GLORIANA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 261, 4 November 1933, Page 7 (Supplement)

GLORIANA.

WORLD'S GREATEST QUEEN. IHB GEMOTS OF ELIZABETH. OPENED THE MODERN AGE, Four hundred years ago there were astrologers at Greenwich, on the River Thames, and like tho astronomers who have taken their place they studied the stars. Nervously the astrologers were talking to a huge mountain of a monarch, overbearing and over-dressed, ■who was in a royal fever of irate anxiety. They assuaged his petulance by promising him that it would be a boy.

It was not the fault of the astrologers that they were wrong. Pale on her bed in the palace, a picture of tragedy in a frame of splendour, lay Queen Anne Boleyn, and it was over her dark eyes and crooked thumb that His Majesty King Henry VTIL heaped his conjugal curses. In her criminal stupidity as consort and mother, the Queen had only given to England an Elizabeth, and for maternity, thus indifferent, the Tudor penalty was murder. On that dark day of disappointment, September 7, the shadow of a headsman's axe fell on what Anne, who died a sportswoman, playfully described as her little neck. New Era Created. The centuries, as they roll along, echo with the cumulative reverberations of the unique Elizabethan glory. The woman fascinates and impresses. But that is not aIL It was her genius that created the era, gorgeous, constructive, expanding, which inaugurated modern civilisation. Hers were the slender but tenacious fingers, with the flashing rings which she used to display their delicacy —that grasped the cord and raised the curtain. It was the final transition from the Middle Ages into the modern era to which we ourselves belong.

The Elizabethans inherited a feudal .eystem shattered by endless conflicts. Pageantry enlivened by innocuous tournaments now glowed with a sunset radiance. The aristocracy of William the Conqueror, whose title was based on prowess in battle, had been destroyed by the Wars of the Roses. It was replaced by an aristocracy no less powerful, of wealth and success, which, in the Cecils and Cavendishes, continues to this day. In a land of fortified castles, the nouveaux riches built stately and comfortable homes like Hatfield, with the gallery for minstrels, the leaded windows, the linen-moulding of the wainscoat, the use of heraldry for decoration, and other amenities, which, in reproduction, may be seen in many a mansion and hotel of our own times. An Unforgettable Figure. Amid varied and far-reaching developments, Elizabeth Tudor stands forth an unforgettable figure. No woman, before or since, has been dressed in a style as lavishly preposterous as was hers. She adopted all the fashions of the period, however absurd, and sublimated them by a regal exaggeration. Her voluminous silks and satins, with their ribands and furbelows, were extended over an enormous Hoop. Above her shoulders there rose vast butterfly wings of bejewelled lace. Her hair glittered with gems. Her bodice, framed of steel, gleamed with gold and emeralds and rubies. When she travelled through her realm, sleeping in innumerable beds that thereby became historic, '. and leaving handkerchiefs as heirlooms for generations yet unborn, she overcame the imagination of the people as a resplendent symbol of the national emergence. For the sake of England, she filibustered forty flirtations, yet refused to marry. For the sake of England she clenched her fist till the skin went white, yet would allow her hand to flutter on a suitor's arm. For the sake of England she lied like a trooper, and, when so had to be, denied the lie. For the sake of England her eyes flashed like cold steel, yet melted to womanly tears. Amid intrigues and prevarications innumerable, perfidious Albion was the faith unfaithful that kept her falsely true.

The white sister at the altar did not dedicate her life with a purpose more elemental and intense than Elizabeth's patriotism. Instinctively, the people realised it. Of her chicaneries they saw nothing. Enough for them that, whatever the weather, Queen Bess was the figurehead, fearless and unflinching, on the prow of the ship of State. The King of Spain might "build his galleons to the sky itself, not for an instant did Elizabeth lower her glance of invincible resolution. A Rare Sanity. Above the patriotism of Elizabeth there was a rare and overruling sanity. No sovereign waved the flag and beat the drum less than she. To serve the country with heart and soul was not enough. If at a time of crisis England was to be saved, she must be served also with the mind.

Of course she could not prevent Sir Francis Drake if, in his restless enthusiasm for superfluous continents "westward ho," he encircled the globe (which Elizabeth preferred as a theatre) and singed the beard of her somewhat alienated half-brother-in-law, the King of Spain. But she would cry, "No war, my lords, no war!" and : even with her buccaneers exploding their broadsides somewhere in the Indies, she meant it. To keep England out of war, at any rate until it was time to win, was her supreme obsession. It was only when France sent troops into Scotland and the Spanish Armada swept up the English' Channel that Elizabeth, as a thrifty housewife, consented reluctantly to a minimum use of ammunition, if there happened to be any.

