Under her sister [99] she found her condition much altered; for it was resolved, and her destiny had decreed it, for to set her apprentice in the school of affliction, and to draw her through that ordeal-fire of trial, the better to mould and fashion her to rule and sovereignty: which finished, Fortune calling to mind that the time of her servitude was expired, gave up her indentures, and therewith delivered into her custody a sceptre as the reward of her patience; which was about the twenty-sixth of her age: a time in which, as for her internals grown ripe, and seasoned by adversity, in the exercise of her virtue; for, it seems, Fortune meant no more but to show her a piece of variety and changeableness of her nature, but to conduct her to her destiny, i.e., felicity.
She was of person tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well favoured, but high-nosed; of limbs and features neat; and, which added to the lustre of these external graces, of a stately and majestic comportment, participating in this more of her father than of her mother, who was of an inferior alloy, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more debonaire and affable: virtues which might well suit with majesty, and which, descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a sweeter temper, and endeared her more to the love and liking of the people, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular princess.
The atrocity of the father’s nature was rebated in her by the mother’s sweeter inclinations; for (to take, and that no more than the character out of his own mouth) He never spared man in his anger, nor woman in his lust.
If we search farther into her intellectuals and abilities, the wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and necessitated. She was learned, her sex and time considered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem and in fashion, the former ages being overcast with the mists and fogs of the Roman [101] ignorance; and it was the maxim that over-ruled the foregoing times, that Ignorance was the mother of Devotion. Her wars were a long time more in the auxiliary part, and assistance of foreign princes and states, than by invasion of any; till common policy advised it, for a safer way, to strike first abroad, than at home to expect the war, in all which she was ever felicitous and victorious.
The change and alteration of religion upon the instant of her accession to the crown (the smoke and fire of her sister’s martyrdoms scarcely quenched) was none of her least remarkable actions; but the support and establishment thereof, with the means of her own subsistence amidst so powerful enemies abroad, and those many domestic practices, were, methinks, works of inspiration, and of no human providence, which, on her sister’s departure, she most religiously acknowledged—ascribing the glory of her deliverance to God above; for she being then at Hatfield, and under a guard, and the Parliament sitting at the self-same time, at the news of the Queen’s death, and her own proclamation by the general consent of the House and the public sufferance of the people, falling on her knees, after a good time of respiration, she uttered this verse of the Psalm:
“A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris.” [102]
And this we find to this day on the stamp of her gold, with this on her silver:
“Posui Deum adjutorem meum.” [103]
Her ministers and instruments of State, such as were participes curarum, or bore a great part of the burthen, were many, and those memorable; but they were only favourites, and not minions; such as acted more by her princely rules and judgments, than by their own wills and appetites; for we saw no Gaveston, Vere, or Spencer, to have swayed alone, during forty-four years, which was a well-settled and advised maxim; for it valued her the more, it awed the most secure, it took best with the people, and it staved off all emulations, which are apt to rise and vent in obloquious acrimony even against the prince, where there is one only admitted into high administrations.