QUEEN ELIZABETH. 245 



I 



intrigued to give her a husband, kings and queens watched 

 over her with jealous vigilance to prevent her from having 

 one, and she was treated as a state criminal because she 

 had taken one of her own selection. Both Elizabeth 

 and James treated her with great severity, and her unjust im- 

 prisonment by the latter, undermined her reason and termina- 

 ted her life.* 



HENRIETTA. 



I shall always dislike Elizabeth for her cruelty to Queen 

 Mary. 



MRS. F. 



It is, indeed, a great blot in her character. The relative 

 conduct of the rival queens has give given rise to much con- 

 troversy among historians, some advocating the part of Mary 

 others that of Elizabeth. The character of Elizabeth, as a 

 woman, is much open to censure; her love of admiration, her 

 ungovernable temper, her vanity, her favoritism, all over- 

 shadow a character which, when the circumstances of the 

 times are taken into consideration, must be deemed, in many 

 respects, worthy of admiration as a sovereign. 



HENRIETTA. 



But how very vain she was. I have read that on an indif- 

 ferent engraving being published of her, she desired that all 

 the impressions might be destroyed, that her subjects might 

 not have such an unworthy portrait of their sovereign. 



ESTHER. 



And then with respect to dress, she always wore false hair 

 of a red color, and appeared in a different dress every day of 



* The relationship was thus : 



Henry Darnley, Charles Stuart, Earl of Lennox, 



married Mary Queen of married Elizabeth 



Scotland. Cavendish. 



I I 



James 1. Arabella Stuart. 



21* 



