Queen Elizabeth I

Agnes Strickland (a writing team that included her sister) entitles her chapter on Elizabeth I "SECOND QUEEN-REGNANT OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND" (Elizabeth's sister Mary being the first). The student of queens cares a great deal about what power the women actually wielded; most were consorts and, far from reigning, found themselves pawns in political chess. Alternatively, most queens encountered conflict between their voluntary liaisons and involuntary matrimony. Strickland's narratives are notable for drawing on contemporary documents.

Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, the favorite abode of her royal parents, Henry Eighth and Anne Boleyn. Her birth is thus quaintly but prettily recorded by the contemporary historian, Hall: "On the 7th day of September, being Sunday, between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, the queen was delivered of a fine lady, on which day the duke of Norfolk came home to the christening."

The queen was desirous of nourishing her infant daughter from her own bosom, but Henry, with his characteristic selfishness, forbade it, lest the frequent presence of the little princess in the chamber of her royal mother should be attended with inconvenience to himself. Much of the future greatness of Elizabeth may reasonably be attributed to the judicious training of her sensible and conscientious governess, combined with the salutary adversity, which deprived her of the pernicious pomp and luxury that had surrounded her cradle while she was treated as the heiress of England.

Strickland, like most biographers, seeks to account for the subject's character in the parents' principles and early environment. Also like other narrators of biography, Strickland provides a childhood anecdote: "The first public act of Elizabeth's life, was her carrying the chrisome of her infant brother, Edward VI., at the christening solemnity of that prince... when they left the chapel, the train of her little grace, just four years old, was supported by lady Herbert, as, led by the hand of her elder sister, the princess Mary, she walked with mimic dignity, in the returning procession, to the chamber of the dying queen."

All Henry's matrimonial schemes for his children were doomed to remain unfulfilled, and Elizabeth, instead of being sacrificed in her childhood in some political marriage, had the good fortune to complete a most superior education, under the auspices of the good and learned Katharine Parr, Henry's sixth queen.

During the reign of Edward, her life was tranquil enough—the most exciting incident during it being the attempt of Lord Seymour, the brother of the Duke of Somerset, the protector, to induce her to marry him, when she was only sixteen years of age. Certainly the celibacy of the sovereign was not in consequence of a want of suitors; excepting Penelope, never lady was so pursued with matrimonial proposals. Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire, was a second pretender to the possession of her hand; and then followed a proposition that she should unite herself to the king of Sweden. Subsequently, she was successively importuned to wed Philip of Spain, the earl of Arran, the Dukes of Alencon and Anjou, the Archduke Charles a son of the Elector-Palatine, the Duke of Holstein, the Earl of Arundel, Sir William Pickering, and, at last, any body; her parliament promising, in their own name, and that of the people, to serve, honor and obey him faithfully, "whoever he might be." But Elizabeth rejected all their propositions, and asserted and verified in the sequel her intention to die a spinster. For this strange determination, various and contradictory opinions are given. By many writers it is attributed to political objects, not very obvious or intelligible; while others, with more appearance of probability, affirm it to have originated in a conscious corporeal disqualification for the contingencies of matrimony and childbirth.

In an extended chain of analogies, Elizabeth is compared to other queens, her elder sister and Mary Queen of Scots in particular. Strickland presumes that Elizabeth is not only physically unsuited to a woman's biological destiny but also mentally, with an "unfeminine mind." Mary's reign brought "ceaseless peril and adversity," but had the opposite of the usual "mollifying" effect; when "the energetic princess... in her turn," came to power, she exercised it with "a far greater extent of hate and cruelty than she herself had ever experienced." This is a standard view of Elizabeth, yet Strickland also admires her subject's resistance to humiliation. "To all the machinations of her enemies to entrap her into some act which might serve as a pretext for her condemnation, she opposed an invincible prudence and discretion." Rather than escape into marriage with the king of Sweden, "she cautiously demanded whether her sister had been made acquainted with it? This inquiry receiving an unsatisfactory reply, she desired that the matter might be formally communicated to Mary, who, though doubtless previously possessed of the knowledge, feigned to thank her for her loyal and dutiful information, and to permit her to decide according to her own inclination." She was diplomatic, too, under religious inquisition, and Strickland quotes a verse enigma that Elizabeth offered "respecting the doctrine of the real presence":

This ingenious subterfuge and jargon seems to have completely perplexed and confounded her interrogators, for we do not hear that they renewed their attempts to entrap her into some avowal which might have conducted her to the stake.

