Elizabeth as Deliverer
Elizabeth’s ascension was greeted with the same high hopes and effusiveness as her father’s in 1509. The Protestant factions in England which had suffered so much under Mary’s well-meaning attempt to reunite with Rome hailed her as their deliverer; surely Elizabeth, the circumstances of whose birth had caused the split with Rome, would lead her people back from the Anti-Christ. The duchess of Suffolk, exiled in Germany and Poland while her co-religionists faced the stake, wrote, "If the Israelites might joy in their Deborah, how much more we English in our Elizabeth!"
The major accomplishment of Elizabeth’s reign was the creation of a distinct national character – a feeling of "Englishness" – that has never diminished. Such character could not have come to fruition except under a strong ruler who firmly believed that she ruled by the appointment of God (an Anglican God, at that)…a female Deborah rescuing her people from the oppression of Roman Catholicism. Such belief in an absolutist ruler was rooted in Elizabeth herself. She came to the throne out of a long medieval tradition that demanded absolutist rule. Of her dynasty, only her father had reigned by personality, but his ruthlessness pushed absolutism to its worst extremes and turned his people against him long before his death. Elizabeth shared the same ruthlessness but had the wisdom to use it only against England’s enemies.
She accomplished major reforms in religion and virtually created the Anglican Church, an amalgamation of Roman Catholicism and Englishness that bore virtually no resemblance to the Protestantism that now dominated so much of Europe. She established the monarch as the head of the Church so that there would be no ambivalence about her authority, and she established a tradition of tolerance for those who deviated back to the old faith or those who followed Luther and Calvin. As long as they did not practice openly and caused no trouble, they were largely left alone.
She came to the throne to find a bankrupt nation, and, through scrimping and cajolery, established such a fine credit rating for England that she, alone among all the rulers of England, was able to borrow money at low interest rates because the lenders at Antwerp knew her reputation for always repaying her loans.
She encouraged her adventurer-privateers to plunder the seas and inadvertently aided the new exploration in doing so.
Because of her wide range of interests and depth of learning, she oversaw the finest flowering of an English culture in literature and fostered an atmosphere in which the greatest of all playwrights could create; Shakespeare would have had a much more difficult time writing under the Puritans, who wanted to outlaw the theater. While she did not create the English Renaissance, her energy and the gaiety of her court fueled it.
Not insignificant in her appeal to her people and to history was the fact that she remained single throughout her life. She insisted that she was married to England; I believe that the truth is that she had seen the fearsome effect marriage could have on a queen (whether a consort, like her mother, or a princess regnant, like her half-sister) and feared losing her freedom and her power. By the time she came to the throne, she had already decided not to marry.
Anne Boleyn
Erickson hypothesizes that she enjoyed flaunting her sexual freedom in much the same way as had her father but grew wary of marriage, despite the constant urging of her advisors to accept one of the many suitors anxious for her hand and the control of England, when she saw the disastrous effects of her cousin Mary’s second marriage on Mary’s control of Scotland.
She was not above using the possibility of marriage and childbearing as a diplomatic club to bring possible allies into line and kept several of them dangling for years while she pretended to ponder various proposals for a state marriage. She talked about marriage, negotiated with the French, the Swedish, and virtually everyone else in Europe except for her Spanish ex-brother-in-law, and flirted as long as she drew breath, apparently with no intention of fulfilling anyone’s matrimonial plans.
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