Home > Work > His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester
1 " Like her father, Bess never forgot a hurt or a service. "
― Jeane Westin , His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester
2 " Like her father, Bess never forgot a hurt of a service. "
3 " Pain was the only sign to her that she was alive and could feel emotion. "
4 " She had been born knowing that boldness erased fear, while cowardice invited it and earned her only more ill treatment. No matter how she shook with dread in private, she would never show fear before her questioners or her guards. In men's minds fear was a certain mark of guilt. "
5 " Why do old men grow huge beards as if to proclaim a manhood that has long since fled? "
6 " Robert bowed to the inevitable. The queen's motto, 'I see all and speak nothing." was as well chosen as any motto could be. He had almost made his old mistake of confusing what Elizabeth said with what she would do. "
7 " The Tudors hated to be wrong, and therefore never were. "
8 " Majesty, there is less danger in fearing too much than too little. "
9 " Sovereigns did not have the luxury of second-guessing or all future commands could be questioned. That could never be. God did not allow his anointed to be wrong. "
10 " She was no sworn wife, but Robin was the only man she ever loved as a husband... though not as much as her crown and thrown. The truth that tore at her breast, turning her about in circles, because he had known... he had known his love was greater than hers. Though it was not, she never could explain it rightly. No man understood, that he was not everything to the woman he loved. "
11 " Have you all forgotten that I am Henry’s spawn? And Anne Boleyn’s . . . a name that does not pass my lips, but is forever on my mind? Who can doubt the courage of a woman who faced the ax by lifting up her long hair with a smile? "
12 " Sometimes Robert believed one thing and sometimes the other, and he wondered if that was true of all those who loved too much and in vain. "