as a
tribute on the part of the merchant class to the interest with which she
watched and shared personally in its enterprises. Her thrift won a
general gratitude. The memories of the Terror and of the Martyrs threw
into bright relief the aversion from bloodshed which was conspicuous in
her earlier reign, and never wholly wanting through its fiercer close.
Above all there was a general confidence in her instinctive knowledge
of the national temper. Her finger was always on the public pulse. She
knew exactly when she could resist the feeling of her people, and when
she must give way before the new sentiment of freedom which her policy
unconsciously fostered. But when she retreated, her defeat had all the
grace of victory; and the frankness and unreserve of her surrender won
back at once the love that her resistance lost. Her attitude at home in
fact was that of a woman whose pride in the well-being of her subjects
and whose longing for their favour was the one warm touch in the
coldness of her natural temper. If Elizabeth could be said to love
anything, she loved England. "Nothing," she said to her first Parliament
in words of unwonted fire, "nothing, no worldly thing under the sun, is
so dear to me as the love and goodwill of my subjects." And the love and
goodwill which were so dear to her she fully won.

[Sidenote: The religious truce.]

It was this personal devotion that enabled Elizabeth to face the
religious difficulties of her reign. Formidable as these had been from
its outset, they were now growing into actual dangers. The attack of the
Papacy from without had deepened the tide of religious fanaticism
within. For the nation at large Elizabeth's system was no doubt a wise
and healthy one. Single-handed, unsupported by any of the statesmen or
divines about her, the Queen had forced on the warring religions a sort
of armed truce. While the main principles of the Reformation were
accepted the zeal of the ultra-reformers was held at bay. Outer
conformity, attendance at the common prayer, was exacted from all, but
changes in ritual which would have drawn attention to the change in
religion were steadily resisted. The Bible was left open. Public
discussion was unrestrained. On the other hand the warfare of pulpit
against pulpit was silenced by the licensing of preachers. In 1576
Elizabeth gave the Protestant zealots a rough proof that she would not
suffer them to draw the Catholics into controversy and rouse the
oppo