approached the
Coast in the form of a great Crescent, one mile across. The little
English "seadogs," not much larger than small pleasure yachts, were led
by Sir Francis Drake. They worried the ponderous Spanish ships, and
then, sending burning boats in amongst them, soon spoiled the pretty
crescent. The fleet scattered along the Northern Coast, where it was
overtaken by a frightful storm, and the winds and the waves completed
the victory, almost annihilating the entire "Armada."

{95}

England was great and glorious. The revolution, religious, social and
political, had ploughed and harrowed the surface which had been
fertilized with the "New Learning," and the harvest was rich. While
all Europe was devastated by religious wars there arose in Protestant
England such an era of peace and prosperity, with all the conditions of
living so improved that the dreams of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" seemed
almost realized. The new culture was everywhere. England was
garlanded with poetry, and lighted by genius, such as the world has not
seen since, and may never see again. The name of Francis Bacon was
sufficient to adorn an age, and that of Shakespeare alone, enough to
illumine a century. Elizabeth did not create the glory of the
"Elizabethan Age," but she did create the peace and social order from
which it sprang.

If this Queen ever loved any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man
who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive
hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion
{96} that she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that
she was the daughter of Henry VIII.!--and sometimes wonder if the
memory of a crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when
sated with pleasures and triumphs, lovers no more whispering adulation
in her ears, and mirrors banished from her presence, she silently
waited for the end.

She died in the year 1603, and succumbing to the irony of fate,--and
possibly as an act of reparation for the fatal paper signed in
1587,--she named the son of Mary Stuart, James VI. of Scotland, her
successor.--James I. of England.

{97}

CHAPTER VIII

The House of Stuart had peacefully reached the long coveted throne of
England in the person of a most unkingly King. Gross in appearance and
vulgar in manners, James had none of the royal attributes of his
mother. A great deal of knowledge had been crammed into a very small
mind.