BOOK VII.

ENGLAND AFTER THE ARMADA.

 

CHAPTER I.

ENGLISH LIFE IN ELIZABETH'S REIGN.

 

 

The repulse of the Spanish Armada marks the period in Elizabeth’s reign when the national spirit rose to its highest point. England, which had long been weighed down by doubts and fears, awoke to a consciousness of its true position. Internal conflicts and differences of opinion ceased to be of importance in face of the great danger which threatened all alike. Englishmen felt, as they had never done before, their community of interests, their real national unity. Hatred of Spain became a deep feeling in the English mind, and when combined with religious zeal and the desire for adventure produced that spirit of restless and reckless daring which so strongly marks the English character at this time. Nowhere is the outcome of awakened national feeling more finely expressed than in the lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the dying Gaunt :

This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,

This other Eden, demi paradise:

This fastness built by Nature for herself

Against Infection, and the hand of war;

This happy breed of men, this little world :

This precious stone, set in the silver sea,

Which serves it in the office of a wall

Or as a moat defensive to a house,

Against the envy of less happier lands.

Moreover England under Elizabeth's careful rule had rapidly increased in wealth and prosperity. It was free from war when all the rest of Europe was engaged in deadly struggle. The queen was thrifty and provident, so that industry was not crippled by heavy taxes. The troubles in the Netherlands threw great commercial advantages into the hands of the English which they were not slow in using. Increasing national prosperity went together with increasing national spirit, and England made rapid strides during the eventful forty-five years of Elizabeth’s reign. One way in which this showed itself was in the great advance of literature. Men’s tongues seemed to be loosened; they felt and expressed interests of every kind. No longer were some things only of importance, but all things that concerned man and his life and feelings were felt to be worthy of record. Hence it is that we know so much more of Elizabeth’s times than we do of those that went before, and that we have materials for a sketch of the social life and manners of the people.

The increase of wealth produced a greater desire for comfort, and Elizabeth’s reign was marked by a great progress in all the refinements and appliances of daily life. Amongst the nobles the sense of peace and security, joined with the desire for greater grandeur, led to a change in the character of their residences. The fortified castle was re-modeled into a palace, though still retaining its old appearance. This was the case with Kenilworth Castle, inside whose frowning battlements was a magnificent palace with every requirement of luxury.

New mansions were also erected all over England by the gentry who wished to live in a manner suitable to their dignity. No age has left a more decided mark on our domestic architecture than the age of the Tudors. The Gothic architecture of the middle ages had given way before the revival of the classical style which spread from Italy. The mixture of Gothic and classical architecture produced the stately yet simple Elizabethan mansions of which such admirable examples remain in Hatfield, Longleat, Audley End, Holland House, and Knowle. Country houses generally were built of brick or stone instead of wood; glass took the place of lattices. “Of old time”, says Harrison in his Description of England, “our country houses instead of glass did use much lattise, and that made either of wicker or fine rifts of oke in checkerwise. But now our lattises are also grown into less use, because glass is come to be so plentiful, and within a very little so good cheap if not better than the other. The walls of our houses on the inner side be either hanged with tapestries, arras work, or painted cloths, wherein either diverse histories, or herbs, beasts, and such like are stained, or else they are sealed with oke of our own or wainscot brought hither out of the east countries. As for stoves we have not hitherto used them greatly, yet doo they now begin to be made in diverse houses of the gentry”.'When the Spaniards in Queen Mary’s days saw the English houses, they said, “These English have houses made of sticks and dirt, but they fare commonly as well as the king”. This reproach was no longer true in Elizabeth’s time.

The luxury of comfort also made rapid progress.

“There are old men”, says Harrison, “yet dwelling in the village where I remain, which have noticed increase of three things to be marvelously altered in England in this remembrance. One is the multitude of chimneys lately erected, whereas in their young days there were not above two or three, if so many, in uplandish towns of the realm. Another is the great amendment of lodging, for our fathers have lien full oft upon straw pallets, and a good round log under their heads instead of a bolster or pillow. The third thing they tell of, is the exchange of vessel, as of trine (wooden) platters into pewter, and wooden spoons into silver or tin. Such also was their poverty, that if some one od farmer or husbandman had been at the alehouse among six or seven of his neighbors, and there in bravery to show what store he had, did cast down his purse, and therein six shillings of silver, it was very likely that all the rest could not lay down so much against it; whereas in my time the farmer will think his gains very small towards the end of his term, if he have not six or seven years rent lying by him, beside a fair garnish of pewter on his cupboard, with so much more in od vessels going about the house, three or four feather beds, so many coverlids and carpets of tapestry, a silver salt, a bowie for wine, and a dozen spoons to furnish up the suite”.

The rich furniture and decorations of the rooms in noblemen's houses is described by Shakespeare in Cymbeline :—

Her bedchamber was hanged

With tapestry of silk and silver : the story

Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman,

And Cydnus swelled above the banks, or for

The press of boats, or pride : a piece of work

So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive

In workmanship and value. The chimney

Is south the chamber ; and the chimney-piece

Chaste Dian bathing. The roof of the chamber

With golden cherubins is fretted ; her andirons

(I had forgot them) were two winking Cupids

Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely

Depending on their brands.

Carpets were not yet much known or used, and the floors were strewed with rushes; thus Romeo says :—

Let wantons light of heart

Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels.

In food, and in the exercise of hospitality, the English were profuse. “The usual fare of a gentleman”, says Harrison, “was four, five, or six dishes when they have but small resort. There were many kinds of meat, and for a man to taste of every dish that stand before him is rather to yield unto a conspiracy with a great deal of meat for the speedy suppression of natural health, than the natural use of a necessary means to satisfy himself with a competent repast to sustain his body withal”. The great men dined in state at a high table in their hall, while their dependants sat at lower tables; the remnants of their dinner were given to the poor. Venetian glass, which was a rarity, was the favorite substance of their drinking vessels. Fifty-six sorts of French wines were imported into England, and thirty kinds of Italian, Greek, Spanish, and Canary wines. Drunkenness was then, as always a characteristic feature of the English people. China dishes and plates were beginning to be known. Knives for eating purposes only began commonly to take the place of fingers in 1563, and forks were not used before 1611. The times for meals were strangely different from our present custom; the gentry dined at eleven and supped at five, the farmers dined at one and supped at seven.

