and with very few helps, extirpated and abolished it. Nor did she do this precipitantly or in a heat, but prudently and seasonably, as may appear from many particulars, and among the rest from a certain answer she occasionally made; for upon her first accession to the throne, when the prisoners, according to custom, were released, as she went to chapel, a courtier, who took a more than ordinary freedom, whether of his own motion or set on by a wiser head, delivered a petition into her hand, and in a great concourse of people, said aloud, "That there were still four or five prisoners unjustly detained, that he came to petition for their liberty as well as the rest, and these were the four Evangelists and the Apostle St. Paul, who had been long imprisoned in an unknown tongue, and not suffered to converse with the people." The queen answered with great prudence, "That it was best to consult them first, whether they were willing to be released or no." And by thus striking a surprising question with a wary, doubtful answer, she reserved the whole matter entirely in her own breast.

Nor yet did she introduce this alteration timorously, and by fits and starts, but orderly, gravely, and maturely; after a conference betwixt the parties, and calling a parliament; and thus, at length, within the compass of one year, she so ordered and established all things belonging to the church, as not to suffer the least alteration afterwards, during her reign. Nay, almost every session of parliament, her public admonition was, that no innovation might be made in the discipline or rites of the church. And thus much for her religion.

Some of the graver sort may, perhaps, aggravate her levities; in loving to be admired and courted, nay, and to have lovepoems made on her; and continuing this humour longer than was decent for her years; yet to take even these matters in a milder sense, they claim a due admiration; being often found in fabulous narrations; as that of "a certain queen in the fortunate islands, in whose court love was allowed, but lust banished." Or if a harsher construction can be put upon them, they are still to be highly admired; as these gaieties did not much eclipse her fame, nor in the least obscure her grandeur, nor injure her government, nor hinder the administration of her affairs; for things of this sort are rarely so well tempered and regulated in princes.

This queen was certainly good and moral; and as such she desired to appear. She hated vice, and studied to grow famous by honourable courses. Thus, for example, having once ordered an express to be written to her ambassador, containing certain instructions, which he was privately to impart to the queen-mother of France, her secretary inserted a clause for the ambassador to use, importing, "That they were two queens, from whose experience, and arts of government no less was expected than from the greatest kings." She could not bear the comparison; but ordered it to be

struck out, saying, "She used quite different arts and methods of government from the queen-mother."

She was, also, not a little pleased, if any one by chance had dropped such an expression as this, "That though she had lived in a private station, her excellencies could not have passed unobserved by the eye of the world." So unwilling was she, that any of her virtue, or praise, should be owing to the height of her fortune.

But if I should enter upon her praises, whether moral or political, I must either fall into a common-place of virtues, which will be unworthy of so extraordinary a princess; or if I would give them their proper grace and lustre, I must enter into a history of her life; which requires more leisure and a richer vein than mine. To speak the truth, the only proper encomiast of this lady is time; which, for so many ages as it has run, never produced anything like her, of the same sex, for the government of a kingdom.

THE BEGINNING

OF THE

HISTORY OF GREAT BRITAIN.

BY Y the decease of Elizabeth, queen of England, the issues of King Henry the Eighth failed, being spent in one generation, and three successions. For that king, though he were one of the goodliest persons of his time, yet he left only by his six wives three children, who, reigning successively, and dying childless, made place to the line of Margaret, his eldest sister, married to James the Fourth, king of Scotland. There succeeded therefore to the kingdom of England, James the Sixth, then king of Scotland, descended of the same Margaret both by father and mother, so that by a rare event in the pedigrees of kings, it seemed as if the Divine Providence, to extinguish and take away all envy and note of a stranger, had doubled upon his person, within the circle of one age, the royal blood of England, by both parents.

This succession drew towards it the eyes of all men, being one of the most memorable accidents that had happened a long time in the Christian world. For the kingdom of France having been reunited in the age before in all the provinces thereof formerly dismembered; and the kingdom of Spain being, of more fresh memory, united and made entire, by the annexing of Portugal in the person of Philip the Second; there remained but this third and last union for the counterpoising of the power of these three great monarchies, and the disposing of the affairs of Europe thereby to a more assured and universal peace.

This event did hold men's observations and discourses the more, because the island of Great Britain, divided from the rest of the world, was never before united in itself under one king, notwithstanding the people be of one language, and not separate by mountains or great waters; and notwithstanding also that the uniting of them had been in former times industriously attempted both by war and treaty.

