Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I
also known as The Virgin Queen and

Good Queen Bess
Queen Elizabeth I was born September 7, 1533
and died March 24, 1603.She was queen of
England (1558–1603) during a period, often
called the Elizabethan Age, when England
asserted itself vigorously as a major European
power in politics, commerce, and the arts.
For the most part, Elizabeth I was a popular
queen, both during and after her lifetime. The
admiration Elizabeth I garnered had a lot to
do with her skills as a rhetorician and an
image-maker, which she used to style herself
as a magnificent female authority figure
devoted to the well-being of England and its
subjects above all else.
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How did Elizabeth I come to be queen of England?
Queen Elizabeth I’s right to the throne wasn’t always guaranteed. Her
father, King Henry VIII, had Parliament annul his marriage to
Elizabeth’s mother—his second wife, Anne Boleyn—thus making
Elizabeth an illegitimate child and removing her from the line of
succession. She had two half- siblings who would take the throne after
Henry’s death: Edward VI and Mary I. Suspicious that her half-sister
would try to seize power, Mary placed Elizabeth under what amounted
to constant surveillance, even jailing her in the Tower of London for a
short period of time. Upon Mary’s death in 1558, Elizabeth I went on to
become one of England’s most illustrious monarchs.
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Queen Elizabeth I’s relationship to religion in England
Upon assuming the throne, Queen Elizabeth I restored England to Protestantism.
This broke with the policy of her predecessor and half-sister, Queen Mary I, a
Catholic monarch who ruthlessly tried to eliminate Protestantism from English
society. Her campaign to suppress Catholicism in England was more moderate and
less bloody than the one enacted by Mary. In reality, Elizabeth wasn’t interested in
catering to either Protestantism or Catholicism, both having the potential to
disrupt the kind of law and order she was trying to establish. Her religious
policies, such as the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity, went a lot further
to consolidate the power of the church under her and to regularize the practice of
the faith.
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The biggest issues facing England during Queen
Elizabeth I’s reign
Queen Elizabeth I inherited several issues from the reign of her predecessor, Queen Mary I,
including an unpopular war with France and the religious divisions that Mary’s campaign
against Protestantism had left behind.
An issue that troubled her reign for its entirety was her lack of a husband and heir, a situation
which she and others realized could potentially ignite a successional crisis upon her death. Still,
she never married, perhaps because she preferred to keep power to herself.
One of her biggest trials—at least in the foreign policy realm—came when Spain tried to invade
England in 1588. The ensuing naval battle would go down as one of the most famous ones ever
and ended with England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada.
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The Woman Ruler In A Patriarchal World
Men saw themselves as rational beings;
they saw women as creatures likely to be
dominated by impulse and passion.
Gentlemen were trained in eloquence and
the arts of war; gentlewomen were urged to
keep silent and attend to their needlework.
In men of the upper classes a will to
dominate was admired or at least assumed;
in women it was viewed as dangerous or
grotesque.
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I know I have but 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.
- Elizabeth I
7
Since her sister’s reign did not provide a satisfactory model for
female authority, Elizabeth had to improvise a new model, one that
would overcome the considerable cultural liability of her sex.
The monarch was at the pinnacle of the state, but that state was
relatively impoverished and weak, without a standing army, an
efficient police force, or a highly developed, effective bureaucracy.
Under these difficult circumstances, Elizabeth developed a strategy
of rule that blended imperious command with an extravagant,
histrionic cult of love.
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The Queen’s relations with the Parliament
A blend of charm and imperiousness
characterized the queen’s relations with
Parliament, on which she had to depend for
revenue. Elizabeth had a rare gift for combining
calculated displays of intransigence with equally
calculated displays of graciousness and, on rare
occasions, a prudent willingness to concede.
Whenever possible, she transformed the
language of politics into the language of love,
likening herself to the spouse or the mother of
her kingdom.
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The Queen’s Image
She possessed a vast repertory of fantastically elaborate dresses and
rich jewels. Her passion for dress was bound up with political
calculation and an acute self-consciousness about her image. She
tried to control the royal portraits that circulated widely in England
and abroad, and her appearances in public were dazzling displays of
wealth and magnificence.
“She imagined that the people, who are much influenced by
externals, would be diverted by the glitter of her jewels, from
noticing the decay of her personal attractions.” wrote Francis Bacon
a few years after the queen’s death.
10
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She suffered from bouts of melancholy and ill health and showed signs of
increasing debility. Having reportedly indicated James VI of Scotland as
her successor, Elizabeth died quietly. The nation enthusiastically
welcomed its new king. But in a very few years the English began to
express nostalgia for the rule of “Good Queen Bess.” Long before her
death she had transformed herself into a powerful image of female
authority, regal magnificence, and national pride, and that image has
endured to the present.
During the long reign (1558–1603) of Elizabeth I, England emerged as a
world power and her presence helped unify the country against foreign
enemies. Her reign is often defined in terms of her skillful diplomacy, her
action on religious matters, and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, Her
reign also saw a brilliant flourishing in the arts.
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Queen Elizabeth I

also known as The Virgin Queen and

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