WHEN ELIZABETH WAS QUEEN

In the reign of Henry VI., Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the King’s uncle, built himself a palace at Greenwich, and he called it “Placentia” or “Plaisance,” which means a pleasant thing or place. (Turn over this page and the next, and you will find a picture of it.) I think the Tudor Kings really found it a pleasant place, for they lived there a great deal; here Henry VIII. and his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were born, and here Edward VI. died.

In those days the road we now call the Strand led from the City to the village of Charing Cross; and all along it stood great and beautiful houses with gardens which stretched down to the river. Each house, most likely, had its water-gate or landing-place, where the master of the house and his guests could step on board their barges, which might take them up the river to Westminster and the royal palace near Richmond, or down to London and beyond it to Greenwich; for in those days the river was London’s greatest and most stately highway. Very stately were the barges, very gay, too, with flags and the fine liveries of servants; and very often people on the banks or in little boats near-by heard music sounding from their decks as they moved swiftly along. How beautiful, how stately, must Queen Elizabeth’s barge have been, when at her Coronation she came by water to the Abbey!

She often stayed in her palace called Plaisance; how grandly she lived there! One who saw her there tells of the “gentlemen, barons, earls, Knights of the Garter, all richly-dressed and bareheaded,” who went before her; one of them carried the sceptre, another the sword of state. The ladies of her Court followed her, and she was guarded on each side by fifty gentlemen who carried gilt battle-axes. She was herself magnificently dressed, and “wherever she turned her face as she passed along, everybody fell down on their knees.”

Sometimes, when she wanted to be amused, plays were acted in the great hall of the palace, and she sat in her chair of state with her ladies about her and looked on. I wonder if any of these plays were written by Shakespeare? Perhaps they were; it is even possible that Shakespeare himself may have acted before her, for he had come to London from his country home two years before the Spanish Armada sailed up the English Channel to conquer England; and during the last five years of her reign, whenever Elizabeth went up the river in her barge, she passed the round wooden theatre, called the Globe, where his plays were acted, for it was in Southwark on the south bank. There is no sign of it now; a great brewery has been built over the place where once it stood.

These were the days when English sailors fought the Spanish on the high seas, because they claimed all the New World as their own and strove to keep everyone else out of it. From the windows or the terrace of her palace did the Queen ever watch ships sailing down the river to take part in this struggle, or in another, a struggle with winds and waves, ice and snow, as the sailors tried to explore the unknown coasts of America? Once at least we know she did, for Admiral Frobisher’s two little ships fired a salute to her as they dropped down the river. He was going to search for gold and for the North-West Passage round the north of America to the Pacific. He found no passage and no gold though he went again and yet again to the cold North. How often Englishmen searched for that passage; how hard they found it to believe that there is no way for ships through those icy seas!

Those were stirring times. Often sailors came home with wonderful tales to tell; and thus, in September, 1580, a ship, called the Pelican, sailed into Plymouth Sound, and all England rang with the news of her coming, for she was Admiral Drake’s ship. Nearly three years before he and his sailors had left England in her; they had fought the Spanish, they had taken great treasure, money and jewels, and they had sailed round the world. Now they were safe home again. Do you wonder that the Queen wanted to see the ship which had made such a voyage? She told Drake to bring the Pelican round to Deptford, which is very near Greenwich; and she went on board and took part in a great feast which was given in her honour; and she knighted Drake on the deck of his own ship. How proud Englishmen were of him! One of them said the Pelican ought to be hoisted up to the top of the tower of St. Paul’s Cathedral, to take the place of the spire which had been destroyed by lightning some time before. Was not this a mad plan? Of course, it was never carried out. For many a year the old ship lay in Deptford Dockyard just as the Victory lies now in Portsmouth Harbour; and people used to visit her, and even have supper on board her. When she was very old she was broken up; out of some of her timbers a chair was made and presented to Oxford University.

Do you remember what happened in 1588? This was the year of the Invincible Armada, when England had to prepare ships and sailors and soldiers to protect herself from the Spanish. What help did London give? She was asked for fifteen ships and five thousand men. “Give us two days,” said her citizens, “to consider what we can do”; and in two days they answered, “We will send thirty ships and ten thousand men to serve our country.”

London, then, had certainly plenty of ships; and many a sea-captain besides Frobisher sailed down the river past Placentia on his way to some far-off port; for London merchants were eager to trade with all parts of the world; and after the defeat of the Spanish Armada they knew that the wide ocean, east and west, lay open before them. No Spaniard now could forbid English ships to sail on any sea.

Drake had seen for himself and had brought home word of the spices and great wealth of the East Indies. But they were very far off, and the cost of fitting out ships for so long a voyage was very great; great, too, were the dangers these ships would have to face dangers of sea and storm, of savage people and an unknown land; could any one merchant risk so much? The Lord Mayor called together some London merchants to consider this question, and they answered, “The losses which would ruin one would hardly be felt if borne by many; let us, then, form a company to trade with the East.” Thus began the East India Company; its birthday was the very last day of the sixteenth century. It had at first only four ships and less than five hundred men; before it came to an end, two hundred and fifty-eight years later, it was ruling nearly all India.

I have another story to tell you which began nearly twenty years before the East India Company’s birthday. In December, 1581, a young man came to Placentia, bringing letters to the Queen from her soldiers in Ireland, where there had been war and great trouble. He was carefully dressed and wore a new plush cloak, for this was, I think, his first visit to Court, and the Queen loved to see everyone about her well and beautifully dressed. Perhaps he had only just arrived; perhaps the Queen had been out in her barge and was coming up from the riverside to her palace; however it may have been, she came to a very muddy place in the road, which is not at all surprising, since in December there is often a great deal of rain. The Queen looked at the puddles and stopped, and the young man sprang forward, swept his plush cloak from his shoulders and spread it over the mud for her to step on that so she might pass on without soiling her shoes. I feel sure you know the young man’s name it was Walter Raleigh. Is it any wonder that he became a great favourite with the Queen? An old story says that soon after this he wrote with a diamond on the glass of a window in the palace:

“Fain would I climb, yet fear to fall.”

