from day to day. Hatfield House, the residence of Elizabeth, was now much more of a Court than St. James's. The dying queen seemed to look on this with indifference; but even in the midst of flattery it sunk deep into the soul of Elizabeth, and when the end of her reign was approaching, she often referred to the circumstance and refused to name a successor.

On receiving Philip's recommendation of Elizabeth, Mary sent the Countess de Feria, formerly Jane Dormer, to her sister with her jewels, and to these were added, by Philip's own order, a very precious casket of his own jewels which he had left at St. James's, and which Elizabeth had greatly admired. By the Countess de Feria, Mary again repeated her solemn injunction that Elizabeth should pay her debts and maintain the Church as established, both of which the countess reported that she swore to do.

On the 17th of November, between four and five o'clock in the morning, her end visibly approaching, at her desire mass was performed in her chamber. At the elevation of the host, she lifted her weary eyes towards heaven, and as the benediction was spoken her head dropped, and she expired in the forty-second year of her age. Cardinal Pole being informed of her decease, expressed his deep satisfaction at the prospect of so speedily following her, and within two and twenty hours also took his mortal departure.

Mary was interred on the north side of Henry VII.'s chapel. No tomb was ever erected to her memory. James I. placed two black tablets with Latin inscriptions to mark the graves of Mary and Elizabeth, and when the Royal vault was opened in 1670, for the funeral of Monk, Duke of Albemarle, the hearts of the two sisters were found in urns.

With all the bigotry of Mary, and the horrors which her concession to the persecuting spirit of her Spanish husband brought upon this country, she had many good and amiable qualities, and had she reached the throne in an age when no religious strife existed, would probably have left a name regarded with much favour by posterity. None of our sovereigns ever maintained a less expensive court. None of them were ever so anxious to avoid unnecessarily taxing the country. When obliged to go to war with France, she regarded the expenditure incurred in a great measure as her own, and in her will treated the remaining debt as if it were her private obligation.

mesnes, that it is now chiefly known by his name. Mary also granted a mansion on Bennet's Hill, near St. Paul's, for the Herald's College, which remains so to this day. She refounded the hospital of the Savoy, which had been confiscated by Henry VIII.; and the ladies of her Court, at her instigation, assisted in furnishing it with beds. But what is a perpetual honour to her memory is, that she was the first to propose a hospital for old or invalid soldiers, and in her will to leave funds for the purpose, which, however, never were appropriated. "Forasmuch," she says, "as there is no house or hospital specially ordained and provided for the relief of poor and old soldiers-namely, of such as have been hurt or maimed in the wars and service of this realm-the which, we think, both honour, conscience, and charity willeth should be provided for; and, therefore, my mind and will is that my executors shall, as shortly as they may after my decease, provide some convenient house within or nigh the suburbs of the City of London, the which house I would have founded and created, being governed with one master and two brethren; and I will that this hospital be endowed with manors, lands, and possessions to the value of four hundred marks yearly.”

In her Court Mary preserved strict morals; and in everything, except in the toleration of religion, she showed a most careful regard to the maintenance of the constitution and the law, in most striking contrast to the practice of her father, and even of her sister Elizabeth. One of the insurgents whom she had pardoned, presented her with a plan by which she might make herself independent of Parliament, and this plan was recommended to her by the Spanish ambassador. She sent, however, for Gardiner, her own chancellor, and putting it into his hand, bade him peruse it, and, as he should answer at the judgment-seat of God, declare his real opinion of it.

Madam," replied Gardiner, on reading it, "it is a pity that so virtuous a lady should be surrounded by such sycophants. The book is naught; it is filled with things too horrible to be thought of." She thanked him, and threw the paper into the fire.

Precisely similar was her conduct when she appointed Morgan Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. "I charge you," she said, "to minister the justice and law indifferently, without respect of persons; and, notwithstanding the old error among you, which will not admit any witness to speak or other matter to be heard in favour of the adversary, the Crown being a party, it is my pleasure that whatever can be brought in favour of the subject may be admitted and heard. You are to sit there, not as advocates for me, but as indifferent judges between me and my people."

Mary was also attentive to the interests of trade. She was the first to make a commercial treaty with Russia, by which the woollen cloths and linens of England were exchanged to great advantage for the skins and furs of northern Muscovy; and she revoked the privileges of the Hanse Town merchants in London, or "merchants of the Steelyard," as they were called, which had been very injurious to the interests of her own subjects.

complete view of her with these modern lights, we are bound to believe that, as a woman, she was naturally mild, but that the persecution of her own faith, in her mother and herself personally, produced a fatal reaction, which yet, had it not been for the more fatal Spanish marriage, would have been to some extent restrained by her better qualities.

CHAPTER XIII.

ELIZABETH.

