ELIZABETH.

(Queen of England).

(Some characteristic peculiarities of.)

A young man, who followed the ambassadors from Holland, expressed in a gross manner, the sentiments with which the sight of so charming a queen inspired him. I shall use Du Maurier’s own expressions: “Prince Maurice, (says he,) being one day in a good humour, told my father that Queen Elizabeth of England, through the common weakness of her sex, was so desirous of being thought handsome, that the states having sent a splendid embassy of the chief men of the country, and attended by a great many young gentlemen of the united provinces, a Hollander in the ambassador’s retinue, at their first audience, after having earnestly viewed the queen, told an English gentleman he had known in Holland, that he did not know why they should speak so indifferently of the queen’s beauty: that they did her the greatest injury; that he thought she was very charming, and if she were his wife, he would convince her she had beauty enough to fire a gentleman’s heart; adding other juvenile discourse fitter to be imagined than expressed. As he said this, he often looked towards the queen, and then turned to the English

gentleman. The queen who had her eyes fixed upon these gentlemen, much more than upon the ambassadors, when the audience was over, sent for the English gentleman, and commanded him, upon pain of her displeasure, to tell her what the Dutchman had said to him; being assured by their motions and behaviour; that they spoke of her. The gentleman excused himself a long time, pretending they were trifles not worthy to be told her majesty; but at length the queen pressing him exceedingly, he was forced to tell her ingenuously the whole truth, and to confess the violent passion the Hollander had expressed for her royal person. The conclusion of the matter was, that the ambassadors were presented each with a chain of gold of 800 crowns, and their chief attendants with one of 100 crowns each; but the Hollander, who found the queen so handsome, had a chain of 1600 crowns, that is, double to what the ambassadors had, and he wore it about his neck all his life after.” Mr. Fontenelle has inserted this artfully, according to his custom, in his Dialogues of the Dead.

It is impossible to say what vile calumnies were spread abroad concerning this queen; which were not to be avoided considering the severity she was forced, by reasons of state, to use towards Papists. Some lost their lives, a great number of others either suffered the rigours of imprisonment, or the inconveniences of exile; and those were the men who chiefly composed injurious libels against the reputation of Elizabeth. The Protestants of England confess it; they do not deny the fact; but they maintain, that the wicked attempts of the Papists against the government, and against the queen, deserved such a punishment. You will be sure not to find this observation in the libels of the English Roman Catholics. You will indeed find the punishments, with all the rhetorical flourishes that can amplify them, but not a

word of the seditious enterprizes which preceded, and were the cause of them. There are few relations in which the order of the events is not confounded. This confusion is not always produced by fraud: a too turbulent zeal is sometimes the cause of it; nature does the rest without designed malice. The constitution of man is such, that he imagines the evils he suffers to be great, and those he indicts to be small. He perceives not the former, but is sensible of the latter; and even when he knows he has been the aggressor, he pretends to have cause of complaint; making no account of what he has done, but only of what he suffers. All ill-conducted zeal fixes the mind upon the hardships of persecuted virtue, and causes the provocations of the persecutors to be forgotten. If these two causes are not sufficient, dishonesty, which alone would disorder the events, completes the confusion. However it be, I have observed, that the principal difference between the accounts of Catholics and Protestants consists in the order of the fact3: each party endeavours to give the first place to the injuries they have endured; making a long detail of these, and passing over slightly what they have done by way of reprisals, or what they have suffered as a just punishment. There is nothing in party recrimination that perplexes the heads of the unprejudiced readers more than this; for in order to know exactly what is blamable and what is excusable in each party, it is absolutely necessary to consider the facts in their true situation. If the Catholics had not laid violent hands on the Protestants till after they had seen them overturn temples, altars, images, and crosses, &c. their cruelties would not have been so criminal; for which reasons it is necessary to give an adversary the precedence in such cases. A modern author has declared that he would not examine whose relations had transposed the events. This discussion in certain cases may not be altogether so laborious, but sometimes it would be found so embarrassing, that unless we were assisted by some revelation of a clearer nature than that of the apocalypse, we should never arrive at the truth.

