any abandonment of their claims on the royal style of
England. It was only after long debate that Cecil wrested from them the
acknowledgement that the realms of England and Ireland of right
appertained to Elizabeth, and a vague clause by which the French
sovereigns promised the English Queen that they would fulfil their
pledges to the Scots.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth's character.]

Stubborn however as was the resistance of the French envoys the
signature of the treaty proclaimed Elizabeth's success. The issue of the
Scotch war revealed suddenly to Europe the vigour of the Queen and the
strength of her throne. What her ability really was no one, save Cecil,
had as yet suspected. There was little indeed in her outward demeanour
to give any indication of her greatness. To the world about her the
temper of Elizabeth recalled in its strange contrasts the mixed blood
within her veins. She was at once a daughter of Henry and of Anne
Boleyn. From her father she inherited her frank and hearty address, her
love of popularity and of free intercourse with the people, her
dauntless courage and her amazing self-confidence. Her harsh, manlike
voice, her impetuous will, her pride, her furious outbursts of anger
came to her with her Tudor blood. She rated great nobles as if they were
schoolboys; she met the insolence of Lord Essex with a box on the ear;
she broke now and then into the gravest deliberations to swear at her
ministers like a fishwife. Strangely in contrast with these violent
outlines of her father's temper stood the sensuous, self-indulgent
nature she drew from Anne Boleyn. Splendour and pleasure were with
Elizabeth the very air she breathed. Her delight was to move in
perpetual progresses from castle to castle through a series of gorgeous
pageants, fanciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. She loved gaiety
and laughter and wit. A happy retort or a finished compliment never
failed to win her favour. She hoarded jewels. Her dresses were
innumerable. Her vanity remained, even to old age, the vanity of a
coquette in her teens. No adulation was too fulsome for her, no flattery
of her beauty too gross. She would play with her rings that her
courtiers might note the delicacy of her hands; or dance a coranto that
an ambassador, hidden dexterously behind a curtain, might report her
sprightliness to his master. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, her
unwomanly jests gave colour to a thousand scandals. Her character in
fact, like