Accession of Elizabeth-She abolishes the Papal Worship-Makes Peace with France and Scotland-War of the Scottish Reformation-Elizabeth takes part with the Reformers-Supports them through Cecil-The Siege of Leith-Peace-Mary Queen of Scots French Huguenots-Parliament enacts Penal Statutes against the Romanists-The Thirty-nine Articles-Peace with France-Proposals for the Marriage of the Queen of Scots-Elizabeth proposes the Earl of Leicester-Mary marries the Lord Darnley. PARLIAMENT had assembled on the morning of the 17th of November, unaware of the decease of the queen; but, before noon, Dr. Heath, the Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, sent a message to the House of Commons, requesting the Speaker, with the knights and burgesses of the Lower House, to attend in the Lords to give their assent in a matter of the utmost importance. On being there assembled, the lord chancellor announced to the united Parliament the demise of Mary, and, though by that event the Commons were dissolved by the law, as it stood till the reign of William III., he called upon them to combine with the Lords, before taking their departure, for the safety of the country, by proclaiming the Lady Elizabeth the queen of the realm.

leaves France for Scotland-Suitors of Elizabeth-She aids the

Whatever might have been the fears of any portion of the community as to the recognition of the title of Elizabeth on the plea of illegitimacy, or from suspicion of her religion, that question had long been settled by the flocking of the courtiers of all creeds and characters to Hatfield, where she resided; and now on this announcement there was a loud acclamation from the members of both Houses of "God save Queen Elizabeth! Long may she reign over us!"

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Elizabeth was proclaimed at the cross in Cheapside, with the same instant and joyful recognition. The people shouted, "God save the Queen!" The bells from all the churches commenced ringing, bonfires were lit, tables were set out at the doors of the wealthy citizens for the multitude, and wine plentifully distributed. Not only was the death of the late queen forgotten in the universal joy, but all the melancholy circumstances of the time, for most melancholy they were. As we have stated, the season was wet and unhealthy. The fires of Smithfield, under the baleful activity of bloody Bonner, were still blazing; the prisons were crammed with fresh victims; and the power of an incensed Providence seemed to darken the country. The dismal seasons had produced famine, and a terrible fever, supposed to be what is now called typhus, of a most malignant kind, was raging through town and country. So much had it thinned the agricultural population that, combined with the disastrous state of the weather, the harvests had in many places rotted on the ground. Many thousands of the people had perished during four months of the autumn, and amongst them great numbers of the clergy, and no less than thirteen bishops. The joyful news which arrested the hand of the persecutor, seemed like light bursting through the clouds, and gave new hope and spirit to the nation.

For two days Elizabeth, as if from due respect to her deceased sister and sovereign, remained quiescent at Hatfield; but thousands of people of all ranks were flocking thither; and on the 19th her Privy Council proceeded thither also, and, after announcing to her her joyful and undisputed accession, they proclaimed her with all state before the gates of Hatfield House. They then sat in council with her, and she appointed her own ministers, having, no doubt, made all these arrangements with the man whom she had long marked out for her prime minister, Sir William Cecil. This statesman, of the true diplomatic breed, cool as winter's east wind, troubled with no disturbing imagination, no misleading heats of generosity, but far-seeing and subtle, though he could never win the confidence of the late queen, though he had bowed humbly, waited long and diligently, and even renounced his religion to win her favour, had soon caught the sagacious eye of Elizabeth, who had an instinctive perception of men able if not, in the truest sense, great. Cecil had for years been her confidential counsellor. By his shrewd and worldly guidance she had shaped her future course; and in appointing her ministers now, she showed by her address to Cecil that it was for him that she designed the chief post. "I give you," she said, "this charge: That you shall be of my Privy Council, and content yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgment I have of you: that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gift, and that you will be faithful to the State; and that, without respect to my private will, you will give me that counsel which you think best; and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only, and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein; and, therefore, herewith I charge you."

Besides Cecil, she named Sir Thomas Parry, her cofferer, Cave, and Rogers, of her Privy Council, Cecil

immediately entered on the duties of her secretary of state, and submitted to her a programme of what was immediately necessary to be done, which she accepted; and thus began that union betwixt Elizabeth and her great minister, which only terminated with his life.

On the 23rd the new queen commenced her progress towards the metropolis, attended by a magnificent throng of nobles, ladies and gentlemen, and a vast concourse of people from London and from the country round. At Highgate she was met by the bishops, who kneeled by the wayside, and offered their allegiance. She received them graciously, and gave them all her hand to kiss, except to Bonner, whom she treated with a marked coldness, on account of his atrocious cruelties: an intimation of her own intentions on the score of religion which must have given great satisfaction to the people. At the foot of Highgate Hill, the lord mayor and his aldermanic brethren, in their scarlet gowns, were waiting to receive her, who conducted her to the Charter House, then the residence of Lord North, where Heath, the chancellor, and the Earls of Derby and Shrewsbury received her. There she remained five days to give time for the necessary preparations, when she proceeded to take up her residence in the Tower, prior to her

coronation.

