A few weeks had elapsed after the execution of poor Mary, when an ambassador, to palaver over the unfortunate queen's only son, James, was sent to Scotland by Elizabeth. When the lad first heard the news he began to roar like a calf, and quiver like an arrow. He vowed vengeance, in a voice of soprano shrillness, and the homely figure of a storm in a slop-basin was faithfully realised.

The ambassador let him have his cry completely out, and then drawing himself up with an air of some dignity, observed, "When you have left off roaring, and can hear me speak, I will tell you the rights of it."

"Nobody has any right to murder my mamma," was the reply of the boy, who again opened the sluices of his grief, and allowed the tears to irrigate his face with a couple of meandering rivulets. At length, silence being obtained, the ambassador declared that the amputation of Mary's head was accidental as far as Elizabeth was concerned; but, "axe-i-dental, you mean," was the bitter reply of her sobbing offspring. The messenger, nevertheless, persisted that the Queen of England meant nothing by signing the death-warrant; that, in fact, she had been "only in fun"; and as he wound up with the offer of an increased pension to James, the heartless brat dried his eyes, with the observation that "What's done can't be undone," and pocketed a quarter in advance of his enlarged income. That Elizabeth had really been determined upon Mary's death, is a point upon which our sagacious readers will require no enlightenment; for to them the character of the royal catamountain—we use the Johnsonian word, in preference to the old, familiar term of catamaran—will be clear, from the gallons of midnight oil which we have bestowed upon it. How to get rid of Mary was, in fact, a subject of frequent deliberation between the English queen and her creatures—pretty creatures they were—among whom Leicester and Walsingham stood prominent. Leicester had proposed poison, while Elizabeth suggested assassination; but the dagger and bowl, the emblems of legitimate tragedy, were both laid aside for the farce of a trial. When the sanguinary business was done, the chief actors in it threw the blame upon the subordinates, and poor Mr. Secretary Davison was declared by Elizabeth to have been the sole cause of the execution of the Scottish queen, because he had assisted in executing the deed that consigned her to the Scaffold. When Davison was accused of the act, he went about exclaiming, "I! Well, that is the coolest!—'Pon my word! What next?" But he soon found what was next, for he was committed to prison, and fined £10,000, merely to give colour to the accusation. When confidentially apprised of the cause of his detention, he went into hysterics at the half-ridiculous, half-melancholy, idea of his being impounded to give colour to a charge which was altogether false; and "It only just cleans me out!—ruins me, by Jove!" was the touching remark he made as he paid the entire fine imposed upon him, and quitted the prison.

Philip of Spain was now becoming desirous of an attack upon England, without having any definite views, beyond a desire for mischief, which was inherent in his character. He had got together a very formidable fleet, and Elizabeth taking alarm, tried all sorts of plans to check his warlike purpose. One of the expedients of her ministers—and it was not a bad one—was to throw discredit on a quantity of Philip's bills, in the hope of his finding a difficulty in getting them discounted. Sir Francis Drake was despatched to Cadiz with a fleet of thirty sail, and Elizabeth having on his departure said to him, affectionately, "Go, and do your best, Drake—there's a duck," he dashed into Cadiz Bay, knocked down four castles, sunk a hundred ships—forecastles included—and going home by the Tagus, took a large man-of-war from under the very nose of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, and then made him a polite obeisance from the bow of the vessel.

Philip did not relax in his preparations for invading England, and he got together a very numerous fleet, by hiring vessels wherever he could, and sending his emissaries to engage a whole squadron at a time, like an individual, who, jumping into the first cab on a stand, desires the whole rank to follow him. The Armada—for such it was called—became, of course, rather numerous than select; but there is no doubt that if its quality was queer, its quantity was most respectable.

