HISTORICAL SUMMARY.

ELIZABETH.

Of the events of this long and important reign, our historical summary must, of necessity, be unsatisfactorily brief. In 1558 Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen.

1559.-The Protestant religion was re-established.

The Dauphin, and his wife Mary, Queen of Scots, assumed the titles of King and Queen of England.

1560.-Civil dissensions raging in Scotland, a French army landed there for the purpose of putting them down. Elizabeth sent troops to the assistance of the malcontents. A treaty was signed at Edinburgh, by which it was stipulated that the French troops should evacuate Scotland, and that Francis and Mary should cease to assume the titles of King and Queen of England. The Presbyterian form of religion was established in Scotland.

1561.-Mary, Queen of Scots, on the death of her husband, Francis the Second, King of France, returned to her own kingdom.

1562.-Elizabeth assisted the Huguenots in France, who put Havre de Grace into her hands.

1563.-Elizabeth concluded a peace with France.

1564.-Mary married Lord Darnley, the Earl of Lenox's son.

James, Prince of Scotland, who afterwards became King of Great Britain, was born.

1567.-Darnley was assassinated, and Mary was generally believed to be an accomplice in the murder.

1568.-Mary being deposed by the Scots, and her son James proclaimed King, sought refuge in England. Elizabeth sent her to Jedburgh Castle, and afterwards to Coventry, where she was kept in close confinement. Elizabeth refused to see her until she had cleared herself from the charge of being concerned in her husband's murder.

1569.-Elizabeth entered into a treaty with the Czar of Muscovy, who granted many privileges to English merchants.

1570.-Murray, the Regent of Scotland, was assassinated, and the Earl of Lenox appointed his successor.

1571-2.-A plot being discovered for the release of Mary, and the subversion

of Elizabeth's Government, in which the Duke of Norfolk was implicated, the Duke was tried, condemned, and beheaded.

1574.-Elizabeth privately assisted the Huguenots of France and the Netherlands with money.

1577.—The Seven United Provinces having offered the sovereignty over them to Elizabeth, she refused it; but assisted them with money, and entered into an alliance with them against Spain.

1580.-The Spaniards invaded Ireland, but were defeated.

Drake returned from a voyage round the world. The Queen dined on board his ship, and knighted him.

1582.-Elizabeth carried on negociations of marriage with the Duke of Anjou, but suddenly broke off the match.

1584.-A conspiracy against the Queen's life was discovered; on which the Spanish Ambassador was ordered immediately to leave the kingdom.

1585.-The Queen formed a treaty with the States, and sent them 500 men, under the command of the Earl of Leicester, and a fleet under Sir Francis Drake, against the Spanish West Indies.

1586.-A conspiracy was discovered, carried on by Babington and others, to murder Elizabeth, and totally overturn the religion of the nation, in which Mary, Queen of Scots, was supposed to be implicated. The Council determined to try Mary for treason; she was accordingly removed to Fotheringay Castle, in Northamptonshire, where she was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. 1587. On the 8th of February Mary was beheaded.

Philip, King of Spain, preparing great fleets to invade England, Drake was sent to the Spanish coasts and did them much mischief.

1588.-Philip determined to make a serious attack on England, and employed three years in equipping a more formidable fleet than had ever before appeared, which was called the Invincible Armada. In July, this fleet, under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, appeared off the English coast; but storms and hurricanes, and the prowess and vigilance of Lord Howard, who commanded the English fleet, destroyed it.

1590.-The United States were very successful against Philip. Elizabeth assisted Henry IV. King of France, against the League and Philip.

1593.-Several expeditions against the Spanish coast, at the expense of individuals, were carried on.

Henry IV. embraced the Catholic religion; on which Elizabeth wrote him a very angry letter; but she accepted his apology, finding it necessary to enter into an offensive and defensive treaty with him against the League and the King of Spain.

1597.-This

year

Lord Effingham and the Earl of Essex took and plundered the town of Cadiz, and destroyed a vast number of ships.

