Queen of England
Elizabeth, born in 1533 the second daughter of Henry VIII by his second wife, Anne Bo-leyn, ruled England for almost forty-five years and presided over a broadly based religious settlement, a cultural Renaissance, and an England that was developing itself in terms of discovery and trade. She is particularly known for her speech to encourage the troops at Tilbury at the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
Elizabeth’s Childhood and Youth
Henry had pulled down the Catholic church in England to divorce his first wife, Catherine, mother of only a daughter. Anne Boleyn also had only a girl child, Elizabeth, and was executed in 1536, charged with adultery and treason. Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, finally gave Henry the son, Edward, he craved. Though he married three more times, there were no more children. Henry died in 1547. His will, which had the force of parliament, gave the throne to Edward and, if Edward died without direct heirs, to Henry’s eldest daughter, Mary, and, if she had no direct heirs, to Elizabeth.
Elizabeth had from her earliest memories known the difficulties and dangers for women when their lives were caught in the spotlight of sexuality and power. Not only must she have early learned her mother’s fate, she also saw the progression of stepmothers at her father’s court. At fifteen she had to listen to rumors that she had become pregnant by Thomas Seymour, widower of her last stepmother Katherine Parr, as he awaited his execution in the Tower. Only her quick wits and
Elizabeth I, queen of England. Portrait by Leopold Mas-sard. (Library of Congress)
Self-possession saved her own reputation and allowed her to protect her servants Katherine Ashley and Thomas Parry. Elizabeth spent the rest of Edward’s reign living quietly and gaining a thorough humanist education in the classics and foreign languages, enjoying it so much that throughout her reign she did translations for relaxation.
Edward VI’s death at age fifteen in 1553 led to a dynastic crisis. Edward had disinherited both his sisters in favor of his Protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, recently married to the youngest son of the most powerful man of the realm, John Dudley, duke of Northumberland. But Catholic Mary had such support she succeeded to the throne without a battle. Mary’s popularity started to wane when she decided to marry her cousin, Philip of Spain. After the unsuccessful Wyatt Rebellion in 1554, Mary and her council sent Elizabeth to the Tower, where she was kept for two months. Elizabeth was afraid she would be executed, as her cousin Lady Jane Grey had been. Nothing could be proved against Elizabeth, however, and her life was spared. When Mary died, Elizabeth succeeded her. Few would have believed in November 1558 that her reign would last until 1603.
Elizabeth’s Accession
Elizabeth was far more successful than Mary and the other women rulers of her time. During her reign England was not engulfed in civil war, as happened to neighboring Scotland or France. She decided to be a queen for all the English, and she was proud to be pure English, not half-Spanish like her older sister Mary. Elizabeth began her reign emphasizing the theme of national unity. One of Elizabeth’s first acts was to appoint William Cecil as her principal secretary. Eventually, he achieved the titles Lord Burghley and Treasurer. It was to be a long and fruitful partnership. Her other loyal servants included Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Christopher Hatton, and Sir Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, for many years her favorite.
Religious Settlement and Succession
After the religious upheavals of the previous decades, Elizabeth chose to preside over a broadly based religious settlement. In 1559 parliament defined England’s official religion. Services were again to be in English, and mass was abolished. But the wording of the settlement was such that communion could be understood any way people wished. While the theology was Protestant, the services retained some Catholic elements, such as candles, choral music, bell ringing, and vestments for ministers. Elizabeth became supreme governor over the Church of England. Elizabeth was satisfied with the Religious Settlement and wanted no more changes. She desired only outward religious conformity from her subjects and did not want to persecute people for their beliefs. During her reign, however, religion and politics became increasingly intertwined, and Elizabeth found herself pressured by both Roman Catholics and radical Protestants. As her reign progressed, she was unwilling to compromise with the growing Puritan movement, which had support in parliament and among some of her church hierarchy. Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury, was suspended from his duties, though not actually deprived of office, over the issue of “prophesying,” that is, allowing congregations to hold discussions on Scriptural texts. Elizabeth perceived these meetings as forums for dissatisfactions with the established church, but Grindal refused to suppress them. Elizabeth hoped that Catholicism would just die out naturally; no one was executed for being a Catholic until 1574, but by then Catholics were involved in attempts to assassinate Elizabeth to restore the old religion to England.
