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Elizabeth, Queen of England.
Makers of England Series
IN THE DAYS
OF
QUEEN ELIZABETH
BY
EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph.D.
Author of “In the Days of Alfred the Great”
“In the Days of William the Conqueror” etc.
ILLUSTRATED FROM FAMOUS PAINTINGS
BOSTON:
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
Copyright, 1902, by Lee and Shepard
Published August, 1902
All rights reserved
In the Days of Queen Elizabeth
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass. U. S. A.
PREFACE
Of all the sovereigns that have worn the crownof England, Queen Elizabeth is the most puzzling,the most fascinating, the most blindlypraised, and the most unjustly blamed. To makelists of her faults and virtues is easy. One maysay with little fear of contradiction that her intellectwas magnificent and her vanity almost incrediblychildish; that she was at one time themost outspoken of women, at another the mostuntruthful; that on one occasion she would manifesta dignity that was truly sovereign, while onanother the rudeness of her manners was unworthyof even the age in which she lived. Sometimesshe was the strongest of the strong, sometimesthe weakest of the weak.
At a distance of three hundred years it is noteasy to balance these claims to censure and toadmiration, but at least no one should forget thatthe little white hand of which she was so vainviguided the ship of state with most consummateskill in its perilous passage through the troubledwaters of the latter half of the sixteenth century.
Eva March Tappan.
Worcester, March, 1902.