is certain that she objected to the marriage of the clergy, and
showed scant courtesy to the wife of her own favourite Archbishop
Parker. Nor would she suffer the Bishops, except as Peers, to meddle
in affairs of State. A magnificent princess, every inch a queen, she
could not forget that the English people had saved her life from the
clutches of her sister, and it was for them, not for any Minister,
courtier, or lover, that she really cared.

Froude was no idolater of Elizabeth, and he became more unfavourable
to her as he proceeded. He dwells minutely upon all her intrigues,
in which she was as petty as in great matters she was grand. For her
rival, Mary Stuart, he had neither respect nor mercy. To her
intellect indeed, which was quite on a par with Elizabeth's, he does
full justice. But neither her beauty nor her wit, neither her
scholarship nor her statesmanship, neither her passion nor her
courage, could blind him to her selfishness, her immorality, and the
fact that she represented the Catholic cause. His account of her
execution certainly lacks sentiment, and Mrs. Norton accused him of
writing like a disappointed lover. His sympathies are with John
Knox, and the Regent Murray, and Maitland of Lethington. But the man
who believes that Mary was not concerned in the murder of her
husband will believe anything, even that she did not reward the
murderer of her brother, or that she would have spared Elizabeth if
Elizabeth had been in her power. And at least Froude does not, like
some more modern writers, degrade her to the level of a kitchen
wench. Froude's Elizabeth was the subject of bitter, hostile,
sometimes violent, criticism in The Saturday Review, the property of
an ardent High Churchman, Beresford Hope. In the next chapter I
shall deal with these articles at more length. It is enough to say
here that they were directed not merely at Froude's accuracy as an