Elizabeth was a sovereign more purely British in blood than any other since the Norman Conquest; and to her appropriately fell the task of completing her country's national independence. Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy and Edward VI's of Uniformity were restored with some modifications, in spite of the opposition of the Catholic bishops, who contended that a nation had no right to deal independently with ecclesiastical matters, and suffered deprivation and imprisonment rather than recognize a schismatic national church. Elizabeth rejected Philip's offers of marriage and paid no heed to his counsels of state. She scandalized Catholic Europe by assisting the revolted Scots to expel the French from North Britain; and revenged the contempt, in which England had been held in Mary's reign, by supporting with impunity the Dutch against Philip II and the Huguenots against the king of France. She concealed her aggressions with diplomatic artifice and caution; but at heart she was with her people, who lost no opportunity, in their new-found confidence, of plundering and insulting the Catholic powers in their way. The astonishing success of England amid the novel conditions of national rivalry requires some attempt at explanation. It seems to have been due to the singular flexibility of the English character and national system, and to the consequent ease with which they adapted themselves to changing environment. Indeed, whatever may be the case at present, a survey of English history suggests that the conventional stolidity ascribed to John Bull was the least obvious of his characteristics; and even to-day the only people who never change their mind at general elections are the mercurial Celts. Certainly England has never suffered from that rigidity of social system which has hampered in the past the adaptability of its rivals. Even in feudal times there was little law about status; and when the customary arrangement of society in two agricultural classes of landlord and tenant was modified by commerce, capitalism, and competition, nobles adapted themselves to the change with some facility. They took to sheep-farming and commercial speculations, just as later on they took to keeping dairy-shops. It is the smallness rather than the source of his profits that excites social prejudice against the shopkeeper in England. On the Continent, however, class feeling prevented the governing classes from participating in the expansion of commerce. German barons, for instance, often with only a few florins a year income, could not supplement it by trade; all they could do was to rob the traders, robbery being a thoroughly genteel occupation. Hence foreign governments were, as a rule, less alive and less responsive to the commercial interests of their subjects. Philip II trampled on commercial opinion in a way no English sovereign could have done. Indeed, complaints were raised in England at the extent to which the