Elizabeth I

I

Introduction

Elizabeth I (1533-1603), queen of England and Ireland (1558-1603), daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was the longest-reigning English monarch in nearly two centuries and the first woman to successfully occupy the English throne. Called Glorianna and Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth enjoyed enormous popularity during her life and became an even greater legend after her death.

Elizabeth’s reign was marked by her effective use of Parliament and the Privy Council, a small advisory body of the important state officials, and by the development of legal institutions in the English counties. Elizabeth firmly established Protestantism in England, encouraged English enterprise and commerce, and defended the nation against the powerful Spanish naval force known as the Spanish Armada. Her reign was noted for the English Renaissance, an outpouring of poetry and drama led by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and Christopher Marlowe that remains unsurpassed in English literary history (see English Literature). She was the last of the Tudor monarchs, never marrying or producing an heir, and was succeeded by her closest relative, James VI of Scotland.

II

Background and Early Life

Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace in London on September 7, 1533. Her parents, Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, wanted a son as heir and were not pleased with the birth of a daughter. When she was two her mother was beheaded for adultery, and Elizabeth was exiled from court. She was later placed under the protection of Catherine Parr, Henry’s sixth wife, and educated in the same household as her half-brother, Edward. Both were raised Protestant. The noted scholar Roger Ascham later served as her tutor, and he educated her as a potential heir to the throne rather than as an insignificant daughter of the monarch. Elizabeth underwent rigorous training in Greek, Latin, rhetoric, and philosophy and was an intellectually gifted pupil.

Edward VI succeeded his father in 1547 at the age of nine. Because of her position as a member of the royal family, Elizabeth became a pawn in the intrigues of the nobles who governed in the boy’s name. One of them twice proposed marriage to her. When her Roman Catholic half-sister, Mary I, inherited the crown in 1553, Elizabeth faced different dangers. She was now sought out to lead Protestant conspiracies, despite the fact that she had supported Mary’s accession and attended Catholic services. In 1554 Mary had Elizabeth imprisoned in the Tower of London, briefly threatened her with execution, and then placed her under house arrest. Elizabeth lived quietly at her family’s country retreat north of London until she became queen upon her sister’s death in 1558. Elizabeth’s experiences as a child and young adult helped her develop keen political instincts that allowed her to skillfully balance aristocratic factions and court favorites during her long reign.

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III

Elizabethan Economy

The nation that Elizabeth inherited was experiencing a steady increase in population. During the 16th century the population of England and Wales would roughly double, and by Elizabeth’s death in 1603 would reach 5 million. The continued population growth placed strains on the economy, which was made worse by serious harvest failures in every decade of Elizabeth’s reign. Prices for food and clothing skyrocketed in what became known as the Great Inflation. The 1590s were the worst years of the century, marked by starvation, epidemic disease, and roving bands of vagrants looking for work.

Elizabeth’s government enacted legislation known as the Poor Laws, which made every local parish responsible for its own poor, created workhouses, and severely punished homeless beggars. Parliament also passed bills to ensure fair prices in times of shortage and to regulate wages in times of unemployment. One of the queen’s most important economic decisions was to issue a new currency that contained a standard amount of precious metal. This raised confidence in the currency and also allowed businesses to enter into long-term financial contracts.

During Elizabeth’s reign, England expanded trade overseas and the merchant community grew. Private shipbuilding boomed and navigational advances made long sea voyages safer. England’s chief commodity was woolen cloth, traded mostly at the Dutch port of Antwerp for finished goods and such luxuries as French wines. Cloth exports grew over the course of the reign, but suffered from competition from finer Spanish products and from Antwerp’s decline after its harbor silted up and became impassable by the mid-1560s. In the 1560s financier Sir Thomas Gresham founded the Royal Exchange to help merchants find secure markets for their goods.