Dress was remarkable in this age for its splendor and magnificence; the vanity of the queen set an example of profusion which was almost universally followed, and which excited the anger of many Puritan satirists. Even then the English had no distinctive dress of their own, but followed foreign fashions without much taste. Every kind of dress was in vogue, and on great occasions there was a strange mixture of costumes. French, German, and Spanish dresses varied with Moorish gowns and barbarian sleeves. Different patterns were adopted for dressing the hair and trimming the beard. Some men wore earrings, “whereby they imagine the workmanship of God to be not a little amended”. Ruffs made of lawn or cambric were worn by both sexes; they were stiffened with starch and wire and were edged with gems. Queen Elizabeth left at her death a wardrobe of three thousand gowns, made of the richest materials; they were of enormous bulk, and were stuffed and padded so as to stand off from the body. Gentlemen’s breeches and doublets were similarly padded to an uncomfortable size; over these they wore cloaks “of silk, velvet, damask, or other precious stuff”, embroidered with gold or silver and buttoned at the shoulder. It was not uncommon for a courtier to “put on a thousand oaks and an hundred oxen into a suit of apparel, to wear a whole manor on his back”.

The title of ‘merrie England’ was not a meaningless one in Elizabeth’s time. Nothing can give a stronger testimony to the strength of the wave of Puritan feeling which swept over England in the next century than to see how entirely it destroyed the many games and festivities which before were common throughout the land, and so stamped upon English life the somewhat hard and joyless aspect which it still wears. In the country the festivities of Christmas, New Year's Day, Twelfth Night, Plough Monday, Candlemas, Shrove Tuesday, Easter, May Day, and many others, were all celebrated with curious pageants and old traditional customs of merry-making. Each district had some historic festival which it commemorated by some rude pageant. The Morris dancers, Maid Marian and Little John, the show of the Hobbyhorse and the Dragon, and other performances of that kind, awoke the anger of the Puritans, who saw in them remnants of paganism and superstition. Sundays were the holidays of the week, when every village had its games and social recreations. Wakes, fairs, and weddings were all occasions of sports and jollity.

Dancing, archery, and bear-baiting were favorite amusements in the capital. There the fashionable promenade was the middle aisle of St. Paul's life in cathedral, where the young man of fashion would order his tailor to meet him with patterns; for the dark little shops were ill-suited for the display of goods. There by his remarks in public the dandy could get credit for his taste from passers-by before he appeared in his new suit at all. Before dinner he walked in one dress, after dinner he returned in another. If he wished to attract especial attention he mounted the steps of the quire while service was going on. That was forbidden, and one of the quire boys at once left his place to exact a fine; then could the dandy amaze the congregation by the splendor of his ‘perfumed embroidered purse’, from which in a lordly way he would ‘quoit into the boy's hands that it was heard above the first lesson, although it were read in a voice as big as one of the great organs’. After this edifying display he would look into the bookseller's if he were of a literary turn of mind; if not, he would visit the tobacconist’s; for tobacco, which was first brought to England by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1586, had already become popular.

As an amusement for the evening was the theatre, which first sprang into popularity during Elizabeth’s reign. The stirring bustling time awoke an interest in the display of the activity and power of human life. The spirit of adventure felt a desire for satisfaction in the contemplation of the struggles of men against destiny, of the soul against its surroundings. The bands of players kept by the queen and noblemen for the performance of masques and pageants at their own festivities began to give public performances. The people needed something to supply the old Miracle Plays which the Reformation had stopped. Public theatres quickly increased in number. At first they were rude enough, and were in shape reproductions of the courtyard of an inn, which first had been the place for dramatic representations. The ‘groundlings’ of the pit stood unprotected from the weather; the boxes and the stage only were covered. The stage was divided into two parts by a balcony, and thus a simple kind of scenery was secured. At first plays were only allowed on Sunday evenings, but soon the players ‘made four or five Sundays every week’. A penny or two-pence admitted to the pit and gallery; a shilling to the more privileged parts of the house. There were no women actors, and female parts were always performed by boys; but the spectators needed few external helps to give the words a meaning, and rouse their interest in the problem of human life and passion which the drama brought before them.

As regards the ordinary occupations of the English, commerce and naval enterprise greatly increased the number of those who could find industrial employment. As a consequence of this distress amongst the poor population in the country slowly diminished. The sturdy beggars who, during the last three reigns had infested the country almost like banditti, were more easily put down in quieter times. The first step towards dealing with them fairly was to make provision for those who were really sick and destitute. A weekly collection was made in all parish churches for the benefit of the poor of the parish. When this was insufficient the justices were empowered to make an assessment for the purpose. Workhouses and hospitals began gradually to be built. Finally the system of parish relief for the poor was established on the present basis by a statute passed in 1601, which enacted that houses of correction be erected in every county, and provided for the maintenance of the poor by means of a rate, which was to be collected and distributed by overseers of the poor. In this way poverty was provided for, and the number of vagrants began slowly to decrease. But severity was still used against them, and not less than 300 of these disturbers of the peace were hanged yearly. It is computed that there were no fewer than 10,000 of these vagabonds in England, engaged sometimes in begging, with many devices to excite compassion, sometimes thieving, sometimes infesting the roads in bands, and using violence to the passers by. Their number diminished but slowly, as it was not easy for them to get employment. There was no great increase in the demand for agricultural laborers, and in the towns trade was rigidly guarded by the guilds. No man could practice a craft who was not a member of a guild, and had not served a regu­lar apprenticeship. The apprentices were a powerful body in London; they were always ready to interfere in a disturbance, and the cry of 'Clubs!' would bring forth a small army of them, ready to take part in any riot that arose.

The occupations for aspiring gentlemen are noted by Shakespeare :

Men of slender reputation

Put forth their sons to seek preferment out:

Some to the wars to try their fortunes there;

Some lo discover islands far away :

Some to the studious universities.

To these we must add the difficult and perilous road to Fortune by seeking court favor. Those whose position did not give them this opportunity, or who chafed under its restrictions, could find employment in the Netherlands, in France, or in naval expeditions against Spain. Others could go on voyages of discovery either in the Arctic regions or in the Indian seas. Those who preferred more studious pursuits studied in Paris, in Germany, or in Italy. Italy especially still exercised a powerful influence, over which the English moralists bewail. “There be the enchantments of Circe”, says Roger Ascham, “brought out of Italy to mar men's manners in England, much by example of ill life, but more by precepts of fond books”.

 

CHAPTER II.

THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE.

