Never perhaps was the accession of any prince the subject of such keen and lively interest to a whole people as that of Elizabeth.

Both in the religious establishments and political relations of the country, the most important changes were antic.i.p.ated; changes in which the humblest individual found himself concerned, and to which a vast majority of the nation looked forward with hope and joy.

With the courtiers and great n.o.bles, whose mutability of faith had so happily corresponded with every ecclesiastical vicissitude of the last three reigns, political and personal considerations may well be supposed to have held the first place; and though the old religion might still be endeared to them by many cherished a.s.sociations and by early prejudice, there were few among them who did not regard the liberation of the country from Spanish influence as ample compensation for the probable restoration of the religious establishment of Henry or of Edward.

Besides, there was scarcely an individual belonging to these cla.s.ses who had not in some manner partaken of the plunder of the church, and whom the avowed principles of Mary had not disquieted with apprehensions that some plan of compulsory rest.i.tution would sooner or later be attempted by an union of royal and papal authority.

With the middling and lower cla.s.ses religious views and feelings were predominant The doctrines of the new and better system of faith and worship had now become more precious and important than ever in the eyes of its adherents from the hardships which many of them had encountered for its sake, and from the interest which each disciple vindicated to himself in the glory and merit of the holy martyrs whose triumphant exit they had witnessed. With all the fervor of pious grat.i.tude they offered up their thanksgivings for the signal deliverance by which their prayers had been answered. The b.l.o.o.d.y tyranny of Mary was at an end; and though the known conformity of Elizabeth to Romish rites might apparently give room for doubts and suspicions, it should seem that neither catholics nor protestants were willing to believe that the daughter of Anne Boleyn could in her heart be a papist. Under this impression the citizens of London, who spoke the sense of their own cla.s.s throughout the kingdom, welcomed the new queen as a protectress sent by Heaven itself: but even in the first transports of their joy, and amid the pompous pageantries by which their loyal congratulations were expressed, they took care to intimate, in a manner not to be misunderstood, their hopes and expectations on the great concern now nearest to their hearts.

Prudence confined within their own bosoms the regrets and murmurs of the popish clergy; submission and a simulated loyalty were at present obviously their only policy: thus not a whisper breathed abroad but of joy and gratulation and happy presage of the days to come.

The s.e.x, the youth, the accomplishments, the graces, the past misfortunes of the princess, all served to heighten the interest with which she was beheld: the age of chivalry had not yet expired; and in spite of the late unfortunate experience of a female reign, the romantic image of a maiden queen dazzled all eyes, subdued all hearts, inflamed the imaginations of the brave and courtly youth with visions of love and glory, exalted into a pa.s.sionate homage the principle of loyalty, and urged adulation to the very brink of idolatry.

The fulsome compliments on her beauty which Elizabeth, almost to the latest period of her life, not only permitted but required and delighted in, have been adverted to by all the writers who have made her reign and character their theme: and those of the number whom admiration and pity of the fair queen of Scots have rendered hostile to her memory, have taken a malicious pleasure in exaggerating the extravagance of this weakness, by denying her, even in her freshest years, all pretensions to those personal charms by which her rival was so eminently, distinguished. Others however have been more favorable, and probably more just, to her on this point; and it would be an injury to her memory to withhold from the reader the following portraitures which authorize us to form a pleasing as well as majestic image of this ill.u.s.trious female at the period of her accession and at the age of five-and-twenty.

"She was a lady of great beauty, of decent stature, and of an excellent shape. In her youth she was adorned with a more than usual maiden modesty; her skin was of pure white, and her hair of a yellow colour; her eyes were beautiful and lively. In short, her whole body was well made, and her face was adorned with a wonderful and sweet beauty and majesty. This beauty lasted till her middle age, though it declined[31]." &c.

[Note 31: Bohun's "Character of Queen Elizabeth."]

"She was of personage tall, of hair and complexion fair, and therewith well favored, but high-nosed; of limbs and feature neat, and, which added to the l.u.s.tre of those exterior graces, of stately and majestic comportment; partic.i.p.ating in this more of her father than her mother, who was of an inferior allay, plausible, or, as the French hath it, more debonaire and affable, virtues which might suit well with majesty, and which descending as hereditary to the daughter, did render her of a more sweeter temper and endeared her more to the love and liking of her people, who gave her the name and fame of a most gracious and popular prince[32]."

[Note 32: Naunton's "Fragmenta Regalia."]

