Part 20

After this Henry VIII had five other wives, six in all; not of course all at one time, for Christians could only have one wife at a time. His first wife he divorced, the second he beheaded, the third died. The same thing happened to his last three wives: the first he divorced, the second he beheaded, and the third died--but Henry died before she did.

Is this too difficult for you to understand?

64

King Elizabeth

King Henry VIII had two daughters.

One was named Mary, and one was named Elizabeth.

Their last name was of course Tudor, the same as their father’s, although we do not usually think of kings and queens as having last names.

King Henry had a son, also, and he was first to become king after his father died, for though he was younger than his sisters, a boy was supposed to be more fit to rule than a girl. But he didn’t live long, and then Mary was the first of the two sisters to become queen.

“Mary, Mary, quite contrary” did not approve what her father had done when he turned against the pope and the Catholic Church. Mary herself was a strong Catholic and ready to fight for the pope and the Catholic Church. In fact, she wanted to have all who were not Catholics, all those who were Protestants, put to death. She thought that all those who did not believe as she did were wicked and should be killed. Like the queen in “Alice in Wonderland,” she was always saying, “Off with his head!” This seems to us very unchristian, but in those days their ideas about such things were peculiar. Mary had the heads of so many people cut off that she was called Bloody Mary.

Mary married a man who was just as strong a Catholic as she and even “bloodier.” He was not an Englishman, but a Spaniard, Philip II of Spain, son of Charles V, who had abdicated.

Philip II was much sterner than his father had been. Philip tried to make those who were Protestants, or who were supposed to be Protestants, confess and give up Protestantism. If they did not do so, they were tortured as the old Christian martyrs had been tortured. This was called the Inquisition. Those suspected of being Protestants were tormented in all sorts of horrible ways. Some were tied up in the air by their hands, like a picture hung on the wall, until they fainted from the pain or else confessed what they were told to confess. Some were stretched on a rack, their heads pulled one way and their legs the opposite way, until their bodies were nearly torn apart. Those who were found guilty of being Protestants were killed outright, burned to death, or put slowly to death, so that they would suffer longer.

The people whom Philip chiefly persecuted were the Dutch people in Holland. Holland then belonged to his empire, and a great many of the Dutch people had become Protestants.

Now, there was a Dutchman called William the Silent, because he talked little but did a great deal. William was furious at the way his people were treated. So he fought against Philip and at last succeeded in making his country free and setting up the Dutch Republic. But William the Silent was murdered by order of Philip.

And that’s the kind of man Bloody Mary had for a husband.

After Mary Tudor died, her sister, Elizabeth Tudor, became queen, though she ruled like a king. Elizabeth had red hair and was very vain and loved to be flattered. She had many lovers but she never married, and as a woman who never marries is called a virgin she was known as the Virgin Queen.

Elizabeth was a Protestant and was just as bitter against the Catholics as her sister and her sister’s husband had been against the Protestants.

A relative of Elizabeth was queen of Scotland. Scotland was a country north of England, but at that time it was not a part of England, and its queen was named Mary Stuart. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was young, beautiful, and fascinating; but she was a Catholic, and so Elizabeth and she were enemies.

Elizabeth heard that Mary Stuart was trying to become queen of England as well as Scotland, so she had her, although a relative, put in prison. In prison Mary Stuart stayed for nearly twenty years and was then at last put to death by Elizabeth’s orders. It is hard for us to understand how any one could have his own relatives killed in this cold-blooded way, especially any one who pretended to be a Christian, but in those times it was a very common custom, as we see when we hear of so many murders committed by the rulers of the people. Philip II, the great champion of the Catholics, made up his mind to punish Elizabeth, his sister-in-law, for killing such a good Catholic as Mary Stuart.

So he got together a large navy of very fine ships called the Spanish Armada. All Spain was very proud of this fleet. It was boastfully called the Invincible Armada; “invincible” means “unconquerable.”

This Invincible Armada set forth in 1588 to conquer the English navy. Lined up in the shape of a half-moon, the ships sailed grandly toward England.

