Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII of England, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed two and a half years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her brother, Edward VI, bequeathed the crown to Lady Jane Grey, cutting his sisters out of the succession. His will was set aside, and in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded the Catholic Mary I, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel,"I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel." Elizabeth's first speech as queen, Hatfield House, 20 November 1558. Loades, 35. and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley. One of her first moves as queen was to support the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement held firm throughout her reign and later evolved into today's Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry, but despite several petitions from parliament and numerous courtships, she never did. The reasons for this outcome have been much debated. As she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity, and a cult grew up around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day.
In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings.Starkey, 5. One of her mottoes was "video et taceo" ("I see, and say nothing").Neale, 386. This strategy, viewed with impatience by her counsellors, often saved her from political and marital misalliances. Though Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs and only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France and Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish Armmada in 1588 associated her name forever with what is popularly viewed as one of the greatest victories in English history. Within twenty years of her death, she was being celebrated as the ruler of a golden age, an image that retains its hold on the English people.
Elizabeth's reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Francis Drake. Some historians are more reserved in their assessment. They depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered,In 1593 during the crisis of Henry IV's conversion, the French ambassador implored William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley "Protect me by your wisdom from the ire of this great princess; for by the living God, when I see her enraged against any person whatever I wish myself in Calcutta, fearing her anger like death itself."". John Lothrop Motley; History of the United Netherlands, 1590-99. sometimes indecisive ruler,Somerset, 729. who enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity to the point where many of her subjects were relieved at her death. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor, in an age when government was ramshackle and limited and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. Such was the case with Elizabeth's rival, Mary I, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and eventually had executed in 1587. After the short reigns of Elizabeth's brother and sister, her forty-four years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.Starkey, 5.
==Early life==
Elizabeth was born in Greenwich Palace in the Chamber of Virgins on 7 September 1533 between three and four o'clock in the afternoon and named after both her paternal and maternal grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard.Somerset, 4. She was the second child of Henry VIII of England to survive infancy; her mother was Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. At birth, Elizabeth was the heiress presumptive to the throne of England. Her older half-sister, Mary, had lost her position as legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne.Loades, 3–5Somerset, 4–5. King Henry VIII had desperately wanted a legitimate son, to ensure the Tudor succession. Anne had been crowned with St. Edward's crown, unlike any other queen consort, while carrying Elizabeth. Historian Alice Hunt has suggested that this was done because Anne's pregnancy was visible at the moment of coronation and she was carrying an heir who was presumed to be male.Hunt Elizabeth was baptised on 10 September in a ceremony held at Greenwich Palace. Thomas Cranmer, the Marquess of Exeter, Elizabeth Howard, Duchess of Norfolk, and Margaret Wotton, Marchioness of Dorset stood as her four godparents. After Elizabeth's birth, Queen Anne failed to provide a male heir. She suffered at least two miscarriages, one in 1534 and another at the beginning of 1536. On 2 May 1536, she was arrested and imprisoned. Hastily convicted on trumped-up charges, she was beheaded on 19 May 1536.Loades, 6–7.Haigh, 1–3.
Elizabeth, who was two years and eight months old at the time, was declared illegitimate and deprived of the title of princess.In the act of July 1536, it was stated that Elizabeth was "illegitimate... and utterly foreclosed, excluded and banned to claim, challenge, or demand any inheritance as lawful heir...to [the King] by lineal descent". Elizabeth who was an incredibly bright child, did not notice that her mother was gone but she did notice the change of her name. She apparently said to her governess. "how haps it governor, yesterday my Lady Princess, today but my Lady Elizabeth?" Somerset, 10. Eleven days after Anne Boleyn's death, Henry married Jane Seymour,"It had taken Henry VIII a month to dispose of his wife on a charge of treason, sweep some of her friends to the block with her, bastardise her child, and acquire a new queen. Here was the power of the Tudor monarchy in action, with the King bending his Council, the Church, and the law to do his will." Haigh, 1. who died 12 days after the birth of their son, Prince Edward. Elizabeth was placed in Edward's household and carried the chrisom, or baptismal cloth, at his christening.Loades, 7–8.
Elizabeth's first Lady Mistress, Lady Margaret Bryan, wrote that she was “as toward a child and as gentle of conditions as ever I knew any in my life”.Somerset, 11. By the autumn of 1537, Elizabeth was in the care of Blanche Herbert, Lady Troy who remained her Lady Mistress until her retirement in late 1545 or early 1546.Richardson, 39–46; Lady Troy's funeral elegy says she was the "guardian, before she passed away, Of Henry VIII's household and his children yonder..."; Sir Rober Tyrwhitt's letter..."four of her gentlewomen confess that Ashley first removed Lady Troy...". Catherine Champernowne, better known by her later, married name of Catherine “Kat” Ashley, was appointed as Elizabeth's governess in 1537, and she remained Elizabeth's friend until her death in 1565, when Blanche Parry succeeded her as Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber.Richardson, 56, 75–82, 136 She clearly made a good job of Elizabeth's early education: by the time William Grindal became her tutor in 1544, Elizabeth could write English, Latin, and Italian. Under Grindal, a talented and skillful tutor, she also progressed in French and Greek.Our knowledge of Elizabeth’s schooling and precocity comes largely from the memoirs of Roger Ascham, also the tutor of Prince Edward. Loades, 8–10. After Grindal died in 1548, Elizabeth received her education under Roger Ascham, a sympathetic teacher who believed that learning should be fun.Somerset, 25. By the time her formal education ended in 1550, she was the best educated woman of her generation.Loades, 21.
==Thomas Seymour==
Henry VIII died in 1547, when Elizabeth was 13 years old, and was succeeded by her half brother, Edward VI. Catherine Parr, Henry's last wife, soon married Thomas Seymour of Sudeley, Edward VI's uncle and the brother of the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. The couple took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea. There Elizabeth experienced an emotional crisis that some historians believe affected her for the rest of her life.Loades, 11. Seymour, approaching age 40 but having charm and "a powerful sex appeal",Loades, 11. engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth. These included entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her and slapping her on the buttocks. After Catherine Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs.Loades, 14."Kat Ashley told another of Elizabeth’s servants, Thomas Parry, that the Queen lost patience with both her husband and Elizabeth after she ‘suddenly came upon them where they were all alone, he having her in his arms’.” Somerset, 23. In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.She moved into the household of Catherine Ashley’s sister Joan and her husband, Sir Anthony Denny, at Cheshunt. Loades, 16.
