tuisset, ut eam' etiamsi in privata et mediocri fortuna ævum traduxisset, tamen non absque aliqua excellentiæ nota apud homines victuram fuisse, apte insinuaret.2 Adeo nihil a fortuna sua ad virtutis laudem mutuare aut transferre volebat. Verum si in ejus laudes, sive morales sive politicas, ingrederer, aut in communes quasdam virtutum notas et commemorationes incidendum est, quod tam rara principe minus dignum; aut si propriam ipsis lucem et gratiam conciliare velim, in vitæ ejus historiam prolabendum, quod et majus otium et venam uberiorem desiderat. Ego enim hæc paucis, ut potui. Sed revera dicendum est; non alium verum hujus fœminæ laudatorem inveniri posse, quam tempus: quod cum tam diu jam volvitur, nihil simile, in hoc sexu, quoad rerum civilium administrationem peperit.

'The first clause of this sentence is omitted by Rawley, and the rest stands thusDelectabatur etiam haud parum si quis forte hujusmodi sermonem intulisset, Eam.... fuisse.

2 The two last words are omitted by Rawley.

ON THE

FORTUNATE MEMORY OF ELIZABETH

QUEEN OF ENGLAND.

ELIZABETH both in her nature and her fortune was a wonderful person among women, a memorable person among princes. But it is not to monks or closet penmen that we are to look for guidance in such a case; for men of that order, being keen in style, poor in judgment, and partial in feeling, are no faithful witnesses as to the real passages of business. It is for ministers and great officers to judge of these things, and those who have handled the helm of government, and been acquainted with the difficulties and mysteries of state business.

The government of a woman has been a rare thing at all times; felicity in such government a rarer thing still; felicity and long continuance together the rarest thing of all. Yet this Queen reigned forty-four years complete, and did not outlive her felicity. Of this felicity I propose to say something; without wandering into praises; for praise is the tribute of men, felicity the gift of God.

First, then, I set it down as part of her felicity that she was raised to sovereignty from a private fortune; not so much because of that feeling so deeply seated in man's nature, whereby benefits which come unexpected and unhoped for are always counted the greater blessings; but because Princes who are brought up in the reigning house with assured expectation of succeeding to the throne, are commonly spoiled by the indulgence and licence of their education, and so turn out both less capable and less temperate. And therefore you will find that the best kings are they who have been trained in both

schools of fortune; such as Henry the Seventh with us, and Lewis the Twelfth in France; both of whom, of late years and almost at the same time, came to their kingdoms not only from a private but from an adverse and troubled fortune; and both were eminently prosperous; the one excelling in wisdom, the other in justice. Much like was the case of this Queen, whose early times and opening prospects fortune checquered with uncertainty, that afterwards when she was settled in the throne it might prove to the last constant and equable. For Elizabeth at her birth was destined to the succession, then disinherited, afterwards superseded. Her fortune in her brother's reign was more propitious and serene, in her sister's more troubled and doubtful. And yet she did not pass suddenly from the prison to the throne, with a mind embittered and swelling with the sense of misfortune, but was first restored to liberty and comforted with expectation; and so came to her kingdom at last quietly and prosperously, without tumult or competitor. All which I mention to show how Divine Providence, meaning to produce an excellent Queen, passed her by way of preparation through these several stages of discipline. Nor ought the calamity of her mother to be admitted as an objection to the dignity of her birth: the rather because it is clear that Henry the Eighth had fallen in love with another woman before he fell in anger with Anne, and because he has not escaped the censure of posterity as a man by nature extremely prone both to loves and suspicions, and violent in both even to the shedding of blood. And besides, the criminal charge in which she was involved was in itself, if we consider only the person to whom it related, improbable, and rested upon the slenderest conjectures; as was secretly whispered (as the manner is in such cases) even then, and Anne herself just before her death with a high spirit and in memorable words made protestation. For having procured a messenger whose fidelity and good will she thought she could trust, she sent the King, in the very hour when she was preparing for the scaffold, a message to this effect: "That he kept constant to his course of heaping honours upon her; from a gentlewoman without title he had made her marchioness; he had then raised her to be the partner of his throne and bed; and now at last, because there remained no higher step of earthly honour, he had vouchsafed to crown her innocence with martyrdom." Which words the messenger

durst not indeed carry to the King, who was then in the heat of a new love; but fame, the vindicator of truth, transmitted them to posterity.

I account also as no small part of Elizabeth's felicity the period and compass of her administration; not only for its length, but as falling within that portion of her life which was fittest for the control of affairs and the handling of the reins of government. She was twenty-five years old (the age at which guardianship ceases) when she began to reign, and she continued reigning till her seventieth year; so that she never experienced either the disadvantages and subjection to other men's wills incident to a ward, nor the inconveniences of a lingering and impotent old age. Now old age brings with it even to private persons miseries enough; but to kings, besides those evils which are common to all, it brings also decline of greatness and inglorious exits from the stage. For there is hardly any sovereign who reigns till he becomes old and feeble, but suffers some diminution of power and reputation of which we have a very eminent example in Philip the Second, King of Spain, a most powerful prince and perfect in the art of government; who in his last times when worn out with age. became deeply sensible of this which I say, and therefore wisely submitted to the condition of things; voluntarily sacrificed the territories he had won in France, established peace there, attempted the like in other places, that he might leave a settled estate and all things clear and entire to his successor. Elizabeth's fortune on the contrary was so constant and flourishing, that not only did her declining, but though declining still fresh and vigorous years, bring with them no decline at all in the state of her affairs; but it was granted to her for an assured token of her felicity not to die before the fate of the revolt in Ireland had been decided by a victory; lest her glory might seem to be in any part sullied and incomplete.

Nor must it be forgotten withal among what kind of people she reigned; for had she been called to rule over Palmyrenes or in an unwarlike and effeminate country like Asia, the wonder would have been less; a womanish people might well enough be governed by a woman; but that in England, a nation particularly fierce and warlike, all things could be swayed and controlled at the beck of a woman, is a matter for the highest admiration.