The naval service of England had been so shabbily provided for, that the British fleet did not exceed thirty-six sail of the line; though by-the-by, as the authorities have just told us that Drake took or demolished one hundred ships at Cadiz, there seems a slight error in figures, which will occasionally happen in the best regulated histories. As it was not known where the enemy was to land, the High Admiral, Lord Howard of Effingham, was obliged to exclaim—"Now, gentlemen, spread yourselves, spread yourselves!" as he ordered Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher to the command of their various detachments. The gallant Drake took up his station at Ushant, as if he would have said "You shan't!" to any foe who might have come to that point to effect a landing. Hawkins cruised near the Scilly Islands to look out, as he said, for the silly fellows who should come in his-way; and Lord Henry Seymour cruised along the Flanders coast, while other captains vigorously scoured the Chops of the Channel. It was expected that the Spanish Armada would have come down the Thames, and perhaps amused themselves with an excursion to Rosherville, which was strongly fortified, as well as all the places on the river. The Boshervillians threw themselves into the arms of their resident baron; and the peaceful inhabitants of Sheerness prepared to fight, out of sheer necessity. Catholics and Protestants vied with each other in eagerness to repel the invader from their shores; and the gallant fellows living near the Tower, declared in their blunt but expressive language, that "though the foe might pass a Gravesend, outlive a Blackwall, or go in safety through a Greenwich, he would most assuredly never survive a Wapping!"

The queen herself, having driven down in her tilbury to Tilbury Fort, mounted a saddle-horse, and, flushed by her nautical enthusiasm, she looked a very horse-marine as she cantered about upon, her steed in the presence of her people. The Earls of Essex and Leicester having held her rein, she majestically bridled up, and sent forth among the crowd a volley of clap-traps, declaring she had come among them, as the song says—

At length it was determined by Philip that the Spanish Armada should set out; and, as Strype pleasantly tells us, "a pretty set-out they made of it." Poor Santa Cruz, the high admiral, made a most unlucky hit to begin with, by falling ill and dying, when his second in command, the Duke of Parma, followed his leader's example, with most inconvenient rapidity.

The chief command was given to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, "who was a very good man, but a very bad sailor," * and knew so little of maritime affairs, that he is reported to have sent to a dealer in marine stores for an outfit. At length the Invincible Armada was ready to put to sea, and they succeeded in "shoving her off," on the 20th of May, 1588, from the Tagus. The seas, which evidently had no notion of being ruled by any but Britannia, turned turbulent under the Spanish usurpers, and a generalising of the waves made it a toss-up whether Medina Sidonia and his fleet would ride out the storm in safety. Four of the ships were actually lost, and nearly all the rest dispersed, and when the high admiral called upon his subordinate officers to be "calm and collected," he found that the storm had not allowed them to be either the one or the other. Having got his forces together again, as well as he could, the Spanish admiral made another start towards the English coast, and appeared off the Lizard Point, with his fleet drawn up in the form of a crescent, being seven miles from horn to horn, and presenting to the enemy the horns of a dilemma. The English were on shore at Plymouth, playing at bowls on the Hoe, and Drake, who was getting the better of the game, declared he would play it out, for there was no hurry, as he could beat his companions first, and the Spaniards afterwards. Having, at length, taken to their vessels, the British watched the foe as they came rolling in their heavy, lumbering ships up the channel. Their guns were planted so high up that they shot entirely over the English vessels, and into one another, while their unwieldy size rendering them unmanageable, several of them being banged to bits by a series of frightful collisions. To add to the confusion, one of the vessels took fire, and was burnt, by an accident of the cook on board, who, it has been ingeniously suggested, was trying to fry some of the celebrated chops of the channel, "which," as Mrs. Markham says, in her very excellent Abridgment, "you know, my little dears, you have all heard talked about."

Another large vessel sprung her mast, another sprung a leak, a third burst her binnacle, a fourth shivered her timbers, a fifth lost all her fore part; and the crew were driven by stern necessity into the stem; while on all sides, there prevailed the utmost confusion. Medina Sidonia retired to the back yard of one of his ships, where he sat dejected and alone, and after a good deal of skirmishing, in which the Spaniards got the worst of it at all points of the compass, the duke made the best of his way home again. He arrived at Santander about the end of September, 1588, with the mere skeleton of the force he had started with, and every sailor he brought back was in himself a complete wreck of what he had been when he quitted his own country. Thus ended the grand design of invading England by means of the Spanish Armada, which, to say the truth, did more mischief to itself than it sustained at the hands of the enemy. Had a public meeting been held at the time to celebrate the victory, we are sure that any English patriot might have proposed a vote of thanks to the Armada, for the "able and impartial manner in which it banged itself almost to pieces, with a total disregard of its own interests, and to the incalculable advantage of England."

