profound factor in fostering in Elizabeth that intense dislike and distrust of the marriage state, which she denounced even at the age of eight, and which never abated. This most dangerous scandal, the fate of her mother, that of Lady Jane Grey, the consequences of her sister Mary's marriage to Philip II., and the life of her father, may well lead us to the belief that matrimony was of all institutions the one most justly feared by Elizabeth both as an individual and as a queen.

In leaving the Seymour Affair, it should be said that there are several documents which we have not quoted; but we believe nothing of importance has been omitted, except perhaps the following in the memoir of the Duchess of Feria, a contemporary, and one of the bitterest enemies Elizabeth as queen ever had :

"In King Edward's time what passed between the Lord Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, and her Doctor Latimer preached in a sermon, and was a chief cause that the Parliament condemned the Admiral. There was a bruit of a child born and miserably destroyed, but could not be discovered whose it was; only the report of the mid-wife, who was brought from her house blindfold thither, and so returned, saw nothing in the house while she was there, but candle light; only, she said, it was the child of a very fair young lady. There was a muttering of the Admiral and this lady, who was then between fifteen and sixteen years of age. If it were so, it was the judgment of God upon the Admiral; and upon her, to make her ever after incapable of children. . . . The reason why I write this is to answer the voice of my countrymen in so strangely exalting the lady Elizabeth, and so basely depressing Queen Mary.”

It is hardly necessary to refer further to this account. Everybody will at once recognize, with only the variation of the unfortunate victim's identity, probably the most ancient tradition with which children in all countries have alternately been made to shudder and marvel. The promulgator of this version, apparently one of its latest appearances, should, however, have been a little more careful before ascribing it to Elizabeth, for that lady has left it on record that the story was that she was with child, not that she had had one. We may safely leave these two versions to those responsible for them,

Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria (ascribed to Henry Clifford, a member of her household), London, 1887, p. 86.

as did Napoleon at St. Helena when confronted with two English journals, one of which stated that he had seduced his sister, while the other charged him with being incompetent. Napoleon could not discover that he himself was really concerned.

But to recur to the letter of 21st of February, 1549,* just printed in extenso. We contend that it shows signs of greater ability than anything written by any other person of similar age in all the records of history. It can only be compared with the previous letter of 28th January, which we have already examined in detail.

This later letter exhibits the profoundest aptitude for, and practice in, the technicalities of the science of logic. To its careful analysis we commend every reader, only now calling his attention to one phrase:

"I would be loth to have the ill will of the people." Why? What difference would that make to this young girl of fifteen ?

We can have little doubt of what was in her mind. She was looking to the future when she might ascend the throne of her brother; and not that alone; she was even at this early day so ordering her life as to remove every obstacle (no matter how insignificant) in her path to that goal! These words admit of no other construction. Do we not know that it was said that once Katherine Parr had told her, "I believe that you are destined by heaven to be the Queen of England"? Probably she repeated it again and again, as almost certainly did scores of others. It was the common belief.

Above all, it was the common hope. She represented the aspirations of her people-and we may be sure that they did not fail to tell her so she who was reputed to be endowed with inherent genius, profound knowledge, and an insatiable avidity for its acquisition-between whom and the throne stood only an invalid boy and a spinster sister of bad health, fragile, unattractive, and nearly double her own age. Can there be any doubt of the eventual effect of these statements upon such a receptive, calculating, reflective, ambitious mind as that possessed by Elizabeth? Are we to suppose that after having these prophecies and circumstances dinned into her ears from every side-by every Protestant who already looked to her to

* MS. Lansd., Brit. Mus., 1236, fol. 33.

restore his faith which it was foreseen would suffer when Catholic Mary succeeded Protestant Edward; and by every Catholic who hoped that she, when Mary came to die, would be the bulwark of his faith-are we to suppose that in the face of all these constant suggestions, this precocious girl did not weigh the chances of their fulfilment ?—this girl who (to quote Wriothesley, the future Lord Chancellor) at six years of age appeared and conducted herself "with as great a gravitie, as she had been 40 years old";* this girl, who, several years later-five years or so before she came to the throne-according to Chapuys, the Imperial ambassador, "almost governed everything" in England. Do we think for a moment that she did not notice that Edward was not strong and very likely soon to die? Do we think her so heedless as not to observe that Mary, who would succeed Edward, was already nearly thirtyfive, broken in health, unmarried, and with no suitor for whom she seemed to care? Are we to suppose that the younger girl did not go further, and, possessed as we know she was of the most intimate facts of life and of the physical condition of her sister, the full particulars of which the reader will soon master, conclude that the chances were that Mary even if she were to marry would probably never have children?

