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Elizabeth I is crowned Queen of England on January 15, 1559 at Westminster Abbey, She was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed two and a half years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother, Edward VI, bequeathed the crown to Lady Jane Grey, cutting his two half-sisters, Elizabeth and the Catholic Mary, out of the succession. His will was set aside, Mary became queen, and Lady Jane Grey was executed. In 1558, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Elizabeth set
out to rule by good counsel, and she depended heavily on a group of trusted
advisers. One of her first moves as
queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church. In government,
Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of
her mottoes was "video et taceo" ("I see, and say
nothing"). In religion she was relatively tolerant, avoiding systematic
persecution. After 1570, when the pope declared her illegitimate and released
her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life.
All plots were defeated, however, with the help of her ministers' secret
service. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, moving between the major
powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of
ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France,
and Ireland. In the mid-1580s, war with Spain could no longer be avoided, and
when Spain finally decided to attempt to conquer England in 1588, the failure
of the Spanish Armada associated her with one of the greatest victories in
English history.
Elizabeth's
reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English
drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe,
and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Sir Francis Drake.
Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems
weakened her popularity. After the short reigns of Elizabeth's half-siblings,
her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and
helped forge a sense of national identity. She died on March 24, 1603 at Richmond
Palace and was buried at Westminster Abbey alongside her half sister Mary I. She was suceeded to the throne of England by her Scottish cousin James I, the first monarch of the Stuart dynasty.
Michael Thomas Barry is the author of Great Britain’s Royal Tombs: A
Guide to the Lives and Burial Places of British Monarchs. It can be purchased
from Amazon through the following links:
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