Seymour continued scheming to control the royal family.Haigh, 8.Not only Elizabeth but Princess Mary and Lady Jane Grey had lived in Seymour's household at various times. Seymour had also "wormed his way" into King Edward’s confidence by slipping him pocket money and calling the Lord Protector stingy; and he had tried to have himself appointed the governor of the King’s person. Neale, 32. When Catherine Parr died of puerperal fever after childbirth on 5 September 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on wedding her.Williams, 24. The details of his former behaviour towards Elizabeth emerged during an interrogation of Catherine Ashley and Thomas Parry, Elizabeth's cofferer.Loades, 14, 16. For his brother and the council, this was the last straw,Neale, 33. and in January 1549, Seymour was arrested on suspicion of plotting to marry Elizabeth and overthrow his brother. Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, "I do see it in her face that she is guilty". Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549.
==Mary I's reign==
Edward VI died, probably of tuberculosis, on 6 July 1553, aged 15. His will swept aside the Succession to the Crown Act 1543, excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession, and instead declared as his heir Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk.Loades, 24–25. Lady Jane was proclaimed queen by the Privy Council, but her support quickly crumbled, and she was deposed after reigning nine days. Mary rode triumphantly into London, with Elizabeth at her side.Elizabeth had assembled 2,000 horsemen, "a remarkable tribute to the size of her affinity". Loades 25.
The show of solidarity between the sisters did not last long. Mary, the country's first queen regnant, was determined to crush the Protestant faith in which Elizabeth had been educated, and she ordered that everyone attend Mass. This included Elizabeth, who had to outwardly conform.Loades, 26. Mary's initial popularity ebbed away when it became known that she planned to marry Prince Philip of Spain, the son of Emperor Charles V.Loades, 27. Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies. In January and February 1554, uprisings broke out (known as Wyatt's rebellion) in several parts of England and Wales, led by Thomas Wyatt.Neale, 45.
Upon the collapse of the uprising, Elizabeth was brought to court and interrogated. On 18 March, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where Lady Jane Grey had been executed on 12 February to deter the rebels.Somerset, 49. The terrified Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence.Loades, 28. Though it is unlikely that she had plotted with the rebels, some of them were known to have approached her. Mary's closest confidant, Charles V's ambassador Simon Renard, argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and the Chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, worked to have Elizabeth put on trial.Somerset, 51. Elizabeth's supporters in the government, including Lord Paget, convinced Mary to spare her sister in the absence of hard evidence against her. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock, where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Crowds cheered her all along the way.Loades, 29."The wives of Wycombe passed cake and wafers to her until her litter became so burdened that she had to beg them to stop." Neale, 49.
On 17 April 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court to be closely attended during the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen. If, on the other hand, Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply. When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child.Loades, 32. Elizabeth's succession seemed assured.Somerset, 66. Even Philip, who became King of Spain in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality. From this time forward, he cultivated Elizabeth, preferring her to the likely alternative, Mary I, Queen of Scots, who had grown up in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin of France.Neale, 53. When his wife fell ill in 1558, Philip sent the Count of Feria to consult with Elizabeth.Loades, 33. By October, Elizabeth was making plans for her government. On 6 November, Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir.Neale, 59.Somerset, 71. Eleven days later, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne when Mary died at St. James's Palace on 17 November 1558.
==Accession==
Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25. As her triumphal progress wound through the city on the eve of the coronation ceremony, she was welcomed wholeheartedly by the citizens and greeted by orations and pageants, most with a strong Protestant flavour. Elizabeth's open and gracious responses endeared her to the spectators, who were "wonderfully ravished".Somerset, 89–90. The "Festival Book" account, from the British Library The following day, 15 January 1559, Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey and anointed by the Catholic bishop of Carlisle. She was then presented for the people's acceptance, amidst a deafening noise of organs, fifes, trumpets, drums, and bells.Neale, 70.
On 20 November 1558, Elizabeth declared her intentions to her Council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance. The speech contains the first record of her often-used metaphor of the "two bodies": the body natural and the body politic:
My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all...to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel.Full document reproduced by Loades, 36–37.
==Religion==
Unfortunately for historians, Elizabeth's personal religious convictions will never be definitely known. Her religious policy favoured pragmatism above all in dealing with three major concerns. The first concern was that of her legitimacy. Although she was technically illegitimate under both Protestant and Catholic law, her retroactively declared illegitimacy under the English church was not a serious bar compared to having never been legitimate as the Catholics claimed she was. Perhaps most importantly, the break with Rome made her legitimate in her own eyes. For this reason, it was never in serious doubt that Elizabeth would embrace at least nominal Protestantism.
Elizabeth and her advisors perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. Elizabeth therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of English Protestants; she would not tolerate the more radical Puritans though, who were pushing for far-reaching reforms. As a result, the parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many superficially Catholic elements, such as priestly vestments.Loades, 46.
The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords, particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury."It was fortunate that ten out of twenty-six bishoprics were vacant, for of late there had been a high rate of mortality among the episcopate, and a fever had conveniently carried off Mary's Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Pole, less than twenty-four hours after her own death". Somerset, 98."There were no less than ten sees unrepresented through death or illness and the carelessness of 'the accursed cardinal' [Pole]". Black, 10.
This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May 1559. All public officials were to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters practised by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of an adapted version of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.Somerset, 101–103.
