ELIZABETH 143 To escape from indignities and persecution at court, Elizabeth was suffered to retire, though carefully watched, to her house of Ashridge, in Buckinghamshire. "Wyat s insurrection, prompted by the rumoured marriage of Mary with Philip of Spain, made her still more an object of suspicion and distrust, as the hopes of the Protestant party were on all occasions turned to Elizabeth. The young princess was taken from Ashridge and privately committed to the Tower. Her death was demanded by some of the bigoted adherents of the court, but Mary dared not and probably did not desire to proceed to this extremity ; Philip, when allied to the English crown, interceded on behalf of the fair captive, and Elizabeth was removed to Woodstock, under care of a fierce Catholic, Sir Heury Bediugfield. Her extreme wariness and circumspection baffled every effort to entrap her. She conformed out wardly to the Catholic Church, opening a chapel in her house at Woodstock, and keeping a large crucifix in her chamber. This conformity was not unnaturally ascribed to dissimulation, but part was probably real. To the end of her life, Elizabeth retained a portion of the old belief. She had always a crucifix with lighted tapers before it in her private chapel; she put up prayers to the Virgin (being, she said, a virgin herself, she saw no sin in this); she disliked all preaching and controversy on the subject of the real presence; and she was zealous almost to slaying against the marriage of the clergy. She was anxious to retain as much as possible of the Catholic ceremonial and the splendid celebrations of the church festivals, which the ardent reformers would gladly have swept away, as had been done in Scotland. The Anglican Church was a compromise. The wretched and inglorious reign of Mary terminated on the 17th of November 1558. Elizabeth heard the news of her accession at Hatfield, and she fell down on her knees exclaiming : A Domino factumest istud, et est mirabile oculis nostris " It is the Lord s doing, it is marvellous in our eyes " words which she afterwards caused to be stamped on a gold coin, impressing on her silver coin another pious motto, Posui Deum aJjutorem meum -" I have chosen God for my helper." All her perils were now passed. The nation received her with unbounded enthusiasm. Church bells were rung, bonfires blazed, tables were spread on the streets, the Protestants exulted with a holy joy. Elizabeth was in her twenty-fifth year when she ascended | the throne. She had been better disciplined and trained for her high trust than most princes, yet the difficulties that surrounded the English crown at this time might well have appalled her. The nation was struggling in a war with France, trade was much decayed, Calais had been lost, and England was distracted by religious divisions and animosities. All Catholic Europe might be expected to be arrayed against the Protestant queen of England. Elizabeth, however, at once chose the better part for herself and the nation. Without waiting for the assembling of her first parliament, she ordered the church service to be read in English, and the elevation of the host to be discontinued. But before this could be known abroad, she had instructed the English ambassador at Piome to notify her accession to the pope. Paul IV., then pontiff, arrogantly replied, that England was a fief of the Holy See, that Elizabeth was illegitimate, and could not inherit the crown, and that she should renounce all her pretensions and submit to his decision. If Elizabeth had ever wavered as to the course she should pursue, this papal fulrnination must have fixed her determination. Twelve years afterwards, a subsequent pope, Pius V., issued a bull releasing English Catholics from their allegiance to the queen, and formally depriving they received, upon the Council s warrant, 13, 6s. 8d. and, " by way of her Majesty s favour," 6, 13s. 4d. in all 20 (Ilalliwell s Illus trations, 1874). her of her title to the throne. But the thunders of the Vatican, like the threats of the Escorial, fell harmless on the English shores. The nation, under its Protestant monarch and her wise counsellors, the Lord-Keeper Bacon, Cecil (afterwards Lord Burghley), Walsingham, Throckmorton, Sir Ralph Sadler, and others, pursued its triumphant course, while its naval strength and glory were augmented beyond all former precedent. The exploits of the gallant sea-rovers Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, the heroic deaths of the brave admirals Gilbert and Grenville, and the transatlantic adventures of Raleigh are still unsurpassed in romantic interest. The government of Elizabeth and the public events of her reign will fall to be recorded in another part of this work, under the head of ENGLAND. Her first parliament passed the famous Acts of Supremacy and Uui formity, which struck directly at the papal power. All clergymen and public functionaries were obliged to renounce the temporal and spiritual jurisdiction of every foreign prince and prelate ; and all ministers, whether beneficed or not, were prohibited from using any but the established liturgy. These statutes were carried out with considerable severity; many Catholics suffered death ; but all might have saved themselves, if they had explicitly denied the right of the pope to depose the queen. The Puritans and nonconformists, on the other hand, were content to bear some portion of the burden of intolerance and oppression, from the consideration that Elizabeth was the bulwark of Protestantism. If they lost her firm hand they lost all ; and the numerous plots and machinations of the Catholics against the queen s life showed how highly it was valued, and how precious it was to Protestant Europe. In the latter part of the queen s reign, her domestic and fiscal regulations were justly open to censure. The abuse of monopolies had grown to be a great evil ; grants of exclu sive right to deal in almost all commodities had been given to the royal favourites, who were exorbitant in their demands, and oppressed the people at pleasure. Elizabeth wisely yielded to the growing strength of the Commons, and the monopolies complained of were cancelled. The monarchy, though as yet arbitrary and in some respects un defined, was still, in essential points, limited by law. One great object of the Protestants was to secure a suc cessor to the throne by the marriage of Elizabeth. The nearest heir was Mary Queen of Scots, a zealous Catholic, who was supported by all the Catholic states, and had os tentatiously quartered the royal arms of England with her own, thus deeply offending the proud and jealous Elizabeth. The hand of the English queen was eagerly solicited by numerous suitors by Philip of Spain, who was ambitious of continuing his connection with England, by the Arch duke Charles of Austria, by Eric king of Sweden, the duke of Anjou, and others. With some of these Elizabeth negotiated and coquetted for years ; to Anjou she seems to have been attached ; but her affections were more deeply touched, as Mr Hallani has remarked, by her favourite Dudley, earl of Leicester. Her early resolution, and that which ultimately prevailed over her weakness or vanity, was, that she should remain single and hold undivided power. To a deputation from the Commons on this-deli- cate subject, she emphatically said she had resolved to live and die a virgin queen : " and for me it shall be sufficient that a marble stone declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin." She appears often to have wavered in her resolution, and, in her partiality for handsome courtiers and admirers, to have forgotten her prudence and dignity. Her partiality for Essex was undis guised it was unhappy for both; and making Hatton chancellor because he could dance gracefully was a bold but not unsuccessful achievement, Elizabeth s fits of rage
were as violent as her fits of love. Her maids of honour