The death of Mary was announced to the two houses, which were then sitting, by Heath bishop of Ely, the lord-chancellor. In both a.s.semblies, after the decorum of a short pause, the notification was followed by joyful shouts of "G.o.d save queen Elizabeth! long and happily may she reign!" and with great alacrity the members issued out to proclaim the new sovereign before the palace in Westminster and again at the great cross in Cheapside.

The Londoners knew not how to contain their joy on this happy occasion:--the bells of all the churches were set ringing, bonfires were kindled, and tables were spread in the streets according to the bountiful and hospitable custom of that day, "where was plentiful eating, drinking, and making merry." On the following Sunday _Te Deum_ was sung in the churches; probably an unexampled, however merited, expression of disrespect to the memory of the former sovereign.

Elizabeth received the news of her own accession at Hatfield. We are not told that she affected any great concern for the loss of her sister, much less did any unbecoming sign of exultation escape her; but, "falling on her knees, after a good time of respiration she uttered this verse of the Psalms; _A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile oculis nostris_[33]: which to this day we find on the stamp of her gold; with this on her silver, _Posui Deum adjutorem meum_[34]."[35]

[Note 33: It is the Lord's doing, it is marvellous in our eyes.]

[Note 34: I have chosen G.o.d for my helper.]

[Note 35: "Fragmenta Regalia."]

Several n.o.blemen of the late queen's council now repairing to her, she held at Hatfield on November the 20th her first privy-council; at which she declared sir Thomas Parry comptroller of her household, sir Edward Rogers captain of the guard, and sir William Cecil princ.i.p.al secretary of state, all three being at the same time admitted to the council-board. From these appointments, the first of her reign, some presages might be drawn of her future government favorable to her own character and correspondent to the wishes of her people.

Parry was the person who had filled for many years the office of her cofferer, who was perfectly in the secret of whatever confidential intercourse she might formerly have held with the lord-admiral, and whose fidelity to her in that business had stood firm against all the threats of the protector and council, and the artifices of those by whom his examination had been conducted. That mindfulness of former services, of which the advancement of this man formed by no means a solitary instance in the conduct of Elizabeth, appeared the more commendable in her, because she accompanied it with a generous oblivion of the many slights and injuries to which her defenceless and persecuted condition had so long exposed her from others.

The merit of Cecil was already in part known to the public; and his promotion to an office of such importance was a happy omen for the protestant cause, his attachment to which had been judged the sole impediment to his advancement under the late reign to situations of power and trust corresponding with the opinion entertained of his integrity and political wisdom. A brief retrospect of the scenes of public life in which he had already been an actor will best explain the character and sentiments of this eminent person, destined to wield for more than forty years with unparalleled skill and felicity, under a mistress who knew his value, the energies of the English state.

Born, in 1520, the son of the master of the royal wardrobe, Cecil early engaged the notice of Henry VIII. by the fame of a religious dispute which he had held in Latin with two popish priests attached to the Irish chieftain O'Neal. A place in reversion freely bestowed on him by the king at once rewarded the zeal of the young polemic, and encouraged him to desert the profession of the law, in which he had embarked, for the political career.

His marriage with the sister of sir John Cheke strengthened his interest at court by procuring him an introduction to the earl of Hertford, and early in the reign of Edward this powerful patronage obtained for him the office of secretary of state. In the first disgrace of the protector he lost his place, and was for a short time a prisoner in the Tower; but his compliant conduct soon restored him to favor: he scrupled not to draw the articles of impeachment against the protector; and Northumberland, finding him both able in business and highly acceptable to the young monarch, procured, or permitted, his reinstatement in office in September 1550.

Cecil, however, was both too wary and too honest to regard himself as pledged to the support of Northumberland's inordinate schemes of ambition; and scarcely any public man of the day, attached to the protestant cause, escaped better in the affair of lady Jane Grey. It is true that one writer accuses him of having drawn all the papers in her favor: but this appears to be, in part at least, either a mistake or a calumny; and it seems, on the contrary, that he refused to Northumberland some services of this nature. It has been already mentioned that his name appeared with those of the other privy-councillors to Edward's settlement of the crown; and his plea of having signed it merely as a witness to the king's signature, deserves to be regarded as a kind of subterfuge. But he was early in paying his respects to Mary, and he took advantage of the graciousness with which she received his explanations to obtain a general pardon, which protected him from all personal danger. He lost however his place of secretary, which some have affirmed that he might have retained by further compliances in religion. This however is the more doubtful, because it cannot be questioned that he must have yielded a good deal on this point, without which he neither could nor would have made one of a deputation sent to conduct to England cardinal Pole the papal legate, nor probably would he have been joined in commission with the cardinal and other persons sent to treat of a peace with France.

