A Short History of England, Ireland and Scotland

by Mary Platt Parmele

The subject of her marriage was a momentous one. There were plenty of aspirants for the honor. Her brother-in-law Philip, since the abdication of Charles V., his father, was a mighty King, ruler over Spain and the Netherlands, and was at the head of Catholic Europe. He saw in this vain, silly young Queen of England an easy prey. By marrying her he could bring England back to the fold, as he had done with her sister Mary, and the Catholic cause would be invincible.

Elizabeth was a coquette, without the personal charm supposed to belong to that dangerous part of humanity. She toyed with an offer of marriage as does a cat with a mouse. She had never intended to marry Philip, but she kept him waiting so long for her decision, and so exasperated him with her caprice, that he exclaimed at last, "That girl has ten thousand devils in her." He little thought, that beneath that surface of folly there was a nature hard as steel, and a calm, clear, cool intelligence, for which his own would be no match, and which would one day hold in check the diplomacy of the "Escurial" and outwit that of Europe. She adored the culture brought by the "new learning;" delighted in the society of Sir Philip Sidney, who reflected all that was best in England of that day; talked of poetry with Spenser; discussed philosophy with Bruno; read Greek tragedies and Latin orations in the original; could converse in French and Italian, and was besides proficient in another language,—the language of the fishwife,—which she used with startling effect with her lords and ministers when her temper was aroused, and swore like a trooper if occasion required.

But whatever else she was doing she never ceased to study the new England she was ruling. She felt, though did not understand, the expansion which was going on in the spirit of the people; but instinctively realized the necessity for changes and modifications in her Government, when the temper of the nation seemed to require it.

It was enormous common-sense and tact which converted Elizabeth into a liberal Sovereign. Her instincts were despotic. When she bowed instantly to the will of the Commons, almost apologizing for seeming to resist it, it was not because she sympathized with liberal sentiments, but because of her profound political instincts, which taught her the danger of alienating that class upon which the greatness of her Kingdom rested. She realized the truth forgotten by some of her successors, that the Sovereign and the middle class must be friends. She might resist and insult her lords and ministers, send great Earls and favorites ruthlessly to the block, but no slightest cloud must come between her and her "dear Commons" and people. This it was which made Spenser's adulation in the "Faerie Queen" but an expression of the intense loyalty of her meanest subject.

Perhaps it was because she remembered that the whole fabric of the Church rested upon Parliamentary enactment, and that she herself was Queen of England by Parliamentary sanction, that she viewed so complacently the growing power of that body in dealing more and more with matters supposed to belong exclusively to the Crown, as for instance in the struggle made by the Commons to suppress monopolies in trade, granted by royal prerogative. At the first she angrily resisted the measure. But finding the strength of the popular sentiment, she gracefully retreated, declaring, with royal scorn for truth, that "she had not before known of the existence of such an evil."

In fact, lying, in her independent code of morals, was a virtue, and one to which she owed some of her most brilliant triumphs in diplomacy. And when the bald, unmitigated lie was at last found out, she felt not the slightest shame, but only amusement at the simplicity of those who had believed she was speaking the truth.

Her natural instincts, her thrift, and her love of peace inclined her to keep aloof from the struggle going on in Europe between Protestants and Catholics. But while the news of St. Bartholomew's Eve seemed to give her no thrill of horror, she still sent armies and money to aid the Huguenots in France, and to stem the persecutions of Philip in the Netherlands, and committed England fully to a cause for which she felt no enthusiasm. She encouraged every branch of industry, commerce, trade, fostered everything which would lead to prosperity. Listened to Raleigh's plans for colonization in America, permitting the New Colony to be called "Virginia" in her honor (the Virgin Queen). She chartered the "Merchant Company," intended to absorb the new trade with the Indies (1600), and which has expanded into a British Empire in India.

But amid all this triumph, a sad and solitary woman sat on the throne of England. The only relation she had in the world was her cousin, Mary Stuart, who was plotting to undermine and supplant her.

The question of Elizabeth's legitimacy was an ever recurring one, and afforded a rallying point for malcontents, who asserted that her mother's marriage with Henry VIII. was invalidated by the refusal of the Pope to sanction the divorce. Mary Stuart, who stood next to Elizabeth in the succession, formed a centre from which a network of intrigue and conspiracy was always menacing the Queen's peace, if not her life, and her crown.

Scotland, since the extinction of the line of Bruce, had been ruled by the Stuart Kings. Torn by internal feuds between her clans, and by the incessant struggle against English encroachments, she had drawn into close friendship with France, which country used her for its own ends, in harassing England, so that the Scottish border was always a point of danger in every quarrel between French and English Kings.