Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/621

Rh judgment, and great political tact. It was these qualities which rendered her reign the strongest and most illustrious in the record of England's sovereigns, and raised the nation from a position of insignificance to a foremost place among the states of Europe.

Along with her good and queenly qualities and accomplishments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, ungrateful, and cruel. She seemed almost wholly devoid of a moral or religious sense. Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. "In the profusion and recklessness of her lies," declares Green, "Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom."

Her Ministers.—One secret of the strength and popularity of Elizabeth's government was the admirable judgment she exercised in her choice of advisers. Around her Council-board she gathered the wisest and strongest men to be found in the realm. The most eminent of the queen's ministers was Sir William Cecil (Lord Burleigh), a man of great sagacity and ceaseless industry, to whose able counsel and prudent management is largely due the success of Elizabeth's reign. He stood at the head of the Queen's Council for forty years. His son Robert, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and Sir Francis Walsingham were also prominent among the queen's advisers.

Reestablishment of the Reformed Church.—As Mary undid the work in religion of Henry and Edward, so now her work is undone by Elizabeth. The religious houses that had been reestablished by Mary were again dissolved, and Parliament, by two new Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, relaid the foundations of the Anglican Church.

The Act of Supremacy required all the clergy, and every person holding office under the crown, to take an oath declaring the queen to be the supreme governor of the realm in all spiritual as well as temporal things, and renouncing the authority or jurisdiction of any foreign prince or prelate. For refusing to take this oath, many Catholics during Elizabeth's reign suffered death, and