e were decidedly
hostile; and all Catholic Europe aimed at the overthrow of England.
Philip II. had adopted the dying injunction of his father to extinguish
the Protestant religion, and the princes of the House of Valois were
leagued with Rome for the attainment of this end. At home, Elizabeth had
to contend with a jealous Parliament, a factious nobility, an empty
purse, and a divided people. The people generally were rude and
uneducated; the language was undeveloped; education was chiefly confined
to nobles and priests; the poor were oppressed by feudal laws. No great
work in English history, poetry, or philosophy had yet appeared. The
comforts and luxuries of life were scarcely enjoyed even by the rich.
Chimneys were just beginning to be used. The people slept on mats of
straw; they ate without forks on pewter or wooden platters; they drank
neither tea nor coffee, but drank what their ancestors did in the
forests of Germany,--beer; their houses, thatched with straw, were dark,
dingy, and uncomfortable. Commerce was small; manufactures were in their
infancy; the coin was debased, and money was scarce; trade was in the
hands of monopolists; coaches were almost unknown; the roads were
impassable except for horsemen, and were infested with robbers; only the
rich could afford wheaten bread; agricultural implements were of the
most primitive kind; animal food, for the greater part of the year, was
eaten only in a salted state; enterprise of all kinds was restricted
within narrow limits; beggars and vagrants were so numerous that the
most stringent laws were necessary to protect the people against them;
profane swearing was nearly universal; the methods of executing capital
punishments were revolting; the rudest sports amused the people; the
parochial clergy were ignorant and sensual; country squires sought
nothing higher than fox-hunting; it took several days for letters to
reach the distant counties; the population numbered only four millions;
there was nothing grand and imposing in art but the palaces of nobles
and the Gothic monuments of mediaeval Europe.

Such was "Merrie England" on the accession of Elizabeth to the
throne,--a rude nation of feudal nobles, rural squires, and ignorant
people, who toiled for a mere pittance on the lands of cold,
unsympathetic masters; without books, without schools, without
privileges, without rights, except to breathe the common air and indulge
in coarse pleasures and religious holidays