Page:The Queens of England.djvu/449

 trine of the real presence, she replied, after a momentary consideration,—

This ingenious subterfuge and jargon seems to have completely perplexed and confounded her malicious interrogators; for we do not hear that they renewed their attempts to entrap her into some avowal which might have conducted her to the stake.

Upon the death of Mary, November 17th, 1558, Elizabeth being then only twenty-five years old, succeeded to the throne of England. Her first public acts were temperate and generous; for though determined to restore the Protestant religion, she showed no animosity to the Catholics or vindictiveness to her own previous persecutors. Her toleration was general; all the bishops she received with kindness and affability, with the sole exception of the fell Bonner, that dark and sanguinary miscreant, from whom she indignantly turned with too well-merited manifestations of abhorrence and disgust. She then recalled her ambassador from Rome, prohibited preaching without license and the elevation of the host, and in other ways displayed such an unequivocal determination to suppress the Catholic religion, that her ministers found great difficulty in obtaining the assistance of a prelate to crown her. When, however, that ceremony had been performed, and her title to the throne acknowledged by a parliament, she confirmed all Edward's statutes relating to religion, appointed herself governess of the Church, and then abolished mass and restored the liturgy. Those great and hazardous changes, the least of which in unskillful hands might have created a civil war and overthrown a dynasty, were effected by Elizabeth without any resort to violence on her part, or any agitation amounting to disturbance on the part of her Catholic subjects. To complete fully his estimate of the difficulty of this vigorous and dexterous deed, the reader must recall to mind the years and sex of the perpetrator of it; and then, however distasteful to him may be the character of Elizabeth as a woman, he will readily admit that as a ruler she must have been endowed with many eminently appropriate qualities and talents.