 

Amid the varied activity of Elizabeth’s reign, English literature burst forth in its most vigorous form. No subject is more profitless for speculation than an attempt to assign the causes for literary activity. But one thought certainly suggests itself. Literature is concerned with the expression of individual thought, and the age which from any circumstances or conditions forces upon man the conception of his own individual power and force, prompts him also to express that conception in the most forcible language. We have seen how the age of Elizabeth brought upon England a consciousness of its national greatness, and awoke in the minds of individual Englishmen a feeling of their own power. Men felt the greatness of the world and the importance of the issues before them; they felt also in those adventurous days how much each man could do for himself. Their ambition was boundless, and success awaited their own courage or cleverness or address. They felt their own importance and they knew their own strength.

Moreover, with increased leisure and increased comfort men had more time for cultivation. The revival of increase of letters which had begun in Italy in the preceding century had been slow in taking root in England. The troubled times had prevented the spread of learning, and Germany and France had advanced more rapidly than England. Grammar schools had been established by Henry VIII and Edward VI, and slowly produced their fruit. But under Mary learning had decayed; the universities were almost at their lowest point, for knowledge was sacrificed to disputation, and the fear of persecution cramped the freedom of thought. Under Elizabeth the universities at once began to revive; the queen was most anxious for their progress, and encouraged them by her presence.

The influence of Italian literature soon made itself felt in England. Already, under Henry VIII, had sprung up two 'courtly makers' as Puttenham called them, the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyat, “who having travelled into Italy, and there tasted the sweet and stately measures of the Italian poesy, greatly polished our rude and homely manner”. They introduced the sonnet, so well adapted to the expression of amorous conceits, which since then has held a chief place among our forms of poetical composition. Surrey also introduced blank verse in his translation of the second and fourth books of Virgil’s Eneid. Translations rapidly increased in number. Harrington translated Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Fairfax, Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, and Chapman, Homer’s Iliad.

There was a greater desire for knowledge about England’s history. Archbishop Parker set an example if diligence in rescuing from destruction the Historical records and documents which had been dispersed by the dissolution of the monasteries. Holinshed, aided by Harrison and others, compiled his Chronicles, which show at all events a larger interest than had yet been felt. Stow was a diligent antiquary who travelled on foot through England to examine manuscripts, and whose Survey of London is still the source of our knowledge of the early history of that city. With true antiquarian zeal Stow wasted his substance, neglected his business, and spent all his money in his favorite pursuit. At the accession of James I we find him reduced to want in his old age, and receiving from the king a permission to ask alms from the churches. Hakluyt was so impressed with the geographical value of the voyages then being made by the English that he collected and published the narratives of travelers. As Elizabeth’s reign went on, enquiry increased and took a broader form. William Camden, head master of Westminster School, published his Britannia, an antiquarian geography of Britain; after Elizabeth’s death he wrote a history of her reign which shows a great advance upon previous contemporary annalists in breadth of view and political insight. Daniel’s History of England, Knolles’ History of the Turks, and Sir Walter Raleigh’s History of the World, show an enlarged conception of historical writing, which was altogether new in England, and from which the rise of critical history can really be traced.

The influence of Italian models was not entirely beneficial. All conscious efforts at imitation lead to affectation and pedantry; too great attention to style makes words be valued at the expense of thought. Obscurity took the place of clearness, and the desire to clothe a thought in a recondite image or far-fetched allusion was stronger than the wish to express the thought itself. Some of the simpler writers in the early part of Elizabeth’s reign complain bitterly of these foreign affectations. Roger Aschani, the tutor of Elizabeth and Lady Jane Grey, in vain lays down the rule—“He that will write well in any tongue must speak as the common people do, and think as wise men do; so should every man understand him, and the judgment of wise men allow him. Many English writers have not done so, but using strange words, as Latin, French, and Italian, do make all things dark”. Aschani, himself a man of strong common sense, was Elizabeth’s Latin secretary. He is known as the author of the Schoolmaster, the first treatise on classical education in the English language, and of Toxophilus, an elegant little dialogue on archery. Again, Thomas Wilson tried by his criticisms of style to stop the obscurity of expression which came from following foreign models extravagantly. “Some seek so far outlandish English, that they forget altogether their mother's language. Some far-journeyed gentlemen, at their return home, like as they love to go in foreign apparel, so will they powder their talk in over­sea language. The mystical wise men and poetical clerks will speak nothing but quaint proverbs and blind allegories : delighting much in their own darkness, especially when none can tell what they do say”.

This affected style reached its highest point in Lyly’s Romance of Euphues, published in 1579- The story is but slight, and is concerned with a young Athenian gentleman, who lives first at Naples and then in England; it is used merely as a thread to bind together a number of remarks and reflections on love, education, friendship, and other points. The style is antithetical and inflated; but there is much fineness of thought running through the book. It was written for ladies : “Euphues had rather lie shut in a lady's casket than open in a scholar’s study”. In this aspiration Lyly succeeded; the ladies of the court all became his scholars. A new style of speaking, called after its founder Euphuism, became fashionable and prevailed among the courtiers. Shakespeare satirized Euphuism in his earliest play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, in the character of the superfine Don Armado, while in Holofernes he shows us the other tendency, towards pedantry, which was engaged in spoiling the English tongue. Euphuism owed its great success to the patronage of the queen. It suited Elizabeth’s character to express herself in quaint conceits, which by their length seemed to be a careful statement, while through their obscurity they were without meaning. To be decorous and impressive without committing herself decidedly to any definite action, was exactly what Elizabeth delighted in.

Sir Philip Sidney marked the return to a soberer and more straightforward style. Sidney’s earliest literary effort was a masque, The Queen of the May, in which the pedantic and affected talk was caricatured and ridiculed. His romance of Arcadia was written immediately after the appearance of Lyly’s Euphues, but showed a great advance in manner of composition. The story was more continuous, and the teaching was not so much conveyed by direct moralizing as by the incidents and situations of the story itself. The setting, however, is a perplexing mixture of chivalrous and classical surroundings; and though Sidney ridiculed pedantry he could not avoid many extravagances and much that is far-fetched both in style and matter. Perhaps the only pure work of Elizabeth’s time which has escaped the prevailing affectation is Sidney’s Defence of Poesie, a noble and graceful treatise on the power of imagination, and a vindication, as against the Puritan tendencies of the time, of its lawful uses. “Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done, neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too much loved earth more lovely. Her world is brazen; the poets only deliver a golden”. “I never heard the old song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trumpet”. In passages such as this we feel the fullness of joy in life and beauty, the depth and quickness of feeling, the nobility and force of spirit, which enabled the men of Elizabeth's time to do great things both in life and literature.