The Treasury was empty. Patriotism, therefore, must begin with parsimony, and a more stingy queen than Elizabeth never drove her courtiers into bankruptcy. When the Armada was sunk she was much relieved. She approved of the helpful winds and- the waves because they cost her nothing. By all means let the nation cheer itself hoarse. Still she could not but regret the expenditure incurred by her captains who, in their officious zeal, had been led into so Wasteful a naval manoeuvre.

Religion's Raging Tides. What was the Christendom within which Elizabeth had to steer her frail bark to safety? It was an ocean on which the tides raged, back and forth, between rocks threatening instant shipwreck. Toward Geneva there loomed the Scylla of Protestantism. At Rome there arose the Catholic Charybdis. What course was there for the pilot except compromise? And the Elizabethan compromise was imposed. Let %al subjects of Her Majesty attend the State church and so believe what they like.

Bid me to live and T will live Thy Protestant to be, wrote one of her poets, Herriek, and she agreed. When they gave her a Bible,

she kissed it and promised "diligently to read therein," and after the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve her court was in black when she received the French Ambassador.

But in order to live, she was no less ready, whenever it seemed to be advisable, to declare herself a Catholic. One of her preachers began to denounce images. But a resonant voice from the Royal pew interrupted the sermon. "Leave that alone," shouted the Queen, "stick to your text, Mr. Dean, stick to your text!" And he did.

She detested married clergy and let them know it. When the Archbishop gave her a banquet at Lambeth Palace she took leave of his wife in terms that have been remembered ever since. "Madame," she said, "I may not call you, and mistress I am loath to call you. But I thank you for your good cheer." Unrivalled in History. Elizabeth's progresses from city to city may have been propaganda. Her infinite zest for display may have been a kind of anaesthetic that enabled the people to face situations of peril without knowing it. But the glamour has never faded. History that is inclined to depreciate only magnifies Elizabeth Tudor. Without a rival, she is acclaimed to-day as the greatest queen, and the equal of the greatest king who ever sat on a throne. Cleopatra merely competed with her in coquetry. Jezebel was no more than her instructress in cosmetics. And as for Catherine de Medici, she could have taken lessons from Elizabeth in the duplicity on which she prided herself.

In sheer magnitude of achievement, there is only one queen with which to compare the last of the Tudors. The length of her reign—4s years—fell short of Victoria's, which was 64 years. But Elizabeth's was more than a reign. She ruled. Mussolini and Stalin themselves do not wield an authority more absolute than hers. There, in her council, she sat, herself the perpetual Prime Minister, so confident in her supremacy that she feared not to match her wits with a Cecil and a Walsingham, the finest statesmen in the realm.

Elizabeth listened to them. She swcre at them. Even when she boxed their ears they always knew that she was shrewd enough thus to respect their sagacity. But they also knew that hers was the final word, and that In her decisions she seldom if ever erred. As Wellington never lost a battle or failed to take a town, so did Elizabeth avoid mistakes. She could not afford them.

If only she had lived on the morrow of the Armada! What an aftermath she would have been spared! She had given her all to England. But the England that had been preserved by her sagacity was ceasing to be her England. A generation of Puritans was arising that feared no challenge of Spain and cared even less for the Elizabethan gaieties of the Renaissance. It was in solitary grandeur than the most companionable of Queens moved among the most grateful of peoples.

Time's Revenges. Infirmities oppressed Elizabeth. In dread of violence, she kept a sword at her side, and over long periods she refused to change her dresses, lying, a shrunken caricature of herself, in finery forever faded. , Thought of her successor drove her frantic. "I will have no rogue's son," she cried, "to sit in my seat," which was her final and feminine allusion to the mother of the rogue's son, Mary Stuart.

It was Sunday in Edinburgh, and Scots still kept the Sabbath. To announce news from the pulpit would have been sacrilege. But a Presbyterian minister has always a right to choose a text. "James First and Sixth," announced the preacher, "James First and Sixth." Word had crossed the Border that the "rogue's son" would sit in the seat of Queen Elizabeth, and it has meant that, in the Abbey, the "rogue" herself —bead and all—rests close to the Queen who signed the decapitation parchment.—P. W. Wilson, in the "New York Times."