members of the house of commons, who brought up the unlucky address, Nov. 14, 1566. It is to be hoped her speech was more perspicuous than her notes of it, or little could the commons learn further, than that their liege lady was in a rage:

"I know no reason why any my private answers to the realm should serve for prologue to a subsidy vote; neither yet do I understand why such audacity should be used to make without my licence an Act of my words. Are my words like lawyer's books, which now-a-days go to the wire-drawers, to make subtle doings more plain? Is there no hold of my speech without an act to compel me to confirm ! Shall my princely consent be turned to strengthen my words, that be not of themselves substantives? Say no more at this time, but if these fellows-(we fear she meant the members of the House of Commons by this irreverent word fellows)— were well answered, and paid with lawful coin, there would be no fewer counterfeits among them!"

The commons regarded this intimation as a breach of their privileges, and allowed the bill for the supplies-that business to which alone her majesty was desirous they should direct their attention, to remain unnoticed. They maintained with unwonted independence," that since the queen would not marry, she ought to be compelled to name her successor, and that her refusing to do so, proceeded from feelings which could only be entertained by weak princes and faint-hearted women."1 Elizabeth

was mortified at this language, but felt that she reigned solely by the will and affections of her own people, whose representatives she had insulted. France, Spain, Scotland, Rome, were ready to unite against her if she took one false step; and she was without money. It was not in her temper to retract, but she well knew how to cajole, and sending for thirty members from each house, she assured them of her loving affection and desire to do all that her subjects' weal required, and that, understanding that the house was willing to grant her an extra subsidy if she would declare her successor; she could only say, "that half would content her, as she considered that money in her subjects' purses was as good as

among the Lansdowne MSS., Brit. Museum, No. 1236, fol. 42. A sentence or two, unconnected in sense, precedes those we have quoted. A specimen of this autograph is engraved in Netherclift's autographs of illustrious women of Great Britain,—a work of great merit.

1 D'Ewes' Journals of Parliament.

in her own exchequer." 1 This popular sentiment obtained from the parliament the really ample grant of one fifteenth and one tenth from the people, and four shillings in the pound from the clergy, unfettered by any conditions whatsoever. When Elizabeth had gained this point, she dismissed her parliament without delay, in a half pathetic, half vituperative speech from the throne; observing in the commencement of her harangue," that although her lord keeper (Bacon) had addressed them, she remembered that a prince's own words bore more weight with them than those that were spoken by her command." She complained bitterly of "the dissimulation that she had found among them when she was herself all plainness. As for her successor," she said, "they might, perhaps, have a wiser or more learned to reign over them, but one more careful for their weal they could not have, but whether she ever lived to meet them again, or whoever it might be, she bade them beware how they again tried their prince's patience as they had done hers. And now, to conclude," said her majesty, "not meaning to make a Lent of Christmas, the most part of you may assure yourselves that you depart in your prince's grace."

At the very period of this stormy excitement, Elizabeth was secretly amusing herself with the almost exploded chimeras of alchemy, for Cecil, in his diary has noted that, in January, 1567, "Cornelius Lanoy, a Dutchman, was committed to the Tower for abusing the queen's majesty, in promising to make the elixir.' This impostor had been permitted to have his laboratory at Somerset house, where he had deceived many by promising to convert any metal into gold. To the queen a more flattering delusion had been held forth, even the draught of perpetual life and youth, and her strong intellect had been duped into a persuasion that it was in the power of a foreign empiric to confer the boon of immortality upon her. The particulars of this transaction would doubtless afford a curious page in the personal 2 D'Ewes. Rapin. 3 i.c., abusing, in old English, meant deceiving.

D'Ewes. Rapin. Camden.

history of the mighty Elizabeth. That she was a believer in the occult sciences, and an encourager of those who practised the forbidden arts of divination and transmutation, no one who has read the diary of her pet conjuror, Dr. Dee, can doubt. It is probable that he was an instrument used by her to practise on the credulity of other princes, and that, through his agency, she was enabled to penetrate into many secret plots and associations in her own realm, but she placed apparently an absurd reliance on his predictions herself. She even condescended with her whole court and privy council to visit him one day at Mortlake, when it was her gracious intention to have examined his library, and entered into further conference, but understanding that his wife had only been buried four hours, she contented herself with a peep into his magic mirror, which he brought to her.' "Her majesty," says Dee, "being taken down from her horse by the earl of Leicester, master of the horse, at the church wall, at Mortlake, did see some of the properties of that glass, to her majesty's great contentment and delight.""

