Elizabeth I
- History Fix Podcast
- 1 day ago
- 22 min read
Episode 158 How a Disappointing Girl Became the Quintessential Queen
The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I painted by an anonymous artist circa 1588.
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I have talked about a lot of Tudors. If you want to go back and do some digging, I have episodes about the War of the Roses and Richard III which explain how the original Tudor monarch, Henry VII, won the throne on the battlefield without much of a claim at all, beginning the unlikely Tudor dynasty. I have episodes about his son, Henry VIII, of course, and all of his six wives. I have an episode about Mary I, eldest daughter of Henry VIII and the first queen regnant of England. I’ve even talked about Frances Grey, Henry VIII’s niece and mother to Lady Jane Grey. I’ve talked about Shakespeare. I’ve talked about the Roanoke Colonies and Sir Walter Raleigh multiple times. And if you really want to dig deep, I even have a mini fix over on Patreon about the Seymour Scandal involving the young princess Elizabeth. However, for whatever reason, I have not yet dedicated a full episode to who that princess would go on to become: Queen Elizabeth I. It’s time to change that. Because Elizabeth’s name keeps coming up for a reason. Her story is nothing short of remarkable. I mean, the greatest of literary geniuses could not have penned it better. Born an utter disappointment to literally everyone and declared illegitimate after her mother’s execution, disinherited as a toddler, the future throne snatched out from under her, Elizabeth would go on to shatter all possible expectations and would end her 44 year reign as one of the most beloved and successful queens, nay monarchs, the world has ever known. How? Let’s fix that.
Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix where I tell surprising true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. It is way way way time to talk about Elizabeth I. Elizabeth is History Fix because who she became and what she was able to achieve in her lifetime, was in such stark contrast, it so sharply contradicted, just absolutely demolished all expectations for women, but really specifically for her and the particular circumstances of her birth. If you would have told Henry VIII in 1536 what his then motherless 2 year old daughter would go on to do and the achieve in the name of England, there’s no way he would have believed any of it. And so, really I think I’m drawn to the story of Elizabeth because it teaches us to check our expectations. You can think what you want, have all the preconceived notions you want, predict whatever outcome you want but history will continue to surprise us, throw us plot twists, curve balls nonetheless. Elizabeth was one of those curve balls. And, like all curve balls I suppose, she did really incredible and also really damaging things during her lifetime, depending on which jersey you’re wearing of course.
But before we get any deeper into Elizabeth, I want to remind you that in my absence last week I released another mini fix episode over on Patreon about the 1986 Challenger disaster when the Challenger space shuttle erupted into flames 73 seconds after takeoff, killing all seven people on board while many school children tuned in live. Turns out that catastrophe was completely avoidable. If you didn’t realize that you really should tune in. You can listen to that whole 20 something minute long mini fix at patreon.com/historyfix podcast which is always linked in the description.
So, to really understand the circumstances of Elizabeth’s birth, we have to backtrack quite a bit. And if you listened to episodes 19 and 20 about Henry VIII and his six wives then you understand a lot of this context already. But if you didn’t or if you need a refresher, allow me to explain. Elizabeth was born on September 7, 1533, the daughter of England’s King Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn. A lot had gone down already though leading up to the moment of Elizabeth’s birth. Henry had previously been married for something like 24 years to his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Catherine was a princess of Spain, youngest daughter of the great Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, who were most well known for sending Christopher Columbus and driving the Moors out of Spain. So Catherine was royalty through and through and she was betrothed to marry Henry’s older brother Arthur pretty much since she was born. She did in fact marry Arthur Tudor when she was 16 years old. However, Arthur died 5 months later of sweating sickness which is this mysterious illness that I promise to dig into further one day. Anyway, Catherine eventually remarried Henry and they became king and queen of England when Henry VII died. Henry and Catherine reportedly had a very happy marriage and appeared to be quite in love. However, they faced one major issue as a couple: their inability to produce a male heir to the throne. And I say their, of course, but at the time, the blame for this would have been entirely on Catherine. Her childbearing journey is actually incredibly tragic. She was believed to have been pregnant 6 times between 1510 and 1518. The first pregnancy in 1510 resulted in a stillborn daughter. The next year, 1511 she gave birth to a son named Henry who survived for 52 days after his birth before dying. Two years later in 1513 she had another son who died soon after birth. And then 1514 a stillborn son. In 1516, she gave birth to their only surviving child Mary, a girl. And then one final loss in 1518, a baby girl who died shortly after birth.
Now, you have to keep in mind that, at this point, England has never had a queen rule in her own right. They have had queen consorts, of course, the wives of kings, but they have never had a queen regnant who actually ruled the country, and honestly they did not even believe it was possible. They did not believe that women were capable. Now, from Catherine’s perspective though, you have to realize, her mother, Isabella of Castile was a queen regnant. She ruled in her own right over in Spain so this whole no queens thing was a bit of a foreign concept to Catherine. I feel like it may have even been a bit difficult for her to really understand why Henry was so desperate for a son, why the birth of a healthy daughter, Mary, wasn’t cutting it. Because in Spain, Mary would have been enough. Her grandmother Isabella was proof of that. But in England, Mary doesn’t cut it.
