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Born 1533, died 1603
Ruled from 1558
Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth was proclaimed illegitimate when her mother was executed in 1536. However, in her father's will, she was listed as third in line to the throne, after her half-brother Edward and half-sister Mary.
With her Protestant leanings, Elizabeth had a relatively easy time during Edward's rule, but her relations with Mary were very different. To the new queen, Elizabeth was part of her hated past and a suspected Protestant. There were moments when Elizabeth's survival seemed unlikely, especially in March 1554 when she was accused of complicity in Wyatt's Rebellion and imprisoned in the Tower of London.
News of Mary's death in 1558 was brought to Elizabeth at her childhood home Hatfield House. She had been preparing for this moment for weeks, with Sir William Cecil as her right-hand man. It was the beginning of a life-long partnership.
The big question was: what would Elizabeth's religion be – Protestant or Catholic? On Christmas morning 1558, she declared her hand, turning her back and leaving the mass as the officiating priest elevated the host for adoration, the supreme moment of the Catholic ritual. Anne Boleyn's daughter would be a Protestant queen.
Elizabeth's first Parliament met in January 1559, when her proposals for a moderate religious settlement came under fire from both sides. Finally, to overcome the Catholic peers and bishops, Elizabeth joined forces with her Protestant commoners and counsellors and duly got the settlement and the supremacy. The price was her acceptance of Cranmer's second, much more radically Protestant prayer book of 1552 and the continued infighting between the religious extremes.
To Cecil and the council, it was obvious that Elizabeth's next move must be to marry, produce an heir and thereby secure the new settlement. However, she was determined that England would have 'one mistress and no master'. As well as several love affairs (including a long one with the earl of Leicester), there were numerous suitors (including Mary's widower Philip II of Spain), but the right consort was never found.
But if Elizabeth could not and would not marry, who should succeed her? The Greys were her nearest relatives but they had put themselves out of the running because of the debacle of Lady Jane Grey's short reign (see Mary I). This left Elizabeth's cousin Mary Stuart, who was married to the dauphin of France and was Queen of Scots in her own right. She was also a Catholic.
On the death of her French husband in 1560, Mary returned to Scotland. Although Elizabeth refused to declare her heir to the throne, she swore not to do anything to impede Mary's claim. Cecil and Parliament were totally opposed to this and tried to force Elizabeth to exclude Mary by naming an alternative successor.
Furious, Elizabeth laid out her objections. She would never name an heir, she said, because they would become 'second person', and she, better than anyone else, knew the dangers of that position – her own life had been in constant danger and she'd been the focus of plots and treason.
Then, in 1568, a Protestant revolution forced Mary to abdicate the Scottish throne in favour of her infant son James and to flee to England. This provoked the greatest crisis of Elizabeth's reign. Mary's presence re-politicised English Catholicism, and the plots soon began. But despite her evident involvement, Elizabeth refused to take action against Mary. However, any thought of avoiding conflict disappeared in 1570 when Pope Pius V issued Regnans in excelsis, which excommunicated Elizabeth.
Foolishly conspiring once again, Mary was unaware that all her letters were passing through the hands of an agent of Elizabeth's Council. Faced with the evidence, Elizabeth could no longer avoid condemning her. She signed the death warrant, but instructed that it was not to be released without her further command. But acting on their own authority, the Council despatched the warrant to Mary's prison at Fotheringhay Castle, where on 8 February 1587 she was publicly beheaded. Now next in line to the English throne was Mary's son, James VI of Scotland, who was being brought up in Scotland by fierce Calvinists.
Mary's execution was a watershed. As a fierce, nationalistic Protestantism took root in England, it was becoming clear that any monarch – or heir – who fell too far out of step with the nation would do so at their peril.
In August 1588, Protestant England faced a terrible Catholic threat: Philip II's Spanish Armada. But the English fire ships broke up the Armada's seemingly invincible formation off Calais and storms did the rest. This was Elizabeth's finest hour: the defence of the realm was traditionally an English monarch's most important role, and she acquitted herself admirably.
By 1601, Elizabeth's new chief minister Robert Cecil, William Cecil's son, had begun a ciphered correspondence with James to smooth his path to the throne. The matter became pressing during the Christmas holidays of 1602, when both Elizabeth's health and her temper suddenly worsened. She died in the small hours of 24 March 1603.
Elizabeth I and Elizabethan England
http://tudorhistory.org/links/elizabeth.
html
Good gateway site to links and information on the queen and the period.
The Life and Times of Queen Elizabeth I
www.elizabethi.org/uk/
Enthusiast's website, peppered with quotes, which contains a great deal of information on the queen and the culture of the time.
Elizabeth, the Queen by Alison Weir (Pimlico, 1999)
Looks at the private life of Elizabeth I, portrayed as both a queen and an extraordinary female in a patriarchal age. Elizabeth's dealings with her family and her long affair with Robert Dudley are also examined.
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Hatfield House
The Gascoyne Cecil Estates
Hatfield Park Estate Office
Hatfield
Hertfordshire AL9 5NQ
Tel: 01707 287 000
Fax: 01707 275 719
Website: www.hatfield-house.co.uk
Part of the original Hatfield Palace (originally a bishop's palace) remains. This is where Elizabeth spent much of her childhood with her brother Edward, and later was kept virtually imprisoned there by her sister Mary. It is said she heard the news of Mary's death and her own accession to the throne under an oak tree in the park.
Tilbury Fort
Located half a mile east of Tilbury, Essex, off the A126
OS reference: TQ 651754
Tel: 01375 858 489
Website: www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/conProperty.48
The first fort on this site was built by Henry VIII; the present one – now owned by English Heritage – was begun in 1672 by Charles II. Nearby was where, on 18 August 1588, Elizabeth I rallied her troops as they waited for the arrival of the Spanish Armada. Wearing a breastplate and carrying a sword, she addressed them: 'I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any prince of Europe should dare invade the border of my realm.'
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