SIX ELIZABETHS

Southland Times, Issue 22915, 13 June 1936, Page 16

SIX ELIZABETHS

Queens And Princesses

An Elizabeth of York who may one day be Elizabeth of England celebrated her birthday to-day (wrote W. R. Sendall in The London News Chronicle on April 22). Three Queens and three Princesses salute her from the history books. Nearly all of them were remarkable people who played parts among great events. The great Queen Elizabeth everyone knows, but no one understands. She was one of the most tantalizing personalities in history and every historian has his own pet theory about her, one even going to the extent of proving--to his own satisfaction —that she was a man. A fact not to be forgotten about her is that she was the child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn a ruthless, energetic, able man and a flirtatious, vigorous pretty woman. Elizabeth flirted all her life; with her servants Burghley, Lei-

cester and Essex, with the King of Spain, the Archduke Charles and the Dulce of Alencon, and she profited by all except Essex. Rebel Peasants Hanged. She hanged six or seven hundred Northern peasants who revolted in 1569 and struck off the right hand of John Stubbs because he published observations on one of her innumerable marriage projects that offended her. This was her father’s spirit. She once declared to Parliament: “Everyone of you, and as many as are Englishmen, are children and kinsmen to me; of whom if God deprive me not, I cannot without injury be accounted Barren.” And when a son, James, was born to Mary, Queen of Scots, a bitter cry was wrung from Elizabeth’s heart: “My sister of Scotland is delivered of a fair boy and I am but a barren stock.” Whatever Elizabeth was, she was not a man! Two graceful Queens precede her, in time if not in honour. Elizabeth Woodville, lovely bride of Edward IV., was a true heroine of romance, a “femme fatale” whose loves brought misfortune. At 24, the dowerless widow of a Lancastrian knight, she knelt at the feet of the victorious Yorkist King to beg the restoration of her dowry and her sons inheritance. The beautiful suppliant won the King’s heart. In the teeth of the opposition of his overmighty subject, Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, the “King-maker,”—who had other plans for him—Edward secretly married her. The price of her love was the revolt of Warwick to the cause of Lancaster, and six months’ exile for Edward, who was lucky to win back his throne at the Battle of Barnet. Elizabeth’s.sons by Edward were the ill-fated Princes in the Tower, their mother, the unhappy instrument of their death. Sanctuary at Westminster. When Richard Crookback, Duke of Gloucester, seized the young Edward V. on his father’s death in 1483, Elizabeth fled with her younger son Richard and her daughters to sanctuary at Westminster. The young King was placed in the Tower by his uncle Richard and, with incredible folly, Elizabeth allowed the younger boy to leave sanctuary and join the young King under his uncle’s “protection.” Their fate was then sealed and Richard’s way to the throne cleared. But the death of one boy without the other would have done the usurper no good. Elizabeth might easily have saved both by saving one. Even after this unhappy experience Elizabeth nearly lent herself to another

of Richard’s pretty schemes. He proposed to get rid of his own Queen Anne and marry his niece, the yellow-haired Elizabeth of York, who was in sanctuary with her mother. Elizabeth Woodville trusted the murderer to the length of leaving sanctuary with her daughter and when Queen Anne died it was rumoured that the wedding would actually take place. However, Henry Tudor's victory at Bosworth put an end to that, and the fair Elizabeth of York married the victor, who was proclaimed Henry VII. This Elizabeth had been all her life a pawn in the political game. Despite its political object, the upion of the lines of York and Lancaster, the marriage was a success. Elizabeth and Henry had two sons, Arthur, who died, and Henry VIII., while Elizabeth died following the birth of a daughter, Catherine.

Kidnapping Plot We might conceivably have had an Elizabeth 11. if the Gunpowder Plot had succeeded. If Guy Fawkes had blown up James 1., a scheme had been prepared for the kidnapping of James’s daughter Elizabeth, who was living at Combe Abbey. She would have been declared Queen Elizabeth according to the Roman Catholic faith. She actually married the Protestant Elector-Palatine, whose attempt on the throne of Bohemia started that great struggle between Catholic and Reformed faiths, the Thirty Years’ War. Her daughter Sophia married the Elector of Hanover and was the mother of George I. Her youngest son was the dashing Prince Rupert of our Civil War. Royalty in these days had little time for human affection. No example of this is more pathetic than the little daughter of Charles 1., the Elizabeth who died at 15 in Carisbrooke Castle. Throughout her childhood she was virtually the prisoner of the Parliament. She was treated kindly enough, but she was deprived of those intimacies which children need. Interminable Puritan sermons were inflicted on the child, a hardship which would have broken the spirit of many a man. She was also a delicate child, her health having been upset by a broken leg in 1643. She was precocious though it is difficult to believe that she could read and write French, Hebrew. Latin and Italian by the age of eight. Her father’s death was a cruel blow. Her grief was such when she heard the sentence that had been passed on him that she fell into a death-like swoon. Her death from shock was for several weeks a common report. Fatal Imprisonment. Yet with a thoughtlessness that approaches positive brutality, she was shut up in Carisbrooke, with its fatal mejnories of her father, when in 1650 her brother Charles took the field in Scotland. This imprisonment was fatal to her, for she took a chill and died soon after her arrival at Carisbrooke. A contrast to this unhappy little girl was Elizabeth, George 111/s daughter. Charitable works, a little dilettante painting, and marriage were the events of her life. The peak excitements were her marriage to the Prince of HesseHomburg at Buckingham House and the publication of reproductions of her pictures, the “Progress of Genius” and the “Birth and Triumph of Cupid.” She founded at Windsor a Society for Providing Marriage Portions to Virtuous Girls, and died in 1840, aged 70. She lived at a time when the political importance of the Royal Family was at a low ebb, while it had not acquired the mountainous social responsibilities which beset it to-day.