Welcome to the Queens of Britain series. In 2024, the blog will spotlight the reigning queens from the island of Great Britain. Check back each month to learn about the women who led their nations.
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| Portrait after Levina Teerlinc at National Portrait Gallery via Wikimedia Commons |
The First Elizabethan Age was marked by England's rise as an empire, including the triumph over the Spanish Armada and a series of religious compromises that prevented the kind of warfare that continued to rock her contemporaries on the Continent. Brilliant at using diplomacy, symbolic artistic depiction, and the stagecraft of majestic pageantry, Elizabeth the real person is elusive.
Her rise to the throne was rarely a certainty until the very moment of her succession. Her childhood and young adulthood consisted of cycles of abandonment and real danger. Throughout all of it, Elizabeth developed a level of cautious circumspection that neither of her parents ever displayed.
Born 10 months after her father King Henry VIII married his second wife Anne Boleyn was a cherished disappointment. Both parents adored her, but the fact that she was not a boy placed the couple in a precarious position. Henry had spent years attempting to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon because he was convinced God was unhappy with that union. The evidence of God's disapproval was that he and Catherine had only a female child. The birth of another female child to his second wife was not what he expected. By the time Elizabeth was two, the second marriage had soured to the point that Henry was willing, nay eager, to believe trumped accusations of adultery. In a space of just 15 days, Anne was arrested, tried, and beheaded.
In the runup to Anne's execution, it was determined that she had bewitched the King and therefore their marriage was invalid. Like Catherine of Aragon's daughter Mary before her, Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. She was not yet three years old. Less than two weeks later, Henry married again to Jane Seymour, who presented him with the much-desired son before dying of childbed fever.
The young Elizabeth was raised by primarily by governesses and tutors while her father made his way through more wives. The central figure of her childhood was governess Kat Ashley, who remained a close friend and companion until her own death in 1565. The little girl has a very advanced education, especially for a girl, but the daughters of the Tudor Dynasty were all similarly learned. Elizabeth knew nine modern and ancient languages. By the end of her life, she may also have added the national languages of her kingdom to the list: Welsh, Irish, Cornish, and Scottish.
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Princess Elizabeth presumably by William Scrots via Wikimedia Commons |
Her father's final wife, Catherine Parr, sought to unite the royal children into a family. Both Mary and Elizabeth were welcomed under her care along with Jane Seymour's son Edward. When Henry VIII died a few years later in 1547 and young Edward became King, 13-year-old Elizabeth remained in Catherine's care at first, even after Catherine married Thomas Seymour. Thomas' attentions to the precocious and blossoming adolescent quickly grew to a state that we would call "inappropriate" today. He would come to her chamber in his nightclothes, frequently tickled her and slapped her playfully on her bottom. At first, Catherine would sanctioned and even joined in the horseplay, even holding Elizabeth down once while Thomas cut the young girl's dress to shreds. Once Catherine found the two in an embrace, her eyes were opened to the danger of the situation. Whether she blamed Thomas or Elizabeth is unknown, but it was Elizabeth who was sent away.
When Catherine died after childbirth a few months later, Kat Ashley suggested Elizabeth might marry Thomas herself. Elizabeth declared that she would not. It was not long until Thomas, who schemed to take control of his nephew King Edward's governance, found himself without a head.
Elizabeth lived with her own household at Hatfield House for the rest of her Protestant brother's reign and through the turbulent nine days of her cousin Lady Jane's brief stint on the throne. When her older half-sister Mary reasserted her right to the throne, Elizabeth rode into London at her side.
Not surprisingly, their unity was short-lived. Always cautious, the Protestant Elizabeth conformed to Mary's demands that she worship as a Catholic. However, the English people had grown increasingly Protestant. As Mary began persecuting Protestants and married the Catholic King Philip II of Spain, her opponents focused on Elizabeth. This placed the young woman in danger. Mary could not trust her. After Wyatt's rebellion in 1554, Mary imprisoned her innocent half-sister first in the Tower of London and then in Woodstock. With no evidence against her, Elizabeth was granted mercy and recalled to court to witness the birth of Mary's first child in 1555. This was the first of two false pregnancies for Mary, who died in November 1558 after naming Elizabeth her heir.