English prose writing went on through a course of purification and amplification throughout Elizabeth’s reign. Puttenham’s Art of Poesie, which appeared in 1589, was an attempt at serious criticism. Its author tries to mediate between pedantry and barbarism, to show how the English language may be enriched without being encumbered. But the practical example how this could be achieved was given by Francis Bacon, whose Essays, first published in 1597, show a mixture of fancy and clearness which was new in English literature. These “brief notes, set down significantly rather than curiously”, as their author says of them, show the effect which the political life of Elizabeth’s time had exercised in maturing reflection and calling into life political wisdom. They are full of pregnant remarks on government; they show a keen analysis of the laws of the forces at work in human society, and of the motives by which men are influenced in their common actions. They are incisive, clear, and condensed. Bacon had freed himself from all affected forms of expression. His imagination is fervent yet restrained; his imagery is abundant yet carefully selected with a view to clearness; he is grave, serious, and thoughtful; his language is chosen to give force and clearness to his thought. His style is not yet quite easy or flowing, but is concise and dignified. Bacon’s Essays will always rank as one of the standard models of English style.

But Bacon has a still greater place in English literature; he first clearly set forth the claims of inductive philosophy as against the old methods of metaphysical speculation. He asserted that knowledge was to be found by careful investigation of nature, not by spinning cobwebs of the brain. He turned men from disputations of words to an observation of the world around them. Bacon’s method was faulty, as was natural for a beginner; but modern science has still to point to him as the man who first brought into due prominence the principles on which its method was to be founded. His great work, in which these ideas were first set forth, was not published till 1620, but it marks the fruits which the increased knowledge of the world in Elizabeth's reign had been slowly bearing in a thoughtful mind.

The great glory, however, of Elizabethan literature are the poets and dramatists. It was in the forms of the imagination that the new spirit of England first found its most congenial expression. Every kind of poetical composition began to advance. To write verses was a necessary accomplishment of every gentleman; no love-making could be carried on without a plenteous flow of amorous verse.

The lover

Sighing like furnace, with a woful ballad

Made to his mistress' eyebrow

is reproduced in all the poetry of the time. Partly the fashion was copied from the sonnets of Petrarch, which were devoted to the expression of changing phases of his pining love for Laura. But the fashionable forms were soon filled with the language of real feeling. The men of Elizabeth’s times neither acted nor felt sluggishly. Their full and ardent natures felt and spoke strongly; sometimes in tones of passionate desire, sometimes with delightful fancies which sprung from delicate and tender thought. Sometimes the Elizabethan poets weave a sweet fancy into the rigorous forms of the sonnet; sometimes they transport themselves and their love from the dull region of common life, and in a realm of faintly imaged peace and simplicity pour forth their pastoral songs. Sometimes again the memory of old tales of love stirs them to tell again with living feeling the story of lovers’ fortunes in bygone times.

Amongst these love-poets we may notice Sir Philip Sidney, who began to sing his lady's praises in studied and artificial forms: gradually he burst through his trammels and learned to be more natural :

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe,

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,

Oft turning others' leaves to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sun-burnt brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay.

At last the happy revelation came to the laboring student,—

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,

'Fool,' said my Muse to me, 'look in thy heart and write.

His sonnets and his songs are full of delicate fancies, and express in new and varied imagery the changing moods of his own mind.

If Italy taught Elizabethan writers the sonnet as the expression of love, no less powerful was the influence of the Italian epics of Ariosto and Tasso. We have seen how soon these poems were translated into English, where they soon produced a follower in Edmund Spenser, whose poem of the Faerie Queen is the great epic of Elizabethan England. Spenser was educated at Cambridge, and began life under the patronage of the Earl of Leicester and his nephew Sidney. In 1580 he went to Ireland as secretary to the viceroy. There he spent almost all the rest of his days, living for the most part at Kilcolman, near Cork, where he had received a grant of three thousand acres of land. In 1598 his house was burned down in Tyrone’s rebellion, and he was compelled to flee to England. He died in London in the following year. Though living in the seclusion of Ireland he took a deep interest in English affairs. His great friend was Sir Walter Raleigh, whom in his poem—Colin Clout's come home again, he celebrates as the Shepherd of the ocean, while Sidney's untimely death is bewailed in the elegy of Astrophel. Spenser’s poems are all animated by his own religious views. We see in them the force of the early Protestant feeling, the hatred of Romanism as being the source of error, the devotion to Elizabeth as the symbol of England’s noblest aspirations.

The 'Faerie Queen' is indeed a poem most characteristic of the time in which it was written. Standing on the threshold of the modern time, Spenser took the old forms of the past and breathed into them a new ideal life. Chivalry in its old meaning was past and gone; but its forms of tilts and tournaments and champions and ladies’ favors still survived as a graceful amusement at the festivities of Elizabeth’s court. The system was not yet forgotten, but all the genuine spirit of that system had faded away. It was Spenser’s object to make these dry bones of the past again live with the life of the present. The spirit of the new age in religion and politics alike was transferred into symbolical forms taken from the old legends of chivalry. In a far distant land, where the outlines were dim and faded into a soft dreamy haze, the imagination of the poet finely set forth in forms of knights and ladies the altered moral aspect of the world. Away from the tumult of the world in his quiet retreat,—

Under the foot of Mole, that mountain hoar,

Keeping my sheep among the cooly shade

Of the green alders by the Mulla's shore,

the poet peopled his ideal world with the creatures of his own fancy. Freed from the trammels of reality Spenser’s imagination draws picture after picture, scene after scene, without effort or straining after effect. He moves easily in the world which he has created, a world far away from daily life, yet not so alien from men’s thoughts as to be entirely unsubstantial and unreal. It is a world of lofty enterprise and high endeavour, of ceaseless labor and conflict for a great end. Virtues and vices encounter one another in incessant shock, and the soul of man is ever advancing through repeated trial and effort towards a higher aim. Yet over all is thrown an air of quietness and peace. Not the violence of excited emotions, but the steady course of the calm yet determined soul is the ideal of Spenser. Hence comes the air of purity and gentleness which is such a distinguishing feature of the Faerie Queen. The poet’s self-mastery gives the poem its dignity, refinement, and grace. The Faerie Queen is the noblest monument of the fine cultivation of Elizabeth’s age.

