Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I (1533–1603), queen of England (1558–1603). Her mother was Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife. Elizabeth was born at Greenwich in September 1533 five months after her parents' marriage had been announced. In May 1536 her mother was executed and a new Act of Succession declared Anne's marriage void, Elizabeth illegitimate, and recognized Henry's third marriage to Jane Seymour as ‘without spot, doubt or impediment’. The birth of her half‐brother Edward in October 1537 made her chances of succeeding to the throne appear remote. A third Act of Succession in 1543 reinstated her, declaring that if Edward died without heirs, the throne would pass to Mary and then Elizabeth.

She spent most of her girlhood at Hatfield. She received a high‐powered classical education which left her in command of Latin and Greek and speaking French, Spanish, and Italian ‘most perfectly’. She was on good terms with Catherine Parr, Henry's last wife, and when, after his death, Catherine married Lord Seymour, Somerset's younger brother, Elizabeth moved into the household. The arrangement ended when Seymour made playful advances to Elizabeth which were not totally unwelcome. After Catherine died in childbirth, Seymour suggested marriage to Elizabeth, who replied prudently that such a matter should be laid before the council. Seymour was arrested in 1549 on a charge of treason and Elizabeth closely questioned.

When Edward was dying in 1553 and could not bear the thought of a catholic succession, he bypassed Elizabeth and named Lady Jane Grey, Northumberland's daughter‐in‐law, as his successor. During the ensuing crisis, Elizabeth stayed at Hatfield on the plea of illness. She was not well rewarded for her acquiescence in Mary's triumph. Within a month Mary was urging her to attend mass and Elizabeth, in floods of tears, real or simulated, begged for time to study the question.

In February 1554 Wyatt's rising against Mary's Spanish marriage brought Elizabeth to the brink of disaster. Summoned urgently to court, she pleaded more illness, then reluctantly obeyed. In March she was sent to the Tower while the conspirators were racked to provide evidence against her. ‘She will have to be executed,’ wrote the emperor's envoy Mendoza briskly. Ultimately she returned to Hatfield, attended mass regularly, and refused all offers of marriage. ‘She is too clever to get herself caught,’ Renard, the imperial ambassador, told the emperor.

In the event, Elizabeth's accession, on 17 November 1558, passed off without incident. Even Mary, in her last weeks, had conceded its inevitability. Elizabeth was faced at once with the same problems that had confronted Mary on her accession five years before—the religious question and her own marriage. The outlines of her religious policy were signalled at an early stage when she placed two of Mary's bishops under arrest for intemperate sermons, and in her first Parliament took back the governorship of the church. It would have been surprising had she done anything else. To adopt a catholic posture would have meant accepting her own bastardy and admitting that she had no right to the throne. The famous via media was to a great extent forced upon her.

The second problem, marriage, had already caused trouble. The political objections to marriage were overwhelming and her council and Parliament urged in vain. A foreign husband would drag the country into continental disputes and reawaken religious animosities: marriage to a subject would be an act of condescension and a formula for faction. Though her reasons for virginity were largely negative, she turned it to her own advantage, declaring that she was married to her people.

Two other decisions could not be delayed—her choice of advisers and her attitude towards the war with France which she had inherited from her sister. On the very first day of her reign she appointed as secretary William Cecil, (Burghley), whom she had employed as her estates surveyor.

Elizabeth was anxious to wind up the war against France, but dared not risk alienating her ally Philip, lest the nightmare possibility of a grand catholic coalition of Spain, France, and Scotland should come into existence. Nor could she easily reconcile herself to losing Calais and in the end a face‐saving formula had to be devised. No sooner had she escaped from one conflict than another emerged—in Scotland where she was persuaded to intervene in 1560 on behalf of the protestant lords against the French. Though the assault on the French‐held Leith castle was a dismal failure, the death of Mary of Guise took the heart out of the French resistance and by the treaty of Edinburgh they agreed to withdraw.

The next developments in foreign affairs were on a totally different scale—no limited interventions, but the great crisis of her reign. Three problems ran together in the 1570s and 1580s—the international religious question, the problem of Mary, queen of Scots, and the developing rift with Philip over the revolt of the Low Countries. Immediately after the failure of the rising of the northern earls, Pius V, far less moderate than his predecessor Pius IV, issued in 1570 a bull deposing her. The result was a series of plots against Elizabeth's life—Ridolfi 1572, Throckmorton 1584, Parry 1585, and Babington 1586. The second element of the worsening storm was the decision of Mary, queen of Scots, after her disastrous marriages to Darnley and Bothwell, to flee her country in 1568 and place herself under Elizabeth's protection. She was soon under close arrest. Despair at ever being released led Mary to dabble in plots and each plot produced fresh demands from ardent protestants for her execution. For many years Elizabeth resisted but the Babington plot sealed Mary's fate and she was executed in 1587. The third factor was that relations with her erstwhile ally Philip broke down and from 1585 Elizabeth sent help to the Dutch rebels. Philip's retort was to begin planning the invasion of England and in July 1588 the great Armada left Corunna. At Tilbury, Elizabeth delivered the most famous of all her speeches, ‘not doubting that we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my Kingdom and of my People.’

The defeat of the Armada turned her into a living legend and the most famous of all English monarchs. Philip launched more attacks and the centre of anxiety moved to Ireland, where Tyrone's rebellion had Spanish support. Many of her counter‐measureswere unsuccessful and Essex's foolish behaviour in Ireland, followed by his abortive insurrection, darkened her last days. But she died still in charge, capable of putting on performances and, at the end, naming ‘our cousin of Scotland’, James VI, as her successor.