sympathies, for Lutheranism was now an established, monarchical and comparatively respectable religion, very different from the Calvinism against which monarchs directed the Counter-reformati