The passionate desire of Elizabeth to be thought handsome, the care she took to shew her beauty, and the complaisance she expressed to those who were sensibly touched with her charms, are undeniably a female foible, which destroys her claim to the praise bestowed by the Roman historian, on Agrippina: “sed Agrippina æqui impatiens, dominandi avida virilibus curis feminarum vitia exuerat. Agrippina freed herself from the tendernesses of her own sex by application to manly business.” Let us produce an author who relates what he saw and heard himself. He says, the ceremony of creating the Lord Robert, Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh, was performed at Westminster, with a great deal of solemnity, the queen herself assisting on the occasion. “He was upon his knees before her, with the greatest gravity, whilst the queen could not forbear to make him a hundred caresses; sometimes pinching him softly, sometimes laying her hand upon his head and shoulders, though the ambassador of France and myself were present.” James Melvil. Memoirs, vol. 1. page 148. ⁹ He that speaks in this manner was the envoy of Mary Stuart Queen of Scotland, at the court of Queen Elizabeth. “The queen, my mistress,” says he, “knowing Queen Elizabeth's humour, commanded me not to be too much upon the reserve with her, and, that my conversation might not be tiresome to her, to be sometimes upon the diverting strain; wherefore, one time giving her an account of the different modes and customs of foreign countries, I even mentioned the women’s buskins. Upon which she told me she had the dress of every country

and every fashion by her, and indeed she took after that every day a different dress, sometimes after the English, sometimes after the French, and sometimes after the Italian mode, continuing these changes all the time I staid at London. At last she would know of me which dress became her best; I answered, in my opinion, the Italian, which answer did not seem to be displeasing to her, for she loved exceedingly to show her fair hair; so that a little Italian bonnet was what pleased her best. Her hair was rather of a yellowish colour than white, but with a beautiful curl, which in appearance was natural. She asked me what coloured hair was reckoned the handsomest, hers or my queen’s? and seeing that I hesitated, she pressed me to declare upon this point. I told her she was the finest queen in England, and mine in Scotland. But this not satisfying her, I told het they were both the most charming in their country; that her majesty was indeed the fairest, but that my queen was also very lovely. She would still know which of the two was the tallest; to which I answered, my queen. ‘ Then,’ says she, ‘ she must be too tall, for I am neither too tall nor too short.’ ” You see here a queen of England busying herself with fashions and dresses. It does not look like a mere amusement: one would think she had made it her principal business, if her application to the royal functions were not well known. But it must be said that she found time for every thing: she applied herself to the cares of government with as much diligence as if she thought of nothing else; and she was as exact in her dress and ornaments as if that had been the utmost of her concern. On the other hand, if her conversations with the envoy of Scotland are considered, her design was not so much to interrogate him, as to make him confess that she was handsomer than Mary Stuart. We may discern by this, that she looked upon her as a rival in point of beauty, and that by the turn she gave her discourse, she would induce people to give her the preference over this rival. This is very consistent with a feminine spirit and temper. Every body knows with what address women seek for applause, sometimes despising themselves in order to be contradicted; sometimes by inquiring if it be true that such and such have beauty, splendor, an incomparable shape, &c.

Pope Sixtus had a particular esteem for Elizabeth. He reckoned her one of the three persons, who, in his opinion, were alone worthy of a crown: the two others were himself and Henry IV. “Your queen,” said he one day to an English gentleman, “is born happy; she governs her kingdom with a great deal of success; she wants only me for her husband to give the world another Alexander.” Mr. Jurieu has expressed this a little more cavalierly. “This good pope said, that he would willingly lie only one night with Elizabeth, Queen of England, being assured they should get another Alexander the Great. This was worthy the gravity and chastity of a pope..... It was this same good pope that said Elizabeth was happy in striking off a crowned head, and that he envied her felicity.” Balzac, by I know not what affectation, has given the pope’s expressions another dress, which takes away their natural air. I shall go a little farther back, that it may be seen what praises that French writer bestows upon this queen. In a letter he wrote to a certain lord, “My intention,” says he to him, “was never to touch the true glory of your heroine; I have always thought she ought rather to be considered for the magnanimity of her soul, the benefits of which will be enjoyed by your latest posterity, than by a frail beauty of body, which is not only destroyed by death, but flies away at the approaches of old age. I must have come from another world to be ignorant of the praises she has received