Her procession to the Tower marked at once her popularity and her sense of royal dignity. Vast crowds had assembled to see and to cheer her; and she was surrounded by a prodigious throng of nobles, and gentlemen, and ladies. She rode in a chariot along the Barbican to Cripplegate, where the lord mayor and the civic dignitaries were waiting to receive her. There she mounted a horse, being already attired in a rich riding-dress of purple velvet, with a scarf tied over her shoulder, and attended by the sergeant-at-arms. The lord mayor went before her bearing her sceptre, at his side the garter kingat-arms, and followed by Lord Pembroke, who bore the sword of state before the queen. Next to her majesty rode Lord Robert Dudley, who had already so won her fancy that, though one of those who had endeavoured to thrust her sister and herself from the throne, she had appointed him master of the horse. The Tower guns announced her approach, and on entering that old fortress, she said to those about her, "Some have fallen from being princes of this land to be prisoners in this place; I am raised from being prisoner in this place to be prince of this land. That dejection was a work of God's justice, this advancement is a work of his mercy as they were to yield patience for the one, so I must bear myself to God thankful, and to men merciful, for the other."

Elizabeth continued at the Tower till the 5th of December. It was necessary to ascertain how many of the existing Council would go along with her in the changes which she meditated. She soon found that she could not calculate on many of them, and a sort of lesser or confidential council was formed of Cecil, Sadler, Parr, the Marquis of Northampton, Russell, and the Dudleys. Of the old councillors she retained thirteen, who were all professed Papists, though some had only conformed for convenience under the late reign of bigot terror, and she added seven new ones, who all openly professed themselves Protestants. As yet, however, she had not announced those changes which were most likely to try the

principles of her councillors; for she kept a show of Popery, and had not touched on the question of the supremacy. Elizabeth had learned caution in her own trials, and she had now at her elbow the very spirit of circumspection itself in Cecil. For the present she continued to attend mass, and witness all the ceremonies of the old religion. She had her sister, the late queen, interred with the solemnities of the Roman ritual; she had mass performed at the funeral of Cardinal Pole, and a solemn dirge and requiem mass for the soul of Charles V.

Yet these things did not deceive the people, and they were made the less doubtful by all prisoners on account of religion being discharged on their own recognisances, and the exiles for the same cause boldly flocking home, and appearing openly at Court. The Papal dignitaries, by their gross want of good policy, soon forced on a more open demonstration of Elizabeth's real feelings. The Pope himself acted the part of a most shallow diplomatist. Instead of waiting to see whether he could not induce the Queen of England to follow in the steps of her sister, he insulted her in a manner which was sure to drive a high-spirited woman to extremities. The conduct of Paul IV., who was now upwards of eighty, can only be regarded as proceeding from ecclesiastical pique, acting on a failing intellect. Elizabeth had sent announcement to all foreign courts of her accession "by hereditary right and the consent of her nation." She assured the Emperor Ferdinand and Philip of Spain that she was desirous to maintain the alliance betwixt the house of Austria and England; to the German princes, and the King of Denmark she owned her attachment to the Reformed faith, and her earnest wish to form a league of union with all Protestant powers. At Rome, her ambassador, Carne, informed the Pope that his new sovereign was resolved to allow liberty of conscience to all her subjects, of whatever creed. This, however, was by no means palatable to his Holiness, for this toleration was, in fact, an avowal of heresy; and he replied that he could not comprehend the hereditary right of one who was not born in lawful wedlock; that the Queen of Scots was the true legitimate descendant of Henry VII.; but that if Elizabeth would submit her claims to his judgment, he would do her all the justice he could.

At home, and to her very face, the same egregious folly and insult were shown. Dr. White, Bishop of Winchester, preached the funeral sermon of the late queen. Elizabeth was present, and it may be supposed that her astonishment and indignation were great to hear one of her subjects haranguing in this style. The sermon was in Latin, but that language was perfectly familiar to the queen. The bishop gave a highly-coloured history of the reign of Queen Mary, and amongst other subjects of eulogium, was especially loud in his praises of her renunciation of Church supremacy. This was a palpable blow at the new queen, who was about to put the oath of supremacy to the prelates, in order to test them; but this was only a beginning. He declared that Paul had forbidden women to speak in the church, and that, therefore, it was not fitting for the church to have a dumb head. He admitted that the present queen was a worthy person, whom they were bound to obey, on the principle that "a living dog was better than a dead lion;" yet qualifying even this left-handed praise by asserting that the dead