==Marriage question==
From the start of Elizabeth's reign, the question arose whom she would marry. She never married, and the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships, or that she knew herself to be infertile.Loades, 38.Haigh, 19. Until bearing a child became impossible, she considered several suitors. Her last courtship, ending in 1581 when she was aged 48, was with François, Duke of Anjou, 22 years her junior. Elizabeth had no need of a man's help to govern, and marrying risked a loss of control or of foreign interference in her affairs; as had happened to her sister Mary. On the other hand, marriage offered the chance of an heir.Loades, 39.
===Lord Robert Dudley===
Elizabeth often received offers of marriage, but she only seriously considered three or four suitors for any length of time. Of these, her childhood friend Lord Robert Dudley probably came closest. Early in 1559, Elizabeth's friendship with the married Dudley turned to love. Their intimacy soon was talk in court and country and abroad.Wilson, 95, 114; Doran Monarchy, 72 It was also said that Amy Robsart, his wife, was suffering from a "malady in one of her breasts",Wilson, 95 and half a year later, that Lord Robert and the Queen had a "secret understanding" to marry after Amy would at last have been "sent into eternity".Gristwood, 129 Yet this was not a welcome idea: "There is not a man who does not cry out on him and her with indignation...she will marry none but the favoured Robert", the Spanish ambassador described the situation at the beginning of 1560.Chamberlin, 118 Accordingly, when Dudley's wife died in September of the same year from a fall from a flight of stairs, a great scandal arose.It is now presumed that Amy Dudley had cancer. At the time, it was widely believed that Dudley had done away with her in order to marry the queen. Somerset, 166–167. For a time, Elizabeth seriously considered marrying Dudley; but William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton, and other politicians were very alarmed and made their disapproval unmistakably clear.Wilson, 126–128 The opposition was so overwhelming, that there were even rumours that the nobility would rise if the marriage took place.Doran Monarchy, 45
Despite several other marriage projects, Dudley was regarded as a serious candidate for nearly another decade.Doran Monarchy, 212 Elizabeth encouraged him in his suit, remaining extremely jealous of his affections, even in case she never meant to marry him herself."...and after all, she will either not marry or else marry Robert, to whom she has always been so much attached...the Queen is in love with Robert" (Philip II of Spain in October 1565): Haynes, 47; Hume, 90–104; Adams, 384, 146 Finally, after Dudley, whom she had created Earl of Leicester in 1564, had remarried in 1578, the queen reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure towards him for having done so.Jenkins, 245, 247; Leicester still wrote in 1585: "She [the Queen] doth take every occasion by my marriage to withdraw any good from me.": Hammer, 46 His wife had to cope with the queen's lifelong hatred.Hammer, 34 Nevertheless, Dudley retained a special place in her heart. After Elizabeth's death, a note from him, who had died in 1588 shortly after the Armada, was found among her most personal belongings, marked "his last letter" in her handwriting.Wilson, 303
===Political aspects===
Elizabeth kept the marriage question open but often only as a diplomatic ploy.Haigh, 17. Parliament repeatedly petitioned her to marry, but she always answered evasively.Loades, 40. In 1563, she told an imperial envoy: "If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married".Haigh, 17. In the same year, following Elizabeth's illness with smallpox, the succession question became a heated issue. Parliament urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April, she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in 1566. The House of Commons threatened to withhold funds until she agreed to provide for the succession. In 1566, Sir Robert Bell boldly pursued the issue despite Elizabeth's command to desist and became the target of her anger, saying, "Mr. Bell with his complices must needs prefer their speeches to the upper house to have you my lords, consent with them, whereby you were seduced, and of simplicity did assent unto it."Hasler, 421–424.
In 1566, she confided to the Spanish ambassador that if she could find a way to settle the succession without marrying, she would do so. By 1570, senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem.Haigh, 17. For this stance, as for her failure to marry, she was often accused of irresponsibility.Haigh, 20–21. Elizabeth's silence strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup.When in 1566 a parliamentary commission urged Elizabeth to name an heir, she referred to the way "a second person, as I have been" had been used as the focus of plots against her sister, Queen Mary. Haigh, 22–23.
Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, not as a normal woman.Haigh, 23. At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin".Haigh, 23. Later on, particularly after 1578, poets and writers took up the theme and turned it into an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. In an age of metaphors and conceits, she was portrayed as married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, Elizabeth spoke of "all my husbands, my good people".Haigh, 24.
==Foreign policy==
Apart from the Dudley courtship, Elizabeth treated the marriage issue as an aspect of foreign policy.Loades, 51. Though she turned down Philip II's own offer in 1559, she negotiated for several years to marry his cousin Archduke Charles of Austria. Relations with the Habsburgs deteriorated by 1568. Elizabeth then considered marriage to two French Valois princes in turn, first Henri, Duke of Anjou, and later, from 1572 to 1581, his brother François, Duke of Anjou.Loades, 53–54. This last proposal was tied to a planned alliance against Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands.Loades, 54. Elizabeth seems to have taken the courtship seriously for a time, and wore a frog-shaped earring that Anjou had sent her.Somerset, 408.
Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the disastrous occupation of Le Havre from October 1562 to June 1563, when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Elizabeth had intended to exchange Le Havre for Calais, retaken by France in January 1558.Frieda, 191. She sent troops into Scotland in 1560 to prevent the French using it as a base.Loades, 55. In 1585, she signed the Treaty of Nonsuch with the Dutch to block the Spanish threat to England.Haigh, 135. Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. This paid off in the war against Spain, 80% of which was fought at sea.Loades, 61. She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, and he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets. An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over which the queen had little control.Flynn and Spence, 126–128.Somerset, 607–611.
===Scotland===
Elizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there.Haigh, 131. She feared that the French planned to invade England and put Mary, Queen of Scots, who was considered by many to be the heir to the English crown,Mary's position as heir derived from her great-grandfather Henry VII of England, through his daughter Margaret Tudor. In her own words, "I am the nearest kinswoman she hath, being both of us of one house and stock, the Queen my good sister coming of the brother, and I of the sister". Guy, 115. on the throne.On Elizabeth's accession, Mary's Guise relatives had pronounced her Queen of England and had the English arms emblazoned with those of Scotland and France on her plate and furniture. Guy, 96–97. Elizabeth was persuaded to send a force into Scotland to aid the Protestant rebels, and though the campaign was inept, the resulting Treaty of Edinburgh of July 1560 removed the French threat in the north.By the terms of the treaty, both British and French troops withdrew from Scotland. Haigh, 132. When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the reins of power, the country had an established Protestant church and was run by a council of Protestant nobles supported by Elizabeth.Loades, 67. Mary refused to ratify the treaty.Loades, 68.
