Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 47006-h.htm or 47006-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47006/47006-h/47006-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/47006/47006-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/indaysofqueeneli00tapp [Illustration: 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 crown of England, Queen Elizabeth is the most puzzling, the most fascinating, the most blindly praised, and the most unjustly blamed. To make lists of her faults and virtues is easy. One may say with little fear of contradiction that her intellect was magnificent and her vanity almost incredibly childish; that she was at one time the most outspoken of women, at another the most untruthful; that on one occasion she would manifest a dignity that was truly sovereign, while on another the rudeness of her manners was unworthy of even the age in which she lived. Sometimes she was the strongest of the strong, sometimes the weakest of the weak. At a distance of three hundred years it is not easy to balance these claims to censure and to admiration, but at least no one should forget that the little white hand of which she was so vain guided the ship of state with most consummate skill in its perilous passage through the troubled waters of the latter half of the sixteenth century. EVA MARCH TAPPAN. _Worcester, March, 1902._ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE BABY PRINCESS 1 II. THE CHILD ELIZABETH 20 III. A BOY KING 39 IV. GIVING AWAY A KINGDOM 56 V. A PRINCESS IN PRISON 75 VI. FROM PRISON TO THRONE 95 VII. A SIXTEENTH CENTURY CORONATION 113 VIII. A QUEEN'S TROUBLES 132 IX. ELIZABETH AND PHILIP 150 X. ENTERTAINING A QUEEN 169 XI. ELIZABETH'S SUITORS 188 XII. THE GREAT SEA-CAPTAINS 208 XIII. THE NEW WORLD 227 XIV. THE QUEEN OF SCOTS 245 XV. THE SPANISH ARMADA 263 XVI. CLOSING YEARS 280 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE.