ELIZABETH,

SECOND QUEEN REGNANT OF ENGLAND AND IRELAND.

CHAPTER II.

Elizabeth's scholastic pursuits-Ascham-Elizabeth's letter to Edward VI.-Her first communication with Cecil-She goes to court-Her simplicity of attireHer conformity to the Reformation - Prevented from seeing king Edward 'Her letter to him - Her household at Hatfield-Privy purse expenses-Her letter to the council-Death of Edward VI.-Elizabeth escapes Northumberland's snares- Required to acknowledge lady Jane Grey's title - Prudent answer Meets her sister Enters London with Mary-Admiration of the people-Popularity with the protestants-Queen's jealousy-Elizabeth refuses the mass-Queen Mary's displeasure-Elizabeth dissembles and conforms— Given precedency next the queen at the coronation - Dines with the queen and Anne of Cleves-Intrigues of the French ambassador-Plots in favour of Elizabeth and Courtenay-Increasing coolness of the queen Elizabeth forbidden to quit the palace- Or to receive visits - Matrimonial proposals— Offered an asylum in France-Courtenay betrays the plot-Wyatt's rebellions -Elizabeth implicated therein-Queen Mary sends for her-Her excuses-Mandate for her appearance-Her journey from Hatfield to court-Entrance into London-Queen refuses to see her-Her death desired by the council— Intercepted letters to Elizabeth Gardiner's accusations against her- Her household discharged - Her distress-Her letter to queen Mary-She is carried by water to the Tower-Her disconsolate condition.

THE disastrous termination of Elizabeth's first love affair, appears to have had the salutary effect of inclining her to habits of a studious and reflective character. She was for a time under a cloud, and during the profound retirement in which she was doomed to remain for at least a year after the execution of the lord admiral, the energies of her active mind found employment and solace in the pursuits of learning. She assumed a grave and sedate demeanour, withal, and bestowed much attention on theology, which the polemic spirit of the times rendered a subject of powerful interest.

Her new governess, lady Tyrwhit, had been the friend of the late queen, Katharine Parr, and was one of the learned females who had supported the doctrines of the Reformation, and narrowly escaped the fiery crown of martyrdom; and though Elizabeth had, in the first instance, defied her authority, there is reason to believe that she was reconciled to her after the first effervescence of her high spirit had subsided, and the assimilation of their religious feelings produced sympathy and good-will between them. A curious little devotional volume is mentioned by Anthony-a-Wood, as having once belonged to queen Elizabeth, which was compiled by this lady for her use, when acting as her preceptress. It was of miniature size, bound in solid gold, and entitled,

"Lady Elizabeth Tyrwhit's Morning and Evening Prayers, with divers Hymns and Meditations."1

It was probably about this period that Elizabeth translated an Italian sermon of Occhines, which she transcribed in a hand of great beauty, and sent to her royal brother, as a new year's gift. The dedication is dated Enfield, December 30, but the year is not specified; the MS. is now in the Bodleian library.

Not in vain did Elizabeth labour to efface the memory of her early indiscretion, by establishing a reputation for learning and piety. The learned Roger Ascham, under whom she perfected herself in the study of the classics, in his letters to Sturmius, the rector of the Protestant university, at Strasburg, is enthusiastic in his encomiums on his royal pupil, of whose scholastic attainments he is justly proud. "Numberless honourable ladies of the present time," says he, "surpass the daughters of sir Thomas More, in every kind of learning; but amongst them all, my illustrious mistress, the lady Elizabeth, shines like a star, excelling them more by the splendour of her virtues than by the glory of her royal birth. In the variety of her commendable qualities, I am less perplexed to find matter for the highest panegyric, than to circumscribe that panegyric within just bounds; yet, I shall mention nothing respect ing her but what has come under my own observation. For two years she pursued the study of Greek and Latin under my tuition, but the foundations of her knowledge in both languages were laid by the diligent instruction of William Grindal, my late beloved friend, and seven years my pupil in classical learning, at Cambridge. From this university he was summoned by John Cheke to court, where he soon after received the appointment of tutor to this lady.

"After some years, when through her native genius, aided by the efforts of so excellent a master, she had made a great progress in learning, and Grindal, by his merit and the favour of his mistress, might have aspired to high dignities, he was snatched away by a sudden illness. I was appointed to succeed him in his office, and the work which he had so happily begun, without my assistance, indeed, but not without some counsels of mine, I diligently laboured to complete. Now, however, released from the throng of a court, and restored to the felicity of my former learned leisure, I enjoy, through the bounty of the king, an honourable appointment in this university.

