Elizabeth had to deal both with religious bigots and unscrupulous kings.  We may be disgusted with the course she felt it politic to pursue, but it proved successful.  A more generous and open course might have precipitated an attack when she was unprepared and defenceless.  Her dalliances and expediencies and dissimulations delayed the evil day, until she was ready for the death-struggle; and when the tempest of angry human forces finally broke upon her defenceless head, she was saved only by a storm of wind and rain which Providence kindly and opportunely sent.  Had the “Invincible Armada” been permitted to invade England at the beginning of her reign, there would probably have been another Spanish conquest.  What chance would the untrained militia of a scattered population, without fortresses or walled cities or military leaders of skill, have had against the veteran soldiers who were marshalled under Philip II., with all the experiences learned in the wars of Charles V. and in the conquest of Peru and Mexico, aided, too, by the forces of France and the terrors of the Vatican and the money of the Flemish manufacturers?  It was the dictate of self-preservation which induced Elizabeth to prevaricate, and to deceive the powerful monarchs who were in league against her.  If ever lying and cheating were justifiable, they were then; if political jesuitism is ever defensible, it was in the sixteenth century.  So that I cannot be hard on the embarrassed Queen for a policy which on the strict principles of morality it would be difficult to defend.  It was a dark age of conspiracies, rebellions, and cabals.  In dealing with the complicated relations of government in that day, there were no recognized principles but those of expediency.  Even in our own times, expediency rather than right too often seems to guide nations.  It is not just and fair, therefore, to expect from a sovereign, in Queen Elizabeth’s time, that openness and fairness which are the result only of a higher national civilization.  What would be blots on government to-day were not deemed blots in the sixteenth century.  Elizabeth must be judged by the standard of her age, not of ours, in her official and public acts.

We must remember, also, that this great Queen was indorsed, supported, and even instructed by the ablest and wisest and most patriotic statesmen that were known to her generation.  Lord Burleigh, her prime minister, was a marvel of political insight, industry, and fidelity.  If he had not the commanding genius of Thomas Cromwell or the ambitious foresight of Richelieu, he surpassed the statesmen of his day in patriotic zeal and in disinterested labors,—­not to extend the boundaries of the empire, but to develop national resources and make the country strong for defence.  He was a plodding, wary, cautious, far-seeing, long-headed old statesman, whose opinions it was not safe for Elizabeth to oppose; and although she was arbitrary and opinionated herself, she generally followed