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, 
AT 
