The Girls' Book of Famous Queens

“I now took occasion to press earnestly my despatch; she said I was sooner weary of her company than she was of mine. I told her Majesty that though I had no reason to be weary, I knew my mistress’s affairs called me home. Yet I was detained two days longer, that I might see her dance, as I was afterwards informed; which being over, she inquired of me whether she or my queen danced best? I answered, the queen danced not so high, nor so disposedly as she did. Then again she wished that she might see the queen at some convenient place of meeting. I offered to convey her secretly to Scotland by post horses, clothed like a page, that under this disguise she might see the queen. She appeared to like that kind of language, but only answered it with a sigh, saying, ‘Alas! if I might do it thus!’ I then withdrew.”

The rise of English manufacture is dated from the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The first paper-mill was set up in 1590, and watches and coaches were first introduced into England during her reign. “When we hear of Elizabeth riding to the House of Peers on a pillion in the beginning of her reign, we should not forget that towards the close of it she is represented as taking an airing in her coach every day.”

“The daily ceremonial of her court was distinguished by ‘Oriental servility.’ Her table was served kneeling, and with as many genuflections as would have contented the Emperor of China. Even her ministers never addressed her but on their knees. From this slavish ceremony Lord Burleigh was latterly excused, when age and infirmities had rendered it painful or rather impracticable; but he was the only exception.”

It has been said “that Elizabeth never forgot the woman in the sovereign; and that with greater truth she never forget the sovereign in the woman.” Poor praise, truly! without heart, without capacity for any kindliness or womanly tenderness, she lived without a friend and died without a mourner. Courtiers grovelled in fawning servility at her feet, women feared her; but no one loved her, and even those who flattered her despised her.

Of her two celebrated favorites, Leicester and Essex, the first was perfidious and utterly worthless; the latter was too manly to bear her insolence, and for that he lost his head. He was too spirited to cringe at her footstool, and when on one occasion she angrily boxed his ear, he exclaimed, in indignation, “I would not have taken such an affront from the hands of the king, her father, and I will not accept it of a petticoat! I owe her Majesty the duty of an earl, but I will never serve her as a slave!”

But nevertheless, the petticoat would not be opposed, and Essex perished on the fatal block, even though his death wrung the small heart Elizabeth possessed with all the sorrow it was capable of feeling. She had given Essex a ring in the time of his influence, telling him, if ever he was in danger to send it to her and she would aid him. When he was sentenced to die, he sent Queen Elizabeth this ring, but it passed through the hands of a court lady whose husband was Essex’s deadly foe. The ring never reached the queen, and Essex was executed. Years after, when this countess was dying she confessed the fate of the ring to the queen. The sorrow and remorse which Elizabeth experienced on knowing that her favorite had thus appealed to her mercy, hastened her own death.

It was during the reign of Queen Elizabeth that Sir Francis Drake accomplished the journey around the world and Sir Walter Raleigh made his famous voyages. Tobacco was first introduced into England by him. An amusing story is told of the first use of the weed. He was smoking a pipe one day, when his servant came into the room bearing a tankard of ale. The simple fellow had never before witnessed the process of smoking, and supposing that the clouds of smoke issuing from his master’s lips betokened some awful accident, he flung the ale into his face and ran from the room, crying that his master was on fire and would be burned to ashes if they did not come to his aid.

Raleigh once amused the queen by making a wager with her that he could tell her the exact weight of the smoke of every pipeful of tobacco that he consumed. The wager was accepted by the queen, and Raleigh thereupon proceeded to weigh the tobacco he placed in his pipe, and, after smoking, he weighed the ashes remaining, and informed her that the difference between the two was the exact weight of the smoke. Elizabeth paid the wager, saying: “That she knew of many persons who had turned their gold into smoke, but that he was the first one who had turned smoke into gold.” The well-known gallantry of this same Raleigh in spreading his new velvet cloak over the muddy walk for his royal mistress to tread upon, not only secured him many new cloaks, but the powerful patronage of the queen.

It was to Queen Elizabeth that the poet Spenser dedicated his poetical muse, and in his “Faerie Queene” he celebrated and exalted his sovereign. But the greatest name of her reign, and the one which has shed the brightest and most lasting lustre upon the Elizabethan age, was the illustrious Shakespeare. It is stated that the “Merry Wives of Windsor” was composed by order of Queen Elizabeth, who, having been pleased with Falstaff, in the play of “Henry IV.,” desired to see more of him. It is supposed that between 1590 and 1603 Shakespeare produced the plays of “Venus and Adonis,” “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” “Love’s Labor Lost,” “Taming of the Shrew,” “Henry IV., V., VI. and VIII.,” “Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” “Hamlet,” “Richard II. and III.,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “King John,” “As You Like It,” “Merchant of Venice,” “All’s Well that Ends Well,” “Much Ado About Nothing,” and “Merry Wives of Windsor”; and before 1606: “Troilus and Cressida,” “Othello,” “Twelfth Night,” “Measure for Measure,” “Comedy of Errors,” “King Lear,” and “Macbeth.” So that nearly all of these works appeared in the reign of Elizabeth, who died in 1603.