We are indebted to the lively pen of Giovanni Michele, the Venetian ambassador, for the following graphic sketch of the person and character of Elizabeth at this interesting period of her life. "Miladi Elizabeth," says he, "is a lady of great elegance both of body and mind, though her face may be called pleasing rather than beautiful. She is tall and well made, her complexion fine, though rather sallow." Her bloom must have been prematurely faded by sickness and anxiety, for Elizabeth could not have been more than three and twenty at this period." Her eyes, but above all her hands, which she takes care not to conceal, are of superior beauty. In her knowledge of the Greek and Italian languages, she surpasses the queen, and takes so much pleasure in the latter, that she will converse with Italians in no other tongue. She is proud and dignified in her manners; for, though she is well aware what sort of a mother she had, she is also aware that this mother of hers was united to the king in wedlock, with the sanction of the church and the concurrence of the primate of the realm. The queen, though she hates her most sincerely, yet treats her in public with every outward sign of affection and regard, and never converses with her but on pleasing and agreeable subjects."

Upon the death of Mary, November 17th, 1558, Elizabeth, being then only twenty-five years old, succeeded to the throne. A deputation from the late queen's council arrived at Hatfield to apprise her of the demise of her sister, and to offer their homage to her as their rightful sovereign. Though well prepared for the intelligence, she appeared at first amazed and overpowered at what she heard, and, drawing a deep respiration, she sank upon her knees and exclaimed, "It is the Lord's doing, it is marvellous in our eyes." Eight-and-twenty years afterwards Elizabeth, in a conversation with the envoys of France, spoke of the tears which she had shed on the death of her sister Mary, but she is the only person by whom they were ever recorded.

Strickland appears to be persuaded by the portraits of Elizabeth as schemer, in presenting these shows of emotion as inventions on the part of the new queen. Compare, in contrast, the genuine affect attributed to the young Queen Victoria upon her succession, in Carey's account (see FS on Queen Victoria). Strickland neverthless admires Elizabeth as a sovereign, and sets out to educate the reader into a more balanced view of her as woman ruler. Elizabeth was "temperate and generous" in dealing with Catholics, without "vindictiveness to her own previous persecutors. Her toleration was general," and yet she enacted various institutional and ritual reforms that ought to have provoked rebellion if handled by a less skillful monarch. Once crowned, "she confirmed all Edward's statutes relating to religion, appointed herself governess of the Church, and abolished the Mass, and restored the Liturgy.... without any resort to violence" by either side. "To complete fully his estimate of the difficulty of this vigorous and dexterous deed the reader must call to mind the years and sex of the perpetrator of it; and then, however distasteful may be the character of Elizabeth as a woman, he will readily admit that, as a ruler, she must have been endowed with many eminently appropriate qualities and talents."

Strickland borrows from a historical source one of her first extended episodes: Lord Bacon's account of a courtier's petition for the release of prisoners, according to custom upon a coronation: "....Elizabeth went to the chapel, and in the great chamber one of her courtiers... besought her with a loud voice, 'That now this good time there might be four or five more principal prisoners released; those were the four Evangelists and the Apostle St. Paul, who had been long shut up in an unknown tongue, as it were, in a prison, so as they could not converse with the common people.' The queen answered very gravely, 'That it was first best to inquire of them whether they would be released or no.'" To Strickland, this repartee is a serious example of Elizabeth's deliberate mode of weighing decisions. She "was always careful to learn whether the people 'would, or no.'" It seems as if Strickland misses the joke that the writers of the gospels cannot be consulted as to their wishes. What preoccupies Strickland is Elizabeth's mixed character: Strickland does not want to seem to commend the queen's entire "career, for many were the despotic acts she afterwards committed," including burdensome "monopolies and patents" that hampered trade. On this matter, Strickland approves of Hume's reproach that the Russian monarch instituted free trade that Elizabeth resisted: "'So much juster notions of commerce were entertained by this barbarian than appear in the conduct of the renowned queen Elizabeth I." To Strickland, the Elizabeth was motivated by "detestable egotism," wishing to avoid the need to petition Parliament for funds, and thus the need to yield to its wishes; "and selfishly, therefore, she resolved to sacrifice the nation's interests...."