But Elizabeth’s time is most famous as being the period in which the English drama flourished. The new-born desire for knowledge turned to man, man’s life, and man’s destinies as the most congenial field for its enquiries, and the popular taste for dramatic spectacles gave it an open field for its display. Elizabeth’s reign saw almost the earliest beginnings of the drama, and saw it reach its highest point in the plays of Shakespeare. The earliest English comedy which deserves the name, Ralph Royster-Doister, was written in Henry VIII’s reign by Nicholas Udall, head master of Eton; it is founded upon the models of Latin comedy, and deals with the adventures of a gull in his wooing of a rich widow. Gammer Gurton’s Needle, written about 1560, supposed to be by John Still, is almost farcical in its character and treats of the disturbance caused in a small village by an old woman’s loss of her needle and the misunderstandings which followed. In tragedy Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, led the way by his play of Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex, which was acted in 1562; the story is taken from ancient British history, and is concerned with royal jealousy, revenge, and murder. The play is a series of narrations rather than a drama; the action is only slightly represented on the stage, and each act is preceded by a dumb show to explain its purport.

It is, however, in about 1586, when the excitement of England had reached its highest pitch, that Marlowe first began to write, and was closely followed by Greene, Peele, Nash, and Shakespeare. Marlowe, Greene, and Peele were all of them educated at the university, and after many discreditable adventures settled down in London, where they led a wild literary life. They and a few kindred spirits formed a profligate circle, who haunted taverns and were ready to turn their hands to any rude jest or unprincipled trick which might supply them with means to carry on their debaucheries.

Besides being a play writer, Greene was also a writer of tales, mostly after Italian models; but he has also left some interesting tracts which throw great light upon his own life. On leaving Cambridge he travelled to Italy and Spain, where “he saw and practised such villany as is abominable to declare”. On his return to England he “ruffled out in silks, and seemed so discontent that no place would please him to abide in, nor no vocation cause him to stay himself in”. “Young in years yet old in wickedness, I began to resolve that there was nothing bad that was profitable : whereupon I grew so rooted in ill mischief that I had as great delight in wickedness as sundry have in godliness”. He followed through life his idea that “what is profitable ceases to be bad” : he married and deserted his wife; he rambled here and there, sometimes in a state of maudlin repentance, then relapsing into debauchery as soon as he could get any money by the numerous tales and pamphlets which he hurriedly composed. He died in poverty and misery at the early age of 32, of the results of a surfeit of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings. The life of Greene may serve as an example of that of the others. Marlowe was even more unhappy; he was stabbed at the early age of 28 in a tavern brawl. Besides their dissolute lives, Marlowe and Greene were both accused of having made open profession of atheism.

From such wild and stormy natures it may be supposed the Elizabethan drama found no calm beginnings. In Marlowe’s fury, desire, and villany reach an extravagant pitch of passion. In Tamburlaine the Great he represents the Tartar conqueror inflated by ambition and success to a point that almost baffles expression. He rages against God and man alike, and believes he has passed beyond the common lot of humanity. The imagery throughout the play is colossal:

I would strive to swim through pools of blood,

Or make a bridge of murdered carcasses,

Whose arches should be framed with bones of Turks,

Ere I would lose the title of a king.

In the Rich Jew of Malta human villany is displayed on the most gigantic scale : the Jew commits every possible crime, even to the poisoning of his own daughter, with fiendish ingenuity, and exults in his success. The prologue of the play is spoken by Machiavelli, who is made to lay down the principle,

I bount religion but a childish toy,

And hold there is no sin but ignorance.

In his play of Faustus Marlowe has dealt with the effects of the overpowering desire for knowledge, the thirst for power, the craving to overstep the limits of life, to enjoy a few years’ intoxication of success at the expense of all the future. We are astonished that a work which shows so much profundity of thought should have been written by so young a man. The desires and interests of an Englishman of that age are set forth in Faustus’ exclamation of delight when first he knows that he has power to command spirits :

I'll have them fly to India for gold,

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl,

And search all corners of the new-found world

For pleasant fruits and princely delicates.

I'll have them read me strange philosophy;

And tell the secrets of all foreign kings :

I'll have them wall all Germany with brass

And make swift Rhine circle fair Wittenberg;

I'll have them fill the public schools with silk,

Wherewith the students shall be bravely clad;

I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring

And chase the Prince of Parma from the land.

And reign sole king of all the Provinces;

Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war

Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp bridge

I'll make my servile spirits to invent.

We have dwelt upon Marlowe because he is the most characteristic representative of the uncontrolled ambition and inordinate desires which lent force to the adventurous spirit of Elizabethan England. A new horizon had opened before men’s eyes. They rushed forward with unbounded delight to take possession of their new realm, and in their first excitement hurried off in chase of what was most marvelous, most strange, and most monstrous among the novelties which had been revealed. In the region of the imagination Marlowe delights in elevating human nature to superhuman proportions. Not the orderly array of life, nor the fine motives of action attract him, but he rushes forward to depict the almost unimaginable extravagance of fury, villany, and desire. Yet Marlowe is a great dramatist. His imagery is forcible, his fancy vivid, his pictures of human passion real though exaggerated; there is the stamp of genius on everything he wrote, and his faults are of the kind that would have been tempered by age. In plot and action, in his views of scenic effect, Marlowe was a great advance upon his predecessors, and when compared with his con­temporaries appears as a true dramatic artist.

About the time when Marlowe's earliest play appeared William Shakespeare first came up to London. He was the son of a well-to-do tradesman in Stratford-upon-Avon, whose fortunes however had begun to decline during his son’s boyhood. At the early age of nineteen he married Anne Hathaway, who was eight years his senior. Increasing poverty and, as the story goes, a disturbance about poaching in Sir Thomas Lucy’s park, drove Shakespeare to quit Stratford, leaving his wife and family behind, and induced him to try his fortunes in London. He arrived there at the age of twenty-two and became an actor. We cannot trace with any certainty his life in London, nor how he became a poet. His earliest work, Venus and Adonis, was dedicated to the Earl of Southampton, who was always his constant patron. Soon he began to try his hand at writing plays, at first comedies which turned upon the fashions of the day. Love’s Labours Lost, one of his earliest plays, was a piece slight in plot, ridiculing the folly of Euphuism and pedantry. The Comedy of Errors was an adaptation of Latin comedy, and aimed at amusing by its broad complications rather than any study of character. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream first of all the poet’s fancy broke forth unrestrained; his pictures of fairyland are full of graceful imagination, and gain force by the contrast between the airy gambols of the elves and the clumsy clowns who labor at their rehearsal. We do not know how Shakespeare learned and wrote, nor do we know with certainty the order of his plays. They were written most of them to order. The theatre possessed an acting copy of some old story, legend, or history; these Shakespeare wrought up; some he entirely transformed with his own power, others perhaps he only remodeled and wrote in parts. Dramatic representations of English history were highly popular, and Shakespeare’s historical plays are deeply interesting as showing how the English at that time looked back upon the stirring events and characters of their country’s past. Shakespeare wrote quickly to supply the demand of the playhouse. His fame soon grew, and Elizabeth listened to his plays with interest. He is said to have written the : Merry Wives of Windsor to gratify the queen, who wished to see Falstaff in love. His plays were at first published; but when his fame was secure he seems to have stopped their publication that he might make more money from their representation. After 1600 Hamlet and King Lear were the only two which were published during his lifetime. Though famous in London, Shakespeare seems never to have lost his affection for his native place. His gains were not all spent in the delights of society. Though he supped at the Mermaid Tavern amongst the wits of the time, he invested his money in the purchase of land near Stratford. In Shakespeare genius was not a wild excitement as it had been to Marlowe; order and self-control were characteristics of his greater penetration into the meaning of life. His insight and depth of feeling led him to care and prudence, not to mere excesses. He retired from London to spend his last years in ease and comfort at Stratford, where he died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two.

