LAMBETH PALACE 



small stretch of the imagination to call up a mental vision of the 

 same place in the days when Elizabeth was Queen. 



And so we will picture her on a certain fine day in the year 1574, 

 when she has come to pay one of her frequent visits to Archbishop 

 Parker, and the bells of Lambeth Church tower are ringing merrily. 

 It is " the time when lilies blow, and clouds are highest up in air; " 

 and as she issues from the shadow of the archway, the sunlight 

 flashes on the jewel in the little green cap that partially conceals 

 her frizzy, red-gold hair. She is mounted on a richly caparisoned 

 palfrey, and its saddle cloth nearly reaches the ground. Her 

 riding coat of green velvet, richly wrought in a diaper pattern with 

 gold and seed pearls, stirred by the movement of the horse, shows 

 a lining of cloth of silver, and we catch a glimpse of a jewelled 

 stomacher, and a heavy rope of pearls. Her ruff to-day is lace- 

 trimmed, but of comparatively modest dimensions ; and her hands 

 are encased in embroidered gloves, over which she wears many 

 rings. She sits with easy dignity in her saddle, and carries her 

 forty-one years lightly ; and it is very easy to see that, like her 

 cousin Mary Stuart, she has been unlucky in her portraitists, for 

 all have given more attention to the last button on her sleeve, than 

 to the force and character in the countenance of the woman in 

 whose reign England first became a world power. She is always 

 represented as a dressed-up wooden doll, with a large aquiline 

 nose, a somewhat hard mouth, and tousled red hair. But mark 

 her as she turns to address a gracious remark to the cavalier in 

 cream-coloured velvet, riding on her left, who is none other than 

 the Earl of Leicester. The severity of mien we associate with the 

 wearer of the portentous ruff and formidable farthingale, is absent 

 now. She has come from Greenwich, and ridden fast to consult 

 my Lord Archbishop on some pressing affairs of State, and the pale 

 skin wears the becoming flush of exercise. She smiles, and there 

 is even fascination in her smile, for is she not Anne Boleyn's 

 daughter ? The severe lines in her face relax, the dark-brown eyes, 

 beneath their curiously heavy lids, brighten. The woman is upper- 

 most now, yet she looks every inch a queen not the queen of starch 

 and whalebone, of tags and finery, compact of vanity and im- 

 periousness, of the National Portrait Gallery, but the " Rose and 

 Lily Queen " of the Tradescent tomb in Lambeth Churchyard. 

 Ah ! depend upon it, there was a lovable side to her nature, since, 



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