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went the length, scarcely with any concealment, of affording them 

 pecuniary assistance ; and when the people of the Netherlands at 

 length rose in revolt against the oppressive gorerament of I'hilip, 

 although the refuted the sovereignty of their country, which they 

 offend to her, ahe lent them money, and in various other ways openly 

 expressed her sympathy and goodwill On the other baud, Philip, 

 although he refrained from any declaration of war, and the usua 

 intercom** both commercial and political long went on between the 

 two countries without interruption, was incessant in bU endeavours 

 to undermine the throne of the EuglUh queen, and the order of things 

 at the head of which she stood, by instigating plots and commotions 

 against her authority within her own dominions. He attempted to 

 turn to account in this way the Itoman Catholic interest, which was 

 till so powerful both in England and in Ireland the intrigues 01 

 the Scottish queen and her partisans materially contributing to the 

 same end. 



The history of Mary Stewart ami of the affairs of Scotland during 

 her reign and that of her son must be reserved for a separate article. 

 Bat it is necessary to observe here, that Mary was not merely the 

 head of the Roman Catholic party in Scotland, but as the descendant 

 of the eldest daughter of Henry VII., had pretensions to the English 

 crown which were of a very formidable kind. Although she was 

 kept in confinement by the Kucli-h government after her flight from 

 the bands of her own subjects in 1568, the imprisonment of her 

 person did not extinguish the hopes or put an end to the efforts ol 

 her adherent*. Repeated rebellions in Ireland, in some instances 

 ojwnly aided by supplies from Spain the attempt made by the Duke 

 of Alva in 1569, through the agency of Vitelli, to concert with tlio 

 Kotuan Catholic party the scheme of an invasion of England the 

 lining of the Roman Catholics of the northern counties under the 

 earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland the same year the plot 

 of the Duke of Norfolk with Ridolfi in K.71, for which that unfor- 

 tunate nobleman lost his bead the plots of Throgmortou and 

 Creichtou in 1584, and of Babington in 1586 to omit several minor 

 attempts of the same kind all testified the restlcw zeal with which 

 the various enemies of the established order of things pursued their 

 common end. Meanwhile however events were tending to a crisis 

 hich was to put an end to the outward show of friendship that had 

 been so long kept up between parties that were not only fiercely 

 hostile in their hearts, but had even bren constantly working for each 

 other's overthrow behind the thiu screen of their professions and 

 courtesies. The Queen of Soots was put to death in 1587, by an act 

 of which it is easier to defend the state policy than cither the justice 

 or the legality, lly this time also, although no actual declaration of 

 war bad yet proceeded either from England or Spain, the cause of the 

 ]ople of the Netherlands had been openly espoused by Elizabeth, 

 whose general, the Earl of Leicester, was now at the head of the 

 troops of the United Provinces, as the revolted states called them- 

 selves. An English fleet at the same time attacked and ravaged the 

 Spanish settlements in the West Indies. At last, in the summer of 

 1588, the great Spanish fleet, arrogantly styled the Invincible Aruiadu, 

 sailed for the invasion of England, and, as is noticed below [see the 

 end of this article], was in the greater part dashed to pieces on the 

 coasts which it came to assail. From this time hostilities proceeded 

 with more or less activity between the two countries during the 

 remainder of the' reign of Elizabeth. Meanwhile Henri III., and after 

 his susssination in 1589 the young King of Navarre, assuming the 

 title of Henri IV., at the bead of the Huguenots, had been maintain- 

 ing a desperate contest in France with the Duke of Guise and the 

 League. For some years Elizabeth and Philip remained only spec- 

 talon of the struggle ; but at length they were both drawn to take a 

 principal part in it The French war however, in so far as Elizabeth 

 was concerned, must be considered as only another appendage to the 

 war with Spain ; it wss Philip chiefly, and not the League, that she 

 opposed in France just as in the Netherlands, and formerly in 

 Scotland, it was not the caute of liberty against despotism, or of 

 revolted subjects against their legitimate sovereign, that she sup- 

 ported, or even the cause of Protestantism against Roman Catholici-m, 

 but her own cause against Philip, her own right to the English throne 

 gainst his, or that of the competitor with whom he took part Since 

 the death of Mary of .Scotland, Philip professed to consider himself 

 as the rightful king of England, partly on the ground of his descent 

 from John of Gaunt, and partly in consequence of Mary having by 

 her will bequeathed her pretensions to him should her ton persist in 

 remaining a heretic. Henri IV., having previously embraced Catho- 

 licism, made peace with Philip by the treaty of Vervins, concluded in 

 May 159S; and the death of Philip followed in September of the 

 aine year. But the war between England and Spain was nevertheless 

 still k.pt up. In 1601 Philip HI. sent a force to Ireland, which 

 haded in that country and took the town of Kinsale; and the 



llowing year Elizabeth retaliated by fitting out a naval expedition 

 gainst her adversary, which captured some rich prizes, and otherwise 

 annoyed the Spaniard. Her forces continued to act in conjunction 

 ith thoe. of the Ssvea United Provinces both by MM and laud. 



