The needle was the solace of Elizabeth in her captivity in the Tower and at Woodstock, and the instrument of her pastime in the days of her greatness. Taylor, a very properly named poet to have sung the praise of the needle, says of her in his poem:—
“When this great Queen, whose memory shall not
By any turn of time be overcast,—
For when the world and all therein shall rot,
Yet shall her glorious fame for ever last,—
When she a maid had many troubles past,
From gaol to gaol by Marie’s angry spleen,
And Woodstock and the Tower in prison fast,
And after all was England’s peerless Queen;
Yet howsoever sorrow came or went,