DIGITISED MANUSCRIPTS

ae Her State progresses with which she delighted the population of the town and country are still celebrated —magnificent State processions and visits which she paid to the cities, universities, and the mansions of the great nobles. Though of a humane disposition she was in- fluenced by the barbarous customs of the day, and went so far as to encourage, personally, the public executioner, a cruel villain called Topcelyffe, who delighted in prolonging the death agonies of his victims; to enforce the torture of the rack on stub- born offenders. But still she was not insensible to the interests of her poorer subjects. When solicited to grant a patent to her cousin, Lord Hunsdon, a nobleman, who invented a stocking- frame, which produced stockings at least three times as fast as the most dexterous female fingers could knit, she refused her patronage to the stocking- machine, as it would interfere with the young maidens who obtained their livelihood by knitting. Under Elizabeth’s auspices, the first English stage was erected and the first English drama was performed. In her time gunpowder was first made in England, instead of being imported from the Continent, as had been the custom until then. The first English newspaper, the English Mercury, was published during her reign, and thus it was in her time that the foundation was laid of that Press