A strange sight, in sooth, it must have been for the good people of Mortlake, who had witnessed in the morning the interment of the wizard's wife in the churchyard, to behold in the afternoon the maiden majesty of England, holding conference with the occult widower under the same church wall, on the flowery margin of the Thames. Nay, more, alighting from her stately palfrey, to read a forbidden page of futurity in the dim depths of his wondrous mirror-ebon framed, and in shape and size resembling some antique hand-screen-while her gay and ambitious master of the horse, scarcely refrained, perchance, from compelling the oracle to reflect his own handsome face to the royal eye, as that of the man whom the fates had decided it was her destiny to wed. Many, however, were the secret consultations Dee held with queen

1 Diary of Dr. Dee, edited by James O. Halliwell, Esq., published by the Camden Society. Dee's Compendious Memorial. 2 Ibid.

3 Last summer, this identical mirror attracted much attention at the private view of Horace Walpole's collection, at Strawberry-hill, and was sold, after great competition, for fifteen guineas.

Elizabeth at Windsor, and Richmond, and even at Whitehall; and when she passed that way she honoured him with especial greetings.

"September 17th," says he, "the queen's majesty came from Richmond, in her coach, the higher way of Mortlake field, and when she came right against the church, she turned down towards my house; and when she was against my garden in the field, she stood there a good while, and then came into the street at the great gate of the field, where, espying me at my door making obeisances to her majesty, she beckoned me to come to her coach side; she very speedily pulled off her glove and gave me her hand to kiss, and to be short, asked me to resort to her court, and to give her to wete (know) when I came there." He also had flattered Elizabeth with promises of perennial youth and beauty, from his anticipated discovery of the elixir of life, and the prospect of unbounded wealth, as soon as he should have arrived at the power of bringing to practical purpose his secret of transmuting the baser metals into gold.

1

After years of false but not fruitless trickery, he professed to have arrived at the point of projection, having cut a piece of metal out of a brass warming-pan, and merely heating it by the fire and pouring on it a portion of his elixir, converted it into pure silver. He is said to have sent the warming-pan with the piece of silver to the queen, that she might see with her own eyes the miracle, and be convinced that they were the veritable parts that had been severed from each other, by the exact manner in which they corresponded after the transmutation had been effected. His frequent impositions on the judgment of the queen, did not cure her of the partiality with which she regarded him, and after a long residence on the continent, she wooed him to return to England, which he did, travelling with three coaches, each with four horses, in state, little inferior to that of an ambassador. A guard of soldiers was sent to defend him from molestation or plunder on the road. Immediately on his arrival, he had an audience of the queen,

1 Dee's Diary.

"Godwin's Lives of the Necromancers.

at Richmond, by whom he was most graciously received. She issued her especial orders that he should do what he liked in chemistry and philosophy, and that no one should on any account interrupt him. He held two livings in the church, through the patronage of his royal mistress, though he was suspected by her loyal lieges of being in direct correspondence and friendship with the powers of evil. Elizabeth finally bestowed upon him the chancellorship of St. Paul's Cathedral.'

The very accurate accounts that were kept, by the officers of Elizabeth's wardrobe, of every article of the royal dress and decorations, are evidenced by the following amusing entry, from the highly curious MS. pertaining to that department, to which we have referred before:

"Lost from her majesty's back the 17th of January, anno 10 R. Eliz. at Westminster, one aglet of gold enamelled blue, set upon a gown of purple velvet, the ground satin; the gown set all over with aglets of two sorts, the aglet which is lost being of the bigger sort. Mem., That the 18th of April anno 8, R. Eliz. her majesty wore a hat having a band of gold enamelled with knots, and set with twelve small rubies or garnets, at which time one of the said rubies was lost. Item, Lost from her majesty's back at Willington, the 16th of July, one aglet of gold enamelled white. Item, One pearl and a tassel of gold being lost from her majesty's back, off the French gown of black satin, the 15th day of July, at Greenwich."2

These aglets were ornamental loops, or eylets, of goldsmiths' work, with which Elizabeth's robes appear to have been thickly besprinkled; they were movable, and changed from one dress to another, according to pleasure, and she had various sets of them of different colours and patterns; some gold enamelled white, some blue, others purple, and some enriched with pearls and gems. Manifold are the entries in the said wardrobe book, of the losses her majesty sustained in these decorations; in one instance the record is entered in regal style. "Itemlost from the face of a gown, in our wearing the same at Cheynes, July anno 12., one pair of small aglets, enamelled blue, parcel of 183 pair." The inference of the reader would naturally be, that her majesty's yeo

1 Godwin's Life of Dee.

* Ex. MSS. Phillipps' Middle Hill Collection.