XII.
GIRLHOOD OF QUEEN ELIZABETH.
If the great Elizabeth was the most wary of sovereigns, it was because she grew from childhood to maturity with the headsman's axe always before her, glittering and terrible. Her first recollection must have been of her father's awful frown. Henry VIII had put away his lawful wife, Catherine of Aragon, and married Anne Boleyn, hoping thereby to get an heir to his throne. He had longed for a son, and it was a daughter who came.
From that hour the heart of the king was dead to his wife, and this became more and more manifest from day to day. Elizabeth was born and lived the first three years of her life in the palace of Greenwich on the Thames, a few miles below London, a palace which is now the naval hospital. On the day of Anne Boleyn's arrest she made one last attempt to soften the heart of her husband. Seeing him standing at a window she approached as a suppliant, holding out to him with her hand their only child, the Princess Elizabeth, then a little more than three years old. He frowned upon them both, turned toward the window again, and with a menacing gesture ordered them away. Before the sun set the traitor's gate of the Tower opened to receive one of the royal barges, which contained this hapless queen, destined ere long to lay her beautiful head upon the block.
The little girl was sent to one of the king's houses at Hunsdon, thirty miles north of London, with her governess, Lady Bryan, a relation of her dead mother. The
