necessary to place herself in the front of a confederacy of belligerent powers. It was sufficient to give the sanction of the name of England, a rich and united kingdom, to the cause which she supported. The spirit and enterprise of her subjects, with some assistance from her, did the rest. By this policy, also, she pleased the popular feeling of her kingdom, and opened a channel in which all the restless action of her nobility and gentry might be borne out and find a current. The national fame was likewise a gainer by the reputation acquired by English knights and soldiers, in fighting against the League in France, and Philip II. in the Netherlands. The country assumed her proper station in the van of the defenders of liberty; the blood of Sir Philip Sidney was shed in the cause of the freedom of the world; and tyrants trembled at the name of Elizabeth and of England.

Secondly. She took care not to ask too much money of the people. Her treaties with Henry IV. and with the Netherland States resemble more the hard bargain of a Swiss Canton than the generous alliance of a powerful and friendly sovereign. She well knew that Parliament held the purse, and must, therefore, become absolute master of a distressed or expensive sovereign. In her situation economy was power. Happy would it have been for Leo X., for Charles I., for Louis XVI., if they and their immediate predecessors had been aware of this keystone of their fate! The Reformation, the civil wars of England, and the revolution in France, had their rise in disordered finances. Men may perhaps submit to be oppressed, but will not easily consent to pay a dear price for the oppression.

Thirdly. She yielded to the popular voice, and cultivated popular favour, whenever it could be done with dignity and safety. She could be severe and kind by turns. Thus, having at one time excited

great murmurs among the House of Commons by forbidding liberty of speech, she soon thought proper to revoke her commands. But nothing shows her policy better than her conduct respecting monopolies. There was hardly any article of which a monopoly was not granted by the Crown. The evil grew so grievous that even Elizabeth's House of Commons echoed with angry speeches and universal complaint. The Queen instantly yielded. She did not acknowledge that the debates of the House of Commons had any weight with her, but she informed them, through her Secretary of State, that she consented to quash those monopolies that were illegal, and to submit to an inquiry with respect to the rest. Secretary Cecil made an apology to the House for having compared them to a school, and said, he by no means intended to deny the freedom of speech.

*

In her manners also the Queen took care to show the greatest confidence in the people. No one knew better how to buy the nation's heart with a phrase, to declare, on occasion, that her treasure was better in her subjects' purses than in her own coffers, and that her best guards were the affections of her people. She was well aware that nothing is so pleasing as the condescension of supreme power. She therefore displayed her greatness by the pomp of her state, and her goodness by the affability of her language.

By such means Queen Elizabeth was enabled to maintain a stable authority over an unquiet people in a restless age. France was distracted by civil war; the King of Spain was employed in a bootless and bloody quarrel with his insurgent subjects in the Netherlands; Germany was shaken in every limb by the Reformation; but the Queen of Eng

*Note (B) at the end of the volume.

land reaped the reward of prudence and courage in the tranquillity and affectionate obedience of her kingdom and people. Her power was enormous. When the Commons remonstrated, she speedily dissolved them. At one time she told them not to meddle in affairs of state. Still less did she permit any proposal of alteration in the Church; and she repeatedly imprisoned, or procured to be imprisoned, those who gainsayed her high pleasure in these matters.* She dispensed with those laws which were unpalatable to her, and regulated the behaviour of her people by ordinance and arbitrary mandate. She forbade the cultivation of woad, as offensive to her royal nostrils. The Court of Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission not being sufficiently arbitrary, it was ordered that every person who imported forbidden books, or committed other offences specified, should be punished by martial law. Those who employed the press as an organ of discussion were speedily condemned. Mr. John Udall, a Puritan minister, charged with having written a slanderous and infamous libel against the Queen's Majesty,' was tried for a felony, and convicted. The sentence was never executed, but the poor man, after several years' confinement, died in prison. The judge told the jury to find him only author of the book, for the offence of writing it had been already determined to be felony by the judges. A gentleman who had written a book to dissuade the Queen from marrying a French prince, was sentenced by a law of Queen Mary to lose his hand. A Puritan of the name of Penry was condemned and executed for seditious papers found in his pocket. Struck by these arbitrary proceedings, Mr. Hume has compared the government of Elizabeth to the modern government of Turkey, and remarking that, in both cases, the

*Note (C) at the end of the volume.

TRING

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sovereign was deprived of the power of levying money on his subjects, he asserts that in both countries this limitation, unsupported by other privileges, appears rather prejudicial to the people." It is needless to say much on this fanciful analogy, so unworthy of a great historian. Did it ever happen that a Turkish house of commons prevailed on the Sultan to correct the extortion of his pashas, as the English House of Commons induced Elizabeth to surrender the odious monopolies? Did Queen Elizabeth ever put to death the holders of those monopolies without trial, in order to seize their illgotten wealth? In fact, the authority of the House of Commons made some advances during, the reign of Elizabeth. The very weight of the power that was used to crush their remonstrances shows the strength of their resistance. The debates of the House of Commons during this reign fill a volume and a half of the old parliamentary history. attentive observer of this country, at that period, would scarcely have failed to remark, that the force of free institutions was suspended, but not destroyed, by the personal influence of Elizabeth; and while he acknowledged that no sovereign ever carried the art of reigning further, he would perceive that the nation had granted her a lease for life of arbitrary power, but had not alienated for ever the inheritance of freedom.

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It was happy for the country that Queen Elizabeth found it her interest to embrace the Protestant religion, and that, by the foolish as well as atrocious plots of the Roman Catholics, she was forced to cultivate still more strongly the affections of the Protestant party. Boast as we may of our Constitution, had Queen Elizabeth been a Roman Catholic, or James II. a Protestant, there would have been no liberty in England.

CHAPTER VI.

JAMES THE FIRST.

'Every one pointed to her (Queen Elizabeth's) white hairs, and said with that peaceable Leontius, “When this snow melteth, there will be a flood." Hall's Sermons.

DURING the latter years of Elizabeth, all classes of people were impatient for the accession of her successor. There is nothing so irksome to mankind as continued demands for a long series of years from the same person upon their admiration and their gratitude. In proportion as the novelty wears out, weariness succeeds to wonder, and envy to weariness; the many, like fastidious critics, begin to find faults where they saw nothing but beauties before, and some are angry that there are so few faults to find. The young love to censure what the old extravagantly praised, and the giddy are disgusted with the monotony of excellence. There might perhaps, however, be other causes why the English nation should desire the reign of James. A new spirit had arisen during the latter years of Elizabeth, both in religion and politics. A large party, known by the name of Puritans, had been formed, or rather, increased and united, who aimed at a further reformation in the Church. The Romish ceremonies, which had been preserved in our form of worship, found no indulgence in the minds of this stern sect; and, had the Puritans been able to execute their wishes, the power and revenues of the bishops would have been submitted to their crucible. Their bold and uncompromising principles led them also to free principles