Wild Bells To The Wild Sky [antikvár]

She shall be lov'd and fear'd. Her oum S,hall bless her;Her foes shake like a field of beaten com,And hang their heads with sorrow. Good gram with her;In her days eoery man shall eat in safetyUnder his own vine what he plants; and singThe merry songs of peace to all his neighbours.ShakespearePreludeV I 'HE Queen is dead. God save the Queen, Elizabeth of X England!" And with those fateful words, proclaimed on November morning in 1558, Elizabeth Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, succeeded to the throne of England. The death of Elizabeth's halfrsister, the childless Mary Tudor, a devout Catholic and daughter of King Harry by his di-vorced Spanish wife, Catherine of Aragon, brought the Protestant princess, who had been dedared a bastard and banished from the court shortly after her birth, the crown of a country that had yet to become the great seafaring nation that was to build a world empire.The realm that the young queen inherited was facing bank-ruptcy, rising inflation, civil and religious unrest, and a height-ening of hostility from its powerful Catholic neighbors, France and Spain, who saw England as an uncivilized island of heretics. Ever since Henry VIII had renounced the supremacy of the pope and severed all bonds with the Church of.Rome, England had become the revolutionary symbol of the great Reformation sweeping through Europe and, in the eyes of the papacy and its zealous defenders, threatening the very heart of Christendom.King Philip II of Spain, fanatic champion of the Catholic2