On the 4th of September, 1588, Leicester, the queen's favourite, died on his way to Kenilworth; but Elizabeth never felt the loss, for she had already effected a transfer of her affections to Robert Devereux, the young Earl of Essex. Her grief at Leicester's death was so slight that it did not prevent her from putting an execution into his house, sweeping off all he had, under a bill of sale, and submitting it to the public hammer in order to repay herself the sums she had advanced to him in his lifetime. Essex was a mere boy, and the part of favourite to a disagreeable ugly old woman like "our Bessy," was by no means a sinecure. He was expected to appear at all times as the light comedian of the Court, and was compelled to exercise flattery ana gallantry towards a harridan who neither justified the one nor inspired the other. He took the earliest opportunity of getting away from her for a short time, by going to sea against her express orders; but he would have braved anything for a respite from the society of the royal bore, whose fondness had become odious to its object, though policy restrained him from openly saying so. On his return home, he found himself almost cut out of the queen's good graces by Sir Walter Raleigh, whose name we have already mentioned as that of a young adventurer. Raleigh was a distinguished navigator, which does not mean that he worked on the cuttings of a railway; but that he belonged to a very humble line, is a point there is not a doubt upon. His reputation rests chiefly on the luggage he brought with him after one of his voyages, when some potatoes, and a few ounces of tobacco crammed into his sac de nuit were destined to hand him down to immortality. The most popular vegetable the world ever saw, has put Raleigh into everybody's mouth; and when we see the cloud rising from the cigar, our imagination may trace, in the "smoke that so gracefully curls," the name of one whoso renown cannot be whiffed away into the regions of oblivion.

The jealousy of Essex caused Raleigh to be sent into Ireland, where he remained for years; and his long sojourn may account for the hold that the potato had taken upon the affections of the Irish people.

His rival being thus summarily got rid of, Essex was left to make his way with the "virgin queen," who was now verging on old age, and treated her young favourite less as a subject than a son; for she had come to that time of life when anything she could show in the shape of fondness deserved the epithet of motherly. The boy was a fine one of his age, being brave and good-looking; but Burleigh and other wise counsellors, seeing that Essex made a fool of the queen, or rather, that she made a fool of herself by her partiality for him, took a dislike to the stripling. On one occasion, old Elizabeth getting kittenish and playful, boxed the boy's ears, which tingled with the pain—for her hand had become bony from age—when he laid his hand upon his sword, and was thrown into disgrace, like a child who had been guilty of naughtiness. He was soon recalled, and promising that he would "never do so any more," he rapidly resumed his place in the favour of the royal dotard.