It is impossible to explain a genius like Shakespeare by any features of the times in which he lived, or to point out the sources from which he gained his experience or knowledge. Analysis and criticism can only discover, they cannot explain, profound truths, fine points of perception, discrimination in details, which the poet’s imagination saw in their entirety, and depicted as it saw. Treatises have been written to prove Shakespeare’s special knowledge of various subjects, and to claim for him a technical training in each. It is impossible to identify Shakespeare with any of his characters, or to say that any special mood of the human mind was peculiarly his own. He is equally at home in the scheming villany of Richard III and the chivalrous bravery of Henry V, in the consuming jealousy of Othello and the complacent sensuality of Falstaff, in the reckless wit of Mercutio and the absorbing revenge of Shylock. In tragedy and comedy alike he is supreme; his master hand swept with unerring accuracy over the entire scale of human life and passion. As he advanced in life, we find in his plays greater thoughtfulness and a more serious tone. In The Merchant of Venice he takes a deeper view of the varied course of life; in a short while how great a change has come imperceptibly over the life and fortunes of so many. As You Like It shows still further the poet’s thoughtfulness. He grapples with the contradictions of life,— “sweet are the uses of adversity”; while the cynical moralizing of Jacques and the quaint practical wisdom of the clown give opportunities for setting in sharp contrast the different solutions of life’s problem. In Hamlet Shakespeare has drawn the struggle of man’s spirit with destiny, the conflict of the soul with its surroundings, the terrible force of sin to perturb the life of the innocent. So profound is the insight which dictated Hamlet that it still remains an inexhaustible subject of speculation, opening out innumerable problems of human life and character. Shakespeare’s range of interest was endless. Amongst the last of his plays was the Tempest, in which he seems to have caught the curiosity awakened by travelers’ tales, and to have pressed forward in fanciful speculation to consider the origin of man’s nature. The monstrous form of Caliban, half human, half brutal, goes with a soul that has but the lower animalism and selfish cunning of the brute for its foundation. The Tempest, like A Midsummer Night’s Dream is worked out with supernatural machinery. Again we are in the region of spirits; but the spirits of Shakespeare’s age differ from those of his youth. No longer are they in the foreground working spontaneously and showing now and then their interest in man's fortunes; they are now kept under man’s sway, controlled by his will, and compelled to work at his command. In both plays the poet’s imagination overpowers us, and peoples the fairy region with shapes which become almost real to us. But the sprightly play of youthful fancy, the unfettered gaiety of heart which clothed the world with the fair colours of a beauti­ful dream, have given way to the reflective wonder of age, which peers into questions it cannot solve. The airy grace of A Midsummer Night’s Dream changes into the stately dignity of the Tempest. With greater knowledge has come greater uncertainty; on the conscious enjoyment of power follows the sense of its bitterness :

Like the baseless fabric of this vision

The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve;

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind; We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a, sleep.

In Shakespeare the glory of the Elizabethan drama was at its height. His youth saw the wild extravagances of the genius of Marlow ; in his later years he saw a new race 0f dramatists arise, Webster, Ford, Massinger, Chapman, Middleton, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher. They were all men of force and power, though none had the range or the profundity of Shakespeare. Jonson is the most famous of them, and is remarkable for taking the subjects of his comedies from the domestic life of his own time. He was a scholar proud of his learning, and wished to introduce a severer style of composition than the untrammelled freedom of Shakespeare. The drama continued to thrive in England until the severer morality of the Puritans revolted against the licence into which it began to fall under the writers of James I's time, and the theatre declined before the feverish excitement which preceded the times of the Great Rebellion.

 

CHAPTER III

LAST YEARS OF ELIZABETH.

 

The years that followed the repulse of the Spanish Armada were the culminating years of Elizabeth’s reign. England awoke to her true position. Spain was everywhere driven back. France again began to form itself into a strong and united power. Yet the power of Spain was still looked upon with respect. Henry IV and Elizabeth would both of them gladly have made peace with Philip II, and would have given the Netherlands over to him could they have been certain of his intentions towards themselves. But Philip still supported the League in France and threatened another invasion of England. Henry IV and Elizabeth still held by the Netherlands, though they were always suspicious of one another’s intentions.

The struggle of Philip and the League against Henry IV became every day more hopeless. Henry’s position in France became so far secure after his conversion that in December 1595 Pope Clement VIII solemnly gave him absolution. The religious struggle in France was now over. Protestantism had been vanquished, not by the victory of the extreme party but by the formation of a moderate party which lay between the two extremes.France returned to submission to the papacy; but it was a voluntary submission, and the attitude of the French Church was one of independence. The Pope was glad to see the re-establishment of the old equilibrium between the two Catholic powers of France and Spain. So long as Spain only had been thoroughly Catholic, the papacy had had to follow Spain entirely; now it could again assume an independent position between the two powers.

