to keep alive a sense of religion within her, yet she had lived through a time of the most exasperated religious controversy, and the controversialists of both sides had tried their skill upon her to the utmost. Moreover, if she had seen, and to some extent felt, the bitterness, cruelty, and relentless brutality of Mary's rule, not less had she also seen the selfish hypocrisy and unscrupulous greed of Edward's Protestant counsellors; and was in no danger of falling under the delusion that in the controversy of the times all the good was on one side and all the evil on the other.
Equally by nature and education Elizabeth was a woman of broad mind and clear understanding, but, like other people, her conduct was not always dictated by her understanding alone. She was biassed by her inordinate vanity, by her love of power, and not less by her self-will, her taste for display, and not unfrequently by mere feminine caprice and perversity. Added to all this, she stood constantly in most difficult situations, and was swayed by innumerable considerations of safety and policy. Considering the number and the force of the temptations to which she was exposed, the wonder is that her course was not even more erratic than it actually was. In regard to Church matters it was, in truth, singularly consistent. Having accepted the state of things established during the first years of her reign, which allowed a certain latitude of opinion in the more mysterious doctrines of the faith, while it maintained some outward decency and order in the worship of the Church, her constant endeavour afterwards, as we have seen, was to maintain uniformity in externals and to check controversy upon difficult and recondite questions. It is abundantly clear that it was to Elizabeth's personal opposition alone it is due that the
