Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

She was twenty-five years old, and very pleasant looking. She was a good scholar in Latin, Greek, Italian, and some other languages; but she loved English above all.

The first thing Elizabeth and her wise counsellors did was to set free all the poor Protestants whom Queen Mary and Bishop Bonner had put in prison, and intended to burn. Then she allowed the Bible and prayers to be read in English.

When Elizabeth rode through London to be crowned in Westminster Abbey, the citizens made all sorts of fine shows to do honour to a queen who had already been so good to the poor Protestants. They hung beautiful silks and satins out at the windows like flags; they built fine wooden arches across the streets, which they dressed up with branches of trees and flowers; and just as the queen was riding under one of them, a boy beautifully dressed was let down by cords from the top, who gave the queen a beautiful Bible, and then he was drawn up again. Elizabeth took the Bible and kissed it, and pressed it to her bosom, and said it was a present she liked best of all the fine things the people had given her that day.

Afterwards she appointed Protestant bishops, and made a very good and learned man, named Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury.

Queen Elizabeth did not find it very easy to undo all the mischief that Queen Mary had done; but at last, with the help of her good counsellors, England was at peace, and the people were settled, some on their lands, where they were beginning to sow more corn and make more gardens than they had done before, and some in different trades; for the English learned to make a great many things at this time from strangers that came to live here.

I will tell you why they came. That cruel Philip the Second, King of Spain, who had been married to Queen Mary, was King over Flanders and Holland, as well as Spain. A great many of the people in those countries were Protestants: but Philip wanted to make them Papists by force, and would have burnt them as Queen Mary did the Protestants in England. But they got away from him, and, hearing that Queen Elizabeth was a friend to the Protestants, they came here. And as some of them were spinners and weavers, and others dyers, and so on, they began to work at their trades, and taught them to the English. Since that time we have always been able to make woollen and linen cloths ourselves.

So you see that King Philip, by being cruel, drove away useful people from his country, and Queen Elizabeth, by being kind and just, got those useful people to do good to our own dear England.

I must tell you a sad story of the worst thing that happened in Queen Elizabeth’s time, in this chapter, because it has a great deal to do with the Protestants and Papists.

In the chapter about Edward the Sixth you read that there was a beautiful young Queen of Scotland, and that the English wished King Edward to marry her; but that she went to France, and married the young French king instead.

She was so very young when she first went, that her husband’s mother kept her to teach along with her own little girls till she was old enough to be married; and I am sorry to say that she taught her to be cunning, and deceitful, and cruel.