And the Queen saw it, and wrote beneath it:

“If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.”

His heart did not fail him; he became captain of her Guard, and he rose higher and higher in her service.

Raleigh was the first Englishman to think how splendid it would be if some of his countrymen would go to America and make homes for themselves there, and so build up a greater England beyond the seas. He sent out ships to explore, and twice he sent out men to settle in the new land. Some the Indians killed; some found the work of building houses and clearing away the forests far harder than they had expected; and the Indians often attacked them, and food was sometimes so scarce they almost died of hunger. Do you wonder they lost heart and came back to England? Thus it seemed that Raleigh’s plan quite failed; but it did not really, for about twenty years later, a company, like the East India Company, was formed, called the Virginia Company. It sent out some settlers who sailed from London in the year 1606, and they did what Raleigh’s men had failed to do built themselves homes, and cleared and tilled the land. Thus began the British Dominions beyond the Seas.

One thing Raleigh did which must not be forgotten. The men he sent to explore in America saw potatoes and tobacco growing there, and learnt from the Indians how to use them. When they came home they showed Raleigh the plants they had brought back with them. He tried smoking tobacco, and I think he must have liked it very much, for he used to give his friends pipes with silver bowls and teach them how to smoke. And he planted potatoes in the garden of a house he had in Ireland; his were the very first Irish potatoes. A few years later both potatoes and tobacco were growing in the garden of one of those fine houses in the Strand of which I have told you; people thought them very rare and curious plants.

Eight years before the great Queen died, Raleigh went himself to South America, and sailed far up the River Orinoco. He found a fertile land and friendly Indians, who told him wonderful stories of the great “city of Manoa” which was (so they said,) rich beyond the dreams of man; El Dorado, the Golden City, the Spanish called it. Raleigh never forgot these stories; more than twenty years later they helped to bring him back to America.

When Elizabeth died and James I. came to the throne he fell into disgrace, for some people said he had plotted against the King; so he was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. But he was not killed; year after year he was kept a prisoner in the Tower of London. How did he pass his days there? was he very dull and sad? I think not. Part of the time his wife and son lived with him; he was very much interested in the new science of chemistry, and he worked at it and tried experiments in his cell; he began to write a wonderful History of the World; and I think he thought and dreamed much about Manoa, his Golden City, and the riches which lay hidden in South America. The Spanish said these riches were all theirs; but Raleigh did not believe this, and he thought Englishmen could so easily get possession of some of them. After many years he tried to persuade King James to let him cross the Atlantic and sail up the Orinoco to find a gold-mine he had heard of there; he said if only he might go and open it up, it would bring great wealth to the King. Had he another hope, I wonder, hidden away in his heart, of which he did not speak that he might also search for and find his Golden City? However this may be, he certainly tried to persuade the King, and he succeeded, for James said, “Yes, you may go,” though he well knew that Raleigh could not go to South America and bring home gold without offending the Spanish, and England was then at peace with Spain. So Raleigh sailed away. After fifteen months he came home with a sad tale to tell; everything had gone wrong, the Spanish had killed many of his men, and he had found no gold. James sent him back to the Tower; and four months later, in the year 1618, he was beheaded, because (so he was told,) he had once plotted against the King. Thus died the last of the great men of Queen Elizabeth’s Court who had done so much for England.

How different London is now from the London of Queen Elizabeth’s reign! Old St. Paul’s and its high tower, I will tell you in the next story what became of them. The Globe Theatre, too, has quite disappeared. Busy shops have taken the places of the beautiful old houses in the Strand; nothing now reminds us of them except the names of some of the streets which turn off it; and Somerset House, the great building where now some of the business of the nation is carried on, is so called because it stands on the place where the Duke of Somerset, who lived in Edward VI.’s reign, began to build a palace for himself.

If you go down the river to Greenwich, will you see Queen Elizabeth’s pleasant palace? Ah, no. Sixty years after she died it was so out of repair that Charles II. ordered it to be pulled down and a new one built in its place. This new palace was not finished until William and Mary’s reign. Then there was a great war with France, and the Queen begged the King to finish the palace and to turn it into a hospital for sailors who had been wounded or crippled in one of the great sea-fights. So it came to pass that, instead of Placentia, we now have Greenwich Palace; you will find a picture of it facing .

Perhaps you are thinking, “At any rate the Tower has not changed, and London still has a Lord Mayor.” But even the Tower has changed, for in Queen Elizabeth’s time it was a royal palace as well as a prison. She did not use it often; perhaps she did not like it, for she had been a prisoner there herself when her sister Mary was Queen. Now our Kings never live there; and prisoners are not kept there; and for more than a hundred and fifty years no one has been beheaded there. I must tell you of one other change, for I am sure it will interest all children. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign, if you had gone to see the Tower, you would have been shown also the lions and other wild animals which, from very early times, had been kept there in dens near the part which is called, after them, the Lion Tower. Now you must go to the Zoological Gardens to see wild animals; there are none in the Tower; they were all sent away to the Zoo not long before Queen Victoria began to reign.

As for the Lord Mayor, he is still the first magistrate of London, and he still takes the leading place in all London’s affairs, just as he did in Queen Elizabeth’s reign. No, his work and duties have not changed, except that, as London has grown greater and more important, they have grown greater and more important also.