In the Days of Queen Elizabeth Read online

  ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.]

  Makers of England Series

  IN THE DAYS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

  by

  EVA MARCH TAPPAN, PH.D.

  Author of "In the Days of Alfred the Great""In the Days of William the Conqueror" etc.

  Illustrated from Famous Paintings

  Boston:Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

  Copyright, 1902, by Lee and ShepardPublished August, 1902

  All rights reserved

  IN THE DAYS OF QUEEN ELIZABETH

  Norwood PressJ. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & SmithNorwood, Mass. U. S. A.

  PREFACE

  Of all the sovereigns that have worn the crown of England, QueenElizabeth is the most puzzling, the most fascinating, the most blindlypraised, and the most unjustly blamed. To make lists of her faults andvirtues is easy. One may say with little fear of contradiction that herintellect was magnificent and her vanity almost incredibly childish;that she was at one time the most outspoken of women, at another themost untruthful; that on one occasion she would manifest a dignitythat was truly sovereign, while on another the rudeness of her mannerswas unworthy of even the age in which she lived. Sometimes she was thestrongest of the strong, sometimes the weakest of the weak.

  At a distance of three hundred years it is not easy to balance theseclaims to censure and to admiration, but at least no one should forgetthat the little white hand of which she was so vain guided the ship ofstate with most consummate skill in its perilous passage through thetroubled waters of the latter half of the sixteenth century.

  EVA MARCH TAPPAN. _Worcester, March, 1902._

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BABY PRINCESS 1 II. THE CHILD ELIZABETH 20 III. A BOY KING 39 IV. GIVING AWAY A KINGDOM 56 V. A PRINCESS IN PRISON 75 VI. FROM PRISON TO THRONE 95 VII. A SIXTEENTH CENTURY CORONATION 113 VIII. A QUEEN'S TROUBLES 132 IX. ELIZABETH AND PHILIP 150 X. ENTERTAINING A QUEEN 169 XI. ELIZABETH'S SUITORS 188 XII. THE GREAT SEA-CAPTAINS 208 XIII. THE NEW WORLD 227 XIV. THE QUEEN OF SCOTS 245 XV. THE SPANISH ARMADA 263 XVI. CLOSING YEARS 280

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

  PAGE.

  ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND. (_From painting by an unknown artist._) _Frontispiece._

  LADY JANE GREY AND ROGER ASCHAM. (_From painting by J. C. Horsley._) 66

  KENILWORTH IN ELIZABETH'S TIME. (_From an old painting._) 184

  ELIZABETH SIGNING THE DEATH WARRANT OF MARY STUART. (_From painting by Liezen-Mayer._) 220

  MARY STUART RECEIVING HER DEATH SENTENCE. (_From painting by Carl Piloty._) 246

  LAST MOMENT OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS. (_From painting by an unknown artist._) 260

  THE SPANISH ARMADA ATTACKED BY THE ENGLISH FLEET. (_From Pine's engraving of the tapestry formerly in the House of Lords, but destroyed by fire in the eighteenth century._) 274

  LAST MOMENTS OF ELIZABETH. (_From painting by Delaroche._) 288

  In the Days of Queen Elizabeth