But admitting, as we must, that this eminent statesman was far from aspiring to the praise of a confessor, he will still be found to deserve high commendation for the zeal and courage with which, as a member of parliament, he defended the interests of his oppressed and suffering fellow-protestants. At considerable hazard to himself, he opposed with great freedom of speech a bill for confiscating the property of exiles for religion; and he appears to have escaped committal to the Tower on this account, solely by the presence of mind which he exhibited before the council and the friendship of some of its members.

He is known to have maintained a secret and intimate correspondence with Elizabeth during the time of her adversity, and to have a.s.sisted her on various trying occasions with his salutary counsels; and nothing could be more interesting than to trace the origin and progress of that confidential relation between these eminent and in many respects congenial characters, which after a long course of years was only terminated by the hand of death;--but materials for this purpose are unfortunately wanting.

The letters on both sides were probably sacrificed by the parties themselves to the caution which their situation required; and among the published extracts from the Burleigh papers, only a single doc.u.ment is found relative to the connexion subsisting between them during the reign of Mary. This is a short and uninteresting letter addressed to Cecil by sir Thomas Benger, one of the princess's officers, in which, after some mention of accounts, not now intelligible, he promises that he and sir Thomas Parry will move the princess to grant his correspondent's request, which is not particularized, and a.s.sures him that as his coming thither would be thankfully received, so he wishes that all the friends of the princess entertained the same sense of that matter as he does.

The letter seems to point at some official concern of Cecil in the affairs of Elizabeth. It is dated October 24th 1556.

The private character of Cecil was in every respect exemplary, and his disposition truly amiable. His second marriage with one of the learned daughters of sir Anthony Cook conferred upon him that exalted species of domestic happiness which a sympathy in mental endowments can alone bestow; whilst it had the further advantage of connecting him with the excellent man her father, with sir Nicholas Bacon and sir Thomas Hobby, the husbands of two of her sisters, and generally with the wisest and most conscientious supporters of the protestant interest. This great minister was honorably distinguished through life by an ardor and constancy of friendship rare in all cla.s.ses of men, but esteemed peculiarly so in those whose lives are occupied amid the heartless ceremonial of courts and the political intrigues of princes. His attachments, as they never degenerated into the weakness of favoritism, were as much a source of benefit to his country as of enjoyment to himself; for his friends were those of virtue and the state. And there were few among the more estimable public men of this reign who were not indebted either for their first introduction to the notice of Elizabeth, their continuance in her favor, or their restoration to it when undeservedly lost, to the generous patronage or powerful intercession of Cecil.

On appointing him a member of her council, the queen addressed her secretary in the following gracious words:

"I give you this charge, that you shall be of my privy-council, and content yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgement I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any gift, and that you will be faithful to the state, and that, without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel that you think best: And that if you shall know any thing necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only, and a.s.sure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein. And therefore herewith I charge you[36]."

[Note 36: "Nugae Antiquae."]

Cardinal Pole was not doomed to be an eye-witness of the relapse of the nation into what he must have regarded as heresy of the most aggravated nature; he expired a few hours after his royal kinswoman: and Elizabeth, with due consideration for the ill.u.s.trious ancestry, the learning, the moderation, and the blameless manners of the man, authorized his honorable interment at Canterbury among the archbishops his predecessors, with the attendance of two bishops, his ancient friends and the faithful companions of his long exile.

On November 23d the queen set forward for her capital, attended by a train of about a thousand n.o.bles, knights, gentlemen, and ladies, and took up her abode for the present at the dissolved monastery of the Chartreux, or Charterhouse, then the residence of lord North; a splendid pile which offered ample accommodation for a royal retinue. Her next remove, in compliance with ancient custom, was to the Tower. On this occasion all the streets from the Charterhouse were spread with fine gravel; singers and musicians were stationed by the way, and a vast concourse of people freely lent their joyful and admiring acclamations, as preceded by her heralds and great officers, and richly attired in purple velvet, she pa.s.sed along mounted on her palfrey, and returning the salutations of the humblest of her subjects with graceful and winning affability.