Elizabeth’s contest against Philip II. of Spain, in assisting the Dutch in their war against Spanish tyranny, was one of the most illustrious of her foreign enterprises. In this war of liberty against despotism, Elizabeth’s bravest commanders and most accomplished courtiers distinguished themselves.

The two conflicting opinions regarding the character and reign of Elizabeth are thus ably stated by an illustrious writer: “Almost from our infancy we have a general impression that her reign is distinguished as one of the most memorable in history; and at a later period we hear of the ‘Elizabethan age’ as equally illustrious in the annals of our literature. Her wisdom, her courage, her prudence and her patriotism, her unconquerable spirit, her excellent laws and vigilant government, her successes at home and abroad, her wars and alliances with the greatest and most powerful princes of her time, the magnificent position which England maintained in her reign as the stronghold of the reformed religion, her own grandeur as the guardian of the Protestants and the arbitress of Europe, her magnanimous stand in defence of the national faith and independence when the Spanish Armada was defeated in 1588; the long list of great men, warriors, statesmen, and poets, who sustained her throne, who graced her court, obeyed her slightest word, lived in her smiles and worshipped as she passed, – all these things are familiar to young people almost from the time they can remember, and they leave a strong and magnificent impression on the fancy. As we grow older and become acquainted with the particular details of history, we begin to perceive with surprise that this splendid array of great names and great achievements has another and a far different aspect. On looking nearer we behold on the throne of England a woman whose avarice and jealousy, whose envious, relentless, and malignant spirit, whose coarse manners and violent temper render her contemptible. We see England, the country of freedom, ruled as absolutely as any Turkish province by this imperious sultana and her grand vizier, Burleigh; we see human blood poured out like water on the scaffold, and persecution, torture, and even death again inflicted for the sake of religion; we see great men, whose names are the glory of their country, pining in neglect, and a base, unworthy favorite revelling in power. We read and learn these things with astonishment; we find it difficult to reconcile such apparent contradictions.”

Such are the difficulties which meet us in the study of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; but a close study of the contradictions in the character of Elizabeth herself will partly solve the seeming mystery. Elizabeth possessed great and heroic traits of character, but these were joined to such a pitiably weak, jealous, and treacherous nature as to make her an anomaly in the history of the world. She lived in an illustrious age, fraught with some of the most momentous events in the annals of time; in a century star-studded with the lustrous names of genius, whose immortal fame has shed a reflex glory on her reign. Interests vital to the progress of humanity teemed and surged around her throne, and lifted her glory high on the topmost crests of the glistening waves of the on-rushing ocean of enlightened civilization and religious liberty.

Hentzner, the German traveller, who visited England in 1599, thus describes Elizabeth’s court four years previous to her death: —

“The presence-chamber was hung with rich tapestry, and the floor, after the English fashion, strewn with hay, through which the queen commonly passed on her way to chapel. At the door stood a gentleman dressed in velvet, with a gold chain, whose office was to introduce to the queen any person of distinction who came to wait upon her. It was Sunday, when there was usually the greatest attendance of nobility. In the same hall were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, a great number of councillors of state, officers of the crown, and gentlemen who waited the queen’s coming out, which she did from her own apartment when it was time to go to prayers, attended in the following manner: first went gentlemen, barons, earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly dressed and bareheaded; next came the chancellor, bearing the seals in a red silk purse, between two, one of which carried the royal sceptre, the other the sword of state in a red scabbard studded with golden fleur-de-lys, the point upward.

“Next came the queen, in the sixty-sixth year of her age, as we were told, very majestic; her face oblong, fair, but wrinkled; her eyes small, yet black and pleasant; her nose a little hooked, her lips narrow and her teeth black (a defect the English seem subject to, from their too great use of sugar). She had in her ears two pearls, with very rich drops; she wore false hair, and that red; upon her head she had a small crown, reported to be made of some of the gold of the celebrated Lunebourg table. Her bosom was uncovered, as all the English ladies have it till they marry, and she had on a necklace of exceeding fine jewels. Her hands were small, her fingers long, and her stature neither tall nor low; her air was stately, her manner of speaking mild and obliging. That day she was dressed in white silk, bordered with pearls of the size of beans, and over it a mantle of black silk, shot with silver threads; her train was very long, the end of it borne by a marchioness. Instead of a chain she had a collar of gold and jewels. As she went along in all this state and magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first to one, then to another, in English, French, and Italian; for besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, and the languages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and Dutch. Whoever speaks to her it is kneeling; now and then she raises some with her hand. Wherever she turned her face as she was going along everybody fell down on their knees. The ladies of the court followed next to her, very handsome and well shaped, and for the most part dressed in white. She was guarded on each side by the gentlemen pensioners, fifty in number, with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel, next the hall, where we were, petitions were presented to her, and she received them most graciously, which occasioned the acclamation of ‘Long live Queen Elizabeth!’”

