Even Tyrwhitt believed that there was a secret compact between them, for he said, quaintly:  “They all sing one song, and she hath set the note for them.”

Soon after this her brother Edward’s death brought to the throne her elder sister, Mary, who has harshly become known as Bloody Mary.  During this time Elizabeth put aside her boldness, and became apparently a shy and simple-minded virgin.  Surrounded on every side by those who sought to trap her, there was nothing in her bearing to make her seem the head of a party or the young chief of a faction.  Nothing could exceed her in meekness.  She spoke of her sister in the humblest terms.  She exhibited no signs of the Tudor animation that was in reality so strong a part of her character.

But, coming to the throne, she threw away her modesty and brawled and rioted with very little self-restraint.  The people as a whole found little fault with her.  She reminded them of her father, the bluff King Hal; and even those who criticized her did so only partially.  They thought much better of her than they had of her saturnine sister, the first Queen Mary.

The life of Elizabeth has been very oddly misunderstood, not so much for the facts in it as for the manner in which these have been arranged and the relation which they have to one another.  We ought to recollect that this woman did not live in a restricted sphere, that her life was not a short one, and that it was crowded with incidents and full of vivid color.  Some think of her as living for a short period of time and speak of the great historical characters who surrounded her as belonging to a single epoch.  To them she has one set of suitors all the time—­the Duc d’Alencon, the King of Denmark’s brother, the Prince of Sweden, the russian potentate, the archduke sending her sweet messages from Austria, the melancholy King of Spain, together with a number of her own brilliant Englishmen—­Sir William Pickering, Sir Robert Dudley, Lord Darnley, the Earl of Essex, Sir Philip Sidney, and Sir Walter Raleigh.

Of course, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth lived for nearly seventy years—­almost three-quarters of a century—­and in that long time there came and went both men and women, those whom she had used and cast aside, with others whom she had also treated with gratitude, and who had died gladly serving her.  But through it all there was a continual change in her environment, though not in her.  The young soldier went to the battle-field and died; the wise counselor gave her his advice, and she either took it or cared nothing for it.  She herself was a curious blending of forwardness and folly, of wisdom and wantonness, of frivolity and unbridled fancy.  But through it all she loved her people, even though she often cheated them and made them pay her taxes in the harsh old way that prevailed before there was any right save the king’s will.

At the same time, this was only by fits and starts, and on the whole she served them well.  Therefore, to most of them she was always the good Queen Bess.  What mattered it to the ditcher and yeoman, far from the court, that the queen was said to dance in her nightdress and to swear like a trooper?