from the general voice of this. I know she has been stiled the Northern Star, the Goddess of the Sea, the true Thetis. I have read these words— 'I will be, madam, your captain-general,’ in a letter written to her by Henry the Great, at the height of his difficulties, and under the violent proceedings of the League; even he, who had excommunicated her, spoke of her with esteem, and you know he was a prince of a very great understanding, and well skilled in the art of government. He took a pleasure to talk of her with the ambassadors resident at his court, and sometimes would pleasantly say, that if he had been married to her, authority and grandeur would have proceeded from such an illustrious marriage. But though she had not arrived to this high degree of reputation, and though they had deprived her of all these glorious marks of esteem, yet two considerations, less specious indeed in the eyes of the world, but more sensible to my mind, would have obliged me to revere her memory, which are, my lord, that she did not despise our muses, and that she loved your family. I am informed by Camden, that she was so well acquainted with good learning, that she made a good Latin translation of some tragedies of Sophocles, and of the orations of Isocrates. The same author tells me what share your ancestors had in her confidence, &c.”

What Mr. Leti says concerning pope Sixtus the Fifth’s keeping a correspondence with Elizabeth is not very unlikely. He both hated and dreaded the king of Spain: therefore he must naturally wish him ill success, and rather desire to see heresy maintained in England than to see Philip II become master of so fine a country. The popes, as sovereign princes, follow the principles of the religion of sovereigns, and consequently sacrifice the Catholic interest to the interest of their particular power. What service would it be to them, for example, that a king of Spain should subdue the Protestants, if by

that means he would become so formidable to the court of Rome, that they would not dare to refuse any thing to the Spaniards for fear of seeing the year 1527 return again, and the imprisonment of Clement VII? It is a less damage to the pope not to be acknowledged either by Holland or by England, than to be owned by them, and thereby some Catholic prince to be in a condition of obtaining from Rome, by favour or force, all his demands. If this principle of speculation be not sufficient to convince us that Sixtus V did all he could to make the king of Spain’s designs against Elizabeth miscarry, we shall see presently a practical reason which will make it evident. When Louis XIV made such great and rapid conquests upon the United Provinces, in the year 1672, cardinal Altieri, who was pope in effect, although another was called Clement X, received the news with a mortal concern because he did not love France; and the duke d’Estrée, ambassador from the crown, took all opportunities to mortify him. Of a later date we have seen Innocent XI deaf to whatever could favour the interest of king James, and ardently promoting every thing that was contrary to France; because he feared more the increase of Lewis the Fourteenth’s influence than he desired the progress of the Catholic religion. He was afraid of being crushed under the too great power of that prince, and therefore he was very glad the Protestants were in a condition to bridle and reduce it. Hence we may better know the happy situation of the affairs of the Protestants, since not only the eternal jealousy between France and the House of Austria will always procure them allies, and protectors in the states of the contrary religion, but even the court of Rome, according to the exigency of occasion, will do what Sixtus V did to the prejudice of the king of Spain, and what Innocent XI did to the prejudice of Lewis XIV. This court is no less concerned than others to preserve the balance of power.

But to what purpose is it to look for instances? We need only consider Sixtus himself with respect to Henry the Great. It is certain, that having observed how much the league augmented the strength of the Spaniards, he shifted sides, and favoured in France the Protestant party, and if he had not died, he would have done his utmost to have deprived the king of Spain of the kingdom of Naples. He traversed the league so visibly, that the Spaniards threatened to protest against him, and to provide otherwise for the preservation of the church, which he abandoned. His death filled the leaguers with joy; one of their preachers, giving the Parisians notice of it made use of these words. “God has delivered us from a wicked and politic pope: if he had lived longer people would have been astonished to have heard the pope preached against in Paris, but it must have been done.” It was not because he was sensible of the great merit of Henry IV, and the knaveries of the league, that this pope took measures contrary to the Catholic religion; but because the heretics' success was injurious to the king of Spain, whom he hated.—Art. Elizabeth.