E. died on 24th Mar., 1603, having lived nearly 70, and reigned nearly 45 years. If the life of her rival, Mary of Scotland, read somewhat like a tragedy, the private life of E. might afford abundant materials for comedy. Always parading her wish to live an unmarried life, E. coquetted with suitor after suitor till long after that period of life when such proposals verge upon the ridiculous. Of her father's schemes to marry her to the Scotch earl of Arran or to Philip the son of Charles V.—afterwards husband of Mary—it is unnecessary to speak, for E. had perSonally little to say in regard to them. But she was scarcely more than a child when her flirtations with the handsome lord admiral Seymour—the brother of the protector Somerset—had passed the bounds of decorum. In Mary's reign, E. was flattered with the attentions of her kinsman, the earl of Courtenay, and she declined the hand of Philibert of Savoy, pressed on her by her sister's council. When queen, with. some hesitation she refused the offer of Philip II., who was desirous of perpetuating his influence over England, and she began that con nection with Leicester, which so seriously compromised her character. It is certain that she loaded him with honors as soon as she had them to bestow; allowed him to become a suitor for her hand within a few days after the sudden death of his wife, Amy Robsart, attributed by all England to his agency; and allowed him to remain a suitor long after his open profligacy had disgusted the nation, and had even opened her own eyes to his worthlessness. If we credit the scandal of the times, the intimacy was of the most discreditable kind. If we credit those sources of information, recently turned to more profit by Mr. Froude than by any of his predecessors, which are found in the dispatches of the bishop of Aquila, ambassador of Philip II. in London, preserved in the archives of Simancas, not only was the moral character of E. sullied with the darkest crimes, but even the quality for which she has ever been most honored, her English patriotism, was mere affectation. These dispatches represent her as accessory —at least, after the fact—to the murder of Amy Robsart, and as offering to Spain to become a Catholic, and to restore the Spanish ascendency in England, if Philip would support her on the throne as the wife of Leicester;' and they represent her as being restrained from giving way to the fatal consequences of her wild passion only by Cecil's control. That there is some basis of truth in this revelation, it is scarcely possible to deny; but the hatred with which Philip regarded E.. after her refusal to marry him, has undoubtedly led the courtly bishop to gross exaggerations. It is undeniable, however, that had E. followed her own inclinations, she would have married Leicester. Her ministers, wisely for the nation, prevented this, but E. never seriously entertained another proposal. Cecil could prevent her marrying whom he would not, but he could not force her to marry whom he would. Among less distinguished suitors, the arch duke Charles of Vienna, and prince Eric of Sweden, pressed their suit in vain. Petitions from parliament to the queen to marry, only excited her maidenly wrath, and produced dignified replies that she would attend to the matter when the time came. Years passed on, and she remained a spinster. Catharine of Medici, queen-mother of. France, intrigued to marry her to one of her sons, Henry of Anjou (afterwards Henry TIT.), or the duke of Alencon, afterwards duke of Anjou. When the foreign envoys pressed the suit of the latter, E. was 38 years of age, and her suitor 19; but they ingeniously flattered her that she and he looked of the same age, for she, by her good preservation, looked nine years younger than she was; while the duke, by his wisdom, gravity, and mature intellect, looked nine years older. This flattery, with more plausible attractions, was without effect.
E.'s position gave too much scope for"the development of the unamiable and ridicu lous features of her character. The personal vanity displayed in her extravagant dress, her conversation, her "high and disposed" dancing, excites a smile, not lessened when we read of the irritable mistress boxing the ears of her councilors, cuffing her attend ants, indulging in expressive masculine oaths, and amusing herself with rough masculine sports. The assertion that she was of a cruel disposition is false. That she could do
cruel things when her vanity was concerned is sufficiently attested by her ordering the right hand of a barrister, named Stubbes, to be struck off for writing a remonstrance against her marriage with the duke of Alencon, which she thought unduly reflected on herself ; but in her reign, the reckless waste of human life which marked the reigns of her predecessors was unknown. She was not, however, of fine feelings. Her brother could compliment her on the calm mind and elegant sentences with which she replied to the communication of the death of her father. On the news' of her sister's death, she burst out with rhapsodical quotations from the Psalms; and when she beard of the execution of her lover Seymour, she turned away the subject with something like a jest. By her attendants, she was more feared than loved. The one quality which never failed her, was personal courage; and when she chose, her demeanor was stately and royal. Religion was with her, as with a great proportion of the nation at that time, a matter more of policy and convenience than of feeling or principle. She preferred Protestant ism, from early associations, because it gave her the headship of the,church, freed her from foreign interference, and was more acceptable to her ministers and to the nation. But she had conformed in Mary's time to Catholicism with little difficulty; and, had there been necessity for it, she would rather have reigned a Catholic than not have reigned at all. To the last, she retained in her private chapel much of the ritualism of the Roman church; and while refusing her Catholic subjects the exercise of their reli gion, she entertained the addresses of Catholic suitors. How thoroughly incapable she was of appreciating a matter of religious principle may be gathered from the fact, that she looked upon.Viegreat gioveTent, destines,, pon afterwArds to play so impor tant a part in the nation's development, as some frivolous controversy about the shape of clerical vestments. Of toleration, then well enough understood by Bacon and the more advanced spirits of the age, she had no conception.
What makes the name of E. so famous, was the splendor of her times. In her long reign, the true greatness of England began. Freed from the possession of those French provinces which rather harassed than enriched—with little domestic commotion—with no great foreign wars—with an almost complete immunity from religious persecution, the nation turned to the arts of peace. An unequaled literature arose. The age that produced Spenser, Shakespeare, and Bacon could not be other than famous. Frobisher and Drake, maritime adventure began, and the foundations of our naval force were laid. Commerce, from being a small matter in the hands of a few foreign mer chants, developed itself largely. The exchange of London was opened in E.'s time; and in the charter which she granted to that company of merchant adventurers, which afterwards took the name of the East India company, may be seen one of the small beginnings of our vast colonial empire. The social condition of the people also greatly improved in her reign. The crowds of vagabonds which the monastic institutions had fostered, and who had pillaged the country in all ways on the secularization of the monastic property, died out, or were absorbed in industrious employments. The last traces of bondage disappeared. Simultaneously with the growth of greater comfort and intelligence in the people, parliament began to assert, with greater vigor, its constitu tional rights. The right of the commons to free speech, and to initiate all money-bills, was steadily asserted, and the right of the crown to grant monopolies, or to issue proc lamations having the force of law, vigorously assailed. In the later years of her reign, the attempts of E. to gain arbitrary 'Sower, and her caprices, had forfeited the popular ity which she so anxiously cultivated. But after her death, her fame revived; and during the time of the Stuarts, amid the jealousy of the Scotch, the troubles of the civil wars, and the hatred of a Catholic sovereign, the nation looked back with fond regard to the long reign of the " Good Queen Bess," when peace had prevailed, and the gov ernment had been thoroughly English.