This story of the life of Queen Elizabeth, the famous English sovereign who guided England through the troubled waters of the latter half of the sixteenth century, was written to appeal to grammar and middle school aged students. A good deal of attention is paid to the formative, youthful years of princess Elizabeth, and the later chapters include stories of English voyages of exploration and the defeat of the Spanish armada. Show All     Download:     PDF       EPUB

ELIZABETH, QUEEN OF ENGLAND.

Preface

Of all the sovereigns that have worn the crown of England, Queen Elizabeth is the most puzzling, the most fascinating, the most blindly praised, and the most unjustly blamed. To make lists of her faults and virtues is easy. One may say with little fear of contradiction that her intellect was magnificent and her vanity almost incredibly childish; that she was at one time the most outspoken of women, at another the most untruthful; that on one occasion she would manifest a dignity that was truly sovereign, while on another the rudeness of her manners was unworthy of even the age in which she lived. Sometimes she was the strongest of the strong, sometimes the weakest of the weak.

At a distance of three hundred years it is not easy to balance these claims to censure and to admiration, but at least no one should forget that the little white hand of which she was so vain guided the ship of state with most consummate skill in its perilous passage through the troubled waters of the latter half of the sixteenth century.

EVA MARCH TAPPAN

Worcester, March, 1902