Elizabeth was a great queen. She ruled over England during one of our most critical periods, and she brought her country successfully through its troubles. When she rode into London, a young woman of five-and twenty, to take up her duties as queen, the fortunes of the country were low. Spain was growing daily more powerful in Europe and in the New World of America. When she died forty-five years later, the power of Spain was broken, the Reformed Church was established, the New World was opened to Englishmen. It must be remembered that England was England only in those days. There were as yet no colonies. Scotland and Ireland had each its own Parliament. This was the England over which Elizabeth ruled. She never left it, and never travelled to Ireland or Scotland.

Yet she delighted in the spirit of adventure that inspired the mariners of her day to sail hither and thither in search of gold and fame. She herself would wave them a last farewell; she was the first to welcome them if they ever returned. Thus did the "Queen of the Northern Seas" gather round her person devoted and faithful friends. The new awakening inspired Englishmen in every direction, but all enterprise centred round Elizabeth's court. Thither Spenser brought his "Fairie Queene," Bacon his Essays, Sir Philip Sidney his sonnets, Sir Walter Raleigh his great schemes for founding colonies.

The expeditions of Hawkins, Drake, Davis, Frobisher, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Richard Grenville, Sir Walter Raleigh were all undertaken with her sanction and help. She sent Leicester to the Netherlands to help the Dutch and Essex to Ireland to enforce her rule, though both failed in the end. Before her Shakespeare acted his plays, and it was her interest and encouragement that helped to raise the drama to its height. And moving quietly behind the flash and pomp of Elizabeth was the stately Lord Burghley, faithful, firm, far-seeing, loving God and Queen and Country.

The old statesman and faithful servant passed away, and Elizabeth could never speak of him without shedding tears. But heavy with grief though she was, she kept up her queenly splendour, and continued her wonderful progresses from country house to country house.

When Elizabeth was sixty-nine and had reigned for forty-three years, she passed away—the last of the Tudors.

Such was England's great queen. But what of England's people? And how did they live during these momentous years of our history? There was movement and activity everywhere, and it was a time of progress for the working classes. A growing demand for English wool gave more work to the increasing populations of the country. Waste lands were made fit for pasture, more and more sheep were reared, more and more men and women toiled in their homes to turn the home-grown wool into flannel and cloth for clothes.

In various parts of England to-day there are still houses which remind us of that old cloth-weaving industry. Lavenham, in Suffolk, is famous for its quaint old cottages, in some of which the inhabitants still use the old hand-looms for the making of a kind of horse-hair cloth; but the most picturesque building in this interesting village is the hall of the Guild of Corpus Christi, where the clothiers' guild (or club) held its meetings, admitted the apprentices, regulated work, prices, and wages, and occasionally feasted together.

The little homesteads of the rural workers were mostly self-contained; nearly every family grew its own corn and made its own bread, reared sheep and spun the wool into cloth, pastured cattle and made its own butter and cheese. The children all helped, for there was no schooling; they were taught and trained by their parents. As yet, there were no large towns full of shops like ours; markets were held at stalls in the open street, and it was a sign of prosperity that the townsmen were now going to the expense of building shelters at the market crosses. There were no great tall chimneys, no manufactories, and machinery to be worked by steam was not invented. There was not much encouragement to inventors, and William Lee, who invented the stocking-frame by watching the movements of his wife's fingers when knitting, had to go to Paris, where he was befriended by the French king, Henry IV.

Housing was improving, but the dwellings of the people were nearly all of wood. The richer classes built fine mansions of brick and stone, of which imposing gateways and porches were always a feature. The roads were still poor and travelling difficult. Only noblemen and very rich people could afford carriages; and it was a common sight to see two people riding the same horse, a woman being often seated behind a man on a cushion called a pillion.

But the country was terribly overrun with beggars at this time, for the closing of the monasteries, and the ever-increasing practice of sheep farming in place of corn growing, had caused many men to be turned adrift. Elizabeth passed some famous Poor Laws, which have remained in force for several hundred years. Those who could  work, but would not work, were punished by being beaten with whips, and sent back to their native village, "there to put themselves to labour as true men ought to do." Every parish was thus forced to support and maintain its own "paupers," as these people were called, and the workhouse system grew up in our midst.

So we see that the "Merrie England" of Elizabeth had its darker side, that the poor were very poor and the rich were very rich. But between the two was rising that important class of people known to history as the "middle class"—honest traders, shop-keepers and manufacturers, who played their great part in the commercial development of our great country.