With the defeat of the Spanish Armada Elizabeth's work was done, and during the last fifteen years of her reign she got more out of touch with her people. That period was one of gradual transition to the conditions of Stuart times; during it practically every claim was put forward that was made under the first two Stuarts either on behalf of parliament or the prerogative, and Elizabeth's attitude towards the Puritans was hardly distinguishable from James I.'s. But her past was in her favour, and so were her sex and her Tudor tact, which checked the growth of discontent and made Essex's rebellion a ridiculous fiasco. He was the last and the most wilful but perhaps the best of her favourites, and his tragic fate deepened the gloom of her closing years. The loneliness of a queen who had no husband or children and no relatives to mention must at all times have been oppressive; it grew desolating in old age after the deaths of Leicester, Walsingham, Burghley and Essex, and Elizabeth died, the last of her race, on the 24th of March 1603. Bishop Creighton's _Queen Elizabeth_ (1896) is the best biography; there are others by E.S. Beesly (_Twelve English Statesmen_, 1892); Lucy Aikin, _Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth_ (1818); and T. Wright, _Queen Elizabeth and her Times_ (1838). See also A. Jessopp's article in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ (A. F. P.) ELIZABETH [PETROVNA] (1709-1762), EMPRESS OF RUSSIA, the daughter of Peter the Great and Martha Skovronskaya, born at Kolomenskoye, near Moscow, on the 18th of December 1709. Even as a child her parts were good, if not brilliant, but unfortunately her education was both imperfect and desultory. Her father had no leisure to devote to her training, and her mother was too illiterate to superintend her studies. She had a French governess, however, and at a later day picked up some Italian, German and Swedish, and could converse in these languages with more fluency than accuracy. From her earliest years she delighted every one by her extraordinary beauty and vivacity. It was Peter's intention to marry his second daughter to the young French king Louis XV., but the pride of the Bourbons revolted against any such alliance. Other connubial speculations foundered on the personal dislike of the princess for the various suitors proposed to her, so that on the death of her mother (May 1727) and the departure to Holstein of her beloved sister Anne, her only remaining near relation, the princess found herself at the age of eighteen practically her own mistress. So long as Menshikov remained in power, she was treated with liberality and distinction by the government of Peter II., but the Dolgorukis, who supplanted Menshikov and hated the memory of Peter the Great, practically banished Peter's daughter from court. Elizabeth had inherited her father's sensual temperament and, being free from all control, abandoned herself to her appetites without reserve. While still in her teens, she made a