Elizabeth, queen of England, daughter of Henry VIII. by his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was born September 7, 1533. Her religious principles were early fixed on the side of the Reformation by Dr. Parker, her mother’s chaplain, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, to whose care Anne Boleyn, not long before her violent death, recommended this her only child, with the charge that she should not want his wise and pious counsel. She passed her early days happily, in the seclusion of private life, uninitiated in the dissipation of the court, and unmolested by its intrigues; but a few months after the accession of her sister Mary, she was arrested on suspicion of being concerned in Wyat’s insurrection, of which it was the object to oppose the marriage of Mary with the Archduke Philip, and to raise the princess Elizabeth to the throne. Her life was placed in imminent danger, by her removal from her abode at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire to London during a severe illness, in compliance with an order to bring her, “quick or dead.” She was committed to the Tower, and exposed to a capital charge of high treason. Two councils were held, before which she defended herself with entire presence of mind, and great boldness. Several councillors voted for her death, but it was ultimately decided that she could be convicted only of misprision of treason, which was no longer a capital offence. She owed her life, therefore, to the saving power of the law; not, as has often been stated, to the intercession of Philip: who did, however, stand forward afterwards in her behalf so as to obtain a mitigation of the severity of her imprisonment, which was continued after her acquittal on the capital charge. It may seem inconsistent in a bigot to the Catholic religion to interfere in behalf of a person on whom the hopes of the Protestants were known to depend: but Philip’s hatred against France was greater than his or even his wife’s zeal in the cause of popery; and the political motives of his conduct are obvious. In the event of Mary dying without issue, the Queen of Scotland, who was actually betrothed, and soon after married to the Dauphin, stood next in succession to Elizabeth. Supposing the intermediate link in the chain to be broken, the crown of England, united to that of France, would give a fatal preponderance to the already formidable rival of the Spanish monarchy. Philip, therefore, had a direct interest both in preserving the life and conciliating the good will of the princess: he foresaw that the demise of his queen must take place before long, and he had formed the scheme of espousing her sister and successor, for which a dispensation would readily have been obtained from the pope.

The reign of Elizabeth began November 17, 1558, when she was twenty-five years of age. Her person was graceful, her stature majestic, and her mien noble. Her features were not regular; but her eyes were lively and sparkling, and her complexion fair. Her spirit was high; and her strong natural capacity had been improved by the most enlarged education attainable in those days. She wrote letters in Italian before she was fourteen; and at the age of seventeen she had acquired the Latin, Greek, and French languages. In addition to these studies she had ventured on the high and various departments of philosophy, rhetoric, history, divinity, poetry, and music. As soon as she was fixed on the throne, her interest and her principles engaged her in plans for the restoration of the Protestant religion. For although Pope Pius IV. promised, on her submission to the papal supremacy, “to establish and confirm her royal dignity by his authority,” yet she must have felt, that with the avowal of popery would be coupled the virtual admission that her father’s divorce from Catherine of Arragon was null and void; and, consequently, that Anne Boleyn was not a wife but a concubine, and her own pretensions to the crown downright usurpation. It was only by rejecting the Pope as her judge that she could maintain her mother’s fair fame and her own legitimate descent. Many writers, Bayle among others, have attempted to prove that she was at heart little more of a Protestant than her father; and her determination to retain episcopacy was sufficient to raise that suspicion in the minds of the adherents to the presbyterian system of church government.

While she was princess she received a private proposal of marriage from Sweden; but she declared, “she could not change her condition.” On her becoming queen, her brother-in-law, Philip II. of Spain, addressed her; but this match also she declined. In the first parliament of her reign, the house of commons represented it as necessary to the welfare of the nation “to move her grace to marriage.” She answered, that by the ceremony of her inauguration she was married to her people, and her subjects were to her instead of children; that they would not want a successor when she died; adding, “And in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare, that a queen having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.” Several great personages proposed a matrimonial union with this illustrious princess; but she maintained her celibacy to the last. The Duke of Anjou seems to have been the most acceptable of her suitors. On his visit to England in 1581, not only was he received with much public parade, but she vouchsafed him strong tokens of personal attachment, and even suffered the marriage articles to be drawn up. But the strong remonstrances of her ministers and favourites finally prevailed, and the intended marriage was broken off.

