and had little respect for any form of ecclesiastical self-government. She valued uniformity in religion, not as a safeguard against heresy, but as a guarantee of the unity of the state. She respected the bishops only as supporters of her throne; and, although the well-known letter beginning "Proud Prelate" is an 18th-century forgery, it is hardly a travesty of Elizabeth's attitude. The outlines of her foreign policy are sketched elsewhere (see ENGLISH HISTORY), and her courtships were diplomatic. Contemporary gossip, which was probably justified, said that she was debarred from matrimony by a physical defect; and her cry when she heard that Mary queen of Scots had given birth to a son is the most womanly thing recorded of Elizabeth. Her features were as handsome as Mary's, but she had little fascination, and in spite of her many suitors no man lost his head over Elizabeth as men did over Mary. She was far too masculine in mind and temperament, and her extravagant addiction to the outward trappings of femininity was probably due to the absence or atrophy of deeper feminine instincts. In the same way the impossibility of marriage made her all the freer with her flirtations, and she carried some of them to lengths that scandalized a public unconscious of Elizabeth's security. She had every reason to keep them in the dark, and to convince other courts that she could and would marry if the provocation were sufficient. She could not marry Philip II., but she held out hopes to more than one of his Austrian cousins whenever France or Mary Stuart seemed to threaten; and later she encouraged two French princes when Philip had lost patience with Elizabeth and made Mary Stuart his protégée. Her other suitors were less important, except Leicester, who appealed to the least intellectual side of Elizabeth and was always a cause of distraction in her policy and her ministers.