ELIZABETH, Queen of England, the daughter of Henry VIII. by his second wife, Anne Boleyn, was born at Greenwich, 7th of September 1533. She was not three years old therefore when her mother was brought to the block in May 1536. Very soon after her birth it was declared, by the Act 25 Henry VIII., c. 22, that if Queen Anne should decease without issue male, to be begotten of the body of the king, then the crown, on the death of the king, should go "to the Lady Elizabeth, now princess, and to the heirs of her body lawfully begotten." By this act therefore Henry's female issue by his present queen was placed in the order of succession before the male issue he might have by any future wife. By the 28 Henry VIII., c. 7, however, passed after his marriage with Jane Seymour, his two former marriages were declared to be unlawful and void, and both Elizabeth and her elder sister Mary were bastardised. But finally, by the 35 Henry VIII., c. 1, passed soon after his marriage with his last wife, Catharine Parr, it was declared that if Prince Edward should die without heirs, then the crown should remain first to the Lady Mary, and, failing her, to the Lady Elizabeth. This was the last legal settlement of the crown, by which her position was affected, made previous to Elizabeth's accession; unless indeed she might be considered to be excluded by implication by the Act 1 Mary, at. 2, o. 1, which legitimatised her sister Mary, declared the validity of Henry's first marriage, and pronounced his divorce from Catherine of Aragon to be void.
In 1535 a negociation was entered into for the marriage of Elizabeth to the Duke of Angouleme, the third son of Francis I. of France ; but it was broken off before any agreement was come to. In 1546 also Henry proposed to the Emperor Charles V., with the view of breaking off a match then contemplated between the emperor's son, the prince of Spain, afterwards Philip II., with a daughter of the French king, that Philip should marry the Princess Elizabeth; but neither alliance took place. Elizabeth's next suitor, though he does not seem to have formally declared his pretensions, was the protector Somerset's unfortunate brother, the Lord Seymour of Sudley. He is said to have made some advances to her even before his marriage with Queen Catharine Parr, although Elizabeth was then only in her fourteenth year. Catharine, 'who died a few months after her marriage (poisoned, as many supposed, by her husband), appears to have been made somewhat uncomfortable while she lived by the freedoms the princess continued to allow Sudley to take with her, which went beyond ordinary flirtation; the scandal of the day indeed was, that "the Lady Elizabeth did bear some affection to the admiral." After his wife's death he was accused of having renewed his designs upon her hand ; and it was part of the charge on which he was attainted that he had plotted to seize the king's person and to force the princess to marry him ; but his executiou in the course of a few months stopped this and all his other ambitious schemes.
In 1550, in the reign of Edward VI., it was proposed that Elizabeth should be married to the eldest sou of Christian III. of Denmark; but the negociation seems to have been stopped by her refusal to consent to the match. She was a favourite with her brother, who
used to call her his 'sweet sister Temperance ;' but he was never theless prevailed upon by the artful aud interested representations of Dudley to pass over her, as well as Mary, in the settlement of the crown which he made by will a short time before his death. [Enwaan Camden gives the following account of the eitnation and employ ments of Elisabeth at this period of her life, in the introduction to his history of her reign. She was both, he says, "in great grace and favour with King Edward, her brother, as likewise in singular esteem with the nobility and people; for she was of admirable beauty, and well deserving a crown, of • modest. gravity, excellent wit., royal soul, happy memory, and indefatigably given to the study of learning; insomuch, as before she was seventeen years of ago she understood well the Latin, French, and Italian tongues, and had an indifferent knowledge of the Greek. Neither did she neglect music, so for as it became a princess, being able to sing sweetly, and play handsomely on the lute. With Roger who was her tutor, she read over Melancthon'a 'Common-Places,' all Tully, a great part of the histories of Titus Livius, certain select orations of Isocrates (whereof two she turned into Latin), Sophoeles's Tragedies, and the New Testament in Greek, by which means she both framed her tongue to a pure and elegant way of speaking, ke." (' English Translation in Kennet's Collection.) It appears from what Amhara himself tells us in his 'Schoolmaster' that Elizabeth continued her Greek studies after she asceuded the throne : "After dinner" (at Windsor Castle, 10th December 1563), he rays, "I went up to read with the Queen's Majesty : we read there together iu the Greek tongue, as I well remember, that noble oration of Demosthenes against rEschines for his false dealing in his embassage to king Philip of Macedonia." On the death of Edward, Camden says that an attempt was made by Dudley to induce Elizabeth to resign her title to the crown for a sum of money, and certain lands to be settled on her : her reply was, " that her elder sister, the Lady Mary. was first to be agreed withal ; for as long as the said Lady Mary lived else, for her part, could challenge no right at alL" Burnett asp that both she and Mary, having beau allured by messages from Dudley, who no doubt wished to get them into his hands, were on their way to town, when the news of Edward's approaching end induced them to turn back. When Mary came to London after being proclaimed queen, the Lady Elizabeth went to moot. her with 500 horse, according to Camden, others say with 2000. Fox, the martyrologist, relates that "Queen Mary, when she was first queen, before she was crowned, would go no whither, but would have her by the hand, and send for her to dinner and supper." At Mary's coronation, in October 1553, according to Holinshed, as the queen rode through the city towards Westminster, the chariot in which she sat was followed by another " having a covering of cloth of silver, all white, and six horde trapped with the like, wherein sate the Lady Elizabeth and the Lady Anne of Cleve." Another account says that Elizabeth carried the crown on this occasion.