Queen Elizabeth first saw the light at Greenwich Palace, where, says Heywood, “she was born on the eve of the Virgin’s nativity, and died on the eve of the Virgin’s annunciation.”  The christening ceremony was gorgeous and elaborate, but, with the downfall of her mother, Anne Boleyn, she ceased to be treated as a princess.  She seems to have owed much to the judicious training of Lady Margaret Bryan, in whose charge she was.  Later, she was associated with Prince Edward, four years her junior; both displayed an extraordinary precocity and capacity for learning.

On Henry’s death, she resided with his widow, Catharine Parr, who married the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour.  That ambitious nobleman, brother of the Protector, certainly designed, when Catharine died, to marry Elizabeth; an intention which was among the causes of his execution under attainder.  His relations with her had already been unduly familiar, but there was no warrant for the scandalous stories that were repeated; and although Elizabeth all her life was naturally disposed to an excessive freedom of manners, she now became a pattern of decorum.  But she was probably more in love with Seymour, as a girl of fifteen, than with anyone else in after life; though, on his death, she called him “a man of much wit and very little judgement.”

Ascham is full of praises of her learning and her wide reading, both in Greek and Latin, which is displayed somewhat pedantically in her letters; her propriety and simplicity of apparel in these days is in curious contrast to the extravagances of her wardrobe in later life.

Mary treated her conspicuously as a sister; she refused, however, to abjure her Protestantism.  Her position became extremely difficult, as the French, the Spaniards, and the Protestant party each sought to involve her in plots for their own ends.  These culminated in Wyat’s rebellion.  The inevitable suspicions attaching to her caused her to be lodged in the Tower; but, in spite of the machinations of the Spanish party and the distrust of Mary, the evidence produced failed to warrant her condemnation.

Yet she was kept in rigorous confinement, her life continuing to be in danger for a month after Wyat himself had been executed.  She was then removed to Richmond, but refused to purchase liberty at the price of marriage to a foreign prince, Philibert of Savoy—­a scheme intended as a cover for Mary’s determination to marry Philip, the Prince of Spain.  Finally, she was transferred to Woodstock, where she was held a close prisoner.

Policy now led her to profess acceptance of the Roman religion, but in very ambiguous fashion.  Probably it was through the intercession of Philip—­now her brother-in-law, whose policy at this time was to conciliate the English people—­that she was set at liberty and readmitted to court at Christmas.

At the end of the next year Elizabeth was at Hatfield, under the gentle surveillance of Sir Thomas Pope.  She continued to be involved in grave dangers by perpetual plots, in which she was far too shrewd to let herself be implicated; and she guarded herself by a continued profession of Romanism to the hour of her accession on her sister’s death.