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A NOTICE OF

THE

LIFE OF ELIZABETH,

QUEEN REGNANT.

BY F. MANSEl reynolds, ESQ.

THE compiler of a memoir of this sovereign is certainly not compelled to resort to the introduction of any collateral characters or incidents to extend his pages; his difficulty, on the contrary, is to determine what to reject, so abundant are his materials. Numerous writers, foreign as well as native, and many of them possessing great gravity and scholastic tastes, seemingly incompatible to the subject, have, nevertheless, evidently derived a peculiar pleasure from recording and expatiating on the talents, eccentricities, and infirmities of this celebrated ruler. To some disquisitional and ratiocinating minds, there is an irresistible attraction in the employment of deliberately investigating, and studiously endeavouring to comprehend, the seeming discords and real contradictions of an anomalous character, who has largely influenced the fortunes and destiny of a great people. The result of this tendency is, that it would not be easy to find two historical personages who have been more favourite themes of reflecting and philosophical intellects, than King Elizabeth, and his successor Queen James. Memoir upon memoir, and essay upon essay, have been accumulated upon both these subjects; and the modern compiler of a sketchy biography of either of them, instead of not knowing what to write, is therefore, as we have stated, often puzzled to decide what to omit. In a limited space any attempt at a sequent and developed narrative being consequently impossible, we

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shall merely jostle together such incidents and illustrations as may seem best suited to revive in the reader's mind his recollections and impressions of the inconsistent career of this masculine potentate, and wayward and disagreeable woman.

Such indeed was her character: as a sovereign, she was resolute and sagacious, but personally she was odious. Heartless, treacherous, envious, insatiate of the grossest flattery, coquettish, and vain almost beyond credibility, audacious and brazen, history transmits to us the delineation of no female more unamiable and displeasing. These are measured terms of condemnation, and they are meant to be read strictly au pied de la lettre ; for certainly it is easy enough to find, in the records of the past, narratives of the crimes of princesses in comparison with which the levities and vices of Elizabeth, may be pronounced to have been almost venial; but "unamiable" and "displeasing" she was in an unsurpassable degree. With many of the angry and domineering qualities of her tyrant father, she united, in her personal intercourse with her courtiers, all the levity, and more than the sexual bias of mind, of her unhappy mother. As a monarch, she was never deficient in head, though she rarely shewed any heart; but in all the circumstances of private life she seemed to have been almost equally devoid of both. Wanton, fantastic, capricious, conceited, frivolous, ridiculous, dancing with joints stiffened by time, and ogling striplings from behind a ridge of wrinkles and a panoply of paint, she was all that even the least rigid man would most abhor to detect in wife, sister, or mother.

But these remarks must be discontinued, for they have reference wholly to either the period of her maturity or to that of her decay; and the very fact of her birth has not yet been averred in these pages. We are gloomily parading the reader round the coffin of the queen, before he has been permitted to obtain even a glimpse of the cradle of the princess.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and was born on September 7th, 1533. Shortly afterwards she was created Princess of Wales, and in the following year declared heir to the throne. In 1536, upon

the execution of her mother, her fickle sire, in a fit of antipathy proclaimed her to be illegitimate; but soon partially restored her to his favour, probably through the kind intervention of Lady Jane Seymour. The direct succession to the crown, however, he never again bestowed on her; but willed that it should be contingent upon the deaths, without issue, of, first, her brother Edward, and secondly, her sister Mary. Yet though he had withdrawn from her a partial and unjust preference, he seems to have treated her with kindness; and when she was eleven or twelve years old, gave her the celebrated Roger Ascham for a tutor. In the severely classical and masculine studies in which he engaged her, and in a certain natural congeniality to them in her, may probably be discovered the foundation of much of the singularity of her subsequent career.

During the reign of Edward VI. her life was tranquil enough, the most exciting incident during it, being the attempt of Lord Seymour, the brother of the Duke of Somerset, the Protector, to induce her to marry him, when she was only sixteen years of age. Certainly the celibacy of this sovereign was not in consequence of a want of suitors; excepting Penelope, never lady was so pursued with matrimonial proposals. Courtenay, earl of Devonshire, was a second pretender to the possession of her hand; and then followed a proposition that she should unite herself to the King of Sweden. Subsequently, she was successively importuned to wed, inter alios, Philip of Spain, the Earl of Arran, the Dukes of Alençon and Anjou, the Archduke Charles, a son of the Elector Palatine, the Duke of Holstein, the Earl of Arundel, Sir William Pickering, and, at last, any body; her parliament promising, in their own name and that of the people, to serve, honour, and obey him faithfully, "whoever he might be." But Elizabeth rejected all their propositions, and asserted and verified in the sequel, her intention to die a spinster. For this strange determination various and contradictory explanations are given. By Hume and many writers it is attributed to political objects, not very obvious or intelligible; while others, with far more appearance of probability, affirm it to have ori

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