"In the year 1559 occurred the commencement of Elizabeth's tyrannical intercourse with the unfortunate Mary Queen of Scots. Originally, scarce foundation existed for an animosity which was afterwards, and for so many years, sustained by a sorry feminine spite and vanity." Strickland does hold Mary responsible for openly advertising an intention to challenge Elizabeth's claim to the throne. Mary put "the arms of England...upon all her equipages and liveries.... Elizabeth clearly saw that it was personal to herself, or else, why had it not been perpetrated during the reign of her sister?" This along with "public policy, and religious bias" led Elizabeth to take sides with Scottish Protestants in the "defeat of the Scottish and French Catholics." The ensuing peace treaty commanded Mary "to abstain from wearing the arms of England. But Mary, as long as her husband Francis II. lived, refused to ratify the proceedings of her ambassadors, and though, after his death, she desisted from assuming any longer the arms, she refused to forego her claim to them."

This passage on the battling queens curiously leads the Stricklands to pronounce on their method as biographers: "Our purpose is not historical, we merely select for narration such public acts as seem most suited to elucidate the intricate and inconsistent character of this anomalous princess." This is followed by another short paragraph that reveals how much consensus has built up concerning Elizabeth, a biographical corpus that leaves little discretion to the presenter: "The affair of Raleigh and his cloak is universally known, and we shall therefore prefer to relate some incidents connected with her partiality to Leicester, which are not equally generally notorious."

Sir James Melville, the ambassador of Mary at the court of Elizabeth was an observing man, well skilled in the world, and an accomplished courtier. How competent he was for observation the following extracts from his works will show: "The ceremony of creating Lord Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester was performed at Westminster with great solemnity, the queen herself helping to put on his robes, he sitting with his knees before her with great gravity, but she could not refrain from putting her hand in his neck, smilingly tickling him; the French ambassador and I standing by." He subsequently adds, "The queen, my mistress, had instructed me to leave matters of gravity sometimes, and cast in merry purposes, lest otherwise I should be wearied, she being well informed of that queen's natural temper. Therefore, in declaring my observations of the customs of Dutchland, Poland, and Italy, the buskins of the women were not forgot, and what country weed I thought best becoming gentlewomen. The queen said she had clothes of every sort, which every day thereafter, so long as I was there, she changed. One day she had the English weed, another the French, and another the Italian, and so forth. She asked me, which of them became her best? I answered, in my judgment, the Italian dress; which answer I found pleased her well, for she delighted to show her golden colored hair, wearing a caul and bonnet as they do in Italy. Her hair was more reddish than yellow, and curled, in appearance, naturally. She desired to know of me, what colored hair was reputed best? and whether my queen's hair or hers were best? and which of them two was fairest? I answered, the fairest of them both was not their worst faults. But she was ever earnest with me to declare which of them both was fairest? I said that she was the fairest queen in England, and mine in Scotland; yet she appeared in earnest; I answered that they both were the fairest ladies in their countries, that her majesty was whiter, but my queen was very lovely. She inquired which of them was of higher stature? I said, my queen. Then, said she, she is too high, for I myself am neither too high nor too low."