Elizabeth offended Mary by proposing her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband. Instead, in 1565 Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular in Scotland and then infamous for presiding over the murder of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio. In February 1567, Darnley was murdered by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Shortly afterwards, on 15 May 1567, Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth wrote to her:
How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.Letter to Mary, Queen of Scots, 23 June 1567." Quoted by Loades, 69–70.
These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James, who had been born in June 1566. James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped from Loch Leven in 1568 but after another defeat fled across the border into England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch; but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England. She was imprisoned there for the next nineteen years.Loades, 72–73.
Mary was soon the focus for rebellion. In 1569, plotters in the Rising of the North talked of freeing her, and a scheme arose to marry her to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth reacted by having Howard executed. Pope Pius V issued a papal bull in 1570, called Regnans in Excelsis, declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance.McGrath, 69 English Catholics thus had an additional incentive to look to Mary Stuart as the true sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her.Loades, 73. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586 she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot.Guy, 483–484. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm divers things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person."Loades, 78–79. On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire.Guy, 1–11. She was 44 years old.
===Spain===
After the disastrous occupation and loss of Le Havre in 1562–1563, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until 1585, when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. This followed the deaths in 1584 of the allies William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and François, Duke of Anjou, and the surrender of a series of Dutch towns to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Philip's governor of the Spanish Netherlands. In December 1584, an alliance between Philip II and the French Catholic League at Joinville undermined the ability of Anjou's brother, Henry III of France, to counter Spanish domination of the Netherlands. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion. The siege of Antwerp in the summer of 1585 by the Duke of Parma necessitated some reaction on the part of the English and the Dutch. The outcome was the Treaty of Nonsuch of August 1585, in which Elizabeth promised military support to the Dutch.Strong / van Dorsten, 20–26 The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish War, which lasted until the Treaty of London in 1604.
The expedition was led by her former suitor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland,Strong / van Dorsten, 43 had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who wanted and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign. Elizabeth on the other hand, wanted him "to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy".Strong / van Dorsten, 72 He enraged Elizabeth by accepting the post of Governor-General from the Dutch States-General. Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands,Strong / van Dorsten, 50 which so far she had always declined. She wrote to Leicester:
We could never have imagined (had we not seen it fall out in experience) that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour....And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.Letter to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 10 February 1586, delivered by Sir Thomas Heneage. Loades, 94.
Elizabeth's "commandment" was that her emissary read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the Dutch Council of State, Leicester having to stand nearby.Chamberlin, 263–264 This public humiliation of her "Lieutenant-General" combined with her continued talks for a separate peace with Spain,Elizabeth's ambassador in France was actively misleading her as to the true intentions of the Spanish king, who only tried to buy time for his great assault upon England: Parker, 193. undermined his standing among the Dutch irreversibly. The military campaign was severely hampered by Elizabeth's repeated refusals to send promised funds for her starving soldiers. Her unwillingness to commit herself to the cause, Leicester's own shortcomings as a political and military leader and the faction-ridden and chaotic situation of Dutch politics were reasons for the campaign's failure.Haynes, 15; Strong / van Dorsten, 72–79 Leicester finally resigned his command in December 1587.
Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships to the Caribbean in 1585 and 1586, and in 1587 had made a successful raid on Cadiz, destroying the Spanish fleet of war ships intended for the Enterprise of England:Parker, 193–194 Philip II had decided to take the war to England at last.Haigh, 138.
On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. A combination of miscalculation,When the Spanish naval commander, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, reached the coast near Calais, he found the Duke of Parma's troops unready and was forced to wait, giving the English the opportunity to launch their attack. Loades, 64. misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships on 29 July off Gravelines which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast defeated the Armada.Black, 349. The Armada straggled home to Spain in shattered remnants, after disastrous losses on the coast of Ireland (after some ships had tried to struggle back to Spain via the North Sea, and then back south past the west coast of Ireland).Neale, 300. Unaware of the Armada's fate, English militias mustered to defend the country under the Earl of Leicester's command. He invited Elizabeth to inspect her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. Wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she addressed them in one of her most famous speeches:Though most historians accept that Elizabeth gave such a speech, its authenticity has been questioned, since it was not published until 1654. Doran Suitors, 235–236.
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people....I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.Somerset, 591; Neale, 297–98.
When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle. The defeat of the armada was a potent propaganda victory, both for Elizabeth and for Protestant England. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. However, the victory was not a turning point in the war, which continued and often favoured Spain.Black, 353. The Spanish still controlled the Netherlands, and the threat of invasion remained. Sir Walter Raleigh claimed after her death that Elizabeth's caution had impeded the war against Spain:
If the late queen would have believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire in pieces and made their kings of figs and oranges as in old times. But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness.Haigh, 145.
Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds,For example, C. H. Wilson castigates Elizabeth for half-heartedness in the war against Spain. Haigh, 183. Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, "to be transported with an haviour of vainglory".Somerset, 655.
===France===
When the Protestant Henry IV inherited the French throne in 1589, Elizabeth sent him military support. It was her first venture into France since the retreat from Le Havre in 1563. Henry's succession was strongly contested by the Catholic League and by Philip II, and Elizabeth feared a Spanish takeover of the channel ports. The subsequent English campaigns in France, however, were disorganised and ineffective.Haigh, 142. Lord Willoughby, largely ignoring Elizabeth's orders, roamed northern France to little effect, with an army of 4,000 men. He withdrew in disarray in December 1589, having lost half his troops. In 1591, the campaign of John Norreys, who led 3,000 men to Brittany, was even more of a disaster. As for all such expeditions, Elizabeth was unwilling to invest in the supplies and reinforcements requested by the commanders. Norreys left for London to plead in person for more support. In his absence, a Catholic League army almost destroyed the remains of his army at Craon, north-west France, in May 1591. In July, Elizabeth sent out another force under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to help Henry IV in besieging Rouen. The result was just as dismal. Essex accomplished nothing and returned home in January 1592. Henry abandoned the siege in April.Haigh, 143. As usual, Elizabeth lacked control over her commanders once they were abroad. "Where he is, or what he doth, or what he is to do," she wrote of Essex, "we are ignorant".Haigh, 143–144.
