Although the instability of her last favourite was the political problem which confronted Elizabeth most personally in the 1590s, it was far from the most serious. Naval war with Spain, intervention in France on behalf of Henry IV (whose claim to the throne was contested by the militant Catholic faction there, with Spanish backing), and the repression of rebellion in Ireland placed intolerable financial strains upon her regime. These were intensified by years of poor harvests, and by their inevitable accompaniment: epidemic disease.
Demographically, the disasters of the 1590s were second only to those of the 1550s. Economically, things may even have been worse, although her councillors remembered the lessons of the 1540s and 1550s, and at least resisted the last temptation of debasing the currency. Partly because of that self-denial, the financial position of the Crown had never been worse in the Tudor era. Long-term inflation had reduced the real value of customs duties and, together with almost systematic under-assessment of the wealth of the nobility and gentry, had massively eroded the real yields of direct taxation. The one novel financial expedient of the period, selling
When Elizabeth visited the Earl of Hertford at Elvetham in 1591, he arranged splendid outdoor entertainments around a small ornamental lake in the shape of a half-moon, specially dug for the occasion. The entertainments, including pageants, songs, verses, fireworks and banquets, filled the three days of her visit. In this picture of the scene, Elizabeth is shown seated beside the left horn of the moon on a throne beneath a cloth of estate.
Or issuing trade monopolies, not only compounded the economic dislocation but for a while soured Elizabeth’s relations with her Parliament. The domestic strains of foreign war and economic crisis in turn undermined law and order, and the Privy Council was having to meet on a daily basis to cope.
All this, added to the uncertainty over the succession, might have amounted to a crisis every bit as bad as that of 1558. Yet the severity of the problems serves chiefly to highlight the extraordinary success of Elizabeth and her government in defending and governing the country through these difficult years. There was neither a baronial nor a popular revolt. Essex’s attempted coup in 1601 made him look ridiculous. What held the country together was a combination of nationalism, Protestantism, and loyalism, focused on the person, or perhaps on the image, of Elizabeth herself.
World History
