Elizabeth of Valois

“ Upon such men and their theories Elizabeth could not look with favour. With all her father's despotic temper, Elizabeth possessed her mother's fine tact, and she represented so grandly the feeling of the nation in its life-and-death-struggle with Spain and the pope, that never perhaps in English history has the crown wielded so much real power as during the five-and-forty years of her wonderful reign. ”

“ Threatened on all sides, Queen Elizabeth bore herself with consummate skill and prudence, and even managed to make herself felt aggressively in continental affairs. The more striking events of her reign were the defeat of the great Spanish Armada, probably the most brilliant and complete sea-victory recorded in history, and the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, her rival and captive. Queen Elizabeth’s reign shines as probably the most remarkable known for its intellectual flowering in every branch of human energy. ”

“ The accession of Francis II., husband to the queen of Scots, to the French throne had renewed the dangers of Elizabeth from the hostility of France and of Scotland; and in the politic resolution of removing from her own territory to that of her enemies the seat of a war which she saw to be inevitable, she levied a strong army and sent it under the command of the duke of Norfolk and lord Grey de Wilton to the frontiers of Scotland. She also entered into a close connexion with the protestant party in that country, who were already in arms against the queen-regent and her French auxiliaries. ”

“ As to Elizabeth, certain writers have ascribed Philip's protection of her at this juncture to the following deduction of consequences;—that if she were taken off, and if the queen should die childless, England would become the inheritance of the queen of Scots, now betrothed to the dauphin, and thus go to augment the power of France, already the most formidable rival of the Spanish monarchy. ”

“ There never was a sovereign who maintained a conflict of world-wide importance amidst greater dangers and with greater success than Queen Elizabeth. Her grandfather had begun a political emancipation from the ruling influences of the continent, her father an ecclesiastical one: Elizabeth took up their task and accomplished it victoriously against Rome and against Spain, while her people had an ever-increasing part in public affairs, and thus entered into a new stage of development. Her memory is inseparably connected with the independence and power of England. ”

“ While the head and crown of them all, restless, energetic, courageous as any man among them, was Elizabeth herself.
Yes, there is a great deal to be said for the children's choice.
But perhaps you would like to hear something of the life the queen led before she ascended the throne, which was not until she was twenty-five. As, no doubt, you all know, Henry VIII. had put away his wife Katharine of Aragon, aunt of the emperor Charles V., in order to marry the beautiful maid of honour Anne Boleyn; and his daughter Mary had shared her mother's fate. ”

“ England had never before had a female sovereign, except in the instance of the gloomy and bigoted Mary. When she was succeeded by her more brilliant sister the gallantry of a gallant and fantastic age was poured at the latter's feet, the sentiment of chivalry mingling itself with loyalty to the crown. The poets idealized Elizabeth. She was to Spenser, to Sidney, and to Raleigh, not merely a woman and a virgin queen, but the champion of Protestantism, the lady of young England, the heroine of the conflict against popery and Spain. Moreover Elizabeth was a great woman. ”

“ It is not easy, without some reflection and care, to comprehend the full extent of the peril which England then ran from the power and the ambition of Spain, or to appreciate the importance of that crisis in the history of the world. Queen Elizabeth had found at her accession an encumbered revenue, a divided people, and an unsuccessful foreign war, in which the last remnant of our possessions in France had been lost; she had also a formidable pretender to her crown, whose interests were favored by all the Roman Catholic powers. ”

“ There was great rejoicing all over the land when the Lords of the Council went down to Hatfield, to hail the Princess Elizabeth as the new Queen of England. Weary of the barbarities of Mary’s reign, the people looked with hope and gladness to the new Sovereign. The nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream; and Heaven, so long hidden by the smoke of the fires that roasted men and women to death, appeared to brighten once more.
Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she rode through the streets of London, from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, to be crowned. ”

“ To all these womanly graces she added brilliant health, wonderful physical strength and activity, and that light-hearted courage and natural contempt of danger which, in a man, makes a leader the idol of his soldiers, and which, when found in a woman, never fails to arouse the wildest enthusiasm and devotion. Such, then, with the whole power of France at her back, was Elizabeth's most formidable foe. ”

“ When she was weary of mystifying foreign statesmen she turned to find fresh sport in mystifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth written the story of her reign she would have prided herself, not on the triumph of England or the ruin of Spain, but on the skill with which she had hoodwinked and outwitted every statesman in Europe during fifty years. Nothing is more revolting, but nothing is more characteristic of the Queen, than her shameless mendacity. It was an age of political lying, but in the profusion and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom. ”

“ Elizabeth's courage and the loyalty with which she had been served by her brave subjects had saved England, and never since that time, with the exception of a raid by the American sailor, Paul Jones, have British shores been reached by a foreign foeman. The English nation was changing in Elizabeth's reign more than in any former period, and many blessings were being given to the Queen's subjects that they had never hitherto known. Her reign saw the last vestige of bondage and servitude die out; and men were now allowed to practise the Protestant religion without the constant fear of death. ”

“ Proud nobles reply by rebellion, come down southwards with ignorant Popish henchmen at their backs; will restore Popery, marry the Queen of Scots, make the middle class and the majority submit to the feudal lords and the minority. Elizabeth, with her ‘aristocracy of genius,’ is too strong for them: the people’s heart is with her, and not with dukes. Each mine only blows up its diggers; and there are many dry eyes at their ruin. Her people ask her to marry. She answers gently, proudly, eloquently: ‘She is married—the people of England is her husband. ”