At the same time, new enterprises like the Muscovy Company were chartered to find outlets for English products. In 1600 the government granted the English East India Company a monopoly to trade in Asia, Africa, and America. The desire to expand overseas trade was also a motive in the ventures of English explorers such as Sir Francis Drake, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Sir Walter Raleigh. Such adventurers established the first English outposts in North America.

IV

Elizabethan Religion

Elizabeth’s accession marked the final change in the nation’s official religion. Her father and half-brother established Protestantism in England, but her half-sister, Mary, attempted forcibly to restore Catholicism. As Henry VIII’s reign had terrorized Catholics, so Mary’s persecuted Protestants. Under Mary, prominent Protestant clergymen were either executed or they fled abroad. The power of the pope was reestablished in England, though even Mary could do nothing to restore the church lands sold off during Henry’s reign.

Elizabeth inherited a highly charged religious situation, which she handled with great skill. Although there was never any doubt she would return England to Protestantism, Elizabeth had to contend with opposition from both Catholics and radical Protestants. Catholic bishops and peers controlled the House of Lords and fought Elizabeth’s first attempts to bring back Protestantism. Protestants exiled under the reign of Mary I returned to England, and many brought with them new and radical Protestant ideas, especially those of John Calvin, a French religious reformer. Calvin stressed the importance of predestination, the belief that salvation was predetermined for some people and not for others. Calvin also wanted the clergy to play a less important role in the state church and to concern themselves with preaching the gospel rather than in becoming bishops.

Under Elizabeth, England again broke with the pope, Catholic services were forbidden, priests were allowed to marry, and relics and decorations were removed from the churches. In attempting to diffuse the religious situation, Elizabeth tried to accommodate Catholic sensibilities in matters she judged less essential. She used Parliament to establish the official doctrine of the new church, which ensured that the voice of Catholic peers would be heard. Under the Act of Supremacy, she assumed the title of Supreme Governor of the Church, rather than the title of Supreme Head, a move to placate critics because Supreme Governor sounded less powerful. She would not allow retaliation against those who had assisted Mary, and she treated with some leniency those who refused to swear an oath to her supremacy.

The English form of Protestantism was defined in part by two measures enacted during Elizabeth’s reign—the Act of Uniformity of 1559 and the Thirty-nine Articles of 1563. The Act of Uniformity established a common prayer book and set the basic ceremonies of the church. The Thirty-nine Articles established religious doctrine that governed the church until the English Revolution in the 1640s. Both acts were compromises that favored the views of more conservative or moderate Protestant groups.

Elizabeth viewed the church as an inseparable part of her monarchy and would not tolerate challenges to it. Such challenges came from both Catholics, who clung to the old faith and plotted to remove the queen, and from Puritans, radical Protestants who wanted to abolish all traces of Catholicism (see Puritanism).

Catholic challenges and plots persisted through much of Elizabeth’s reign, and Elizabeth reacted to them strongly. In 1569 a group of powerful Catholic nobles in northern England rose in rebellion but were savagely repressed. The northern earls were executed, their property and those of their followers was confiscated, and their heirs were deprived of their inheritance. In 1570 the pope excommunicated Elizabeth, sanctioning Catholic efforts to dethrone her. In 1571 an international conspiracy was uncovered to assassinate her in favor of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Although Mary was beheaded in 1587 after years of being at the center of Catholic plots against Elizabeth, such plots did not end until England defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588.

Elizabeth’s battles against the Puritans were less conclusive. She suspended Archbishop of Canterbury Edmund Grindal when he would not punish Puritans who refused to kneel or make the sign of the cross. She also imprisoned a member of Parliament in 1576 for introducing a bill to change the prayer book, and she refused to accept the Lambeth Articles of 1595, which contained a Calvinist, and more radical, interpretation of the doctrine of predestination. But Elizabeth’s efforts did not stop the Puritans from criticizing the established church, attacking bishops, and converting others to their views. The significance of the Elizabethan religious settlement is that it was able to hold the vast majority of the people together, despite being a compromise few would have chosen.

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