Page:The child's pictorial history of England; (IA childspictorialh00corn).pdf/133

 Fourth, and thus secure peace by uniting the families of York and Lancaster:—the princess Elizabeth was a lady much beloved by every body, and her many acts of benevolence were long remembered in England, so that she was generally called the good queen Bess.

3. The king wished to increase the wealth and prosperity of the nation, and he took the best means of doing so by promoting commerce. He made commercial treaties, that is, agreements about trade, with foreign princes, by which he obtained many advantages for the English merchants, just as our government has lately made a treaty with the emperor of China, about our trade in his country.

4. No English ship had ever been to China then, nor even to India; and America had not yet been discovered; but in the time of Henry the Seventh, the Spaniards and Portuguese made longer voyages than had ever been made before, and the celebrated Christopher Columbus, whom I dare say you have often heard of, found out by study, that there was an unknown land on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and although people laughed at him, he at last persuaded the king and queen of Spain to let him have ships, and sailors, and money, to go in search of it, so he was the first that found out