The English fleet was composed only of little boats. But instead of going out to meet the Armada in regular sea-battle as the Spaniards expected, the English ships sailed out and attacked the Spanish ships from behind and fought one ship at a time. The English were better fighters, and their small boats were quicker and more easily managed. They could strike a blow and get away before a Spanish ship could turn around into position to fire. So gradually they sank or destroyed the big Spanish boats one by one.

Then the English set some old boats afire and started them drifting toward the Spanish fleet. As all boats at that time were of course made of wood, the Spaniards became frightened at these burning piles drifting down upon them, and part of the fleet sailed away. The rest tried to get back to Spain by sailing the long way round, north of Scotland. But a terrible storm struck them, and almost all the boats were shipwrecked, and thousands of dead bodies were washed up on shore. So the great Spanish Armada was destroyed, and with it ended the power of Spain at sea. She was no longer the great nation she had been.

At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, the largest and most powerful country in the world was Spain; at the end of her reign it was England that was the most powerful. Ever since then her fleet, which King Alfred started far back, has been the largest, and the saying is, “Britannia rules the waves.”

People at that time thought it impossible for a woman to rule as well as a man, but under Elizabeth’s rule England in turn became the leading country of Europe. Then people said Elizabeth ruled _like_ a man, that she had a man’s brain, a man’s will. In fact they said she was more man than woman--that she was a tomboy grown up--that’s why I call her “King Elizabeth.”

[Illustration]

65

The Age of Elizabeth

This story is about the Age of Elizabeth.

My father always told me that it was impolite to talk about a lady’s age.

But I’m not going to tell you how old Elizabeth was, though she did live and reign a great many years.

I’m going to tell you some of the things that happened during her long life, for the time when she lived is what is called the Age of Elizabeth.

There was a young man named Raleigh living when Elizabeth became queen. One day when it was raining and the streets were muddy, Elizabeth was about to cross the street. Raleigh saw her and, to keep her from soiling her shoes, ran forward, took off his beautiful velvet cape, and threw it in the puddle where she was about to step, so that she might cross upon it as upon a carpet. The queen was greatly pleased with this thoughtful and gentlemanly act, and she made him a knight, so that he was then called Sir Walter Raleigh, and ever after that he was one of her special friends.

Sir Walter Raleigh was much interested in the new country of America. Cabot had claimed a great part of it for England almost a hundred years before, but England had done nothing about it. Raleigh thought something should be done about it; he thought English people should settle there, so that other countries like Spain, which had made so many settlements in America, would not get ahead of England. So Raleigh got together several companies of English people and sent them over to an island called Roanoke, which was just off the coast of the present State of North Carolina. At that time, however, almost the whole coast of the United States as far north as Canada was called Virginia. It had been named Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth.

Some of these Roanoke colonists became discouraged with the hardships they had to suffer and so gave up and sailed back home again. Those who remained all disappeared. Where? No one knows. We think they must either have been killed by the Indians or have died of starvation. At any rate, not one was left to tell the tale. Among these Roanoke colonists was the first English child born in America--a girl, who had been named Virginia Dare, for the queen was very popular and a great many girls were named Virginia after her.

Some tobacco was brought back from Virginia, and Sir Walter Raleigh learned to smoke. This was such a strange and unknown thing at that time that one day while he was smoking a pipe a servant who saw smoke coming out of his mouth thought he was on fire and, running for a bucket of water, emptied it over his head.

Virginia is still famous for its tobacco. At first tobacco was supposed to be very healthful, for the Indians seemed to have very good health and they smoked a great deal. Afterward, however, in the next reign, King James so hated tobacco that he wrote a book against it and forbade it to be used.

After Queen Elizabeth had died, Raleigh was put in prison, for it was said he was plotting against the new king James, who came after Elizabeth. The prison where he was placed was the Tower of London, the old castle that William the Conqueror had built. Here Raleigh was kept for thirteen long years, and to pass the time away he wrote a “History of the World.” But at last he was put to death as many other great men were also.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there lived the great writer of plays, the greatest writer the world has ever known. This man was William Shakspere.

Shakspere’s father could not write his name. Shakspere himself spent only six years at school. As a boy he was rather wild, and he was arrested for hunting deer in the forest of Sir Thomas Lucy at Stratford.

[Illustration: Shakspere reading to Elizabeth.]

