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The Identity of Elizabeth

(a) Documents The next matter with which we have to deal is regarding the identity of Elizabeth. This needs (if necessary) a consideration of the facts of her life, and so far as we can realise them, from external appearance, mental and moral attitudes, and intentions. On account of space we must confine this branch of the subject to the smallest portion of time necessary to form any sort of just conclusion and accepting the available records up to 1543, take the next period from that time to anywhere within the first few years of her reignby which time her character was finally fixed and the policy on which her place in history is to be judged had been formulated and tested.

This implies in the first instance a brief (very brief) study of her physique with a corollary in the shape of a few remarks on her heredity:

Grafton's Chronicle states, under the date of 7 September 1533, "the Queene was delivered of a fayre Lady" which was his Courtly way of announcing the birth of a female princess, blond in colour. In all chronicles "fayre" means of light colour. In Wintown the reputed father of Macbeth-the Devil is spoken of as a "fayre" man; evil qualities were in that age attributed to blondes. In a letter dated from Greenwich Palace, 18 April, 1534, Sir William Kingston said to Lord Lisle: "To-day, the King and Queen were at Eltham" (where the royal nursery then was) "and saw my Lady Princess-as goodly a child as hath been seen. Her Grace is much in the King's favour as a goodly child should be-God save her!"