Lesson VIII: Elizabeth I
The Last Tudor
Elizabeth was only a toddler when her mother was beheaded. After that, she went from being a pampered royal princess to being mostly ignored. Henry VIII never formally denied that he was her father, but she was still officially illegitimate. Her position was both awkward and uncertain for much of her childhood.
Her situation improved a good deal when Edward VI took the throne. The siblings looked a lot alike, got along well, and were close in age, Elizabeth being only four years older. She was welcomed at court, and obviously favored over her stubbornly Catholic sister, Mary.
But scandal touched Elizabeth at a young age. While living with her stepmother, Catherine Parr, Catherine's husband Thomas Seymour began to show an interest in Elizabeth, who was then about fifteen. Seymour's only real interest was in power, but Elizabeth was flattered and seemed smitten with him. Catherine finally put an abrupt end to the flirtation by sending Elizabeth away, but not soon enough to prevent rumors from flying over the relationship. When Catherine died, it was commonly believed that Seymour intended to marry Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, however, may have already decided that marriage was not for her, and nothing came of whatever plans Seymour may have had. Marrying a member of the royal family -- even an illegitimate one, as Elizabeth then was -- without the sovereign's permission was treason. This put Elizabeth in a very awkward position that might easily have led to her own execution. She was interrogated quite harshly, but stood up bravely to her questioners and managed to clear her name. Eventually, Seymour was executed for his schemes to seize power, which were both unwise and poorly planned. It is said that upon hearing of Seymour's death, she said, "This day died a man of much wit but very little judgement." Elizabeth would never be so careless with her reputation again.
She was 25 when she took the throne, and immediately showed herself to be much more moderate and forgiving than her sister, though she never spoke against Mary. Her reign was long and sometimes very eventful. The English navy's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, for example, was utterly unexpected and was considered a miracle at the time, for until then Spain had been the acknowledged ruler of the seas.
Elizabeth I, the Rainbow Portrait.
Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
Phillip II of Spain, once her brother-in-law, had actually proposed marriage to her in 1559, which she flatly refused. In fact, despite her advisors urging her to marry, she refused all such proposals, with a combination of wit, diplomacy, and a little luck. Considering what had happened when Mary had married a Spaniard, a foreign ruler would not do for England, Elizabeth said, and since there were no Englishmen to match her rank, she could not marry at all.
Rumor had it that she had a close relationship with Robert Dudley, son of the infamous John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had been executed for treason by Mary I for his involvement in placing Lady Jane on the throne. Robert had fought for Jane and barely escaped execution himself. He was imprisoned in the Tower of London at the same time that Elizabeth was held there, having fallen under suspicion of aiding a rebellion in protest of Mary's plans to marry Phillip of Spain. While Dudley was handsome and Elizabeth clearly enjoyed his company, there is no evidence that it was anything more than a flirtation. Still, she gave him many honors, including making him the first Earl of Leicester.
Elizabeth's signature
She told her subjects that she was married to her country and her people, and would always put their welfare above all. This helped her inspire great loyalty in both nobles and commoners. Sir George Bowes, after fighting for the queen during an uprising in the north of England, had lost his crops and cattle, and had his house vandalized and looted. "I have nothing but my horse, armor, and weapons," he wrote to Elizabeth, "which I more esteem than twenty times as much of other things, because thereby I am enabled to serve my good queen."
And Elizabeth was equally fond of her subjects. She loved to go out on royal progresses, when she would travel around the country with her courtiers and be seen by the people, calling out her thanks and blessings to them as they cheered. In 1601, the last time she addressed Parliament in what is now called her Golden Speech, she said, "And though God has raised me high, this do I account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves."
Like her father, she cared little for someone's birth, preferring to judge by skill, and often gave titles and lands to those who were good advisers and councilors to her. William Cecil, for example, was from a respectable though untitled family, but he showed such skill in handling Elizabeth's lands and estates when she was a girl that she made him her Privy Secretary (Secretary of State today) when she became queen, and later made him a baron. Unlike her father, Elizabeth threw herself into the day to day business of ruling, often working late into the night. Thanks in large part to Catherine Parr, who had helped arrange Elizabeth's education, she was perhaps the best educated of the Tudor rulers, speaking six languages well and two or three others less fluently. She was proud of her ability to greet most ambassadors with at least a few sentences of their native languages.
Perhaps remembering what had happened when her sister Mary was dying childless, Elizabeth always refused to name a successor, something which caused many problems. Her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, was the most obvious choice, as she was the granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Margaret. But England still had no love for Scotland, and as she was a Catholic, English Protestants in particular did not want her on the throne. Some English Catholics, however, believed that Elizabeth was illegitimate and that Mary should be Queen.
Mary made several political mistakes, however, and the schemes of her nobles eventually forced her to flee Scotland, leaving the throne to her one-year-old son James VI. She went to England seeking safety but was not as welcome as she had expected, for her presence was a serious political embarrassment. After years of imprisonment, she was finally executed for plotting against Elizabeth. Later, her son would become James I of England, beginning the Stuart line, but Elizabeth probably never did name a successor, despite claims that she had agreed to the choice of James on her deathbed.
Mary, Queen of Scots - granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Margaret
She was 69 when she died, after ruling for 44 years, the longest reigning Tudor monarch and the fifth longest reign for any English ruler up to that point. It may have been partly her own image that killed her -- she had a habit of wearing very pale makeup, which in those days would have contained lead, and it is possible this slowly poisoned her. But after her death, for the first time since Henry VII and Elizabeth of York welcomed their second son in 1491, England found itself with a young king on the throne who had two sons to ensure the succession. The country had come full circle.