After the absolution of Henry IV it was impossible for Philip long to continue the war against him. Philip himself, in spite of his great dominions, was hopelessly bankrupt. The loss of the resources of the Netherlands, the expenses of his many wars, and the ruinous financial system which he had inherited, and by which the yearly revenue was pledged for the payment of interest on the royal debt—all these causes combined to exhaust the king's coffers, though he squandered nothing on his own magnificence or pleasures. In the beginning of 1596 Philip won an important triumph by the capture of Calais. But this awoke the alarm of England and of the Hollanders as much as of the French. A joint expedition was equipped against Spain in which the English took the lead. Lord Admiral Howard sailed with a fleet of a hundred and fifty vessels against Cadiz, and the Earl of Essex commanded the land forces. On June 21 the Spanish ships which assembled for the defence of the town were entirely defeated. Essex was the first to leap on shore, and the English troops easily took the city. The clemency of the English soldiers contrasted favorably with the terrible barbarities of the Spaniards in the Netherlands. “The mercy and the clemency that hath been showed here”, wrote Lord Howard, “will be spoken of through­out the world”. No man or woman was needlessly injured; but Cadiz was sacked, and the shipping in its harbor destroyed. Essex wished to follow up this exploit by a further attack upon Spain; but Howard, who had accomplished the task for which he had been sent, insisted on returning home.

This was the last great naval expedition against Spain. There was in England also a strong desire for peace. The queen and Burleigh were both growing old; they felt that they had accomplished their purpose; they had steered England through the difficulties which beset her; they would gladly have reaped the advantages of the position which they had now secured. But there was a strong party among the younger nobles who were animated by the old spirit of hatred against Spain. They were eager for an opportunity of gaining military distinction; they longed to destroy Spain utterly, and win for England without dispute the mastery of the seas. The struggles of these two parties cast a shadow over the declining years of Elizabeth, and the queen’s personal weaknesses were mingled in a melancholy and almost tragic way in the political intrigues which disturbed the end of her reign.

The leader of the war party was Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. He was Leicester’s step-son, and had been introduced to court by him. After Robert Leicester’s death he became the queen's chief favourite, and succeeded to Leicester’s influence. Young, handsome, chivalrous, outspoken, and ambitious, he awoke all Elizabeth’s tenderness, and although he was more than thirty years her junior, she bestowed upon him the affection of a mistress rather than of a mother. He gathered round him all the ambitious and ardent spirits of the time, and so long as his influence was supreme with the queen, a policy of peace was impossible. When he set out for Cadiz his power was at its height. During his absence Burleigh prevailed with the queen to have his son Robert Cecil appointed secretary of state. The peace party had thus gained a great victory, and used their power to disparage the exploits of Essex. On his return he took up a position of determined antagonism to them, and symbolized his views at a festival in honor of the queen’s accession. He was met in the tilt-yard by a hermit, an officer of state, and a soldier; each entreated him to follow his views of life; but the answer was given that this knight would never forsake his mistress’s love, whose virtue made all his thoughts divine, whose wisdom taught him all true policy, whose beauty and worth made him at all times fit to command armies.'

In 1597 Essex prevailed upon the queen to allow a naval expedition, known as ‘The Island Voyage’, to be made, with the object of destroying the Spanish ships, and of cutting off their fleet on its return from the West Indies. The fleet sailed for the Azores, where Raleigh, without waiting for Essex, captured the island of Fayal. Essex blazed into anger against Raleigh, and even threatened his life; party quarrels broke out even in the fleet. The expedition was a failure, owing to the mistakes made by Essex. The Spanish fleet escaped, and the English squadron reached home without having done much damage. Philip meantime had sent out another Armada against England, which was dispersed by a storm off the Scilly Isles, and was driven back to Ferrol.

This was, however, the last attempt at war upon a large scale. Henry IV early in 159S concluded with Philip the treaty of Vervins, and turned his attention to the consolidation of the French monarchy upon its old Catholic basis. By the edict of Nantes toleration was given to the French Protestants; but a slow process of political exclusion and social pressure was applied to win them back to Catholicism. Philip’s hands were once more free for operations against England and the Netherlands. His plan was to give up to his daughter Isabella the sovereignty of the Spanish Netherlands, and leave to her husband, the Cardinal Archduke Albert of Austria, the task of reducing the disobedient provinces. Meanwhile England was again to be attacked where it was most vulnerable, in Ireland. The discontented Irish had been reduced to obedience by a strong hand, and had been kept quiet during the great crisis of Elizabeth’s reign. In 1597 Lord de Burgh pushed into Ulster, and after some fighting fortified and garrisoned Portmore, on the Blackwater, near Armagh. The tribes of Ulster united under Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who received support from Philip and the Pope. After several attempts to storm Portmore, he besieged it, and in August 159S beat back Sir Henry Bagenal, who was marching to its aid. This was a severe blow to the English forces, and the fort was at once surrendered.

Philip could not, however, prosecute his designs. He died in September, after a most painful illness, which he endured with Christian fortitude. “I die like a good Catholic, in faith and obedience to the holy Roman Church”, were his last words. He was seventy-one years old, and had ruled the Spanish monarchy for forty years. He was a sincere fanatic, who had identified his own interests with those of Catholicism. We have seen how wide were his plans and how far-reaching was his policy. His great schemes failed one by one, and left him hopelessly bankrupt. In 1597 he repudiated his debts, and ruined many of the chief commercial houses in Europe. His enterprises aimed solely at extending his own influence and the power of his house. His possessions were taxed to the utmost to supply funds for these great undertakings, and his people’s industry was stopped by unwise taxes. Castile, as being the seat of his government, suffered most. The fall of Spain from its high position in Europe was gradual, but the causes of its decay were financial. It had to pay for the great plans of Charles V and Philip II, and it received no national advantage to recompense it for the injurious results of their failure. Philip II left to his successor a high position, an impoverished exchequer, and a ruinous system of government. It required only a few years for the last two legacies to destroy the first.

In spite of all his efforts, Philip II had seen the loss to The United the Spanish monarchy of the United Provinces 0f the Netherlands. The cession of the obedient provinces (known henceforth as the Spanish Netherlands) to the Infanta Isabella and her husband Albert, was made just before Philip’s death. They were to bear joint rule over the Provinces with the title of the Archdukes. Under their skilful general Spinola, a worthy successor of Alexander of Parma, the war in the Netherlands was carried on briskly till 1607. But generalship was soon developed in the United Provinces as well. Prince Maurice of Orange, son of William the Silent, displayed remarkable powers as a tactician. While war was carried on under him and Spinola, the Netherlands became a school of warfare to the rest of Europe. The United Provinces continued to hold their own against all attempts to subdue them. In 1607 a truce was made which practically recognized that the United Provinces had made good their claim to independence. Under Prince Maurice as Stadtholder, Holland became a European power whose commercial and colonizing activity soon gained for her an important position.

Meanwhile England had still to face the serious difficulty of the Irish revolt. The peace party amongst Elizabeth's counselors saw in this new peril a fit field for the warlike ambition of Essex.