Strickland credits this Elizabethan dialogue of vanity, and adds further documentary evidence from other loyalists of Scotland: "In Sir Walter Scott's "History of Scotland," is a passage which records her vanity with such whimsical gravity, that it must be transferred to these pages in his own words:—'Throughout her whole reign, queen Elizabeth, pre-eminent as a sovereign, had never been able to forbear the assertion of her claims as a wit and a beauty. When verging to the extremity of life, her mirror presented her with hair too gray, and features too withered to reflect, even in her own opinion, the features of that fairy queen of immortal youth and beauty, in which she had been painted by one of the most charming poets of that poetic age. She avenged herself by discontinuing the consultation of her looking-glass, which no longer flattered her; and exchanged that monitor of the toilet, for the false, favorable, and pleasing reports of the ladies who attended her. This indulgence of vanity brought, as usual, its own punishment. The young females who waited upon her, turned her pretensions into ridicule; and if the report of the times be true, ventured even to personal insult, by misplacing the cosmetics which she used for the repair of her faded charms, sometimes daring to lay on the royal nose the carmine which ought to have embellished the cheeks.'" Clearly it does not occur to Strickland to question the mockery of an aging woman or to sympathize with a woman who loses a source of power in the courtly world, her beauty.

This biographer accepts the testimony of an enemy's ambassador and an entertaining historian many generations later. Yet she expresses amazement at the contradictions of Elizabeth's undisputed character, even in citing yet another male judge: "Scarcely can it be believed, that the individual exhibited in forms at once so ridiculous and repulsive, can, under another phase, have extorted from even a Jesuit, the following exalted praise:—'Elizabeth is one of those extraordinary persons, whose very name imprints in one's mind so great an idea, that the noblest descriptions that are given of her are much below it. Never crowned head understood better how to govern, nor made fewer false steps during a long reign. Charles the Fifth's friends could easily reckon his mistakes; but Elizabeth's foes were reduced to invent them for her. Elizabeth's design was to reign, govern, and be mistress; to keep her people in obedience and her neighbors in awe; affecting neither to weaken her subjects, nor to encroach on foreigners, yet never suffering any to lessen that supreme power, which she equally knew how to maintain by policy or by force; for none at that time had more wit, management, and penetration than she. She understood not the art of war; yet knew so well how to breed excellent soldiers, that England had never seen a greater number, or more experienced, than those which existed during her reign. Her conduct in relation to the marriage of herself with the two successive Dukes of Anjou, was in complete accordance with the determination she expressed to Melville, and so many others, "that she was resolved to die a virgin." It is evident that she never had the smallest intention to unite herself to either of them; with regard to the elder duke, the whole negotiation was equally a stratagem both on the part of Catherine and Elizabeth; but with regard to the second, her affections were involved though the object of them was a "very ugly man." The most amusing feature of this grand contention of will between two such illustrious practitioners as the queen-mother of France and the maiden ruler of England is, that each being far too clever to fail, only succeeded by each cheating the other. The purposes of both the arch-deceivers were attained, and both therefore were mutual dupes."

It was observed that after the death of Essex, the people ceased to greet the queen with the demonstrations of rapturous affection with which they had been accustomed to salute her when she appeared in public. They could not forgive the loss of that generous and gallant nobleman, the only popular object of her favor, whom she had cut off in the flower of his days; and now, whenever she was seen, a gloomy silence reigned in the streets through which she passed. These indications of the change in her subjects' feelings towards her are said to have sunk deeply into the mind of the aged queen, and occasioned that depression of spirits which preceded her death.

As Strickland adds layers to her collage of Elizabeth's character, the reader feels more that history has moved on than that a story has been narrated. She devotes a short paragraph to the "evil portent," in the queen's eyes, of needing to have her coronation ring removed: over the years it had "grown into her finger," and it had to be "filed off." In the next paragraph, Strickland mentions "the beginning of June," though no year has been specified, no other indication other than Elizabeth's depression and the approach of the next chapter in the book, that the subject's life nears its close. Elizabeth "confided to the French ambassador, Count de Beaumont, 'that she was a-weary of life,' and with sighs and tears, alluded to the death of Essex," her obsession. She said, 'that being aware of the impetuosity of his temper and his ambitious character, she had warned him two years before to content himself with pleasing her, and not to show such insolent contempt..., but to take care not to touch her sceptre, lest she should be compelled to punish him according to the laws of England, and not according to her own.... His neglect of this caution,' she added, 'had caused his ruin.'" Nevertheless, the reign and life of the melancholy survivor carry on in Strickland's volume.

