Elizabethan era

“ If Elizabeth had married, as her people often implored her to do, and if her progeny had sat upon the throne and continued the sway of the Tudors, half a century of turmoil and bloodshed, under the essentially foreign rule of the Stuarts, might have been spared to England. The Revolution doubtless would never have taken place. The material and intellectual advance of England and all Britain would have been steady and sure upon the splendid foundation of the Elizabethan structure. ”

“ England stood forth as the centre of opposition against Philip, and under the unwilling leadership of Elizabeth entered on its epic period of heroism, was stimulated to that remarkable outburst of energy and intellect and power which we call the Elizabethan age. ”

“ Elizabethan England is the motherland, the true historic home, of all the different peoples who speak the sea-borne English tongue. In the reign of Elizabeth there was only one English-speaking nation. This nation consisted of a bare five million people, fewer than there are to-day in London or New York. But hardly had the Great Queen died before Englishmen began that colonizing movement which has carried their language the whole world round and established their civilization in every quarter of the globe. ”

“ The rush of foreign influences on the England of Elizabeth's time, stimulated alike by the printing press, by religious movements, by the revival of ancient learning, and by the habits of travel and commerce, has not been equalled in force and volume by anything else in history. ”

“ We need seek no further for a reason why the England of Elizabeth surpassed all other communities. Having all material wealth beyond any other people, at no time has the doctrine of universal labour and repudiation of the fictitious riches of metallic hordes or usurious accumulations been so invariably denounced. ”

“ This Is a delightful characteristic. It is a noble characteristic. It is because of this that we forget and forgive the disagreeable and the savage, and, for we sometimes meet them, the foolish characteristics of the Elizabethan. We forget and forgive all this and express our idealisation of the country of Queen Elizabeth by the phrase "In Merry England." ”

“ There was no promise of happiness for England in the accession of a prince or princess of this house to its throne.
But the Stuarts came—and the troubles of England began in real [Pg 53] earnest. Elizabeth's reign had been, as it then seemed to all Englishmen, and as in very many respects it was, the golden age of Britain. Never had art, and literature, and material prosperity, risen to so high a level. The world seemed opening to a new and glorious life, like a rose bursting into bloom. ”

“ The kingdom was far from being prosperous when Elizabeth assumed the reins of government, and it is the enormous stride in civilization which England made during her reign, beset with so many perils, which constitutes her chief claim to the admiration of mankind. ”

“ Yet with all this fine but rude material for future greatness, it was nevertheless a glaring fact that the condition of England on the accession of Elizabeth was most discouraging,--a poor and scattered agricultural nation, without a navy of any size, without a regular army, with factions in every quarter, with struggling and contending religious parties, with a jealous parliament of unenlightened country squires; yet a nation seriously threatened by the most powerful monarchies of the Continent, who detested the doctrines which were then taking root in the land. ”

“ It was by these great men that Elizabeth was ruled,--so far as she was ruled at all,--not by favorites, like her successors, James and Charles. The favorites at the court of Elizabeth were rarely trusted with great powers unless they were men of signal abilities, and regarded as such by the nation itself. ”

“ Elizabeth, daughter of Henry and a disgraced and decapitated Queen, wore the crown of England. If heredity had been as much talked of then as now, England might have feared the child of a faithless wife, and a remorseless, bloodthirsty King. But while Mary, daughter of Katharine, the most pious and best of mothers, had left only a great blood-spot upon the page of History, Elizabeth's reign was to be the most wise, prosperous and great, the Kingdom had ever known. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No sooner was a settled monarchy established, and the country relieved from the dreaded dangers of a second civil war, than literature revived, and resumed the flourishing aspect, though not the sound and vigorous condition, to which, in the days of Elizabeth, it had happily attained. ”

“ Wisdom and good feeling made Elizabeth’s crown, in fact, what laws and compacts have made her successors’,—a constitutional sovereign’s. She ascertained the sentiments of her people almost without the intervention of Parliament, and was more a carrier-through of the national will than the originator of absolute decrees. The moral battles of a nation in pursuit of some momentous object like religious or political freedom bring forth great future crops, as fields are enriched on which mighty armies have been engaged. The fertilizing influence extends in every direction, far and near. ”

“ France was still the hereditary enemy; and the loss of Calais under Mary had exasperated the whole English nation. Scotland was a constant menace in the north. Spain was gradually changing from friend to foe. The Pope was disinclined to recognize Elizabeth at all.
To understand how difficult her position was we must remember what sort of constitution England had when the germ of the United States was forming. The Roman Empire was one constituent whole from the emperor down. The English-speaking peoples of to-day form constituent wholes from the electorate up. ”

“ Let us endeavour now to sum up the results produced by the long and important reign of Elizabeth upon the relations between Church and State in England then and since her time. In so doing we must be careful to include in our record not only the effects produced, but also the means, and the power, and the authorities, by which they were brought about. No ruler of England has ever, since Elizabeth's day had opportunities similar to hers. At no time since has an equal amount of power rested in the hands of a single individual. ”