But while the queen was still at service in the chapel, her table was set out with the following solemnity: —

“A gentleman entered the room, bearing a rod, and along with him another, who had a table-cloth, which, after they had both kneeled three times with the utmost veneration, he spread upon the table, and after kneeling again they both retired. Then came two others, one with the rod again, the other with a salt-cellar, a plate, and bread; when they had kneeled as the others had done, and placed what was brought upon the table, they too retired, with the same ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmarried lady (we were told she was a countess), and along with her a married one, bearing a tasting knife; the former was dressed in white silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three times in the most graceful manner, approached the table and rubbed the plates with bread and salt, with as much awe as if the queen had been present. When they had waited there a little while, the yeomen of the guard entered, bareheaded, clothed in scarlet, with a golden rose upon their backs, bringing in at each turn a course of twenty-four dishes, served in plate, most of it gilt; these dishes were received by a gentleman in the same order they were brought, and placed upon the table, while the lady-taster gave to each of the guard a mouthful to eat of the particular dish he had brought, for fear of any poison. During the time that this guard, – which consists of the tallest and stoutest men that can be found in all England, being carefully selected for this service, – were bringing dinner, twelve trumpets and two kettle-drums made the hall ring for half an hour together.

“At the end of all this ceremonial a number of unmarried ladies appeared, who, with particular solemnity, lifted the meat off the table, and conveyed it into the queen’s inner and more private chamber, where, after she had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the ladies of the court. The queen dines and sups alone, with very few attendants; and it is very seldom that anybody, foreign or native, is admitted at that time, and then only at the intercession of some person in power.”

This same traveller, Hentzner, states “that he counted on London bridge no less than three hundred heads of persons who had been executed for high treason.” Surely a lamentable evidence of Elizabeth’s cruelty.

J. R. Green, M. A., in his “History of the English People,” thus sketches the character of Queen Elizabeth: —

“Her moral temper recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood within her veins. She was at once the daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her dauntless courage, her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, man-like voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger, came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were school-boys; she met the insolence of Essex with a box on the ear; she would break, now and then, into the gravest deliberations, to swear at her ministers like a fish-wife.

“But strangely in contrast with the violent outlines of her Tudor temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent nature she derived from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure were with Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph’s dream. She loved gayety and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity remained even to old age, the vanity of a coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty too gross. She would play with her rings, that her courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto, that the French ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her unwomanly jests, gave color to a thousand scandals. Her character, in fact, like her portraits, was utterly without shade. Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled the voluptuous temper which had broken out in the romps of her girlhood, and showed itself almost ostentatiously throughout her later life. Personal beauty in a man was a sure passport to her liking. She patted handsome young squires on the neck when they knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her ‘sweet Robin,’ – Lord Leicester, – in the face of the court.

“It was no wonder that the statesmen whom she outwitted held Elizabeth almost to the last to be little more than a frivolous woman. But the Elizabeth whom they saw was far from being all of Elizabeth. The wilfulness of Henry, the triviality of Anne Boleyn, played over the surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper purely intellectual, the very type of reason untouched by imagination or passion. Luxurious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, Elizabeth lived simply and frugally, and she worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had no weight whatever with her state affairs. The coquette of the presence-chamber became the coolest and hardest of politicians at the council-board. Fresh from the flattery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no flattery in the closet; she was herself plain and downright of speech with her councillors, and she looked for a corresponding plainness of speech in return. Her expenditure was parsimonious, and even miserly. If any trace of her sex lingered in her actual statesmanship, it was seen in the simplicity and tenacity of purpose that often underlie a woman’s fluctuations of feeling. It was this in part which gave her her marked superiority over the statesmen of her time. No nobler group of ministers ever gathered round a council-board than those who gathered round the council-board of Elizabeth. But she is the instrument of none. She listens, she weighs, she uses or puts by the counsels of each in turn, but her policy as a whole is her own. It was a policy, not of genius, but of good sense. Of political wisdom, indeed, in its larger and more generous sense, Elizabeth had little or none; but her political tact was unerring. It was a policy of detail, and in details her wonderful readiness and ingenuity found scope for their exercise. She played with grave cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and with much of the same feline delight in the mere embarrassment of her victims.

