DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

ee Francis Walsingham, her ambassador to France, who toiled many years in her service, died a pauper. Her temper was awful; she swore at a Cabinet Minister in a manner which would astonish a Billingsgate fishwife. When she was out of temper, she soothed herself by beating her ladies-in-waiting ; and on one occasion she replied to a discourteous remark of one of her favourites and greatest nobles of the realm, Lord Essex, with a box on the ear. Her worse defects were her mendacity and duplicity. In political affairs she lied in such a barefaced way, that she often deceived her own ministers, and she never showed the slightest shame when found out. Her dissimulation was never more painfully illus- trated than in her conduct towards her cousin, Mary Stuart. When after the death of her consort, the King of France, Mary Stuart returned to Scotland, she soon found herself at war with the nobles of the kingdom, who rebelled against her, partly owing to Mary Stuart’s own fault, but chiefly to the bribes they received from Elizabeth. Elizabeth wrote the sweetest letters to her cousin, but secretly she bought over her relatives, friends, and servants. Elizabeth's hatred of Mary Stuart was due in great part to jealousy, for Mary Stuart was a younger, more beautiful, and a more attractive woman than Elizabeth. When the Scottish re- bellion succeeded, Mary Stuart fled to England, B