When still a boy Shakspere married a girl older than himself named Anne Hathaway. After he had been married a few years he left her and their three children, left the little town of Stratford, and went up to the great city of London to seek his fortune. There Shakspere got a job working around a theater, holding the horses of those who came to see the plays. Then he got a chance to act in the theater, and he became an actor, but he did not become a very good one.

In those days the theaters had no scenery. A sign was put up to tell what the scene was supposed to be. For instance, instead of forest scenery, they would put up a sign saying, “This is a forest,” or instead of a room scene a sign saying “This is a room in an inn.” There were no actresses. Men and boys took the parts of both men and women.

Shakspere was asked to change some of the plays that had already been written, so that they could be better acted. He did this very well; then he started in to write plays himself. Usually he took old stories and made them into plays, but he did it so wonderfully well that they are better than any plays that have ever been written before or since.

Though Shakspere left school when only thirteen years old, he seems to have had a remarkable knowledge of almost everything under the sun. He shows in his plays that he knew about history and law and medicine, and he knew and used more words than almost any writer who has ever lived. Indeed, some people say that with the little education he had, he could not possibly have written the plays himself, and so they have tried to prove that some one else must have written them. Some of the greatest of Shakspere’s plays are “Hamlet,” “The Merchant of Venice,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Julius Cæsar.”

Shakspere made a good deal of money for those times--almost a fortune. Then he left London and went back to live in the little town of Stratford where he was born. Here at last he died and was buried in the village church. People wanted to move his body to a greater and handsomer place, to a famous church in London. But some one, perhaps Shakspere himself, had written a verse which was carved on his tombstone. The last line of this verse said, “And curst be he who moves my bones”; so they never were moved, for no one dared to move them.

66

James the Servant or What’s In a Name?

What does your name mean?

If it is Baker or Miller or Taylor or Carpenter or Fisher or Cook,

it means that at some time one of your ancestors was a

baker, or miller, or tailor, or carpenter, or fisher, or cook.

If your name is Stuart or Steuart or Stewart or Steward, it means that at some time one of your ancestors was a steward for in olden days people knew very little about spelling, and they spelled the same name in different ways. A steward was a chief servant.

There was a family named Stuart in Scotland, and from chief servants or stewards they had become rulers of the Scots. Mary Stuart, whom Elizabeth had beheaded, was one of them.

As Queen Elizabeth never married, she had no children to rule after her. She was the last of the Tudor family. So the English had to look around for a new king, and they looked to Scotland.

Now, Scotland, as I have told you, was then a separate country and not a part of England as now. The son of Mary Stuart was then king of Scotland. His name was James Stuart. As he was related to the Tudors, the English invited him to come and rule over them. He accepted the invitation and was called James I. So we speak of his reign and that of his children as the reign of the Stuarts.

The Stuart family reigned for about a hundred years, that is, from 1600 to 1700, all except about eleven years when England had no king at all.

Many times the English must have been very sorry that they had ever invited James to be their king, for he and the whole Stuart family lorded it over the English people. They acted as if they were “lords of creation,” and the English people had to fight for their rights.

A body of men called Parliament were supposed to make the laws for the English people. But James said that Parliament could do nothing that he didn’t like, and if they weren’t very careful he wouldn’t let them do any governing at all. James said that whatever the king did was right, that the king could do no wrong, that God gave kings the right to do as they pleased with their subjects. This was called the Divine Right of Kings. Naturally the English people would not put up with this sort of thing. Ever since the time of King John they had insisted on their own rights. The Tudors had often done things that the people didn’t like, but the Tudors were English. The Stuarts, however, were Scotch, and the people looked on them as foreigners; what they permitted in one of their own family they wouldn’t stand in these strangers whom they had invited into their family. So, of course, a quarrel was bound to start. But the real fight came with the next king and not with James.

James was very fond of beefsteak, and one particular cut from the loin of beef he liked especially well. It was so delicious he thought it should be honored in some way, and so he made it a knight as if it were a brave and gallant gentleman and dubbed it “Sir Loin,” which we still call it to-day--although people have forgotten all about how it got such a name, and some even say this is only a story and that he never did such a foolish thing, anyway.