“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. Nor was her trickery without political value. Nothing is more revolting in the queen, but nothing is more characteristic, 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. A falsehood was to her simply an intellectual means of meeting a difficulty.

“She had a quick eye for merit of any sort, and a wonderful power of enlisting its whole energy in her service. Her success, indeed, in securing from the beginning of her reign to its end, with the single exception of Leicester, precisely the right men for the work she set them to do, sprang in great measure from the noblest characteristic of her intellect.

“Elizabeth could talk poetry with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; she could discuss euphuism with Lyly, and enjoy the chivalry of Essex; she could turn from talk of the latest fashions, to pore with Cecil over despatches and treasury books; she could pass from tracking traitors with Walsingham, to settle points of doctrine with Parker, or to calculate with Frobisher the chances of a northwest passage to the Indies. The versatility and many-sidedness of her mind enabled her to understand every phase of the intellectual movement of her day, and to fix by a sort of instinct on its higher representatives. But the greatness of the queen rests above all on her power over her people. We have had grander and nobler rulers, but none so popular as Elizabeth. It was only on her intellectual side that Elizabeth touched the England of her day. All its moral aspects were simply dead to her. She made her market with equal indifference out of the heroism of William of Orange or the bigotry of Philip. The noblest aims and lives were only counters on her board. No woman ever lived who was so destitute of the sentiment of religion. While the world around her was being swayed more and more by theological beliefs and controversies, Elizabeth was absolutely untouched by them.”

For nineteen long years Queen Elizabeth kept the beautiful Mary, Queen of Scots, in captivity, without right or reason, Mary Stuart’s defenders declare; but Elizabeth’s upholders claim that Mary was guilty of many plots against the English Queen.

It is almost impossible to tread the mazy paths of this epoch with impartial glance and unbiassed opinions. The writers on both sides of these knotty questions are able and apparently conscientious. We can but state both sides, and leave the reader to form his or her own opinion.

That Mary, Queen of Scots, could have been subjected to all the terrible trials and awful accusations which fell upon her seemingly defenceless head and still be entirely innocent of the crimes alleged against her, is quite possible, considering her peculiar situation and the selfish hatred of her enemies; yet those who believe in her guilt bring forth very strong evidence to prove that she connived at murder, and willingly gave herself into the power of the murderer.

This seems too atrocious to claim regarding a woman of the otherwise winning and kindly character of Mary, Queen of Scots. When two entire nations, – and one of them governed by a keen-witted, dissembling, and weakly-jealous queen, – are joined to destroy one poor helpless woman, and that woman a prisoner in the hands of her enemies, with spies at every keyhole and adversaries on every side, hoping to raise themselves to power by her destruction, – it is hardly to be wondered at that evidence can be found or forged which shall aid them in overwhelming her in ruin and at length in death.

Either Mary, Queen of Scots, stands forth in history as the most diabolical instance of hypocritical innocence cloaking the blackest of infamy which the world affords, – for she was too enlightened to be excused as a Cleopatra, and too apparently an embodiment of womanly loveliness and gentleness to be shunned as a Catherine de’ Medici, and therefore all the more dangerous and insidious a tempter to lead others to hideous crimes; – or she was the most pathetic and helpless victim of the most nefarious intrigues, which seemingly none but the devils in Hades could have originated and carried out, to the lasting disgrace of civilized and so-called Christian nations, and the indelible dishonor of the heartless sovereign who abetted and consummated such an atrocious crime.

Either Mary, Queen of Scots, or Elizabeth, Queen of England, must be stamped with disgrace and even infamy; or both of them were victims in the hands of fiendish aspirants for power, – the one, unwillingly, helpless as a prisoner, treacherously betrayed; the other, willingly, tarnishing her royal glory out of weak jealousy veiled under hypocritical protestations of political policy and unselfish devotion to the welfare of her subjects.

If Elizabeth was guilty of putting to death an innocent and persecuted kinswoman, who, relying on her avowed declarations of love and friendship, fled to her for safety, only to meet a lingering and dishonorable imprisonment, and an outrageous and ignominious death, at the hands of her who basely professed the tenderest sympathy and sisterly affection, – then Mary, Queen of Scots’ tragic death is unparalleled in history; for though other queens have died upon the scaffold, the executioner’s hand was not lifted at the command of a near and professedly-devoted relation; nor did an only son behold his mother’s shameful death without raising hand or word to help her when that son was a king upon a throne. That Mary Queen of Scots, rightfully claimed the throne of Scotland is beyond dispute; that she also rightfully claimed her place as successor to Elizabeth for the throne of England, is clearly proven from the fact that her son, James VI. of Scotland, ascended the throne of England, as James I., upon the death of Elizabeth, without any seeming opposition or question of his rights of succession.