"The lady Elizabeth has completed her sixteenth year; and so much solidity of understanding, such courtesy united with dignity, have never been observed at so early an age. She has the most ardent love of true religion and the best kind of literature; the constitution of her mind is exempt from female weakness, and she is endued with masculine power of application; no apprehension can be quicker than hers, no memory more retentive. French and Italian she speaks like English; Latin with: fluency, propriety, and judgment. She also spoke Greek with me frequently, willingly and moderately well. Nothing can be more elegant

This precious relic was, at the time Anthony-a-Wood wrote, in the possession of the Rev. Mr. Ashley, of Barrow, in Suffolk.

*Edward VI.

than her handwriting, whether in the Greek or the Roman character. In music she is very skilful, but does not greatly delight. With respect to personal decoration, she greatly prefers a simple elegance, to show and splendour, so despising the outward adorning of plaiting the hair and wearing of gold, that in the whole manner of her life she rather resembles Hippolyta than Phædra.

"She read with me almost the whole of Cicero, and a great part of Livy from those two authors her knowledge of the Latin language has been almost exclusively derived. The beginning of the day was always devoted by her to the New Testament in Greek, after which she read select orations of Isocrates, and the tragedies of Sophocles, which I judged best adapted to supply her tongue with the purest diction, her mind with the most excellent precepts, and her exalted station with a defence against the utmost power of fortune. For her religious instruction, she drew first from the fountains of Scripture, and afterwards from St. Cyprian, the Commonplaces' of Melancthon, and similar works, which convey pure doctrine in elegant language.

"In every kind of writing she easily detected any ill adapted or farfetched expression. She could not bear those feeble imitators of Erasmus, who bind the Latin language in the fetters of miserable proverbs. On the other hand, she approved a style, chaste in propriety, and beautiful in perspicuity, and she greatly admired metaphors when not too violent, and antitheses when just, and happily opposed. By a diligent attention to these particulars, her ear became so practised and so nice, that there was nothing in Greek, Latin, or English prose or verse, which according to its merits or defects, she did not either reject with disgust or receive with the highest delight."

The letters from which these passages have been extracted, were written by Ascham, in Latin, in the year 1550, when he had for some reason been compelled to withdraw from his situation in Elizabeth's household. The commendations of this great scholar, had probably some share in restoring her to the favour of the learned young king, her brother, whose early affection for the dearly-loved companion of his infancy, appears to have revived after a time, and though the jealousy of the selfish statesmen who held him in thrall, prevented the princely boy from gratifying his yearnings for her presence, he wrote to her to send him her portrait.

Elizabeth, in her reverential, and somewhat pedantic epistle, in reply certainly gives abundant evidence of the taste for metaphors to which Ascham adverts in his letters to Sturmius.

"LETTER FROM THE PRINCESS ELIZABETH TO KING EDWARD VI., WITH A PRESENT OF HER PORTRAIT.'

“Like as the rich man that daily gathereth riches to riches, and to one bag of money layeth a great sort till it come to infinite, so methinks your majesty, not being sufficed with many benefits and gentlenesses showed to me afore this time, doth now increase them in asking and desiring where you may bid and command, requiring a thing not worthy the desiring for itself. but made worthy for your highness's request. My picture, I mean, in which, if the inward good

'Cotton. MS., Vesp. F. iii., fol. 20.

mind toward your grace might as well be declared as the outward face and countenance shall be seen, I would not have tarried the commandment, but prevented it, nor have been the last to grant, but the first to offer it. For the face I grant I might well blush to offer, but the mind I shall never be ashamed to present. For though from the grace of the picture the colours may fade by time, may give by weather, may be spotted by chance; yet the other, nor time with her swift wings shall overtake, nor the misty clouds with their lowerings may darken, nor chance with her slippery foot may overthrow.

Of this, although yet the proof could not be great, because the occasions hath been but small, notwithstanding as a dog hath a day, so may I perchance have time to declare it in deeds, where now I do write them but in words. And further, I shall most humbly beseech your majesty, that when you shall look on my picture, you will vouchsafe to think, that, as you have put the outward shadow of the body afore you, so my inward mind wisheth that the body itself were oftener in your presence; howbeit, because both my so being I think could do your majesty little pleasure, though myself great good; and again, because I see as yet not the time agreeing thereunto, I shall learn to follow this saying of Orace (Horace), Feras non culpes quod vitari non potest.' And thus I will (troubling your majesty I fear) end with my most humble thanks. Beseeching God long to preserve you to his honour, to your comfort, to the realm's profit, and to my joy. From Hatfield, this 15th day of May.