The death of Burleigh, on the 4th of August, 1598, for whom the hurly-burly of politics had been too much, left the entire field to Essex, and he made the most of it, by getting the appointment of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; from which he derived the double advantage of advancing his own views and getting away from Elizabeth. He took with him a considerable force, which he somehow or other frittered away without doing any good whatever: and after losing several of his soldiers by marching them completely off their legs, he determined that he must have "a truce to such an unpleasant sort of thing," and entered at once into a truce with the enemy. Elizabeth, who had calculated upon his settling the Irish question at the point of the sword, was disgusted at his failure, and desired him not to come home till he had subjected his honour to thorough repair, and taken all the stains out of his character. As he had no relish for the task imposed upon him, he suddenly quitted his post, and hastening to England, arrived at the palace covered with mud and dirt, for he had made a regular steeple-chase of the latter part of his journey. Without going home to change his boots, he rushed into the presence-chamber before the queen was up, and, without asking any questions, he pushed his way to her dressing room. He found her completely en dÉshabille, and started back at finding her hair on a block before her, instead of on her head, for she had got her wig in hand, and was trying to turn and twist it into a becoming form, by means of powder, pomatum, tongs, combs, and curl-papers. Startled by his sudden appearance, she hastened to put herself to rights as well as she could, and was angry at the intrusion; but as he fell at her feet, she contrived to cover the baldness of her head, and then received him more affably. He had no sooner gone than she began to reflect upon his presumption in having thus taken her unawares; and when he returned, after going home to dress, she would have nothing to say to him. He was desired to stay at home, and consider himself a prisoner in his own house; but as the old crone had allowed so many former familiarities, he was quite unprepared for the game of propriety she was now practising. He went home and took to his bed, for it made him perfectly sick to witness the sudden prudery of the queen, who during his illness sent him a daily basin of broth from her own table. She ordered eight eminent physicians to consult on his case; but this calling in of a powerful medical force looks very much as if she had been disposed to get rid of him, and preferred physic to law for once, as a method of destruction. In spite of his eight doctors Essex got better, and sent submissive messages, to which Elizabeth turned a deaf ear; and Essex, by attributing her deafness to age, irritated her beyond expression. He was told that he would find her unbending; when he at once replied that he had found her bent nearly double, when he last had the honour of seeing her, and he was glad to hear that royalty was once more beginning to look up in England, by taking its proper position. These remarks irritated Elizabeth beyond expression; and having brought him before the privy council, she caused a sentence of banishment to be inflicted upon him, which he sarcastically declared was agreeable to him, as it would keep from him the sight of Elizabeth, whom he now denominated his "old queene." Anxious to try the effect of intimidation upon the nervous septuagenarian who now sat upon the throne, he entered into a conspiracy with Scotland; but it was soon found out, and, rushing with desperate fury into the streets, he tried to raise a mob by addressing inflammatory speeches to the populace. The citizens looked at him and listened to him, but shaking their heads, passed on, when he soon found out that a solo movement unsupported by any concerted piece, rendered him truly ridiculous. At length he was hurried off to the Tower, and having been tried, he was condemned to die, though he fully expected the palsied old creature who held the sceptre in her tremulous hand, would, in a love-sick mood, decree his pardon.

It is said that in "happier days," when Essex had been in the habit of striking "the light, the light, the light guitar," to the tinlike sound of Elizabeth's voice, she had given him a ring, telling him if ever he fell into disgrace, the return of that ring would obtain his pardon. Elizabeth was from day to day listening to every knock, expecting the identical ring, but it never came, and on the 25th of February, 1601, he was actually beheaded. Elizabeth never held up her head again; but, indeed, as she had long contracted a stoop from debility and old age, there is nothing astonishing in the fact we have mentioned. The spectacle of an old woman pining in love after a mere boy, was revolting enough; but the fact is made doubly disgusting by the recollection that she had herself caused the death of the object of her disreputable dotage.

Some time after the execution of Essex, the Countess of Nottingham was taken ill, and sending for Elizabeth confessed that the favourite had given the ring before his death to be delivered to the queen, but that it had been kept back for party purposes. The sovereign, who was shaking in every limb from ambiguity and agitation, flew at the Countess of Nottingham in her bed, seized her by the shoulder, and administered the most violent cuffs that a female of seventy is capable of bestowing on one who has offended her. "Take that—and that—and that—and that—and that!"—was the cry of the queen, as she suited the action to the word in every instance. The exertion was too much for the tottering fabric of human frailty, who threw herself on the floor when she got to her own room, and refusing to go to bed, rolled about for ten days on a pile of cushions. Being asked to name her successor, she is said by some to have specified James; while others maintain that she said nothing. When she was too exhausted to oppose her attendants, they got her into bed, and on the 24th of March, 1603, she died in the seventieth year of her age, and forty-fifth of her reign.

Many people have a very natural objection to written characters, but we feel compelled to give a written character of Queen Elizabeth; and we are sorry to remark, that we can say very little that will be thought complimentary. In person she was bony, coarse, muscular and masculine. Her hair was red, but this she inherited from her father Henry, and thus her red hair has been said, by that mountebank, Stiype, to have been he-red-hair-tary at that time in the royal family. She endeavoured, by the aid of dress, to make up for the unkindness of Nature; and she surrounded herself with a quantity of hoops, which, as her figure was rather tub-like, may be considered appropriate. She never gave away her old clothes, and no less than three thousand dresses were found at her death, the bodies of which, it is said, would have covered half London at its then size, while the skirts would have covered all the outskirts. Her portrait is always drawn with an enormous ruff round her neck, which she adopted, it is believed, to hide the roughness of her chin, which showed Nature to be her enemy, for it had bearded her frightfully.