With what vivid and what affecting impressions of the vicissitudes attending on the great must she have pa.s.sed again within the antique walls of that fortress once her dungeon, now her palace! She had entered it by the Traitor's gate, a terrified and defenceless prisoner, smarting under many wrongs, hopeless of deliverance, and apprehending nothing less than an ignominious death. She had quitted it, still a captive, under the guard of armed men, to be conducted she knew not whither. She returned to it in all the pomp of royalty, surrounded by the ministers of her power, ushered by the applauses of her people; the cherished object of every eye, the idol of every heart.

Devotion alone could supply becoming language to the emotions which swelled her bosom; and no sooner had she reached the royal apartments, than falling on her knees she returned humble and fervent thanks to that Providence which had brought her in safety, like Daniel from the den of lions, to behold this day of exaltation.

Elizabeth was attended on her pa.s.sage to the Tower by one who like herself returned with honor to that place of his former captivity; but not, like herself, with a mind disciplined by adversity to receive with moderation and wisdom "the good vicissitude of joy." This person was lord Robert Dudley, whom the queen had thus early encouraged to aspire to her future favors by appointing him to the office of master of the horse.

We are totally uninformed of the circ.u.mstances which had recommended to her peculiar patronage this bad son of a bad father; whose enterprises, if successful, would have disinherited of a kingdom Elizabeth herself no less than Mary. But it is remarkable, that even under the reign of the latter, the surviving members of the Dudley family had been able to recover in great measure from the effects of their late signal reverses.

Lord Robert, soon after his release from the Tower, contrived to make himself so acceptable to king Philip by his courtier-like attentions, and to Mary by his diligence in posting backwards and forwards to bring her intelligence of her husband during his long visits to the continent, that he earned from the latter several marks of favor. Two of his brothers fought, and one fell, in the battle of St. Quintin's; and immediately afterwards the d.u.c.h.ess their mother found means, through some Spanish interests and connexions, to procure the restoration in blood of all her surviving children. The appointment of Robert to the place of master of the ordnance soon followed; so that even before the accession of Elizabeth he might be regarded as a rising man in the state. His personal graces and elegant accomplishments are on all hands acknowledged to have been sufficiently striking to dazzle the eyes and charm the heart of a young princess of a lively imagination and absolute mistress of her own actions. The circ.u.mstance of his being already married, blinded her perhaps to the nature of her sentiments towards him, or at least it was regarded by her as a sufficient sanction in the eyes of the public for those manifestations of favor and esteem with which she was pleased to honor him. But whether the affection which she entertained for him best deserved the name of friendship or a still tenderer one, seems after all a question of too subtile and obscure a nature for sober discussion; though in a French "_cour d'amour_" it might have furnished pleas and counterpleas of exquisite ingenuity, prodigious sentimental interest, and length interminable. What is unfortunately too certain is, that he was a favorite, and in the common judgement of the court, of the nation, and of posterity, an unworthy one; but calumny and prejudice alone have dared to attack the reputation of the queen.

Elizabeth had no propensity to exalt immoderately her relations by the mother's side;--for she neither loved nor honored that mother's memory; but several of the number may be mentioned, whose merits towards herself, or whose qualifications for the public service, justly ent.i.tled them to share in her distribution of offices and honors, and whom she always treated with distinction. The whole ill.u.s.trious family of the Howards were her relations; and in the first year of her reign she conferred on the duke of Norfolk, her second-cousin, the order of the garter. Her great-uncle lord William Howard, created baron of Effingham by Mary, was continued by her in the high office of lord-chamberlain, and soon after appointed one of the commissioners for concluding a peace with France. Lord Thomas Howard, her mother's first-cousin, who had treated her with distinguished respect and kindness on her arrival at Hampton Court from Woodstock, and had the further merit of being indulgent to protestants during the persecutions of Mary, received from her the t.i.tle of viscount Bindon, and continued much in her favor to the end of his days.

Sir Richard Sackville, also her mother's first-cousin, had filled different fiscal offices under the three last reigns; he was a man of abilities, and derived from a long line of ancestors great estates and extensive influence in the county of Suss.e.x. The people, who marked his growing wealth, and to whom he was perhaps officially obnoxious, nicknamed him Fill-sack: in Mary's time he was a catholic, a privy-councillor, and chancellor of the court of Augmentations; under her successor he changed the first designation and retained the two last, which he probably valued more. He is chiefly memorable as the father of Sackville the poet, afterwards lord Buckhurst and progenitor of the dukes of Dorset.

