ceeding cruelty. When upon one occasion she visited the Archbishop of Canterbury, in taking leave of his wife, Mrs. Parker, she said, "Madam, I may not call you, and mistress I must not call you, but however, I thank you.” Here was a piece of gratuitous impudence.

In what words can we sufficiently express reprobation of her treatment of the Lady Catharine Grey, the sister to the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey; this history is indeed a tragedy, even more terrible than that which involves the memory of the illustrious sister. She was so unfortunate as to be the successor to the throne by the Suffolk line; and when her sister was betrothed to Lord Guildford Dudley, her hand was given to Lord Herbert, but the marriage was never consummated. From this time she remained in obscurity and neglect, the two queens Mary and Elizabeth, taking no heed to her existence, until in the year, 1560, intelligence was conveyed to Elizabeth that Catharine had contracted a marriage with the Earl of Hertford, the son of the Protector Somerset. The lady was questioned, she confessed her pregnancy, declaring herself to be at the same time the lawful wife of the earl; her degree of relationship was not so near as to make a marriage without the queen's

consent illegal, but she was immediately committed prisoner to the Tower. Hertford was summoned to produce evidence of the marriage by a certain day; but he was in France, and he found it impracticable to produce his proofs by the time specified; and to the Tower he also was committed as the corruptor of a maiden of Royal Blood; the lady was treated in the Tower with hardships and rigour, and the following extract from instructions forwarded to Mr. Warner, the lieutenant, sufficiently indicate her situation. "Our pleasure is that ye shall, as by our commandment, examine the Lady Catharine very straitly; how many have been privy to the love between her and the Earl of Hertford, from the beginning, and let her certainly understand that she shall certainly have no manner of favour, except she will shew the truth.

Ye shall also send to Alderman Lodge secretly for St. Low, and shall put her in awe of divers matters confessed by the Lady Catharine, and so also deal with her, that she may confess to all her knowledge in the same matters." The child of which the Countess of Hertford was delivered soon after her committal, was regarded as illegitimate; and she was doomed to expiate her pretended misconduct by a further

you

imprisonment during the pleasure of the queen. There was born another child, the result of stolen interviews, connived at by Warner, for which he lost his place; the earl was fined the immense sum of fifteen thousand pounds. The marriage of the unfortunate pair was fully proved, and the feelings and expressions of the people were unanimous in their favour, and it was asked generally through the country by what right her majesty dared to keep asunder those whom God had put together. The final result of all this barbarity was, that Elizabeth detained the poor Lady Catharine in prison, until her death, in January, 1567; and the earl, her husband, having added to his offences by placing, on legal record, the proofs of his children's legitimacy and his wife's purity, was kept in prison until after her death, nine whole years.

It was a dangerous thing to marry, or to contract a marriage in the neighbourhood of the court, without the queen's consent; she was even disposed to interfere, to prevent, or withhold her consent, if required for a marriage. Yet was this Royal Misanogamist a great coquette, and was ever disposed to receive the homage of young and good looking knights.The only pathway to success at court was flat

tery; the polished tongue of Raleigh won for him grant after grant, and step after step of the royal favour, from that lucky moment when he threw off his cloak, and spread it before her majesty, as a carpet on which to move, saving her royal feet from disastrous contact with dirty stones and puddles. She had an eye for a graceful figure, and an ear for a flattering, even for a servile tongue. No doubt her jealousy of Mary Stuart, as her rival to the throne, was fanned and made yet more fierce, by her jealousy of the exquisite beauty of the Scottish Queen. When she was thirty-five, and Mary ten years younger, in the bright meridian of those charms which electrified the Court of Paris, and set France on fire with their report; Elizabeth had the cool complacency to wonder which was the most beautiful. Interesting, was all that could be said of her in her most radiant days, when all the additional charm of suffering cruel injustice hung around her. Her interview with Sir James Melville, the ambassador from Mary to England, is one of the richest morsels of self-adulation to be met with on any page. Space will not allow to cite the whole of the conversation, or the various interviews, but it strikingly illustrates the dissimulation of Elizabeth. The passage has been

frequently cited. It is, moreover, lengthy, but we are much mistaken if the reader will not gather from it a better estimate of the personal character of Queen Bess, than almost anything else that can be cited :

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"to her own

"She took me," he continues, bedchamber, and opened a little cabinet, wherein were divers little pictures wrapped within paper, and their names written with her own hand upon the papers. Upon the first that she took up was written My lord's picture.' I held the candle, and pressed to see that picture so named; she appeared loth to let me see it, yet my importunity prevailed for a sight thereof, and I found it to be the Earl of Leicester's picture. I desired that I might have it to carry home to my queen, which she refused, alleging that she had but that one picture of his. I said, "Your Majesty hath here the original,' for I perceived him at the farthest part of the chamber speaking with Secretary Cecil. Then she took out the queen's picture and kissed it, and I adventured to kiss her hand for the great love evinced therein to my mistress. She showed me also a fair ruby, as great as a tennis-ball: I desired that she would send either it or my Lord of Leicester's picture as a token to my