===Ireland===
Although Ireland was one of her two kingdoms, Elizabeth faced a hostile—and in places virtually autonomousOne observer wrote that Ulster, for example, was "as unknown to the English here as the most inland part of Virginia". Somerset, 667. Catholic population that was willing to plot with her enemies. Her policy there was to grant land to her courtiers and prevent the rebels from giving Spain a base from which to attack England. In response to a series of uprisings, the English forces pursued scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child. During a revolt in Munster led by Gerald FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, in 1582, an estimated 30,000 Irish people starved to death. The poet Edmund Spenser wrote that the victims "were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same".Somerset, 668. Elizabeth advised her commanders that the Irish, "that rude and barbarous nation", be well treated; but she showed no remorse when force and bloodshed were deemed necessary.Somerset, 668–669.
Between 1594 and 1603, Elizabeth faced her most severe test in Ireland, with the revolt known as Tyrone's Rebellion, or the Nine Years' War. Its leader, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, was backed by Spain.Loades, 98. In spring 1599, Elizabeth sent Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, to put the revolt down. To her frustration,In a letter of 19 July 1599 to Essex, Elizabeth wrote: "For what can be more true (if things be rightly examined) than that your two month's journey has brought in never a capital rebel against whom it had been worthy to have adventured one thousand men". Loades, 98. he made little progress and returned to England without permission. He was replaced by Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who took three years to defeat the rebels. O'Neill finally surrendered in 1603, a few days after Elizabeth's death.Loades, 98–99.
===Russia===
Elizabeth continued to maintain the diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia originally established by her deceased brother. She often wrote to its then ruler tsar Ivan Grozny on amicable terms, though the tsar was often annoyed by her focus on commerce rather than on the possibility of a militairy alliance. The tsar even proposed to her once, and during his later reign, asked for a guarantee to be granted asylum in England should his rule be jeopardised.
Upon Ivan's death, he was succeeded by his simple-minded son Feodor. Unlike his father, Feodor had no enthusiasm in maintaining exclusive trading rights with England. Feodor declared his kingdom open to all foreigners, and dismissed the English ambassador Sir Jerome Bowes, whose pomposity had been tolerated by Feodor's father. Elizabeth sent a new ambassador, Dr. Giles Fletcher, to demand the regent Boris Godunov to convince the tsar to reconsider. The negotiations failed, due to Fletcher addressing Feodor with two of his titles omitted. Elizabeth continued to appeal to Feodor in half appealing, half reproachful letters. She proposed an alliance, something which she had refused to do when offered one by Feodor's father, but was turned down.Russia and Britain by Crankshaw, Edward, published by Collins, 126 p. The Nations and Britain series
===Barbary states, Ottoman Empire, Japan===
Trade and diplomatic relations developed between England and Islamic countries during the rule of Elizabeth.Vaughan, Performing Blackness on English Stages, 1500-1800 Cambridge University Press 2005 p.57 Nicoll, Shakespeare Survey. The Last Plays Cambridge University Press 2002, p.90 England established a trading relationship with Morocco in opposition to Spain, selling armour, ammunition, timber, and metal in exchange for Moroccan sugar, in spite of a Papal ban.Speaking of the Moor, Emily C. Bartels p.24 In 1600, Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, the principal secretary to the Moroccan ruler Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur, visited England as an ambassador to the court of queen Elizabeth I,Vaughan, p.57University of Birmingham Collections in order to negotiate an Anglo-Moroccan alliance against Spain.Vaughan, p.57 Elizabeth "agreed to sell munitions supplies to Morocco, and she and Mulai Ahmad al-Mansur talked on and off about mounting a joint operation against the Spanish".The Jamestown project by Karen Ordahl Kupperman Discussions however remained inconclusive, and both rulers died within two years of the embassy.Nicoll, p.96
Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire during with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to Ottoman Constantinople, William Harborne, in 1578. For the first time, a Treaty of Commerce was signed in 1580.The Encyclopedia of world history by Peter N. Stearns, p.353 Numerous envoys were dispatched in both directions and epistolar exchanges occurred between Elizabeth and Sultan Murad III.Kupperman, p.39 In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Islam and Protestantism had "much more in common than either did with Roman Catholicism, as both rejected the worship of idols", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire.Kupperman, p.40 To the dismay of Catholic Europe, England exported tin and lead (for cannon-casting) and ammunitions to the Ottoman Empire, and Elizabeth seriously discussed joint military operations with Murad III during the outbreak of war with Spain in 1585, as Francis Walsingham was lobbying for a direct Ottoman military involvement against the common Spanish enemy.Kupperman, p.41
The first Englishman to reach Japan, William Adams, was a former employee of the Barbary Company, which had been established in 1585. He set foot in Japan in August 1600, as a pilot for the Dutch East India Company. He would play a key role as a counselor to the Japanese Shogun, and helped establish the first diplomatic contacts and commercial treaties between England and Japan.
==Later years==
As Elizabeth aged and marriage became unlikely, her image gradually changed. She was portrayed as Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser's poem.Blanche Parry, Elizabeth's Chief Lady of the Bedchamber, commissioned her epitaph in Bacton Church. Dated to before November 1578, this has the first depiction of Queen Elizabeth I as Gloriana: Richardson, 145–148. Her painted portraits became less realistic and more a set of enigmatic icons that made her look much younger than she was. In fact, her skin had been scarred by smallpox in 1562, leaving her half bald and dependent on wigs and cosmetics.Loades, 92.Gaunt, 37. Sir Walter Raleigh called her "a lady whom time had surprised".Haigh, 171. However, the more Elizabeth's beauty faded, the more her courtiers praised it.
