Elizabeth I

1533-1603

Queen of england

Sources

The Good Queen. Elizabeth I, known as the Virgin Queen or Good Queen Bess, was the reigning monarch of England from 1558 to 1603. A shrewd, calculating, manipulative woman, she instilled deep loyalty in her subjects with her grave majestic poise. She preserved the English nation against internal as well as external threats, and during her forty-five-year reign the island kingdom emerged as a world power. It is because of her influence that the latter half of the sixteenth century in England is known as the Elizabethan Age.

Early Years. Elizabeth was born on 7 September 1533, the daughter of Tudor king Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Because Henry VIII had defied the Pope and married Boleyn in the hope of producing a male heir to the throne, he was bitterly disappointed in the birth of a second daughter. Before Elizabeth was three, the king had her mother beheaded and their marriage declared invalid. Although now considered an illegitimate child, Elizabeth was still third in line to the throne (after her half brother Edward and half sister Mary). She received tutoring from leading Renaissance scholars who noted the child’s intellect and seriousness. The humanist Roger Ascham wrote: “Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverence is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.” In time she became fluent in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian.

Court Intrigue. Upon his father’s death in 1547, Edward VI became king of England; when he died in 1553, Elizabeth’s older sister assumed the throne. Mary Tudor, wife of Philip II of Spain and a devout Catholic, did not endear herself to her Protestant subjects. Consequently, many nobles as well as commoners saw Elizabeth as their savior. As for the queen’s sister, she professed her own Catholicism in order to avoid suspicion, but in 1554 she was arrested for plotting to overthrow the government and narrowly escaped execution.

Accession. On 17 November 1558 Mary died and Elizabeth became queen of England. One observer of her coronation procession into London noted: “If ever any person had either the gift or the style to win the hearts of people, it was this Queen, and if ever she did express the same it was at that present, in coupling mildness with majesty as she did, and in stately stooping to the meanest sort.” Elizabeth quickly surrounded herself with experienced and loyal advisers, including William Cecil (afterward Lord Burghley) who served the queen for forty years as secretary of state and lord treasurer. She followed a policy of avoiding conflict with Parliament and curtailing state expenditures, although she did see the need for a strong navy.

A Woman’s World. During her years as monarch, Elizabeth refused to compromise her power by taking a husband, although arranged marriages to various foreign as well as English noblemen were proposed to her at times. Nonetheless, some evidence suggests that she did develop romantic attachments to two men, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex. The notion of Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen wedded to her kingdom gradually developed. The powerful personal image she engineered was one of female authority and regal magnificence combined with extravagant dress and rich jewels.

Religious Issues. Under Elizabeth, England was restored to Protestantism. In 1559 Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, which revived the statutes of Henry VIII proscribing Catholicism and declared the queen supreme governor of the Church. Some Catholic aristocrats protested these measures, and in 1569 Elizabeth brutally suppressed a rebellion in northern England. Two years later informers uncovered the Ridolfi Plot, an international conspiracy against her life. Possible links to Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret and the nearest heir to the throne, soon surfaced. (Mary had been driven from Scotland in 1568 and had taken refuge in England.) English Protestants reviled the Catholic Mary and saw her as a serious threat, especially since Elizabeth had not produced a male heir.

Eliminating Mary. In 1580 Pope Gregory XIII proclaimed that there was no sin in killing the heretic Elizabeth, who had been excommunicated by Pope Pius V ten years earlier. Tensions with the Papacy increased after the English sent a small military expedition to assist Dutch Protestant rebels. When the Babington Plot against the queen was uncovered in 1586, secret correspondence in Mary’s handwriting was intercepted. In February 1587 Elizabeth caved into the outcry against the Queen of Scots as a menace to the realm and had Mary beheaded.

Diplomacy. An astute observer of international affairs, Elizabeth played a diplomatic game with England’s two chief rivals, France and Spain. However, persecution of Mary’s adherents at home and a foreign policy of strengthening Protestant allies abroad ensured the wrath of the Roman Catholic nations, especially Spain. Privateers led by Sir Francis Drake and others raided Spanish shipping and ports, and by the mid 1580s it became clear that war was inevitable between the two countries. When Philip II launched the ill-fated Spanish Armada in 1588, the English navy quickly defeated it.

Successor. In her last years Elizabeth suffered much from ill health. Her principal counselor, Sir Robert Cecil, the son of Lord Burghley, secretly corresponded with the likeliest claimant to the throne, James VI of Scotland. Elizabeth supposedly indicated James VI as her successor before dying quietly on 24 March 1603.

Sources

John Bennett Black, The Reign of Elizabeth, 1558-1603 (Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Christopher Coleman and David Starkey, eds., Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Christopher Haigh, ed., The Reign of Elizabeth I (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985).

Jasper Ridley, Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue (New York: Fromm International, 1989).