The compilers of memoirs have racked their brains for some plausible explanation of Elizabeth’s repugnance to matrimony. When overtures were first made to her she was young, and had a good person, which she spared no art in setting off to advantage: she was notoriously fond of admiration, and was no less jealous of the personal beauty of Mary, Queen of Scots, than of her competition as a rival sovereign, or as a claimant of the crown of England. Neither prudery nor coldness could be imputed to her. Her gaiety extorted a sarcastic exclamation from an ambassador: “I have seen the head of the English church dancing!” She chose her favourites, Leicester, Essex, Raleigh, and others, from among the most comely, as well as the most valiant and accomplished of her subjects. Melvil, who had been sent by Mary of Scotland to the court of Elizabeth, relates in his Memoirs, that on creating Lord Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, at Westminster, with much solemnity, the queen assisted at the ceremonial, and he knelt before her with great gravity: “but,” he says, “she could not refrain from putting her hand to his neck, smilingly tickling him, the French ambassador and I standing by.” In relating his diplomatic transactions, he furnishes other proofs of the queen’s partiality for the Earl of Leicester. He had occasion to name before her “my Lord of Bedford and my Lord Robert Dudley. She answered, it appeared I made but small account of my Lord Robert, seeing I named the Earl of Bedford before him; but that ere long she would make him a far greater Earl; and that I should see it done before my return home. For she esteemed him as her brother and best friend, whom she would have herself married, had she ever intended to have taken a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished the queen her sister might marry him.” It is no wonder that her propensity to gallantry should have been stigmatized by popish writers, or that they should even have ventured to assail her character for chastity: even those of the reformed religion were somewhat scandalized by the levities of their ecclesiastical governess. Her foreign biographer, Gregorio Leti, in his ‘Histoire d’Elizabeth,’ says, “I do not know whether she was so chaste as is reported; for, after all, she was a queen, she was beautiful, young, full of wit, delighted in magnificent dress, loved entertainments, balls, pleasures, and to have the handsomest men in her kingdom for her favourites. This is all I can say of her to the reader.”

The charge of personal depravity in so illustrious a sovereign deserves a fuller examination than is admissible within our limits. But it is in a great measure discredited by the circumstance that it originated with those Romish and political enemies, who perseveringly strove to destroy the queen, as the main prop of that fabric they were moving every engine to overthrow. Dr. Sanders and Cardinal Allen, the popes, the Spanish writers and their partisans, make statements, some of them manifestly untrue, others unsupported by respectable testimony. Among her own subjects, the popular scandal turned chiefly on Leicester, Hatton, and Essex; but without a single criminating fact as to either. Bacon states the case candidly, and probably puts it on its true ground: “She suffered herself to be honoured, and caressed, and celebrated, and extolled with the name of love, and wished it and continued it beyond the suitability of her age. If you take these things more softly, they may not even be without some admiration, because such things are commonly found in our fabulous narratives, of a queen in the islands of Bliss, with her hall and institutes, who receives the administration of love, but prohibits its licentiousness. If you judge them more severely, still they have this admirable circumstance, that the gratifications of this sort did not much hurt her reputation, and not at all her majesty, nor even relaxed her government, nor were any notable impediment to her state affairs.” Some writers of secret history have assigned the danger to which it was thought she would be exposed in bearing children as the real reason for her perseverance in celibacy.

We do not propose to relate the events of the reign of Elizabeth, inasmuch as our object does not extend beyond a sketch of her personal character. It is perhaps the most brilliant period in English history; it called into action some of the most able statesmen and greatest warriors of whom this country could ever boast. Leti tells us that Pope Sixtus V. was her ardent admirer, and placed her among the only three persons who, in his estimation, deserved to reign: the other two members of this curious triumvirate were Henry IV. of France and himself. He once said to an Englishman, “Your queen is born fortunate: she governs her kingdom with great happiness; she wants only to be married to me, to give the world a second Alexander.” The same author, in his life of Sixtus, records a secret correspondence of that pope with Elizabeth; among other particulars of which he relates the following anecdote. Anthony Babington, a gentleman of Derbyshire, with other English papists, had engaged in a conspiracy against the queen. Their project was, after having assassinated her, to deliver Mary of Scotland from prison, and to place her on the throne. Babington and three of his accomplices armed themselves against the possible failure of their enterprise, by applying to the pope for prospective absolution, to take effect at the time of their last agonies. His Holiness complied with their demand; but is said instantly to have despatched due warning to the queen.

This conspiracy was the preliminary to an event, which has been justly characterized as the stain of deepest dye on the fair fame of Elizabeth,—the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1586. It would be foreign to the subject, to relate the circumstances which led that princess to take refuge in England, trusting to Elizabeth’s promises of protection and kindness. Her reception at first was as favourable as was perhaps consistent with due attention to the public safety, considering that the Roman Catholic portion of British subjects held her to be the rightful sovereign, and Elizabeth an illegitimate and heretical usurper. But feelings of habitual enmity, enforced perhaps by the arguments of her political advisers, overpowered the sympathy of the first moments, and suggested the advantages to be taken of a defenceless competitor. Elizabeth, therefore, after having in the first instance ordered her to be treated like a queen, afterwards committed her to close prison. On the discovery of Babington’s plot, in which Mary was deeply implicated, the queen of Scots was arraigned of high treason before commissioners specially appointed by the crown. By that solemn tribunal, she was tried and found guilty, and by Elizabeth was delivered over to execution. Even Bohun, in his character of Elizabeth, though in general her panegyrist, says on this occasion, “By this action, she tainted her reign with the innocent blood of a princess, whom she had received into her dominions, and to whom she had given sanctuary.” If the sentence was executed, not in vindication of the offended laws, but as a sacrifice to personal revenge, Elizabeth’s guilt was greatly aggravated by her extreme dissimulation in the management of the affair. She no sooner received intelligence of Mary’s decapitation, than she abandoned herself to misery and almost despair: she put on deep mourning; her council were severely rebuked; her ministers, and even Burleigh, were driven from her presence with furious reproaches. Her secretary Davison was subjected to a process in the Star-Chamber for a twofold contempt, in having revealed her Majesty’s counsels to others of her ministers, and having given up to them the warrant which she had committed to him in special trust and secrecy, to be reserved for a case of sudden emergency. But Davison’s apology, an extract from which was inserted by Camden in his Annals, has since been found entire among the original papers of Sir Amias Paulet. From this authentic source it appears, that Davison was made her unconscious agent and instrument. Those who have endeavoured to extenuate the apparent treachery of Elizabeth, have alleged that the queen of Scots kept the queen of England in continual dread of dethronement; and that if the necessity existed to take the life of the queen of Scots, it was equally necessary that it should be done with a show of reluctance, and the least possible odium to the queen of England. Such has been the defence, both of the act itself, and of the subsequent dissimulation. But it would be difficult to apologize for her proceedings against Davison, an able and honest servant, whom she disgraced and ruined, for the purpose of impressing the belief that Mary was executed without her knowledge and contrary to her intentions. Right and wrong must be differently estimated in sovereigns and ordinary persons, if the sacrifice of such a victim to the shade of Mary or the indignation of her son can be justified.