During King James’s reign the Bible was translated into English. This is probably the same Bible you read and that is called the King James Bible.

Nothing much happened in England during James’s reign, but in some other countries a great deal did happen, although the king had little to do with it. English people made settlements in India, that far away country of the Brahmanists, which Columbus had tried to reach by going west; and these settlements there grew until India at last belonged to England. The English made settlements also in America, and these grew until at last part of America, too, belonged to England.

One of these settlements in America was made in the South, and one was made in the North. Raleigh’s settlement at Roanoke had disappeared, as I told you; but in 1607 a boatload of English gentlemen sailed over to America looking for adventure and hoping to make their fortunes by finding gold. They landed in Virginia and named the place where they settled Jamestown after their king, James. But they found no gold, and as they were not used to work, they didn’t want to do any. But their leader, Captain John Smith, took matters in hand and said that those that didn’t work shouldn’t eat. So then the colonists had to go to work.

Back in England people had learned to smoke, and so the colonists began to raise tobacco for the English people. The tobacco brought the colonists so much money that it proved to be a gold-mine--of a different kind--after all. But the colonial gentlemen wanted some one to do the rough work for them. So a few years later some negroes were brought over from Africa and sold to the colonists as slaves to do the rough work. This was the beginning of slavery in America, which grew and grew until in the South almost all the work was done by colored slaves.

A little later another company of people left England for America. These people were not looking for fortunes, however, as the Jamestown settlers had been. They were looking for a place where they might worship God as they pleased, for in England they were interfered with, and they wanted to find a place where no one would interfere with them. So this company of people left England in 1620 in a ship called the _Mayflower_ sailed across the ocean and landed in a place called Plymouth, in Massachusetts, and there they settled. More than half of them died the first winter from hardship and exposure in the bitter weather that they have in the North, but, nevertheless, none of those who were left would go back to England. This settlement was the beginning of that part of the United States called New England. You will hear more about both settlements later when you study American History. But at present we must see what was going on in England, for there were great “goings on” there.

[Illustration]

67

A King Who Lost His Head

Have you ever sung, “King William was King James’ son”?

Well, that must have been some other King James, for King Charles was this King James’ son, and he was Charles I.

Charles was “a chip of the old block.” Like his father he believed in the Divine Right of Kings, that he alone had the right to say what should be done or what should not be done, and he treated the English people as King John had; that is, as if they were made simply to serve his pleasure and to do as he said.

But this time the people didn’t carry him off, as they had King John, to agree to a paper. They started to fight. The king made ready to fight for what he thought his rights. So he got together an army of lords and nobles and those who agreed with him. Those who took his side even dressed differently from those who were against him. They grew their hair in long curls and wore a broad-brimmed hat with a large feather and lace collars and cuffs of lace even on their breeches.

Parliament also got together an army of the people who wanted their rights. They had their hair cut short and wore a hat with a tall crown and very simple clothes. A country gentleman named Oliver Cromwell trained a regiment of soldiers to be such good fighters that they were called Ironsides.

[Illustration: King Charles and Oliver Cromwell.]

The king’s army was made up of men who prepared for battle by drinking and feasting. The parliamentary army prayed before going into battle and sang hymns and psalms as they marched.

At last after many battles the king’s army was beaten and King Charles was taken prisoner. A small part of Parliament then took things in their own hands, and though they had no right to do so they tried King Charles and condemned him to death. They found him guilty of being a traitor and a murderer and other terrible things. Then he was taken out in front of his palace in London in the year 1649 and his head was cut off. People now feel that this was a shameful thing for the parliamentary army to do to the king, and even at that time only a part of the English people were in favor of it. He might have been sent away instead of being killed, or he might have had his office of king taken away from him.

Oliver Cromwell, the commander of the parliamentary army then ruled over England for a few years. He was a coarse-looking person with very rough manners, but honest and religious, and he ruled England as a stern and strict father might rule his family. He would stand no nonsense. Once when he was having his picture painted--for there were no photographs then--the artist left out a big wart he had on his face. Cromwell angrily told him, “Paint me as I am, wart and all.” Cromwell was really a king although he called himself Protector, but he did a great deal that was good for England.