One of the members of Elizabeth's household gives the following account of the state of the queen's mind, in a letter to a confidential correspondent, in the service of her successor: 'Our queen is troubled with a rheum in her arm, which vexeth her very much, besides the grief she hath conceived for my lord of Essex's death. She sleepeth not so much by day as she used, neither taketh rest by night. Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes with shedding tears, to bewail Essex.'"

Strickland almost seems in the position of lady in literal waiting in the court, tracing the fitful moods of the sovereign. At the same time the biographer might be filing through correspondence: from "fits of despondency... we find Elizabeth exhibiting fits of active mirthfulness, especially at the expense of her dwarfish premier, Cecil.... She sometimes so far forgot the dignity of her age and exalted station as to afford him a sort of whimsical encouragement." This "coquetry" is documented in a courtier's letter "to the earl of Shrewsbury" copying "'some verses compounded by Mr. Secretary, who got Hales to frame a ditty to it. The occasion was, I hear, that the young lady Derby, wearing about her neck and in her bosom, a dainty tablet, the queen, espying it, asked, "What fine jewel that was?" Lady Derby was anxious to excuse showing it; but the queen would have it. She opened it, and, finding it to be Mr. Secretary's picture, she snatched it from lady Derby's neck, and tied it upon her own shoe, and walked about with it there. Then she took it from thence, and pinned it on her elbow, and wore it some time there also. When Mr. Secretary Cecil was told of this, he made these verses, and caused Hales to sing them in his apartments. It was told her majesty that Mr. Secretary Cecil had rare music and songs in his chamber. She chose to hear them, and the ditty was sung.'" The gist of the verse was "'that he repines not, though her majesty may please to grace others; for his part, he is content with the favor his picture received.' This incident took place when the royal coquette was in her seventieth year. Strange scenes are occasionally revealed when the mystic curtain that veils the penetralia of kings and queens from vulgar curiosity is, after the lapse of centuries, withdrawn by the minuteness of biographical research. What a delicious subject for an " H. B." caricature would the stately Elizabeth and her pigmy secretary have afforded!" Strickland impersonally ascribes agency to "biographical research" unveiling penetralia, but misses both the vulgar curiosity in her expose of the pranks and entertainments of historical figures, and the element of caricature in her own portrayal of Elizabeth.

Strickland adds further scenes of intrigue. Cecil was double dealing as "the creature of the expecting impatient heir" of the aging queen. "One day, a packet, from King James, was delivered to him....Elizabeth's quick eye, doubtless, detected the furtive glance which taught him to recognize that it was a dangerous missive; and she ordered him instantly to open and show the contents of his letters to her." He played on her fear of disease ("one of her weak points"); 'This packet,' said he, ...' has a strange and evil smell. Surely it has not been in contact with infected persons or goods?' ... she hastily ordered Cecil to throw it at a distance, and not to bring it into her presence again till it had been thoroughly fumigated. He, of course, took care to purify it of the evidence of his own guilty deeds.

The next anecdote, however, goes far beyond all our present discovery in optics: "Afterwards, in the melancholy of her sickness, she desired to see a true looking-glass, which in twenty years before she had not seen, but only such a one as on purpose was made to deceive her sight, which true looking-glass being brought her, she presently fell exclaiming at all those flatterers which had so much commended her, and they durst not after come into her presence." Her attendants had doubtless left off painting her, and she happened to see her natural face in the glass.

A fearful complication of complaints ... began to draw visibly to a climax. She suffered greatly with the gout in her hands and fingers, but was never heard to complain of what she felt in the way of personal pain, but continued to talk of progresses and festivities, as though she expected her days to be prolonged through years to come.