We are forced to determine in the face of these letters that even at this early period nothing escaped their author that concerned her present or her future. Elizabeth was ordering her daily life with the one object of obtaining and retaining the

*Hearne's Sylloge Epistolarum, 149. Wriothesley visited Mary and Elizabeth in December, 1539, three months after Elizabeth's sixth birthday, at Hertford Castle. The part of Wriothesley's report dealing with Elizabeth is as follows: "I went then to my lady Elizabeth's Grace, and to the same made the King's Majestie's most hearty commendations, declaring that his Highnes desired to hear of her health, and sent her his blessing. She gave humble thanks, enquiring after his Majestie's welfare, and that with as great a gravitie, as she had been 40 years old. If she be no worse educated than she now appeareth to me, she will prove of no less honor and womanhood than shall beseem her father's daughter...." [This is probably the exact wording of Wriothesley. Certainly it is the wording of Hearne, the authority upon which all the later versions apparently have had to be based, owing to the burning of so much of the original as contained the reference to Elizabeth ; and nobody has ever cast any doubts upon Hearne's exactness in copying. The MS. fragment-part of one page-still in existence is Otho C. X., 272 old number, 274 present number, B.M. MS. R. Miss Strickland's Elizabeth (Everyman Ed., p. 11), quoting for sole authority State Papers, 30th Henry VIII. as authority, makes the last clause read "she will prove of no less honour than beseemeth her father's daughter," while her authority gives the phrase as she will be an honour to womankind."]

throne of her fathers. In a word, she entered the whirlpool of politics at fifteen. Had we time to linger, we should see her daily playing her hand in that tremendous game.

Deeply, however, as she was involved in it by the Seymour Affair, the severest trials of her whole life, its most dangerous situations and most delicate decisions, ensued in the ten years or so which were yet to elapse before she became Queen.

All through those long years, from her fifteenth to her twenty-fifth year, the most formulative and impressionable of her career, she was in the very centre of English politics, and for the greater part of that period was the very hub about which the entire governmental system revolved.

We must give due weight to these tremendous factors, for only by their comprehension can we realize that, altogether apart from Elizabeth's education through books, it was a most astute and successful politician, schooled by long years of danger to her succession and to her life itself, exercised in almost daily negotiations with the most ambitious and most unscrupulous men and women, who at the age of twenty-five ascended the throne.

If great events were dependent upon the personality of the head of England, surely no other country at such a time of crisis ever had a monarch so well endowed and trained in the art of statecraft by actual experience to enter upon the scene with nearly fifty years of life yet remaining to institute and complete that which Providence had decreed.

CHAPTER II

ELIZABETH'S HIGHLY TRAINED MIND

HE contention that Elizabeth was the most potent human instrument that ever wielded the forces of England is supported by the knowledge that she was not only a genius, but, as we shall directly see, a highly-trained one, as well.

As to the former, if we had no more than her letters to the Protector, it would be evident that the girl was possessed of this rarest of qualities which is vouchsafed to the world in its rulers no oftener than once or twice in a thousand years. From Alexander there is none to Cæsar, from Cæsar we must leap to Constantine, from him to Elizabeth, and from Elizabeth to Napoleon-and from Napoleon to-whom? It will probably be at least five hundred years before the world will learn his

name.

There can be no more doubt that Elizabeth was a youthful prodigy than of the truth of such a description of William Wootton, Newton's friend and Swift's doughty antagonist, who was reading Greek and Latin at five, Hebrew at six, and had by then mastered Homer, Virgil, Pythagoras, Terence, and Corderius-who had his B.A. from Cambridge at twelve, was a Fellow of St. John's, Cambridge, at fifteen, and a F.R.S. before he was twenty-one; of John Stuart Mill who had mastered the chief Greek authors by eight, the Latin ones by twelve, had written, at that age, a history of the government of Rome, and other histories before he was seven, not to mention a knowledge of higher mathematics, logic, classical literature, and political economy by thirteen.

Yet none of the early works of these masters shows greater range of ability, or more variety of power-indeed, they utterly lack the executive, administrative, combative, practical sense so prominent in the princess's-than shines out so forcibly in