resented to her
the danger in which she stood by the continual conspiracies against her
life, and acquainted her that a man was lately taken who stood ready in
a very dangerous and suspicious manner to do the deed; and they showed
her the weapon wherewith he thought to have acted it. And therefore they
advised her that she should go less abroad to take the air, weakly
attended, as she used. But the queen answered, 'that she had rather be
dead than put in custody.'"

"Ireland," says Naunton, "cost her more vexation than any thing else;
the expense of it pinched her, the ill success of her officers wearied
her, and in that service she grew hard to please." She also arrived at a
settled persuasion that the extreme of severity was safer than that of
indulgence; an opinion which, being communicated to her officers and
ministers, was the occasion, especially in Ireland, of many a cruel and
arbitrary act.

When angry, she observed little moderation in the expression of her
feelings. In the private letters even of Cecil, whom she treated on the
whole with more consideration than any other person, we find not
unfrequent mention of the harsh words which he had to endure from her,
sometimes, as he says, on occasions when he appeared to himself
deserving rather of thanks than of censure. The earl of Shrewsbury
often complains to his correspondents of her captious and irascible
temper; and we find Walsingham taking pains to console sir Henry Sidney
under some manifestations of her displeasure, by the assurance that they
had proceeded only from one of those transient gusts of passion for
which she was accustomed to make sudden amends to her faithful servants
by new and extraordinary tokens of her favor.

There was no branch of prerogative of which Elizabeth was more tenacious
than that which invested her with the sole and supreme direction of
ecclesiastical affairs. The persevering efforts therefore of the
puritans, to obtain various relaxations or alterations of the laws which
she in her wisdom had laid down for the government of the church,--on
failure of which they scrupled not to recall to her memory the strong
denunciations of the Jewish prophets against wicked and irreligious
princes,--at once exasperated and alarmed her, and led her to assume
continually more and more of the incongruous and odious character of a
protestant persecutor of protestants. But the puritans themselves must
have seemed guiltless in her eyes compared