Elizabeth was happy to play the part,"The metaphor of drama is an appropriate one for Elizabeth's reign, for her power was an illusion—and an illusion was her power. Like Henry IV of France, she projected an image of herself which brought stability and prestige to her country. By constant attention to the details of her total performance, she kept the rest of the cast on their toes and kept her own part as queen." Haigh, 179. but it is possible that in the last decade of her life she began to believe her own performance. She became fond and indulgent of the charming but petulant young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who took liberties with her for which she forgave him.Loades, 93. She repeatedly appointed him to military posts despite his growing record of irresponsibility. After Essex's desertion of his command in Ireland in 1599, Elizabeth had him placed under house arrest and the following year deprived him of his monopolies.Loades, 97. In February 1601, the earl tried to raise a rebellion in London. He intended to seize the queen but few rallied to his support, and he was beheaded on 25 February. Elizabeth knew that her own misjudgements were partly to blame for this turn of events. An observer reported in 1602 that "Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes with shedding tears to bewail Essex".Black, 410.
The monopolies Elizabeth reclaimed from Essex were her typical reward to a courtier during the last years of her reign. She had come to rely on this cost-free system of patronage rather than ask Parliament for more subsidies in a time of war.A Patent of Monopoly gave the holder control over an aspect of trade or manufacture. See Neale, 382. The practice soon led to price-fixing, the enrichment of courtiers at the public's expense, and widespread resentment.Williams, 208. This culminated in agitation in the House of Commons during the parliament of 1601.Black, 192–194. In her famous "Golden Speech" of 30 November 1601, Elizabeth professed ignorance of the abuses and won the members over with promises and her usual appeal to the emotions:She gave the speech at Whitehall Palace to a deputation of 140 members, who afterwards all kissed her hand. Neale, 383–384.
Who keeps their sovereign from the lapse of error, in which, by ignorance and not by intent they might have fallen, what thank they deserve, we know, though you may guess. And as nothing is more dear to us than the loving conservation of our subjects' hearts, what an undeserved doubt might we have incurred if the abusers of our liberality, the thrallers of our people, the wringers of the poor, had not been told us!Loades, 86.
The period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 brought new difficulties for Elizabeth that lasted the fifteen years until the end of her reign. The conflicts with Spain and in Ireland dragged on, the tax burden grew heavier, and the economy was hit by poor harvests and the cost of war. Prices rose and the standard of living fell.Haigh, 155.Black, 355–356. During this time, repression of Catholics intensified, and Elizabeth authorised commissions in 1591 to interrogate and monitor Catholic householders.Black, 355. To maintain the illusion of peace and prosperity, she increasingly relied on internal spies and propaganda. In her last years, mounting criticism reflected a decline in the public's affection for her.This criticism of Elizabeth was noted by Elizabeth's early biographers William Camden and John Clapham. For a detailed account of such criticisms and of Elizabeth's "government by illusion", see chapter 8, "The Queen and the People", Haigh, 149–169.
One of the causes for this "second reign" of Elizabeth, as it is now frequently called,Adams, 7; Hammer, 1 was the different character of Elizabeth's governing body, the privy council in the 1590s. A new generation was in power. With the exception of Lord Burghley, the most important politicians had died around 1590: The Earl of Leicester in 1588, Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, Sir Christopher Hatton in 1591.Lacey, 50 Factional strife in the government, which had not existed in a noteworthy form before the 1590s,Doran Monarchy, 216 now became its hallmark.Hammer, 1–2 A bitter rivalry between the Earl of Essex and Robert Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, and their respective adherents, for the most powerful positions in the state marred politics.Hammer, 1, 9 The queen's personal authority was lessening,Hammer, 9–10 as is shown in the affair of Dr. Lopez, her trusted physician. When he was wrongly accused by the Earl of Essex of treason out of personal pique, she could not prevent his execution, although she had been angry about his arrest and seems not to have believed in his guilt (1594).Lacey, 117–120
This same period of economic and political uncertainty, however, produced an unsurpassed literary flowering in England.Black, 239. The first signs of a new literary movement had appeared at the end of the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, with John Lyly's Euphues and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender in 1578. During the 1590s, some of the great names of English literature entered their maturity, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. During this period and into the Jacobean era that followed, the English theatre reached its highest peaks.Black, 239–245. The notion of a great Elizabethan age depends largely on the builders, dramatists, poets, and musicians who were active during Elizabeth's reign. They owed little directly to the queen, who was never a major patron of the arts.Haigh, 176.
==Death==
Elizabeth's most trusted advisor, Burghley, died on 4 August 1598. His political mantle passed to his son, Robert Cecil, who soon became the leader of the government.After Essex's downfall, James VI of Scotland referred to Cecil as "king there in effect". Croft, 48. One task he addressed was to prepare the way for a smooth succession. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret.Cecil wrote to James, "The subject itself is so perilous to touch amongst us as it setteth a mark upon his head forever that hatcheth such a bird". Willson, 154. He therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim.James VI of Scotland was a great-great-grandson of Henry VII of England, and thus Elizabeth's first cousin twice removed since Henry VII was Elizabeth's paternal grandfather. Cecil coached the impatient James to humour Elizabeth and "secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations or over much curiosity in her own actions".Willson, 154. The advice worked. James's tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: "So trust I that you will not doubt but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them to you in grateful sort".Willson, 155. In historian J. E. Neale's view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with "unmistakable if veiled phrases".Neale, 385.
The Queen's health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Catherine, Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow. In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a "settled and unremovable melancholy".Black, 411. She died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James VI of Scotland as king of England.Black, 410–411.
Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall, on a barge lit with torches. At her funeral on 28 April, the coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey on a hearse drawn by four horses hung with black velvet. In the words of the chronicler John Stow:
Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came out to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man.Weir, 486.
