plan, which best accorded with her disposition, was that
adopted by Elizabeth. It may be mentioned as a characteristic trait,
that a few years before, she had accepted with thanks an offer secretly
made to herself by some person holding an inferior station in the
customs, of a full disclosure of the impositions practised upon her in
that department. She had admitted this voluntary informer several times
to her presence; had imposed silence in the tone of a mistress on the
remonstrances of Leicester, Burleigh, and Walsingham, who indignantly
urged that he was not of a rank to be thus countenanced in accusation of
his superiors; and had reaped the reward of this judicious patronage, by
finding herself entitled to demand from her farmer of the customs an
annual rent of forty-two thousand pounds, instead of the twelve thousand
pounds which he had formerly paid. She now exacted from him a further
advance of eight thousand pounds per annum; and stimulated Burleigh to
such a rigid superintendence of all the details of public oeconomy as
produced a very important general result. It was probably in the ensuing
parliament that a conference being held between the two houses
respecting a bill for making the patrimonial estates of accountants
liable for their arrears to the queen, and the commons desiring that it
might not be retrospective, the lord treasurer pithily said; "My lords,
if you had lost your purse by the way, would you look back or forwards
to find it? The queen hath lost her purse."

This rigid parsimony, at once the virtue and the foible of Elizabeth,
was attended accordingly with its good and its evil. It endeared her to
the people, whom it protected from the imposition of new and oppressive
taxes; but, being united in the complex character of this remarkable
woman with an extraordinary taste for magnificence in all that related
to her personal appearance, it betrayed her into a thousand meannesses,
which, in spite of all the arts of graciousness in which she was an
adept, served to alienate the affections of such as more nearly
approached her. Her nobles found themselves heavily burthened by the
long and frequent visits which she paid them at their country-seats,
attended always by an enormous retinue; as well as by the contributions
to her jewelry and wardrobe which custom required of them under the name
of new year's gifts, and on all occasions when they had favors, or even
justice, to ask at her hands[105]. There