Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / by Alexander Walker.

  • Walker, Alexander, 1779-1852.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Woman physiologically considered as to mind, morals, marriage, matrimonial slavery, infidelity and divorce / by Alexander Walker. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    5- V. - J « .vU*- / Nor did her persecution cease here.—She not only avoided to acknowledge Mary’s son as her successor, though an unaspiring and peaceable prince ; but she kept him in dependence, by bribing his ministers, and fomenting discontents in Scotland ; and she appears to have excited the conspiracy of Gowrie, for seizing his person, if not for taking away his life.—Such and so inveterate was Elizabeth’s criminality, notwithstanding the cruelties she had inflicted upon his mother. We may conclude this view of her character by the relation, nearly in the words of Mr. Hume, of her conduct as to Mary’s execution, in which such a concentration of wickedness is exhibited as history perhaps nowhere else presents. The worst of the Roman emperors, whom we hold up as models of criminality, scarcely showed more deliberation in cruelty than this queen. Elizabeth was observed to sit much alone, pensive and silent, and sometimes to mutter to herself half sentences, importing the difficulty and distress to which she was reduced. She at last called Davison, a man easy to be imposed on, and who had lately, for that very reason, been made secretary ; and she ordered him to draw out secretly a warrant for the execution of the Queen Mary of Scots, which she afterwards said she intended to keep by her.—She commanded him, of her own accord, to deliver her the warrant for the execution of that princess.— She signed it readily, and ordered it to be sealed with the great seal of England ; and she appeared in such good humour on the occasion that she made to him some jocular remarks.—She added, that though she had so long