Stories of Elizabethan Heroes

Before we touch upon the lives of some of the heroes of the Maiden Queen, it were well to consider briefly what life was like in those days, and how it differed from our own. When on a November day in 1558 Sir Nicholas Throckmorton spurred his steaming horse to Hatfield, in haste to inform the Princess Elizabeth that Queen Mary was dead, he was bidden to ride back to the Palace of St. James's and request one of the ladies of the bedchamber to give him, if the Queen were really dead, the black enamelled ring which her Majesty wore night and day. So cautious had the constant fear of death made Anne Boleyn's daughter. Meanwhile a deputation from the Council had arrived at Hatfield to offer to the new Queen their dutiful homage. Elizabeth sank upon her knees and exclaimed: "A Domino factum est istud, et est mirabile in oculis nostris" ("This is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes")—a text which the Queen caused to be engraved on her gold coins, in memory of that day of release from anxiety. For the poor young Princess had lived for years in a state of alarm; she had been imprisoned in the Tower, the victim of plots for and against her; she had been kept under severe control at Woodstock under Sir Henry Bedingfeld, where she once saw a milkmaid singing merrily as she milked the cows in the Park, and exclaimed, "That milkmaid's lot is better than mine, and her life far merrier." And now on a sudden her terrors were turned into a great joy; and what the Princess felt all England was soon experiencing, as soon as men realised that the tyranny of Rome and of Spain was shattered and gone. Elizabeth was now at the close of her twenty-fifth year, of striking beauty and commanding presence, tall and comely, with a wealth of hair, yellow tinged with red; she inherited from her mother an air of coquetry, and her affable manners soon endeared her to her people. The English were tired of Smithfield fires and foreign priests and princes; a new era seemed to be dawning upon them at last—an era of freedom for soul and body; and imagination ran riot with hope to forecast a new and happier world. The homage of an admiring nation was stirred by her young beauty; and wild ambition, not content with the quiet fields of England, turned adventurously to the New World beyond the Atlantic, where men dreamed of real cities paved with gold. It is true that the Pope had given all the great West to his faithful daughter, Spain; but Englishmen thought they had as much right to colonise America as any son of Spain, and they soon obtained their Queen's leave to land and explore. But the first merchants who ventured west found that Spanish policy forbade "Christians to trade with heretics." Nay, if they were taken prisoners by the Spaniards they suffered the punishment of the rack and the stake; and if they escaped, they came home with tales of cruelty that set all England ablaze to take revenge. "Abroad, the sky is dark and wild," writes Kingsley, "and yet full of fantastic splendour. Spain stands strong and awful, a rising world-tyranny, with its dark-souled Cortezes and Pizarros, Alvas, Don Johns and Parmas, men whose path is like the lava stream: who go forth slaying and to slay in the names of their Gods.... Close to our own shores the Netherlands are struggling vainly for their liberties: abroad, the Western Islands, and the whole trade of Africa and India, will in a few years be hers ... and already Englishmen who go out to trade in Guinea, in the Azores and New Spain, are answered by shot and steel."