Elizabeth died on the 24th of March 1603, in the seventieth year of 

 her age and the forty-flfth of her reign. In the very general account 

 to which we have necessarily confined ourselves of the course of 

 public transactions daring the lung period of the English annals with 



which her name is associated, we have omitted all reference to many 

 subordinate particulars, which yet strongly illustrate both her personal 

 conduct and character and the history of her government One of 

 the first request* addressed to her by the parliament after she came 

 to the throne was that she would marry ; but for reasons which were 

 probably various, though with regard to their precise nature we are 

 rather left to speculation and conjecture than possessed of any satis- 

 factory information, she persisted in remaining single to the end of 

 her days. Yet she coquetted with many suitors almost to the last 

 In the beginning of her reign, among those who aspired to h r hand, 

 after she had rejected the offer of Philip of Spain, were Clm. lea, arch- 

 duke of Austria (a younger son of the Emperor Ferdinand L) ; James 

 Hamilton, earl of Arran, the bead of the Protestant party in Scotland ; 

 Krick XIV., king of bweden (whom she bad refused in the reign 

 of her sister Mary) ; and Adolphue, duke of Holstein (uncle to 

 Ferdinand II. of Denmark). "Nor were there wanting at home," 

 adds Camden, ''some persons who fed themselves (as lovers use to do) 

 with golden dreams of marrying their sovereign;" and he mentions 

 particularly Sir William Pickering, " a gentlemen well born, of a 

 narrow estate, but much esteemed for his learning, bis handsome way 

 of living, and the management of some embassies into France and 

 Germany;" Henry, earl of Arundel; and Robert Dudley (afterwards 

 the notorious earl of Leicester), a younger son of the Duke of 

 Northumberland, " restored by Queen Mary to his honour and estate; 

 a person of youth and vigour, and of a hue shape and proportion, 

 whose father and grandfather were not so much hated by the people, 

 but he was as high in the favour of Queen Elizabeth, who out of her 

 royal and princely clemency heaped honours upon him, and saved 

 hit life whose father would have destroyed htr'i." 



Leicester continued the royal favourite till bis death in 15SS, dis- 

 gracing by his profligacy the honours aud grants that were lavished 

 upon him by Elizabeth, who, having appointed him Commander-in- 

 chief of the forces which she sent to the assistance of the Dutch, 

 insisted upon maintaining him in that situation, notwithstanding tlio 

 mischiefs produced by his incapacity and misconduct, and, at tlio 

 perilous crisis of the Spanish invasion, was on the point of constituting 

 him lieutenant-governor of England and Ireland. Camden says th.it 

 the letters-patent were already drawn, when Burghley aud Hattou 

 interfered, aud put a stop to the mattar. Of the foreign princes that 

 have been mentioned, the archduke Charles persisted longest in his 

 suit : a serious negociatiou took place on the subject of the match in 

 1567, but it came to nothing. In 1571 proposals were made by 

 Catherine do' Medici for a marriage between Elizabeth and her sou 

 Charles IX., and afterwards in succession with her two younger sons, 

 Henry, duke of Aujou (afterwards Henri III.), aud Francis, duke of 

 Alt-neon (afterwards Duke of Anjou). The hut match was again 

 strongly pressed some years after; and in 1581 the arrangement for it 

 had been all but brought to a conclusion when, at the lost moment, 

 Elizabeth drew back, declining to sign the marriage articles, after she 

 had taken up the pen for the purpose. Very soon after the death of 

 Leicester, the young Robert Devereux, earl of Escx, whose mother 

 Leicester had married, was taken into the same favour that hail 

 so long enjoyed by the deceased nobleman ; and his tenure of tbe royal 

 partiality lasted, with some intermissions, till be destroyed himself by 

 his own hot-hcadedness and violence. He was executed for a : 

 attempt to excite an insurrection against tbe government in Knl. 

 Elizabeth however never recovered from, this shock ; and she may bo 

 said to have sealed her own sentence of death in signing tbe death- 

 warrant of Essex. 



Both tbe personal character of Elizabeth and the character of her 

 government have been estimated very differently by writers of oppo- 

 site parties. That she bad great qualities will hardly be disputed by 

 any one who duly reflects on the difficulties of the position she occu- 

 pied, the consummate policy aud success with which she directed her 

 course through the dangers that beset her ou all sides, the courage 

 and strength of heart that never failed her, the imposing attitude she 

 maintained in the eyes of foreign nations, and the admiration and 

 pride of which she was the object at home. She was undeniably 

 nudowed with great good sense, aud with a true feeling of what became 

 her place. The weaknesses, and also the more forbidding features of 

 tier character, ou the other baud, are so obvious as scarcely to require 

 to be apecitied. Many of tbe least respectable mental peculiarities of 

 ber owu sex were mixed in her with some of tbe least attractive among 

 those of the other. Her selfishness and her vanity were both intense ; 

 and of tbe sympathetic affections and finer sensibilities of every kind 

 she was nearly destitute. 



Her literary knowledge was certainly very considerable ; but of her 

 compositions (a fow of which are in verse) none are of much value, 

 nor evidence any very superior ability, with the exception perhaps of 

 some of ber speeches to the parliament A list of the pieces attributed 

 M ber may be found in Walpole's ' Royal and Noble Authors.' 



There has been a good deal of controversy as to the proportion in 

 which the elements of liberty and despotism were combined iu the 

 Kngli-h constitution, or iu the practice of the government, in the reign 

 of Elizabeth ; the object of one party being to convict the Stuarts of 

 deviating into a new course iu those exertions of the prerogative and 

 .hat resistance to the popular demands which led to the civil wars of 

 the 17th century, of the other, to vindicate them from that charge, 