6

"Your majesty's most humble sister,

ELIZABETH."

In the summer of 1550, Elizabeth had succeeded in reinstating her trusty cofferer, Thomas Parry, in his old office, and she employed him to write to the newly-appointed secretary of state, William Cecil, afterwards lord Burghley, to solicit him to bestow the parsonage of Harptree, in the county of Somerset, on John Kenyon, the yeoman of her robes. A lamentable instance of an unqualified layman, through the patronage of the great, devouring that property which was destined for the support of efficient ministers of the church. Such persons employed incompetent curates as their substitutes, at a starving salary, to the great injury and dissatisfaction of the congregation.

Parry's letter is dated September 22d, from Asheridge. "Her grace," he says "hath been long troubled with rheums (rheumatism), but now, thanks be to the Lord, is nearly well again and shortly ye shall hear from her grace again." A good understanding appears to have been early established between Elizabeth and Cecil, which possibly might be one of the under-currents that led to her recal to court, where, however, she did not return till after the first disgrace of the duke of Somerset. On the 17th of March, 1551, she emerged from the profound retirement in which she had remained since her disgrace in 1549, and came in state to visit the king her brother. She rode on horseback through London to St. James's palace, attended by a great company of lords, knights, and gentlemen, and after her about two hundred ladies. On the 19th, she came from St. James's, through the park, to the court. The way from the park-gate to the court was spread with fine sand. She was attended by a very honourable confluence of noble and worshipful persons of both sexes, and was received with much ceremony at the court gate.3

2

Tytler's Edward and Mary, vol. i.

Or catarrh-cold; the word rheums being used indifferently at that era for both maladies.

'Stryve's Memorials.

That wily politician, the earl of Warwick, afterwards duke of Northumberland, had considered Elizabeth, young and neglected as she was, of sufficient political importance to send her a duplicate of the curious letter addressed by the new council jointly to her and her sister, the lady Mary, in which a statement is given of the asserted misdemeanours of Somerset, and their proceedings against him.' The council were now at issue with Mary on the grounds of her adherence to the ancient docrines, and as a conference had been appointed between her and her opponents on the 18th of March, it might be to divert popular attention from her and her cause, that the younger and fairer sister of the sovereign was permitted to make her public entrance into London, on the preceding day, and that she was treated with so many marks of unwonted respect. Thus we see Mary makes her public entry on the 18th, with her train all decorated with black rosaries and crosses, and, on the 19th, Elizabeth is again shown to the people, as if to obliterate any interest that might have been excited by the appearance of the elder princess. The love of Edward VI. for Elizabeth was so very great, according to Camden, that he never spoke of her by any other title than his " dearest sister," or "his sweet sister Temperance." 3 Elizabeth at that period affected extreme simplicity of dress, in conformity to the mode, which the rigid rules of the Calvinistic church of Geneva was rendering general, among the stricter portion of those noble ladies who professed the doctrines of the Reformation.

"The king her father," says Dr. Aylmer, "left her rich clothes and jewels, and I know it to be true that in seven years after his death she never, in all that time, looked upon that rich attire and precious jewels but once, and that against her will; and that there never came gold or stone upon her head, till her sister forced her to lay off her former soberness, and bear her company in her glittering gayness, and then she so wore it, that all men might see, that her body carried that which her heart misliked. I am sure that her maidenly apparel which she used in king Edward's time made the noblemen's wives and daughters ashamed to be dressed and painted like peacocks, being more moved with her most virtuous example, than with all that ever Paul or Peter wrote, touching that matter."5

The first opening charms of youth Elizabeth well knew required no extraneous adornments, and her classic tastes taught her that the elaborate magnificence of the costumes of her brother's court, tended to obscure, rather than enhance, those graces, which belonged to the morning bloom of life.

The plainness and modesty of the princess Elizabeth's costume, was particularly noticed, during the splendid festivities that took place on the occasion of the visit of the queen-dowager of Scotland, Mary of Lor

Tytler's Edward and Mary, vol. i.

Camden's Introduction to Elizabeth's Life.

2 Memoir of Mary, vol. v.

The learned tutor of lady Jane Grey, in an encomium which he wrote on Elizabeth, after her accession to the throne, entitled, "The Harbour for Faithful Subjects."

6 Aylmer's Harbour for Faithful Subjects.