“ Of all the sovereigns that have worn the crown of England, Queen Elizabeth is the most puzzling, the most fascinating, the most blindly praised, and the most unjustly blamed. To make lists of her faults and virtues is easy. ”

“ Justice will not be done to the great recovery under Elizabeth unless we understand how low the country had sunk when she came to the throne.
During the early years of her reign, it was the universal opinion at home and abroad that without Spanish protection she could not preserve her throne against a French invasion in the interests of Mary Stuart. Henry II. meant that, by the marriage of the Dauphin Francis with Mary, the kingdoms of England and Scotland should be united to one another and eventually to France. ”

“ Royal robes hang around her form in classic folds, and her closely curled hair is covered with a simple cap. She has no crown, the sceptre has been broken from one hand, also the cross from the imperial orb which she holds in the other.
That learned English philosopher, Lord Bacon, has written of Queen Elizabeth: "She was pious, moderate, constant, and an enemy to novelty. She hated vice, and studied to preserve an honorable name. No age has ever produced her like for the government of a kingdom." ”

“ There was much in the proposal to flatter the pride and tempt the ambition of a prince; much also to gratify that desire of retaliation which the encouragement given by Philip to the Northern rebellion and to certain movements in Ireland, as well as to all the machinations of the queen of Scots, may reasonably be supposed to have excited in the bosom of Elizabeth. ”

“ The French Ambassador, de Noailles, whose instructions were that he should play upon the popular discontent in regard to the queen's proposed marriage to Philip of Spain, in the interest of France, encouraged Elizabeth to associate herself with the factious, and to become, as it were, the stalking-horse of the disaffected. ”

“ Thus, Henry IV. of France, and William III. of England have been admired in spite of their defects.
Queen Elizabeth is the first among the great female sovereigns of the world with whose reign we associate a decided progress in national wealth, power, and prosperity; so that she ranks with the great men who have administered kingdoms. If I can prove this fact, the sex should be proud of so illustrious a woman, and should be charitable to those foibles which sullied the beauty of her character, since they were in part faults of the age, and developed by the circumstances which surrounded her. ”

“ The English longed to feel sure that the government would go on peacefully even if their queen should be taken from them. Before Henry’s father came to the throne, there had been in England a terrible time of civil war because there were different claimants to the crown who were supported by different parties, and most people in the land would rather have a form of worship with which they did not agree than feel that the death of their sovereign would be followed by a return of those bloody days. If Elizabeth married and had a child to inherit the crown, the land would settle down to quiet. ”

“ This being their view, the baby daughter of Charles IV. was at once set aside; and the claim of Edward III. of England, if, indeed, he ever made it, rested on Isabella of France, his mother, sister of the three sovereigns. And if succession through a female had been possible, then the daughters of those three kings had rights to be reserved. It was, however, clear that the throne must go to a man, and the crown was given to Philip of Valois, founder of a new house of sovereigns. ”

“ To throw down one's glove before a man was to challenge him to a combat. At the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, as of many other sovereigns of England, the "Queen's champion," a knight in full armor, rode into the great hall and threw down his glove, crying, "If there be any manner of man that will say and maintain that our sovereign Lady, Queen Elizabeth, is not the rightful and undoubted inheritrix to the imperial crown of this realm of England, I say he lieth like a false traitor, and therefore I cast him my gage." ”

“ Money restored to its just value; Domestic Rebellions quelled; France relieved when involved with internal divisions; The Netherlands supported, the Spanish Armada vanquished; Ireland, almost lost by rebels, eased by routing the Spaniards; the Revenues of both Universities much enlarged; and lastly, all England enriched. Elizabeth, during forty-five years, a very prudent Governor, a victorious and triumphant Queen, most pious and most happy, at her calm death in her seventieth year, left her remains to be placed in this Church which she preserved, until the hour of her Resurrection in Christ. ”

“ Amidst the perplexities of the Royal Family it was perfectly unavoidable that repeated proposals should have been made at various times for them to escape these dangers by flight. The Queen had been frequently and most earnestly entreated to withdraw alone; and the King, the Princesse Elizabeth, the Princesse de Lamballe, the royal children, with their little hands uplifted, and all those attached to Marie Antoinette, after the horrid business at Versailles, united to supplicate her to quit France and shelter herself from the peril hanging over her existence. ”

“ While the cruelties of the English queen drove protestant preachers into Scotland, the political schemes of the queen regent induced her to favour them, and to connive at the propagation of their opinions. At the critical moment when the latter had accomplished her favourite designs, and was preparing to crush the Reformation, Elizabeth ascended the throne of England, and was induced, by political no less than religious considerations, to support the Scottish reformers. ”

“ By the King’s side stood the Queen-mother, still intriguing for power though life was fast ebbing, and descending to the arts of a procuress to win her opponents. Clearly there was no hope for France until the last of this degenerate race of the Valois had disappeared. ”

“ But all these things we lose sight of in the undoubted virtues, abilities, and services of this great Queen. Historians have other work than to pick out spots on the sun. The dark spot, if there is one upon Elizabeth's character, was her coquetry in private life. It is impossible to tell whether or not she exceeded the bounds of womanly virtue. She was probably slandered and vilified by treacherous, gossiping ambassadors, who were foes to her person and her kingdom, and who made as ugly reports of her as possible to their royal masters. ”