temper was aroused, and swore like a trooper if occasion required.

But whatever else she was doing she never ceased to study the new
England she was ruling. She felt, though did not understand, the
expansion which was going on in the spirit of the people; but
instinctively realized the necessity for changes and modifications in
her Government, when the temper of the nation seemed to require it.

It was enormous common-sense and tact which converted Elizabeth into a
liberal Sovereign. Her instincts were despotic. When she bowed
instantly to the will of the Commons, almost apologizing for seeming to
resist it, it was not because she sympathized with liberal sentiments,
but because of her profound political instincts, which taught her the
danger of alienating that class upon which the greatness of her Kingdom
rested. She realized the truth forgotten by some of her successors,
that the Sovereign and the middle class _must be friends_. She
might resist and insult her lords and ministers, send great Earls and
favorites ruthlessly to the block, but no slightest cloud must come
between her and her "dear Commons" and people. This it was which made
Spenser's adulation in the "Faerie Queen" but an expression of the
intense loyalty of her meanest subject.

Perhaps it was because she remembered that the whole fabric of the
Church rested upon Parliamentary enactment, and that she herself was
Queen of England by Parliamentary sanction, that she viewed so
complacently the growing power of that body in dealing more and more
with matters supposed to belong exclusively to the Crown, as for
instance in the struggle made by the Commons to suppress monopolies in
trade, granted by royal prerogative. At the first she angrily resisted
the measure. But finding the strength of the popular sentiment, she