“ Side by side with the gradual developement of the English Empire and of the English race has gone on, through the century that has passed since the close of the Seven Years' War, the transfer of power within England itself from a governing class to the nation as a whole. If the effort of George failed to restore the power of the Crown, it broke the power which impeded the advance of the people itself to political supremacy. ”

“ The Elizabethans, as a nation, though brilliantly intellectual, were in many respects immature,—as if the characteristics of childhood were set in a body of manhood. Their delight in rapid changes of scene, in rapidly succeeding varied emotional sensations, above all, in their dislike of long and continuous mental strain—these are qualities peculiar to them as a nation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The identity of interests between the crown and the nation which had made the reign of Elizabeth so glorious, and which she herself had consummated on the occasion of her last public appearance by a free and voluntary concession of these same impositions, was now destroyed, and a divergence of interests, made patent by vulgar bargaining, was substituted which stimulated the disastrous struggle between sovereign and people, and paralysed the national development for two generations. ”

“ But the nation about the throne seemed to the Puritan not less divinely ordered a thing than the throne itself; it was the voice of God, inspiring and directing, which spoke through its history and its laws; it was God that guided to wisdom the hearts of Englishmen in Parliament assembled as He guided to wisdom the hearts of kings. Never was the respect for positive law so profound; never was the reverence for Parliaments so great as at the death of Elizabeth. There was none of the modern longing for a king that reigned without governing ”

“ And that work was surely an expansion, an expansion of England. We come once more to our paradox; may it not be that England herself may be expanded by the very cutting short of her dominion? Again, what is England? Do we mean by it simply the dominions of the Crown of England—or rather the dominion of a Crown of whose kingdom the British England is but a part? Or do we mean by it the land of the English folk, wherever they may dwell? ”

“ What was wanting in discipline would have been to some extent made up by the spontaneous cohesion of a force organised under its natural leaders, the nobles and gentry of each locality, not a few of whom had seen service abroad. But, after all, the greatest element of strength was the free spirit of the people. England was, and had long been, a nation of freemen. There were a few peers, and a great many knights and gentlemen. But there was no noble caste, as on the Continent, separated by an impassable barrier of birth and privilege from the mass of the people. ”

“ So since the days of Elizabeth, and from seed dropped by her hand, an Eastern and a Western Empire had been added to that island Kingdom, whose highest dream had been to get back some of her lost provinces in France. Instead of that it was to be her destiny to girdle the Earth, so that the Sun in its entire course should never cease to shine upon British Dominions.
Side by side with the aspiration which uplifts a nation, there is always a tendency toward degradation, which can only be arrested by the infusion of a higher spiritual life. ”

“ In some reigns, the kingdom is in the most terrible confusion, in others it appears mean and corrupt; in Charles II.'s time, what a figure we make with French measures and French mistresses! But when our times are written, England will recover its glory; such conquests abroad, such prosperity at home, such prudence in council, such vigor in execution, so many men clothed in scarlet, so many fine tents, so many cannon that do not so much as roar, such easy taxes, such flourishing trade! ”

“ I purpose to write the History of England from the accession of King James II. down to a time within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the people and the title of the reigning dynasty. ”

“ Hundreds of years ago, in the ancient boroughs of England, a genius for self-government began to display itself, and it is that to which the greatness of our empire is mainly to be attributed. We not only got the noblest of all Imperial gifts—self-government—but we got more than that. Great Britain gave us another noble Imperial gift—the magnificent continent we possess, with all its resources and all its wealth. ”

“ But as the nobility declined, not only monarchy, but the people acquired additional importance. The distribution of the property of the church and of confiscated estates, and the progress of trade and general intelligence, rapidly raised the people into a visible third estate, and the commons in Elizabeth's reign assumed a position of considerable dignity and force, which even that high-spirited queen was compelled to bow to. ”

“ The reign of Elizabeth was, at least, considerably in advance of our own time in one respect, for it is remarkable for the passing of a Poor Law which, unlike that of the present day, was founded on the principles of humanity. ”

“ For the sixteenth century they are only preserved in a very fragmentary state as regards England; for the seventeenth they lie before us, with gaps no doubt here and there, yet in much greater completeness. Even in the first volume they have been useful to me for Mary Tudor's reign and the end of Elizabeth's; in the later ones, not only for James I's times, but also far more for Charles I's government and his quarrel with the Parliament. ”

“ Lately, when I've been reading up the Elizabethans, and one or two other periods, I've been amazed more than ever at the way things change. Even in talking to my uncle of seventy about the Victorians, it comes out astoundingly. The whole machinery of life, and the minds of every class and kind of man, change beyond recognition every generation. I don't know that 'Progress' is certain. All I know is that change is. These solid solemn provincials, and old maids, and business men, and all the immovable system of things I see round me, will vanish like smoke. ”