It therefore seemed a manifest work of Providence, and a case of reservation for these times; insomuch that the vulgar conceived that now there was an end given, and a consummation to superstitious pro phecies, the belief of fools, but the talk sometimes of wise men, and to an ancient tacit expectation which had by tradition been infused and

inveterated into men's minds.* But as the best divinations and predictions are the politic and probable foresight and conjectures of wise men, so in this matter the providence of King Henry the Seventh was in all men's mouths; who being one of the deepest and most prudent princes of the world, upon the deliberation concerning the marriage of his eldest daughter into Scotland, had, by some speech uttered by him, showed himself sensible and almost prescient of this event.

A concurrence of several uncommon external circumstances gave great reputation to this succession. A king in the strength of his years, supported with great alliances abroad, established with royal issue at home, at peace with all the world, practised in the regiment of such a kingdom, as might rather enable a king by variety of accidents than corrupt him with affluence or vain glory; and one that, besides his universal capacity and judgment, was notably exercised and practised in matters of religion and the church, which in these times, by the confused use of both swords, are become so intermixed with considerations of estate, as most of the counsels of sovereign princes or republics depend upon them.

But nothing did more fill foreign nations with admiration and expectation of his succession than the wonderful and, by them, unexpected consent of all estates and subjects of England, for the receiving of the king without the least scruple, pause, or question. For it had been generally dispersed by the fngitives beyond the seas, who, partly to apply themselves to the ambition of foreigners, and partly to give estimation and value to their own employments, used to represent the state of England in a false light, that after Queen Elizabeth's decease there must follow in England nothing but confusions, interreigns, and perturbations of estate, likely far to exceed the ancient calamities of the civil wars between the houses of Lancaster and York, by how much more the dissensions were like to be more mortal and bloody when foreign competition should be added to domestical, and divisions for religion to matter of title to the crown.

And in particular, Parsons the Jesuit, under a disguised name, had not long before published an expresst reatise, wherein, whether his malice made him believe his own fancies, or whether he thought it the fittest way to move sedition, like evil spirits, which seem to foretell the tempest they mean to move; he laboured to display and give colour to all the vain pretences and dreams of succession which he could imagine, and thereby had possessed many abroad that knew not the affair here, with those his vanities.

There were also within this realm divers persons both wise and well affected, who, though they questioned not the right, yet setting before themselves the waves of people's hearts, guided no less by sudden and temporary winds than by the natural course and motion of the waters, were not without fear what might be the event. For Queen Elizabeth

* The prophecy here meant seems to be this: When Hempe is spun England's done.

being a princess of extreme caution, and yet one that loved admiration above safety, and knowing the declaration of a successor might in point of safety be disputable, but in point of admiration and respect, assuredly to her disadvantage, had from the beginning set it down for a maxim of estate to impose a silence touching succession.*

Nay, it was not only reserved as a secret of state, but restrained by severe laws, that no man should presume to give opinion or maintain argument touching the same; so, though the evidence of right drew all the subjects of the land to think one thing, yet the fear of danger of law made no man privy to others' thought. And therefore it rejoiced all men to see so fair a morning of a kingdom, and to be thoroughly secured of former apprehensions, as a man that awaketh out of a frightful dream.

And thus not only the consent but the applause and joy was infinite, and not to be expressed, throughout the realm of England, upon this succession; whereof the consent, no doubt, may be truly ascribed to the clearness of the right, but the general joy, alacrity, and gratulation, were the effects of differing causes. For Queen Elizabeth, although she had the use of many both virtues and demonstrations that might draw and knit unto her the hearts of her people, yet nevertheless carrying a hand restrained in gift, and strained in points of prerogative, could not answer the votes either of servants or subjects to a full contentment, especially in her latter days, when the continuance of her reign, which extended to five-and-forty years, might discover in people their natural desire and inclination towards change; so that a new court and a new reign were not unwelcome to many. Numbers rejoiced, and especially those of settled estate and fortune, that the fears and uncertainties were overblown, and that the die was cast. Others, that had made their way with the king, or offered their service in the time of the former queen, thought now the time was come for which they had prepared; and generally all such as had any dependence upon the late earl of Essex, who had mingled the service of his own ends with the popular pretence of advancing the king's title, made account their cause was amended.

Again, such as might misdoubt they had given the king any occasion of distaste, did contend by their forwardness and confidence to show it was but their fastness to the former government, and that those affections ended with the time. The papists fed their hopes, by comparing the case of the papists in England and under Queen Elizabeth, and the case of the papists in Scotland under the king; construing their condition in Scotland the less grievous, and forming conjectures of the king's government here accordingly, besides the comfort they ministered to themselves from the memory of the queen his mother. The ministers, and those which stood for the presbytery, thought their cause had more sympathy with the discipline of Scotland than the hierarchy of England, and so took themselves to be a degree nearer

* See the character of this queen.