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Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was queen of England and Ireland from 1558 to 1603.

She preserved stability in a nation rent by political and religious dissension

and maintained the authority of the Crown against the growing pressures of

Parliament.

Born at Greenwich, on September 7, 1533, Elizabeth I was the daughter of

Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Because of her father's continuing

search for a male heir, Elizabeth's early life was precarious. In May 1536 her

mother was beheaded to clear the way for Henry's third marriage, and on July 1,

Parliament declared that Elizabeth and her older sister, Mary, the daughter of

Henry's first queen, were illegitimate and that the succession should pass to

the issue of his third wife, Jane Seymour. Jane did produce a male heir, Edward,

but even though Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate, she was brought up in

the royal household. She received an excellent education and was reputed to be

remarkably precocious, notably in languages (of which she learned Latin, French,

and Italian) and music.

Edward VI and Mary

During the short reign of her brother, Edward VI, Elizabeth survived

precariously, especially in 1549 when the principal persons in her household

were arrested and she was to all practical purposes a prisoner at Hatfield. In

this period she experienced ill health but pursued her studies under her tutor,

Roger Ascham.

In 1553, following the death of Edward VI, her sister Mary I came to the

throne with the intention of leading the country back to Catholicism. The young

Elizabeth found herself involved in the complicated intrigue that accompanied

these changes. Without her knowledge the Protestant Sir Thomas Wyatt plotted to

put her on the throne by overthrowing Mary. The rebellion failed, and though

Elizabeth maintained her innocence, she was sent to the Tower. After two months

she was released against the wishes of Mary's advisers and was removed to an old

royal palace at Woodstock. In 1555 she was brought to Hampton Court, still in

custody, but on October 18 was allowed to take up residence at Hatfield, where

she resumed her studies with Ascham.

On November 17, 1558, Mary died, and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne.

Elizabeth's reign would historically be revered as a golden age, when England

began to assert itself internationally through the mastery of sea power. The

condition of the country seemed far different, however, when she came to the

throne. A contemporary noted: "The Queen poor. The realm exhausted. The nobility

poor and decayed. Want of good captains and soldiers. The people out of order.

Justice not executed." Both internationally and internally, the condition of the

country was far from stable.

At the age of 25 Elizabeth was a rather tall and well-poised woman; what she

lacked in feminine warmth, she made up for in the worldly wisdom she had gained

from a difficult and unhappy youth. It is significant that one of her first

actions as queen was to appoint Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) as her

chief secretary. Cecil was to remain her closest adviser; like Elizabeth, he was

a political pragmatist, cautious and essentially conservative. They both

appreciated England's limited position in the face of France and Spain, and both

knew that the key to England's success lay in balancing the two great

Continental powers off against each other, so that neither could bring its full

force to bear against England.

The Succession

Since Elizabeth was unmarried, the question of the succession and the actions

of other claimants to the throne bulked large. She toyed with a large number of

suitors, including Philip II of Spain; Eric of Sweden; Adolphus, Duke of

Holstein; and the Archduke Charles. From her first Parliament she received a

petition concerning her marriage. Her answer was, in effect, her final one:

"this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a

Queen, having reigned such a time died a virgin." But it would be many years

before the search for a suitable husband ended, and the Parliament reconciled

itself to the fact that the Queen would not marry.

Elizabeth maintained what many thought were dangerously close relations with

her favorite, Robert Dudley, whom she raised to the earldom of Leicester. She

abandoned this flirtation when scandal arising from the mysterious death of

Dudley's wife in 1560 made the connection politically disadvantageous. In the

late 1570s and early 1580s she was courted in turn by the French Duke of Anjou

and the Duke of Alen?on. But by the mid-1580s it was clear she would not

marry.

Many have praised Elizabeth for her skillful handling of the courtships. To

be sure, her hand was perhaps her greatest diplomatic weapon, and any one of the

proposed marriages, if carried out, would have had strong repercussions on

English foreign relations. By refusing to marry, Elizabeth could further her

general policy of balancing the Continental powers. Against this must be set the

realization that it was a very dangerous policy. Had Elizabeth succumbed to

illness, as she nearly did early in her reign, or had any one of the many

assassination plots against her succeeded, the country would have been plunged

into the chaos of a disputed succession. That the accession of James I on her

death was peaceful was due as much to the luck of her survival as it was to the

wisdom of her policy.

Religious Settlement

England had experienced both a sharp swing to Protestantism under Edward VI

and a Catholic reaction under Mary. The question of the nature of the Church

needed to be settled immediately, and it was hammered out in Elizabeth's first

Parliament in 1559. A retention of Catholicism was not politically feasible, as

the events of Mary's reign showed, but the settlement achieved in 1559

represented something more of a Puritan victory than the Queen desired. The

settlement enshrined in the Acts of Supremacy and Conformity may in the long run

have worked out as a compromise, but in 1559 it indicated to Elizabeth that her

control of Parliament was not complete.

Though the settlement achieved in 1559 remained essentially unchanged

throughout Elizabeth's reign, the conflict over religion was not stilled. The

Church of England, of which Elizabeth stood as supreme governor, was attacked by

both Catholics and Puritans. Estimates of Catholic strength in Elizabethan

England are difficult to make, but it is clear that a number of Englishmen

remained at least residual Catholics. Because of the danger of a Catholic rising

against the Crown on behalf of the rival claimant, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was

in custody in England from 1568 until her execution in 1587, Parliament pressed

the Queen repeatedly for harsher legislation to control the recusants. It is

apparent that the Queen resisted, on the whole successfully, these pressures for

political repression of the English Catholics. While the legislation against the

Catholics did become progressively sterner, the Queen was able to mitigate the

severity of its enforcement and retain the patriotic loyalty of many Englishmen

who were Catholic in sympathy.

For their part the Puritans waged a long battle in the Church, in Parliament,

and in the country at large to make the religious settlement more radical. Under

the influence of leaders like Thomas Cartwright and John Field, and supported in

Parliament by the brothers Paul and Peter Wentworth, the Puritans subjected the

Elizabethan religious settlement to great stress.

The Queen found that she could control Parliament through the agency of her

privy councilors and the force of her own personality. It was, however, some

time before she could control the Church and the countryside as effectively. It

was only with the promotion of John Whitgift to the archbishopric of Canterbury

that she found her most effective clerical weapon against the Puritans. With

apparent royal support but some criticism from Burghley, Whitgift was able to

use the machinery of the Church courts to curb the Puritans. By the 1590s the

Puritan movement was in some considerable disarray. Many of its prominent

patrons were dead, and by the publication of the bitterly satirical Marprelate

Tracts, some Puritan leaders brought the movement into general disfavor.