Despite the presence of several other claimants to the throne, the transition of power went smoothly.The heir presumptive under the terms of Henry VIII's Will, i.e. either Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp, or Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven, depending on whether one recognized the legitimacy of the first-mentioned's birth; and the Lady Arbella Stuart on grounds similar to James's own. James's succession set aside Henry VIII's Third Succession Act and will in favour of the line of Henry's younger sister, Mary Tudor.Goldsworthy, 145 To rectify this, James had Parliament pass the Succession to the Crown Act 1603. The question of whether Parliament could control the succession to the crown by statute was controversial throughout the 17th century.ibid.; see also "The Law of Succession to the Crown in New Zealand" in: Waikato Law Review (1999), esp. ch. III "Power to change descent of the Crown" for a discussion of the controversy, and the place of James's succession therein.
==Legacy==
Elizabeth was lamented, but many people were relieved at her death.Loades, 100–101. Expectations of King James were high, and at first they were met, with the ending of the war against Spain in 1604 and lower taxes. Until the death of Robert Cecil in 1612, the government ran along much the same lines as before.Willson, 333. James's rule, however, became unpopular when he turned state affairs over to court favourites, and in the 1620s there was a nostalgic revival of the cult of Elizabeth.Somerset, 726. Elizabeth was praised as a heroine of the Protestant cause and the ruler of a golden age. James was depicted as a Catholic sympathiser, presiding over a corrupt court.Strong, 164. The triumphalist image that Elizabeth had cultivated towards the end of her reign, against a background of factionalism and military and economic difficulties,Haigh, 170. was taken at face value and her reputation inflated. Godfrey Goodman, Bishop of Gloucester, recalled: "When we had experience of a Scottish government, the Queen did seem to revive. Then was her memory much magnified."Weir, 488. Elizabeth's reign became idealised as a time when crown, church and parliament had worked in constitutional balance.Dobson and Watson, 257.
The picture of Elizabeth painted by her Protestant admirers of the early 17th century has proved lasting and influential.Haigh, 175, 182. Her memory was also revived during the Napoleonic Wars, when the nation again found itself on the brink of invasion.Dobson and Watson, 258. In the Victorian era, the Elizabethan legend was adapted to the imperial ideology of the day,The age of Elizabeth was redrawn as one of chivalry, epitomised by courtly encounters between the queen and sea-dog "heroes" such as Drake and Raleigh. Some Victorian narratives, such as Raleigh laying his cloak before the queen or presenting her with a potato, remain part of the myth. Dobson and Watson, 258. and in the mid-20th century, Elizabeth was a romantic symbol of the national resistance to foreign threat.Haigh, 175.In his preface to the 1952 reprint of Queen Elizabeth I, J. E. Neale observed: "The book was written before such words as "ideological", "fifth column", and "cold war" became current; and it is perhaps as well that they are not there. But the ideas are present, as is the idea of romantic leadership of a nation in peril, because they were present in Elizabethan times". Historians of that period, such as J. E. Neale (1934) and A. L. Rowse (1950), interpreted Elizabeth's reign as a golden age of progress.Haigh, 182. Neale and Rowse also idealized the Queen personally, she always did everything right; her more unpleasant traits were ignored or explained as signs of stress.Kenyon, 207
Recent historians, however, have taken a more complicated view of Elizabeth.Haigh, 183. Her reign is famous for the defeat of the Armada, and for successful raids against the Spanish, such as those on Cádiz in 1587 and 1596, but some historians point to military failures on land and at sea. Elizabeth's problems in Ireland also stain her record.Black, 408–409. Rather than as a brave defender of the Protestant nations against Spain and the Habsburgs, she is more often regarded as cautious in her foreign policies. She offered minimal aid to foreign Protestants and failed to provide her commanders with the funds to make a difference abroad.Haigh, 142–147, 174–177.
Elizabeth established an English church that helped shape a national identity and remains in place today.Loades, 46–50.Weir, 487.Hogge, 9–10. Those who praised her later as a Protestant heroine overlooked her refusal to drop all Catholic practices.The new state religion was condemned at the time in such terms as "a cloaked papistry, or mingle mangle". Somerset, 102. Historians note that in her day, strict Protestants regarded the Acts of Settlement and Uniformity of 1559 as a compromise.Haigh, 45–46, 177.Black, 14–15.Collinson, 28–29. In fact, Elizabeth believed that faith was personal and did not wish, as Francis Bacon put it, to "make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts".Williams, 50.Haigh, 42.
Despite Elizabeth's largely defensive foreign policy, her reign raised England's status abroad. "She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island," marvelled Pope Sixtus V, "and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the (Holy Roman) Empire, by all".Somerset, 727. Under Elizabeth, the nation gained a new self-confidence and sense of sovereignty, as Christendom fragmented.Hogge, 9n.Loades, 1. Elizabeth was the first Tudor to recognise that a monarch ruled by popular consent.As Elizabeth's Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Sir Nicholas Bacon, put it on her behalf to parliament in 1559, the queen "is not, nor ever meaneth to be, so wedded to her own will and fantasy that for the satisfaction thereof she will do anything...to bring any bondage or servitude to her people, or give any just occasion to them of any inward grudge whereby any tumults or stirs might arise as hath done of late days". Starkey, 7. She therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her Stuart successors failed to follow. Some historians have called her lucky;Somerset, 727. she believed that God was protecting her.Somerset, 75–76. Priding herself on being "mere English",Edwards, 205. Elizabeth trusted in God, honest advice, and the love of her subjects for the success of her rule.Starkey, 6–7. In a prayer, she offered thanks to God that:
[At a time] when wars and seditions with grievous persecutions have vexed almost all kings and countries round about me, my reign hath been peacable, and my realm a receptacle to thy afflicted Church. The love of my people hath appeared firm, and the devices of my enemies frustrate.Somerset, 727.