1599.-A rebellion, under Tyrone, having broken out in Ireland, Essex was sent thither; but instead of acting with vigour against Tyrone, he at last

granted him a truce, for which the Queen wrote him a very angry letter, which made him return to England without leave, when he was put under arrest in his own house.

1601.-Essex, being of a violent temper and exceedingly ambitious, entered deeply into very dangerous designs, and, amongst others, into one for seizing the Queen's person. His treason being discovered, he was sent to the Tower,

and at last beheaded. Philip III. sent some Spanish troops to Ireland; but Lord Mountford, who commanded there, entirely defeated Tyrone, and compelled the Spanish troops to evacuate Ireland by a treaty, as he besieged them in Kinsale. He then harassed Tyrone in such a manner as obliged him to submit to the Queen's clemency.

1602.-To keep the Spaniards employed at home, Elizabeth sent a fleet on their coast, under Levison and Monson, who made some rich captures.

1603.-The Queen died on the 24th March. She named the King of Scotland as her successor.

C

ATHERINE GRAY was the second surviving sister of the

unhappy Lady Jane, who perished on a scaffold in the beginning of the reign of Queen Mary. She was heir not only to the talents and the virtues, but to the misfortunes of her sister; for she inherited the same pretensions to the English crown, and consequently became an object of fear and jealousy to the reigning sovereign, although her quiet and unambitious character could not furnish the slenderest pretext for subjecting her to violence or restraint. Mary too found that the system of terror which she pursued, and her matrimonial alliance with the King of Spain, had established her throne on the firm foundation, not indeed of the love, but of the fear and obedience of her subjects. She was consequently satisfied with the contempt and oblivion into which the pretensions of the House of Suffolk had fallen, and did not think it necessary to resort to any farther measures of severity against the members of that unhappy family. It was not, therefore, until after the ascension of Queen Elizabeth, that the Lady Catherine Gray became fully aware of the misery which was entailed upon her by the fact of her being the child of her own parents. She was also guilty of the same crime for which the Queen of Scots afterwards forfeited her head-that of being in the graces of form and feature infinitely Elizabeth's superior. The Queen nevertheless saw that her rival,

or rather the phantom of a rival which her imagination had conjured up, was of all persons, in temper and disposition, the least likely to disturb her by her pretensions to the English crown, but she dreaded the event of those pretensions being transferred by her to a husband or a child. She therefore determined to prevent Catherine from entering into any matrimonial engagement, and resolved at first to banish her to a distance from the court, and to place her under the surveillance of her spies. The latter part of this resolution, however, she subsequently altered; and thinking that the mistress would keep a more vigilant watch than the most zealous hirelings, she kept her about her own person in a state of exalted, but strict captivity.

This measure, however, defeated its object; for the Queen served but as a foil to the beautiful Catherine Gray, who attracted the admiration and won the hearts of all the courtiers. Among others, the gallant and accomplished Edward Seymour, the son of the unfortunate Duke of Somerset who was beheaded in the reign of Edward the Sixth, became captivated by her charms. Of this person it was believed that the Queen was herself enamoured. She, although very chary of conferring honours and dignities, had restored Seymour to the forfeited estates of his father, and created him first a knight, afterwards Baron Seymour, and at length Earl of Hertford.

The young Earl repaid his sovereign's benefactions by manifesting the utmost zeal and devotion in her service. So chivalrous and delicate in those days were the attentions paid by the courtiers to their Queen, that she often mistook the manifestations of respect and loyalty for those of tenderness and love. Believing that the latter were the feelings which the Earl of Hertford entertained towards her, her vanity and her affection became both too deeply interested to enable her to exert her ordinary watchfulness over the movements of Catherine Gray. That lady, of a naturally delicate and feeble constitution, having latterly discovered symptoms of an alarming illness, obtained more easily than she expected, the Queen's permission to retire to her country-house in Hertfordshire. Indeed, her royal cousin was so much pleased