When, therefore, upon the news of Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, the Protestant refugees made their way back to England, they came as Calvinistic Puritans.  Their stay upon the Continent had been short, but it had been just enough to put the finishing touch upon the work that had been going on since the days of Wyclif.  Upon such men and their theories Elizabeth could not look with favour.  With all her father’s despotic temper, Elizabeth possessed her mother’s fine tact, and she represented so grandly the feeling of the nation in its life-and-death-struggle with Spain and the pope, that never perhaps in English history has the crown wielded so much real power as during the five-and-forty years of her wonderful reign.

One day Elizabeth asked a lady of the court how she contrived to retain her husband’s affection.  The lady replied that “she had confidence in her husband’s understanding and courage, well founded on her own steadfastness not to offend or thwart, but to cherish and obey, whereby she did persuade her husband of her own affection, and in so doing did command his.”  “Go to, go to, mistress,” cried the queen, “You are wisely bent, I find.  After such sort do I keep the good will of all my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest assured of some special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience.” [2] Such a theory of government might work well in the hands of an Elizabeth, and in the circumstances in which England was then placed; but it could hardly be worked by a successor.  The seeds of revolt were already sown.  The disposition to curb the sovereign was growing and would surely assert itself as soon as it should have some person less loved and respected than Elizabeth to deal with.  The queen in some measure foresaw this, and in the dogged independence and uncompromising enthusiasm of the Puritans she recognized the rock on which the monarchy might dash itself into pieces.  She therefore hated the Puritans, and persecuted them zealously with one hand, while circumstances forced her in spite of herself to aid and abet them with the other.  She could not maintain herself against Spain without helping the Dutch and the Huguenots; but every soldier she sent across the channel came back, if he came at all, with his head full of the doctrines of Calvin; and these stalwart converts were reinforced by the refugees from France and the Netherlands who came flocking into English towns to set up their thrifty shops and hold prayer-meetings in their humble chapels.  To guard the kingdom against the intrigues of Philip and the Guises and the Queen of Scots, it was necessary to choose the most zealous Protestants for the most responsible positions, and such men were more than likely to be Calvinists and Puritans.  Elizabeth’s great ministers, Burleigh, Walsingham, and Nicholas Bacon, were inclined toward Puritanism; and so were the naval heroes who won the most fruitful victories of that century, by shattering the maritime power of Spain