The reign of Elizabeth lasted forty-four years, four months, and six days. It was distinguished by great actions; it raised the British name to a high and glorious rank in the scale of nations: and we of the present times are indebted to it for some of our greatest advantages. But the sovereign herself closed her long and eventful life in a state of deep melancholy. Her kinsman, Sir Robert Cary, relates, with the quaintness of the time, the circumstances of his visit to her on her death-bed. “She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I was grieved at first to see her in this plight; for in all my lifetime I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of Scots was beheaded.” She died March 24, 1603, in her seventieth year. Few as are the particulars of her life which we have been able to admit into our narrative, they have perhaps been sufficient to give an outline, however faint, of her character. It has been drawn out in form, and with fairness, by Lord Bolingbroke, in the following passage from his Idea of a Patriot King. “Our Elizabeth was queen in a limited monarchy, and reigned over a people at all times more easily led than driven; and at that time capable of being attached to their prince and their country by a more generous principle than any of those which prevail in our days, by affection. There was a strong prerogative then in being, and the crown was in possession of greater legal power. Popularity was however then, as it is now, and as it must always be in mixed government, the sole foundation of that sufficient authority and influence which other constitutions give the prince gratis and independently of the people, but which a king of this nation must acquire. The wise queen saw it; and she saw too how much popularity depends on those appearances that depend on the decorum, the decency, the grace, and the propriety of behaviour of which we are speaking. A warm concern for the interest and honour of the nation, a tenderness for her people and a confidence in their affections, were appearances that ran through her whole public conduct, and gave life and colour to it. She did great things; and she knew how to set them off according to their true value, by her manner of doing them. In her private behaviour she showed great affability, she descended even to familiarity; but her familiarity was such as could not be imputed to her weakness, and was therefore most justly ascribed to her goodness. Though a woman, she hid all that was womanish about her; and if a few equivocal marks of coquetry appeared on some occasions, they passed like flashes of lightning, vanished as soon as they were discovered, and imprinted no blot on her character. She had private friendships, she had favourites: but she never suffered her friends to forget that she was their queen; and when her favourites did, she made them feel that she was so.”

Our delineation of Elizabeth has been rather that of a very great personage, than of a good woman; but it must be admitted on all hands, that the poison of calumny has been largely administered, in proportion to the invidiousness of her position. This general lot of greatness fell the heavier on her, in consequence of the severe laws which she was compelled to enact and execute against the papists. The libels against Elizabeth’s good fame were put forth mostly by persons of that proscribed sect, who have represented her, not as indulging the frailties from which her most strenuous advocates cannot exonerate her, but as a monster of cruelty, avarice, and lust. It is but justice to place in contrast with so hateful a picture the noble character ascribed to her even by a Jesuit, in a book published in the Catholic metropolis of France. PÈre d’Orleans, in his ‘Histoire des Revolutions d’Angleterre,’ speaks thus: “Elizabeth was a person whose name immediately imprints in our minds such a noble idea, that it is impossible well to express it by any description whatsoever. Never did a crowned head better understand the art of government, and commit fewer errors in it, during a long reign. The friends of Charles V. could reckon his faults: Elizabeth’s enemies have been reduced narrowly to search after hers; and they, whose greatest concern it was to cast an odium upon her conduct, have admired her. So that in her was fulfilled this sentence of the Gospel, that the children of this world are often wiser in their views and designs than the children of light. Elizabeth’s aim was to reign, to govern, to be mistress, to keep her people in submission, neither affecting to weaken her subjects, nor to make conquests in foreign countries; but yet not suffering any person to encroach in the least upon the sovereign power, which she knew perfectly well how to maintain, both by policy and by force. For no person in her time had more wit, more skill, more judgment than she had. She was not a warlike princess; but she knew so well how to train up warriors, that England had not for a long time seen a greater number of them, nor more experienced.”