A Chaine of Pearle (1630) is a panegyric to the virtues of Queen Elizabeth I, published during the reign of Charles I when the cult of the Virgin Queen was often coterminous with criticism of the excesses and failures of Charles's political and religious inclinations. The qualities ascribed to Elizabeth in A Chaine of Pearle are in accord with the picture that has survived to the twentieth century of a moderate and savvy ruler who reigned by carefully controlling the image of her personal and public life. The descriptions of the "pearles" of virtue show an unusual melding of the public and private aspects of each virtue, which, taken together, form a unique commentary on the notion of the monarch's "two bodies." Nonetheless, aside from minimal speculation in biographical dictionaries about the identity of the author and summary comments on the poem, there has been no modern critical work...