Elizabeth

Elizabeth (1533-1603), Queen of England, one of the most popular and most remarkable monarchs that England has had. The "man-minded offshoot" of Henry VIII. - "le Boi Elizabeth" as the French used to call her - was born at Greenwich, being the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Much of the peculiar nature of her qualities was the natural outcome of the circumstances of her early life. Made much of at one time as a likely heir to the crown, becoming at another an object of jealousy and dislike to her sister Mary, and in no small danger of losing her head, it is not surprising that a profound power of dissimulation was a marked feature in her character. It was during this period of her life that she developed the circumspection, prudence, and tact that enabled her to become an almost autocratic ruler, and the valuable gift of an unerring judgment in the choice of counsellors. When the death of her sister Mary in 1558 put her upon the throne, she had a difficult course to steer, but thanks to her own wisdom and to that of Cecil, Walsingham, and other like-minded advisers, she evaded all the rocks and shoals in her way. Her dislike to marriage, which has puzzled both her contemporaries and later generations, may have been owing to a combination of causes, one of the chief having, no doubt, been a conviction of ability to rule, and a disinclination to sacrifice any portion of her liberty. Her coquetting and vacillating dealings with the Duke of Alencon may have been partly owing to the dictates of policy, and partly to that womanly weakness that she sometimes showed, and which appeared all the greater by contrast with her usual manlike qualities. It is also to this weakness that we must set down the one great political blunder of her life - her treatment of Mary Stuart. Feminine jealousy seems to have been as active an element in her conduct in this case as any possible apprehension on the score of Mary's religion and nearness to the throne. It is difficult to say how far the colonising enterprise of her reign was owing to causes independent of her, and how far to her political wisdom. Some think her to have forwarded the schemes of Drake, Raleigh, and the other adventurers of the age, simply from motives of mercantile prudence, in this respect showing herself the worthy granddaughter of the astute Henry VII. What seems to us, judging from a distance, the absurdly exaggerated reverence felt for her by her courtiers bears witness to the extraordinary strength of her character, for it is impossible to suppose it all to have been lip-service and high-flown romance. Her conduct with regard to her favourites, Leicester and Essex, has puzzled many, but to be her favourite must have been like playing with a tiger. She was in no way backward in letting them see and, on occasion, feel her claws. She knew how to value Burleigh, and, no doubt, thoroughly understood Leicester, and found some ironical amusement in befooling Aleneon, and puzzling her owrt "good people." The masterly policy of posing as the champion of a Protestantism which she probably cared little for, and the glory of having humbled the first military power of the world, may fairly be divided between the queen and her gifted advisers. Knowing when and how gracefully to yield, she reigned in her people's hearts with a more absolute sway than has been attained by any English ruler before or since. Her good education and love of learning was not so unusual a quality in her day as it became later. In this respect Lady Jane Grey was at least her equal. There is some mystery attaching to her early connections with Seymour, High Admiral of England, who had paid her attentions when she was a girl of sixteen. It is just within the bounds of possibility that faithfulness to his memory may have had something to do with her determination not to marry. It should not be forgotten that it is said that we owe Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor to Elizabeth's desire to see something more of Falstaff and his oddities.