Hardly, as I conceive, answered Mr. Addison, if you reflect that these sallies, or rather habits of passion, were the daily terror and vexation of all about her. Her very minions seemed raised for no other purpose, than the exercise of her ill-humour. They were encouraged, by her smile, to presume on the royal countenance, and then beaten down again in punishment of that presumption. But, to say the truth, the slavish temper of the time was favourable to such exertions of female caprice and tyranny. Her imperious father, all whose virtues, she inherited, had taught her a sure way to quell the spirit of her nobles. They had been long used to stand in awe of the royal frown. And the people were pleased to find their betters ruled with so high a hand, at a time when they themselves were addressed with every expression of respect, and even flattery.
She even carried this mockery so far, that, as Harrington observes well, “she converted her reign, through the perpetual love-tricks that passed between her and her people, into a kind of romance.” And though that political projector, in prosecution of his favourite notion, supposes the queen to have been determined to these intrigues by observing, that the weight of property was fallen into the popular scale; yet we need look no further for an account of this proceeding, than the inherent haughtiness of her temper. She gratified the insolence of her nature, in neglecting, or rather beating down, her nobility, whose greatness might seem to challenge respect: while the court, she paid to the people, revolted her pride less, as passing only upon herself, as well as others, for a voluntary act of affability. Just as we every day see very proud men carry it with much loftiness towards their equals, or those who and raised to some nearness of degree to themselves; at the same time that they affect a sort of courtesy to such, as are confessedly beneath them.
You see, then, what her boasted affability comes to. She gave good words to her people, whom it concerned her to be well with, and whom her pride itself allowed her to manage: she insulted her nobles, whom she had in her power, and whose abasement flattered the idea, she doted upon, of her own superiority and importance[93].
Let the queen’s manner of treating her subjects be what it would, Dr. Arbuthnot said, it appears to have given no offence in those days, when the sincerity of her intentions was never questioned. Her whole life is a convincing argument; that she bore the most entire affection to her people.
Her love of her people, returned Mr. Addison hastily, is with me a very questionable virtue. For what account shall we give of the multitude of penal statutes, passed in her reign? Or, because you will say, there was some colour for these; what excuse shall we make for her frequent grants of monopolies, so ruinous to the public wealth and happiness, and so perpetually complained of by her parliaments? You will say, she recalled them. She did so. But not till the general indignation had, in a manner, forced her to recall them. If by her people, be meant those of the poorer and baser sort only, it may be allowed, she seemed on all occasions willing to spare them. But for those of better rank and fortune, she had no such consideration. On the other hand, she contrived in many ways to pillage and distress them. It was the tameness of that time, to submit to every imposition of the sovereign. She had only to command her gentry on any service she thought fit, and they durst not decline it. How many of her wealthiest and best subjects did she impoverish by these means (though under colour, you may be sure, of her high favour); and sometimes by her very visits! I will not be certain, added he, that her visit to this pompous castle of her own Leicester, had any other intention.
But what, above all, are we to think of her vow of celibacy, and her obstinate refusal to settle the succession, though at the constant hazard of the public peace and safety?
You are hard put to it, I perceive, interrupted. Dr. Arbuthnot, to impeach the character of the queen in this instance, when a few penal laws, necessary to the support of her crown in that time of danger; one wrong measure of her government, and that corrected; the ordinary use of her prerogative; and even her virginity; are made crimes of. But I am curious to hear what you have to object to her zeal for the English glory, carried so high in her reign; and the single point, as it seems to me, to which all her measures and all her counsels were directed.
The English glory, Mr. Addison said, may, perhaps, mean the state and independency of the crown. And then, indeed, I have little to object. But, in any other sense of the word, I have sometimes presumed to question with myself, if it had not been better consulted, by more effectual assistance of the Reformed on the Continent; by a more vigorous prosecution of the war against Spain[94]; as I hinted before, by a more complete reduction of Ireland. But say, we are no judges of those high matters. What glory accrued to the English name, by the insidious dealing with the queen of Scots; by the vindictive proceedings against the duke of Norfolk; by the merciless persecutions of the unhappy earl of Essex? The same spirit, you see, continued from the beginning of this reign to the end of it. And the observation is the better worth attending to, because some have excused the queen’s treatment of Essex by saying, “That her nature, in that decline of life, was somewhat clouded by apprehensions; as the horizon, they observe, in the evening of the brightest day, is apt to be obscured by vapours[95].” As if this fanciful simile, which illustrates perhaps, could excuse, the perverseness of the queen’s temper; or, as if that could deserve to pass for an incident of age, which operated through life; and so declares itself to have been the proper result of her nature.
You promised, interposed Dr. Arbuthnot, not to pry too closely into the secrets of the cabinet. And such I must needs esteem the points to be, which you have mentioned. But enough of these beaten topics. I would rather attend you in the survey you promised to take of her court, and of the princely qualities that adorned it. It is from what passes in the inside of his palace, rather than from some questionable public acts, that the real character of a prince is best determined. And there, methinks, you have a scene opened to you, that deserves your applause. Nothing appears but what is truly royal. Nobody knew better, than Elizabeth, how to support the decorum of her rank. She presided in that high orb with the dignity of a great queen. In all emergencies of danger, she shewed a firmness, and, on all occasions of ceremony, a magnificence, that commanded respect and admiration. Her very diversions were tempered with a severity becoming her sex and place, and which made her court, even in its lightest and gayest humours, a school of virtue.
These are the points, concluded he, I could wish you to speak to. The rest may be left to the judgment of the historian, or rather to the curiosity of the nice and critical politician.