Somewhat against his will he was sent out as Lord-Lieutenant to Ireland, with an army of twenty-two thousand men. It was to be seen if he would justify by his deeds his martial talk. Essex left the court unwillingly, for his personal relations towards the queen were unsatisfactory. He had become intoxicated by power, and forgot at times the basis of its tenure. He mistook his popularity for an independent source of authority, and thought that the queen could not do with­out him. At a council in which Irish affairs were being discussed, Essex differed from the queen, and when she refused to follow his opinion he turned his back contemptuously upon her. Enraged, Elizabeth gave him a box on the ear, and Essex laid his hand upon his sword, exclaiming that he would not have endured such an affront at the hands of Henry VIII himself. For some time after this he stayed away from court; but the quarrel was made up, and Essex sailed for Ireland in March 1599, accompanied by royal favor and popular applause and expectations.

Essex's conduct in his command disappointed all men’s hopes. Instead of marching against Tyrone in Ulster, he spent four months in putting down smaller rebels in Munster. Even there his success was not brilliant, and his soldiers suffered from sickness. When at last he went against Tyrone his men were dispirited; he could not venture on a battle, and entered into negotiations with the rebel chiefs. There were rumors of a renewal of war with Spain, and Essex was anxious to return to England. He made peace with Tyrone, contrary to his orders, but he still trusted to his own popularity. He hastily returned to England in September and hurried at once into the queen’s presence. At first she received him graciously; but soon the voices of his enemies prevailed. Essex was called to account for his conduct before the council, and was committed to custody. He was examined before the Star Chamber, was deprived of his offices, and or­dered to live a prisoner in his own house during the queen's pleasure. His conduct had awakened the queen’s suspicions, and his enemies accused him of making a league with Tyrone that he might obtain aid from him in a projected revolt in England. He was not admitted into the royal presence, and when, in September 1600, a monopoly of sweet wines expired, from which he drew his chief source of income, it was not renewed. Essex now saw that his enemies were bent on his ruin and he determined on a decided step. He threw his doors open and gathered his friends around him; once more he trusted to his popularity to overawe the queen and obtain his old influence over her. The privy council, alarmed at his preparations, summoned him before them. He refused to appear, and when some of the councilors were sent to ask the cause of the assemblage at Essex House, they were kept as prisoners, and Essex marched with his followers into the City, hoping that it would rise in his behalf. But the people saw no cause for a revolt. Essex with difficulty made his way back to his house and was forced to surrender (February 8, 1601). He was brought to trial and found guilty of high treason.

It was a terrible trial to Elizabeth to sign the death-warrant of the man she had loved; but the force of events drove her to do so. The queen who had condemned to death the Duke of Norfolk and Mary Queen of Scots could not pardon Essex if she would. He was executed on February 25, and Elizabeth, now grown old and worn with cares, never recovered from the shock of this tragic complication.

A cloud gathered over the last years of Elizabeth. Her old ministers were dead, and intrigues which could not command were rife around her. A new generation of her people had grown up whose interests lay beyond the shifty policy to which Elizabeth had now accustomed herself. England had passed through the great crisis of its peril in safety, and those who now enjoyed the proud feeling of independence felt little sympathy with the cautious policy by which that independence had been slowly won. Elizabeth had done her work and outlived her time. As she went to open Parliament in 1601 she no longer heard the accustomed acclamations from the populace, who resented Essex's death. The expenses moreover of the Irish war began to weigh heavily upon her. Up to this time she had managed by strict economy to keep herself tolerably independent of parliamentary grants, and hence her tone to Parliament had been one of superiority and repression. In 1001 large supplies were granted by Parliament for the Irish war; but an attack was made upon the right which the crown exercised of granting monopolies (or the exclusive right of trading in some article) to courtiers as a convenient way of providing for them without expense. So bitter and so unanimous was the House in its complaints that it was impossible for the queen to stand against it. Seeing that she must give way, Elizabeth did so with good grace; she sent a message to the House that she would revoke all illegal grants of monopolies. Her message was received with joy; one member even called it ‘a gospel of glad tidings’. A deputation went to thank her, and Elizabeth, in a dignified speech, thanked them for having pointed out to her a mistake into which she had fallen through error of judgment.

The new spirit of the people was finding its expres­sion in a desire for greater political freedom. The arbitrary system of the Tudors, which made everything centre round the sovereign, was no longer in accordance with the new state of things which their strong government had done much to promote. Parliament began to act with greater freedom and independence, and it required all Elizabeth's tact and prestige to maintain her old position. There were signs that her successor would have to modify her system of government, which was rendered tolerable to the people only by its success.

A gleam of success was thrown over the last years of Elizabeth by the victory of Lord Mountjoy (formerly Sir Charles Blount) in Ireland. The joint forces of the Spaniards and Irish were defeated; but though Tyrone was reduced to extremities Mountjoy recommended that an agreement be made with him. His final submission was made six days after the queen’s death.

 

Elizabeth’s end was rapidly approaching. She became moody and wayward after Essex’s death; she realised from it her own isolation; she became gloomy and suspicious. “She walks much in her privy chamber”, says Sir John Harrington, “and stamps with her feet at ill news, and thrusts her rusty sword at times into the arras in great rage. The dangers are over, yet she always keeps a sword by her table”. Bodily weakness and mental distress rapidly increased, till in March 1603 she took to her bed. Sir Robert Carey, her kinsman, gives an account of her condition. “She took me by the hand and wrung it hard, and said : No, Robin, I am not well; and then discoursed with me of her indisposition, and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs”. Her illness grew worse till or March 23 she was speechless. It is said that by signs she indicated to her council the King of Scotland as her successor. Then she made signs for the Archbishop to come to her, and listened long to his prayers; twice when he rose from his knees to depart, she motioned to him to continue. Early on Thursday morning, March 24, she died, in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-sixth of her reign.

Her character has been sufficiently shown in recounting the events in which she took part. Her wisdom and her prudence are to be measured by her success. With scanty means at her command she yet succeeded, in an age of vast plans and huge undertakings, in guiding England safely through the dangers which threatened it on every side. During her reign England grew rapidly both in inward resources and in outward importance. Freed from the fear of Spain, England began to realize her position as the chief maritime power of Europe; a new spirit began to develop itself amongst the people; the increased sense of individual power found its expression in the grandees outburst of English poetry. The reign of Elizabeth marks the time when England began definitely to assume those features which most distinguish her from other nations at the present day.

 

THE END.