xample and severe
corrections endeavoured to reduce her nobility to their old severe way
of life."

CHAPTER XX.

1582 TO 1587.

Traits of the queen.--Brown and his sect.--Promotion of
Whitgift.--Severities exercised against the puritans.--Embassy of
Walsingham to Scotland.--Particulars of lord Willoughby.--Transactions
with the Czar.--Death of Sussex.--Adventures of Egremond Ratcliffe--of
the earl of Desmond.--Account of Raleigh--of Spenser.--Prosecutions of
catholics.--Burleigh's apology for the government.--Leicester's
Commonwealth.--Loyal association.--Transactions with the queen of
Scots.--Account of Parry.--Case of the earl of Arundel--of the
earl of Northumberland.--Transactions of Leicester in Holland.--Death
and character of P. Sidney--of sir H. Sidney.--Return of
Leicester.--Approaching war with Spain.--Babington's conspiracy.--Trial
and condemnation of the queen of Scots.--Rejoicings of the
people.--Artful conduct of the queen.--Reception of the Scotch
embassy.--Conduct of Davison.--Death of Mary.--Behaviour of
Elizabeth.--Davison's case.--Conduct of Leicester.--Reflections.

The disposition of Elizabeth was originally deficient in benevolence and
sympathy, and prone to suspicion, pride and anger; and we observe with
pain in the progress of her history, how much the influences to which
her high station and the peculiar circumstances of her reign inevitably
exposed her, tended in various modes to exasperate these radical evils
of her nature.

The extravagant flattery administered to her daily and hourly, was of
most pernicious effect; it not only fostered in her an absurd excess of
personal vanity, but, what was worse, by filling her with exaggerated
notions both of her own wisdom and of her sovereign power and
prerogative, it contributed to render her rule more stern and despotic,
and her mind on many points incapable of sober counsel. This effect was
remarked by one of her clergy, who, in a sermon preached in her
presence, had the boldness to tell her, that she who had been meek as
lamb was become an untameable heifer; for which reproof he was in his
turn reprehended by her majesty on his quitting the pulpit, as "an over
confident man who dishonored his sovereign."

The decay of her beauty was an unwelcome truth which all the artifices
of adulation were unable to hide from her secret consciousness; since
she could never behold her image in a mirror, during the latter years of
her life, withou