==See also==
*Protestant Reformation
==Notes==
==References==
*Adams, Simon: Leicester and the Court: Essays in Elizabethan Politics Manchester: Manchester University Press 2002 ISBN 0719053250
*Black, J. B. The Reign of Elizabeth: 1558–1603. Oxford: Clarendon, (1936) 1945. OCLC 5077207
*Chamberlin, Frederick: Elizabeth and Leycester Dodd, Mead & Co. 1939
*Collinson, Patrick. "The Mongrel Religion of Elizabethan England." Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Susan Doran (ed.). London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. ISBN 0701174765.
*Croft, Pauline. King James. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN 0333613953.
*Davenport, Cyril. English Embroidered Bookbindings. Alfred Pollard (ed.). London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1899. OCLC 705685.
*Dobson, Michael; and Nicola Watson. "Elizabeth's Legacy". Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Susan Doran (ed.). London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. ISBN 0701174765.
*Doran, Susan: Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I Routledge 1996 ISBN 0415119693
*Doran, Susan. "The Queen's Suitors and the Problem of the Succession." Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Susan Doran (ed.). London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. ISBN 0701174765.
*Edwards, Philip. The Making of the Modern English State: 1460–1660. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. ISBN 031223614X.
*Flynn, Sian; and David Spence. "Elizabeth's Adventurers". Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Susan Doran (ed.). London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. ISBN 0701174765.
*Frieda, Leonie. Catherine de Medici. London: Phoenix, 2005. ISBN 0173820390.
*Goldsworthy, J.D.: The Sovereignty of Parliament Oxford UP 1999 ISBN 0198268939
*Gristwood, Sarah: Elizabeth and Leicester Bantam Books 2008 ISBN 9780553817867
*Guy, John. My Heart is My Own: The Life of Mary Queen of Scots. London and New York: Fourth Estate, 2004. ISBN 184115752X.
*Haigh, Christopher. Elizabeth I. Harlow (UK): Longman Pearson, (1988) 1998 edition. ISBN 0582437547.
*Hammer, P.E.J.: The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585-1597 Cambridge UP 1999 ISBN 0521019419
*Hasler. P. W (ed). History of Parliament. House of Commons 1558–1603 (3 vols). London: Published for the History of Parliament Trust by H.M.S.O., 1981. ISBN 0118875019.
*Haynes, Alan: The White Bear: The Elizabethan Earl of Leicester London: Peter Owen 1987 ISBN 0720606721
*Hogge, Alice. God's Secret Agents: Queen Elizabeth's Forbidden Priests and the Hatching of the Gunpowder Plot. London: HarperCollins, 2005. ISBN 0007156375.
*Hume, Martin The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth London: Eveleigh Nash & Grayson 1904 
*Hunt, Alice: The Drama of Coronation: Medieval Ceremony in Early Modern England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008
*Jenkins, Elizabeth: Elizabeth and Leicester The Phoenix Press 2002 ISBN 1842125605
*Kenyon, John The History Men: The Historical Profession in England since the Renaissance London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1983 ISBN 0297782541
*Lacey, Robert: Robert Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1971 ISBN 0297003208
*Loades, David. Elizabeth I: The Golden Reign of Gloriana. London: The National Archives, 2003. ISBN 1903365430.
*Lockyer, Roger. Tudor and Stuart Britain 1471-1714. Third Edition, 2004. London: Pearson.
*McGrath, Patrick: Papists and Puritans under Elizabeth I London: Blandford Press, 1967.
*Neale, J.E..: Queen Elizabeth I: A Biography. London: Jonathan Cape, (1934) 1954 reprint. OCLC 220518.
*Parker, Geoffrey: The Grand Strategy of Philip II Yale University Press 2000 ISBN 0300082738
*Richardson, Ruth Elizabeth: Mistress Blanche: Queen Elizabeth I's Confidante, Logaston Press 2007
*Rowse, A. L. The England of Elizabeth. London: Macmillan, 1950. OCLC 181656553.
*Somerset, Anne. Elizabeth I. London: Phoenix, (1991) 1997 edition. ISBN 0385721579.
*Starkey, David. "Elizabeth: Woman, Monarch, Mission." Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Susan Doran (ed.). London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. ISBN 0701174765.
*Strong, Roy. Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I. London: Pimlico, (1987) 2003. ISBN 071260944X.
*Strong, R.G.; van Dorsten, J.A.: Leicester's Triumph Oxford University Press 1964
*Weir, Alison. Elizabeth the Queen. London: Pimlico, (1998) 1999 edition. ISBN 0712673121.
*Williams, Neville. The Life and Times of Elizabeth I. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972. ISBN 0297831682.
*Willson, David Harris. King James VI & I. London: Jonathan Cape, (1956) 1963. ISBN 0224605720.
*Wilson, Derek: Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley Earl of Leicester 1533-1588 London: Hamish Hamilton 1981 ISBN 0241101492
==Further reading==
*Camden, William. History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth. Wallace T. MacCaffrey (ed). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, selected chapters, 1970 edition. OCLC 59210072.
*Clapham, John. Elizabeth of England. E. P. Read and Conyers Read (eds). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951. OCLC 1350639.
*Elizabeth I: The Collected Works Leah S. Marcus, Mary Beth Rose & Janel Mueller (eds.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. ISBN 0226504654.
*Elizabeth: The Exhibition at the National Maritime Museum. Susan Doran (ed.). London: Chatto and Windus, 2003. ISBN 0701174765.
*Ridley, Jasper. Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue. New York : Fromm International, 1989. ISBN 088064110X.
==External links==
*William Camden, Annales Rerum Gestarum Angliae et Hiberniae Regnante Elizabetha. (1615 and 1625.) Hypertext edition, with English translation. Dana F. Sutton (ed.), 2000. Retrieved 7 December 2007.
*Tudor and Elizabeth Portraits. Tudor and Elizabethan portraits and other works of art, provided for research and education. Retrieved 15 December 2007.
*Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion, and Other Various Occurrences in the Church of England, During Queen Elizabeth's Happy Reign by John Strype (1824 ed.): Vol. I, Pt. I, Vol. I, Pt. II, Vol. II, Pt. I, Vol. II., Pt. II, Vol. III, Pt. I, Vol. III, Pt. II, Vol. IV
*Elizabeth I with rare pictures from the British Museum and British Library
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