ELIZABETH 



Queen Elizabeth 



From the painting try f- Zuccaro 



To the last Elizabeth persisted 

 in her refusal to make any pro- 

 nouncement as to her successor on 

 the throne. Besides King James 

 of Scotland, the son of Mary Stuart, 

 there were various living descend- 

 ants of the two sisters of Henry 

 VIII, all of them Protestants, on 

 whose behalf more or less plausible 

 claims might be put forward. 

 There was also a possible claimant 

 in the person of a daughter of 

 Philip of Spain, who claimed de- 

 scent from John of Gaunt. But for 

 Elizabeth to have nominated an 

 heir at any time would have been 

 an inducement to her own assas- 

 sination. Only at the point of death, 

 at Richmond, Mar. 24, 1603, was 

 she said to have approved by a 

 sign the name of the Scottish king. 



No reign in our annals is more 

 glorious than that of Elizabeth. 

 Its extraordinary political success 

 was due in great part to her own 

 extraordinary political intelligence 

 and to the peculiarities of her 

 character. Between good fortune 

 and her own ingenuity she was in- 

 variably provided with some way 

 of escape from every complication 

 which she herself wove, or which 

 was woven about her. In the last 

 resort she deliberately utilised as- 

 sumed feminine weaknesses as 

 justifying the unjustifiable in her 

 conduct. She made full use of the 

 shrewdest brains, the strongest 

 hands, and the stoutest hearts that 

 could be called into her service ; 

 and she never misjudged her ser- 

 vants. But ever she went her own 

 way devious always, not seldom 

 false, not often generous, but never 

 without knowing exactly what she 

 was doing. And exactly what she 

 was doing was what no other 

 living man or woman, including 

 her most intimate advisers, ever 

 knew. She outwitted every states- 



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man in Europe ; none outwitted 

 her. And she raised England from 

 the degradation into which it had 

 fallen under her immediate pre- 

 decessors to the highest rank 

 among nations. 



But it is not only Elizabeth's 

 political success that gives to the 

 Elizabethan era a unique place in 

 history. It was the era in which 

 England sprang suddenly into the 

 position of maritime supremacy, 

 and an era also of such poetic 

 achievement as could be paralleled 

 only by Athens in the past, and 

 once again by England herself 

 early in the 19th century. 



In Elizabeth's reign the English 

 seamen came to their own. They 

 acquired the skill in ocean naviga- 

 tion which gave them a complete 

 ascendancy over the earlier ocean 

 sailors, Spanish and Portuguese. 

 Frobisher and Davis explored the 

 far northern shores of the recently 

 discovered American continent and 

 penetrated deep into the Arctic 

 seas. John Hawkins and many 

 another sea-dog of Devon made 

 the voyage to the Spanish main, 



ELIZABETH 



and learnt to make little account 

 of fighting with Spanish ships of 

 thrice their tonnage. Save the 

 Spaniards and Portuguese, the 

 Englishman, John Oxenham, was 

 the first European to lay keel in 

 the Pacific. Francis Drake was the 

 first captain who sailed the whole 

 way round the world, since the 

 Portuguese Magellan died before 

 his voyage was completed. Before 

 Elizabeth was dead, Cavendish, 

 too, had sailed round the world. 

 The Englishmen who destroyed 

 the Armada first made it manifest 

 that the ship of war should be 

 herself a weapon of war, with 

 sailors, not soldiers, to fight her ; 

 that seamanship is the grand 

 factor in naval warfare, and is the 

 inheritance of Englishmen more 

 than of any other people. The 

 Elizabethan seamen laid the foun- 

 dations both of the commercial 

 and of the naval supremacy of 

 England, though neither was quite 

 decisively established until nearly 

 another century had passed. 



No less astonishing was the 

 literary development of the latter 



Queen Elizabeth. The last scene in the royal palace of Sheen, Richmond, where 

 away, March 24, 1603, in the presence of some of her advisers 



the queen passed away, 



After a painting by P. Delacroix, in the Louvre, Paris 