The 25-year-old Queen Elizabeth showed wisdom beyond her years. In one of her first acts, she signaled her intention to put aside religious persecutions. Officially Protestant, she mixed a bit of Catholicism into her personal religious observations. Most importantly, however, she saw the futility and high cost of religious strife.
The next greatest question of Elizabeth's reign was whom she would marry. It was almost inconceivable that a woman would remain single or that she would attempt to rule without a husband. Her two immediate predecessors were both married. It is hard to know Elizabeth's true intentions but she used the possibility of her marriage as a lynchpin in her governance and her foreign policy. She would string along potential suitors in negotiations, sometimes for years. The one man she might have married was her longtime friend Robert Dudley, whom she is thought to have loved. However, his first wife's death under mysterious circumstances -- some even accused Elizabeth of having her murdered -- made the choice too politically controversial. Nevertheless, she prevented him from remarrying for years. When she discovered he had secretly married Lettice Knollys, she was enraged. She never forgave Lettice, but she remained fond of Robert, whom she had created Earl of Leicester.
On the foreign marriage mart, she turned down a proposal from Mary's widower but held out her potential hand to the King of Sweden, the King of Denmark, an Austrian archduke, the future King of France, and that French king's younger brother. The last of these, Francois Duke of Anjou might have been the most serious. Elizabeth was already in her 40s at this point and the duke was two decades younger. It is unlikely that creating an heir featured much in her decision-making.
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| By Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger via Wikimedia Commons |
Instead, Elizabeth came to be celebrated as The Virgin Queen, whether technically true or not. She also gained the nickname Gloriana, in her later reign, as England began to exert its place around the expanding globe. Spain had dominated the expansion of overseas territories for most of the first century after the Spanish monarch's sponsored the voyages of Christopher Columbus. The riches they brought back from the New World had made Spain a formidable power. Elizabeth authorized privateers to harass the Spanish ships and redirect their wealth into her coffers. In 1588, Elizabeth's former brother-in-law King Philip set out to use his power to bring England to its knees. A bit of bad weather helped the English defeat the large Spanish Armada.
This pivotal moment in history helped set England on the path to becoming the British Empire, upon which the sun never set. Under Elizabeth, the first English colonies were established in Virginia, named in honor of the Virgin Queen. The creation of the East India Company also spurred more English exploration and trade across Asia.
Back home, the relative stability and increasing wealth of the nation helped to spur a great cultural revival. Poets and playwrights abounded. Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare all rose to prominence.
Elizabeth's 44-year reign was the third longest up to that point in history. Basking in the praise of her courtiers and the strength of her political power, she continued to refuse to name an heir almost to the very last moment. It was only after her advisor Robert Burghley persuaded King James VI of Scotland to appeal to Elizabeth's vanity that she finally agreed for James to be her successor. James was Mary Queen of Scots son and a grandson of her aunt Margaret Tudor, who had married King James V of Scotland.
The Tudor dynasty that had gained the throne through violence and bloodshed in 1485 ended in 1603 with a peaceful transfer of power to the king of an enemy nation. Finally, the crowns of England and Scotland were on the head of a single monarch. Amazingly, it was an achievement gained not by war nor by marriage, but by one woman's steadfast refusal to marry and her ability to build a nation that was both rich and powerful.
QUEENS OF BRITAIN SERIES
Boudica, Queen of the Iceni
Empress Matilda
Margaret Maid of Norway
Lady Jane Grey
Queen Mary I
Queen Elizabeth I
Mary Queen of Scots
Queen Mary II
Queen Anne - coming soon
Queen Victoria - coming soon
Queen Elizabeth II - coming soon
MORE ABOUT ELIZABETH
Elizabeth I on British Monarchy
Queen Elizabeth I Facts and Myths on Royal Museums Greenwich
Why Was Queen Elizabeth I So Important? on English Heritage