She was exceedingly fond of visiting the houses of the nobility; but she usually ruined all whom she honoured in this way, by the expense they were put to in entertaining her. Lord Leicester, who had her staying with him at Kenilworth, for a few days, nearly ruined himself in bears, of which he took in a great quantity to bait for the amusement of his sovereign.

In disposition, manners and appearance, there was nothing feminine or graceful about Elizabeth; but Hume, who seems very fond of her, tells us, that in weighing her, one ought to sink the female and think only of the sovereign. We cannot, however, understand a person being at the same time a good queen and a bad woman, unless the woman happens to be somebody beside herself, when she is obviously unfit to be trusted with the responsibility of government. Elizabeth had a certain amount of talent; "for she had," says Hume, "both temper and capacity;" but capacity seems to have belonged rather to the bony bulkiness of her unfeminine form, than to the extent of her intellect.

Her private character was exceedingly disreputable; and her amorous propensities, which seemed rather to increase with her old age, rendered her disgusting to her contemporaries, as well as ridiculous in the eyes of posterity. She was constantly in love with some stripling about the Court, who, when he became un peu passÉ, was thrown aside for some more juvenile admirer.

There can be no doubt that the admirable character of Mrs. Skewton, if we may be allowed an irreverent allusion to fiction amidst the awful solemnities of fact, is to be attributed to the extensive historical research of Mr. Dickens, and his intimate acquaintance with the period of the reign of Elizabeth. It may be admitted that she governed with considerable firmness; but the praise, such as it is, of "coming it exceedingly strong," is, after all, a most questionable compliment.

Several of the greatest names in science and literature shed a glory on Elizabeth's reign; but the most magnificent sunshine, by falling on a mean object, does not make the object itself in reality more respectable. Bacon, Shakespeare, Spenser and others, are said to have flourished at the time; but we have examined their autographs with peculiar care, and have seen no symptoms of flourishing about any one of them. To say they all wrote at the period would be true; but to say they flourished is an exaggeration to which we will not lend ourselves.

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. This blot, however, will, we trust, be removed in time for a sixth—though not quite quickly enough for a second, third, fourth or fifth—edition of this work; for the Spirit of the Times has doomed the Poor Law to perdition.

Theatres first came into vogue in Elizabeth's reign; and it is a fact at which our sober reverence for the Swan of Avon takes considerable alarm, that that ever-to-be-lamented bird was in the habit of exercising his quills in the neighbourhood of the New Cut, at a concern called the Globe, where the prices were only twopence to the pit, and one penny in the gallery. The critics sat on the stage, and were furnished with pipes and tobacco—a gentle intimation to them to "draw it mild" in their notices of the performances. It is possible, that through the fumes of the tobacco they got a bird's-eye view of the stage, which was favourable to the performance of their critical duties. The audience used to read, play at cards, smoke, and drink, before the performance began; and perhaps, if the piece happened to be dull, they relieved it by some of those pastimes even during its progress.

Smoking, which has since reached such universality that every man one meets is a chimney, and every boy a flue, is known to have been introduced by Raleigh, who, fearing; that his friends would rally him on the propensity, used to indulge it in secret. One day some smoke was seen to issue from his apartment, and the people about him, fearing he was on fire, inundated him with buckets of water that put him out very seriously, and determined him in future not to smoke the pipe of privacy. The mode of living was not very luxurious in Elizabeth's reign, for a glass of ale and a slice of bread formed the ordinary breakfast, while brawn was an article of general consumption; and, as Elizabeth was very fond of it, her great brawny arms are easily accounted for.

An attempt has been made to attribute various graces and accomplishments to Elizabeth, which, even after attempting to enlarge our credulity, and stir up our organ of veneration to its fullest extent, we are unable to give her credit for. It is said that she played, sang, and danced tolerably well, though her figure seems to give very weighty testimony against her probable possession of the last of these accomplishments.

She admired dancing among her courtiers, and she is said to have promoted Hatton for his terpsiohorean efforts, she having once seen him practising his steps, when she declared that he held himself so well in the first position, that she would elevate him to the first positions soon as possible. Elizabeth, though profuse in her own indulgences, was stingy in the extreme to others, and her accumulation of old clothes proves a tenacity of bad habits, and a shabbiness towards her femme de chambre, that are on a par with the other despicable points in her character.