Sir Francis Knolles, whose lady was one of the queen's nearest kinswomen, was deservedly called to the privy-council on his return from his voluntary banishment for conscience' sake; his sons gained considerable influence in the court of Elizabeth; his daughter, the mother of Ess.e.x, and afterwards the wife of Leicester, was for various reasons long an object of the queen's particular aversion.

But of all her relations, the one who had deserved most at her hands was Henry Carey, brother to lady Knolles, and son to Mary Boleyn, her majesty's aunt. This gentleman had expended several thousand pounds of his own patrimony in her service and relief during the time of her imprisonment, and she liberally requited his friendship at her first creation of peers, by conferring upon him, with the t.i.tle of baron Hunsdon, the royal residence of that name, with its surrounding park and several beneficial leases of crown lands. He was afterwards joined in various commissions and offices of trust: but his remuneration was, on the whole, by no means exorbitant; for he was not rapacious, and consequently not importunate; and the queen, in the employments which she a.s.signed him, seemed rather to consult her own advantage and that of her country, by availing herself of the abilities of a diligent and faithful servant, than to please herself by granting rewards to an affectionate and generous kinsman. In fact, lord Hunsdon was skilled as little in the ceremonious and sentimental gallantry which she required from her courtiers, as in the circ.u.mspect and winding policy which she approved in her statesmen. "As he lived in a ruffling time," says Naunton, "so he loved sword and buckler men, and such as our fathers wont to call men of their hands, of which sort he had many brave gentlemen that followed him; yet not taken for a popular or dangerous person." Though extremely choleric, he was honest, and not at all malicious. It was said of him that "his Latin and his dissimulation were both alike," equally bad, and that "his custom in swearing and obscenity in speech made him seem a worse Christian than he was."

Fuller relates of him the following characteristic anecdote. "Once, one Mr. Colt chanced to meet him coming from Hunsdon to London, in the equipage of a lord of those days. The lord, on some former grudge, gave him a box on the ear: Colt presently returned the princ.i.p.al with interest; and thereupon his servants drawing their swords, swarmed about him. 'You rogues,' said my lord, 'may not I and my neighbour change a blow but you must interpose?' Thus the quarrel was begun and ended in the same minute[37]."

[Note 37: "Worthies" in Herts.]

The queen's attachment to such of her family as she was pleased to honor with her notice, was probably the more constant because there was nothing in it of excess or of blindness:--even Leicester in the height of his favor felt that he must hold sacred their claims to her regard: according to Naunton's phrase, he used to say of Sackville and Hunsdon, "that they were of the tribe of Dan, and were Noli me tangere's."

After a few days spent in the Tower, Elizabeth pa.s.sed by water to Somerset Place; and thence, about a fortnight after, when the funeral of her predecessor was over, to the palace of Westminster, where she kept her Christmas.

Busy preparation was now making in her good city of London against the solemn day of her pa.s.sage in state from the Tower to her coronation at Westminster. The usages and sentiments of that age conferred upon these public ceremonials a character of earnest and dignified importance now lost; and on this memorable occasion, when the mingled sense of deliverance received and of future favor to be conciliated had opened the hearts of all men, it was resolved to lavish in honor of the new sovereign every possible demonstration of loyal affection, and every known device of festal magnificence.

The costume of the age was splendid. Gowns of velvet or satin, richly trimmed with silk, furs, or gold lace, costly gold chains, and caps or hoods of rich materials adorned with feathers or ouches, decorated on all occasions of display the persons not of n.o.bles or courtiers alone, but of their crowds of retainers and higher menials, and even of the plain substantial citizens. Female attire was proportionally sumptuous.

Hangings, of cloth, of silk, of velvet, cloth of gold or silver, or "needlework sublime," clothed on days of family-festivity the _upper chamber_[38] of every house of respectable appearance; these on public festivals were suspended from the balconies, and uniting with the banners and pennons floating overhead, gave to the streets almost the appearance of a suit of long and gayly-dressed saloons. Every circ.u.mstance thus conspired to render the public entry of queen Elizabeth the most gorgeous and at the same time the most interesting spectacle of the kind ever exhibited in the English metropolis.

[Note 38: As long as that style of domestic architecture prevailed in which every story was made to project considerably beyond the one beneath it, the upper room, from its superior size and lightsomeness, appears to have been that dedicated to the entertainment of guests.]