All contemporary writers bear witness to the increased dejection of her mind, after visiting her dying kinswoman, the Countess of Nottingham; but the particulars of that visit rest on historical tradition only. It is said that the countess, pressed in conscience on account of her detention of the ring, which Essex had sent to the queen as an appeal to her mercy, could not die in peace until she had revealed the truth to her majesty, and craved her pardon. But Elizabeth, in the transport of mingled grief and fury, shook, or, as others have said, struck the dying penitent in her bed, with these words, "God may forgive you, but I never can!"

The death-bed confession of the countess of Nottingham gave a rude shock to the fast-ebbing sands of the sorrow-stricken queen.

It is almost a fearful task to trace the passage of the mighty Elizabeth through the "dark valley of the shadow of death." Many have been dazzled with the splendor of her life, but few even of her most ardent admirers, would wish their last end might be like hers.

Strickland once again quotes at length from the memoir of a contemporary male courtier: Robert Carey, "afterwards earl of Monmouth," who visited the sickroom of "his royal kinswoman": "'I found her in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She called me to her; I kissed her hand, and told her it was "my chiefest happiness to see her in safety and health, which I hoped might long continue. She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said, 'No, Robin, I am not well,' and then discoursed to 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. I was grieved... I never saw her fetch a sigh, but when the queen of Scots was beheaded. Then, upon my knowledge, she shed many sighs and tears, manifesting her innocence that she never gave consent to the death of that queen. I used the best words I could to persuade her from this melancholy humor, but I found it was too deeprooted in her heart, and hardly to be removed. This was upon Saturday night, and she gave command that the great closet should be prepared for her to go to chapel the next morning.'" The next day after much suspense she never emerged but lay upon cushions in the private room to hear the service, and remained on the cushions without eating for days.

Beaumont, the French ambassador, affords a yet more gloomy picture of the sufferings of mind and body, which rendered the progress of the "dreaded and dreadful Elizabeth" to the tomb, an awful lesson on the vanity of all earthly distinctions and glories, in the closing stage of life, when nothing but the witness of a good conscience, and the holy reliance on the mercy of a Redeemer's love, can enable shrinking nature to contemplate, with hope and comfort, the dissolution of its earthly tabernacle.

On the 24th of March, Beaumont made the following report of the state of the departing monarch:—"The queen was given up three days ago; she had lain long in a cold sweat, and had not spoken. A short time previously she said, 'I wish not to live any longer, but desire to die.' Yesterday and the day before she began to rest, and found herself better after, having been greatly relieved by the bursting of a small swelling in the throat. She takes no medicine whatever, and has only kept her bed two days; before this she would on no account suffer it, for fear (as some suppose) of a prophecy that she should die in her bed. She is, moreover, said to be no longer in her right senses; this, however, is a mistake; she has only had some slight wanderings at intervals."

Strickland disputes an account of the way the courtiers knew of Elizabeth's approval of James as her successor, and similarly suggests that the vigilant "spies" about court found it difficult to detect the quiet passing of "the spirit of the mighty Elizabeth." Having said prayers, she fell into a final sleep, "and, about three in the morning, it was discovered that she had ceased to breathe." Here another signal is transmitted, this one a legendary secret code but unmistakable what it portended for Britain. "Lady Scrope gave the first intelligence" of Elizabeth's death "by silently dropping a sapphire ring to her brother, who was lurking beneath the windows." This famous "'blue ring' had been confided to Lady Scrope" for this very purpose. "Sir Robert Carey caught the token, fraught with the destiny of the island empire, and departed, at fiery speed, to announce the tidings in Scotland."

This great female sovereign died in the seventieth year of her age, and the forty-fourth of her reign. She was born on the day celebrated as the nativity of the Virgin Mary, and she died, March 24th, on the eve of the festival of the annunciation, called Lady-day. Among the complimentary epitaphs which were composed for her, and hung up in many churches, was one ending with the following couplet:—