Page:Under Dispute (1924).pdf/74

 The English, however, unlike Americans, refuse to survey with unconcern the spectacle of chaotic officialdom. They are a fault-finding people, and have expressed their dissatisfaction since the days of King John and the Magna Carta. They were no more encouraged to find fault than were other European commonalties that kept silence, or spoke in whispers. The Plantagenets were a high-handed race. The hot-tempered Tudors resented any opinions their subjects might form. Elizabeth had no more loyal servant than the unlucky John Stubbs, who lost his right hand for the doubtful pleasure of writing the "Gaping Gulf." Any other woman would have been touched when the culprit, raising his hat with his left hand which had been mercifully spared, cried aloud, "God save the Queen!" Not so the great Elizabeth. Stubbs had expressed his views upon her proposed marriage to