In addition to the question of religion, Elizabeth had to deal with another significant issue: the succession. From the beginning of her reign, Elizabeth’s council and parliament, fearing the potential chaos if she died without a designated heir, begged her to marry and, they hoped, have a son and heir. In the meantime Elizabeth was under great pressure to name a successor. Elizabeth, however, while she played with courtship and perceived its use as a useful political tool, refused to marry; she also would not name an heir. The example of Henry and his succession of wives would hardly have convinced Elizabeth that marriage was an enviable estate or that, even if she married, she would necessarily have a surviving son or survive the rigors of childbirth herself. Nor did she want someone else to be a rising sun to her setting sun. Elizabeth had a variety of suitors: her former brother-in-law, Mary’s husband, Philip II; the Habsburg Archduke Charles; Eric XIV of Sweden; and the sons of Catherine de Medicis, both Henry Duke of
Anjou (later Henry III) and Francis, duke of Alenjon, later duke of Anjou. Robert Dudley, to whom Elizabeth eventually gave the title earl of Leicester, was also a forceful suitor for her hand. For years, rumors swept around Elizabeth and Dudley, particularly after the mysterious death of his wife, Amy Robsart, in 1560.
Foreign Relations and Mary Stuart
During the first part of her reign, Elizabeth worked to keep England out of expensive and dangerous foreign entanglements, but by the 1580s conflicts with Spain escalated. When Philip of Spain sent the Armada in 1588, Elizabeth gave a rousing speech to her troops that is said to include the famous words, “I may have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.” Yet Elizabeth’s reign had its share of troubles. Elizabeth had serious problems with her Catholic cousin, Mary Stuart, the Scottish queen. Mary claimed Elizabeth’s throne while queen regent in France and then after her return to Scotland. After the murder of Mary’s second husband and her remarriage shortly therafter to James Hepburn, earl of Bothwell, the Scottish people rebelled and forced her to abdicate in favor of her infant son James. In 1568 Mary escaped to England and was Elizabeth’s “enforced guest” for nineteen years— conspiring to have Elizabeth assassinated— until Mary’s execution in 1587.
The Last Years of the Reign
The last years of Elizabeth’s reign also had economic difficulties. Inflation and poor harvests caused misery for many of the English, and there was deep fear that the Spanish might attempt another invasion. There were great fears as well that Spain might use Ireland as a base, and the Irish lords were in rebellion over English control. In 1599 Elizabeth’s final favorite Robert Devereux, earl of Essex, spectacularly failed at resolving the situation in Ireland and lost favor. Two years later, in 1601, he led a rebellion against her, which, though it failed and he was executed, caused both Elizabeth and England anguish.
It was also, however, a time of great cultural development. In the last decade and a half of her reign William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and others wrote great plays for the theater, while poets like Edmund Spenser published their work. In 1601 Elizabeth had her final parliament, where she spoke of her love for her people. Though her physicians could not name a specific complaint, by the beginning of 1603 her health began to fail; she died on 24 March 1603. Elizabeth had always refused to name her successor, stating God would take care of England. Her cousin, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary Stuart, peacefully ascended the throne of England at her death. England under Elizabeth had survived as an independent nation and was not decimated by religious civil wars, as were a number of her continental neighbors. Though there were certainly problems throughout the reign, Elizabeth is one of the best known of all English monarchs, and many describe her as one of the most successful.
Carole Levin
See also Boleyn, Anne; Mary Stuart; Religious Reform and Women.
Bibliography
Primary Works
Marcus, Leah, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth
Rose, eds. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
May, Steven, ed. Queen Elizabeth I: Selected Works. New York: Washington Square Press, 2004.
Pryor, Felix. Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Secondary Works
Doran, Susan. Elizabeth I and Foreign Policy, 1558—1603. London and New York: Rout-ledge, 2000.
Levin, Carole. The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
Levin, Carole. The Reign of Elizabeth I. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
MacCaffrey, Wallace T. Elizabeth I. New York: Arnold, 1993.
World History
