458 THE FELICITIES OF QUEEN ELIZABETH. 



As for this lady she reigned four and forty years 

 complete, and yet she did not survive her felicity. 

 Of this felicity I am purposed to say somewhat; 

 yet without any excursion into praises ; for praises 

 are the tribute of men, but felicity the gift of God. 



First, I reckon it as a part of her felicity, that she 

 was advanced to the regal throne from a private 

 fortune. For this is ingenerate in the nature and 

 opinions of men, to ascribe that to the greatest 

 felicity, which is not counted upon, and cometh 

 unlooked for, but this is not that I intend, it is this, 

 princes that are trained up in their father s courts, 

 and to an immediate and apparent hope of succession 

 do get this by the tenderness and remissness of their 

 education, that they become, commonly, less capable 

 and less temperate in their affections. And there 

 fore you shall find those to have been the ablest and 

 most accomplished kings that were tutored by both 

 fortunes. Such was with us, King Henry the Se 

 venth ; and with the French, Lewis the Twelfth : both 

 which in recent memory, and almost about the same 

 time obtained their crowns, not only from a private, 

 but also from an adverse and afflicted fortune; and did 

 b&th excel in their several ways ; the former in pru 

 dence, and the other in justice. Much like was the 

 condition of this princess, whose blossoms and hopes 

 were unequally aspected by fortune, that afterwards 

 when she came to crown, fortune might prove 

 towards her always mild and constant. For Queen 

 Elizabeth, soon after she was born, was entitled to 

 the succession in the crown, upon the next turn 