Catherine has that final baby in 1518 who does not survive and then nothing. She does not become pregnant again after that, that we know of. In Henry’s mind, this is a catastrophe. He’s about to completely drop the ball on this Tudor dynasty that his father just started. He’s only the second Tudor monarch. He can’t possibly be the last. He can’t be the one to end the dynasty. So, long story short, and go back and listen to episode 19 if you want more details on this, but Henry ends up divorcing Catherine. Now, the Catholic Church, because England is a Catholic country at this point. The Catholic Church will not grant the divorce. The pope is very loyal to Spain, Catherine is a Spanish princess, her nephew is currently ruling Spain. Pope says no way. So Henry takes drastic action in the form of breaking with the Catholic Church and establishing a new protestant church, the Church of England, of which he is the head. This will send absolute shockwaves out throughout the rest of history but it does allow Henry to grant himself his own divorce from Catherine and he marries his pretty young mistress, Anne Boleyn. Now, you have to understand, Anne was in no way a proper marriage prospect for the king of England. Her family, her father, her uncle, her brother, they were courtiers in Henry’s court, but they really did not have the titles and the level of nobility required to marry into the royal family. So this is quite shocking to the public. I mean they loved Catherine. They really really loved Catherine. In the eyes of England, she was their true queen and no one, certainly not this bimbo was going to replace her. And Anne faced a lot of ridicule and even threats from the public throughout her relationship with Henry. She was not well liked at all.
But, she did become pregnant right away which had to have been very exciting for Henry. He needed a male heir and here was Anne, obviously very fertile. However, Anne did not give birth to a boy as everyone, for some reason, just sort of expected. She gave birth instead to a little fiery red headed girl she named Elizabeth after Henry’s mother. Despite this being their first child of presumably many, Henry did little to hide his disappointment. The usual celebrations that would happen at court over the birth of a royal child were muted. According to ambassador Eustace Chapuys (Shap-wee) they were quote “very cold and disagreeable… and there has been no thought of having the bonfires and rejoicings usual in such cases.” In fact, they were so sure that the baby would be a boy that they had already written birth announcements with the word prince on them and someone was tasked with the job of adding double esses to all the princes to make them read princess. It was embarrassing honestly at this point for Henry to have a daughter. He was being judged by the entire world for what he had done, breaking with the Catholic Church, divorcing his wife of 24 years, they were judging him hard. And here he was with yet another daughter. So, to say that Elizabeth’s birth was a disappointment is almost an understatement. However, at the time she is declared next in line for the throne, ahead of her older half sister Mary who was 17 when Elizabeth was born and had disinherited when her father divorced her mother.
But, that won’t last long for Elizabeth. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, fails to produce any more living children, suffering probably 3 miscarriages after Elizabeth, the third and final of which was definitely a boy. So this really ruins her relationship with Henry who begins to believe that their entire marriage is cursed and he ends up having her convicted of high treason which included adultery with at least 5 different men, incest with her brother, and plotting to kill Henry. Were any of those charges true… probably not. Was Henry himself committing adultery left and right, yes literally nonstop, but whatever. Anne was beheaded for these crimes on May 19, 1536, just 4 months after that final misscarriage, when Elizabeth was 2 years and 8 months old. And so what did this mean for Elizabeth? She was declared illegitimate and removed from the royal line of succession. Her title was downgraded from Princess Elizabeth to Lady Elizabeth and she’s sort of sent off to live away from court. Her older half sister Mary, who is pushing 20 years old at this point, is like “wah,” right, she’s already had all this happen to her shortly after Elizabeth’s birth.
Henry marries his third wife Jane Seymour less than a week after Anne is executed and it’s Jane who will give Henry his only surviving legitimate son, Edward. Elizabeth was actually allowed to attend Edward’s christening in 1537 when she was 5 years old. She was part of the procession to the chapel and got to carry the ceremonial baptism cloth as Edward’s illegitimate half sister. But, besides that, she was mostly sort of neglected through the next several wives. It’s not until Henry gets to his sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, that Elizabeth is sort of pulled back into the family. Catherine encourages Henry to reconcile with both Mary and Elizabeth and he actually adds them back to the line of succession after Edward, so it went Edward, Mary, and then Elizabeth.
Catherine Parr seemed to have a positive influence on Elizabeth. Historic Royal Palaces writes quote “In 1544, Elizabeth spent a happy summer at Hampton Court, watching her stepmother act as Regent. Elizabeth arrived at court to find Katherine exercising full powers in her husband’s absence; for the first time in Elizabeth's life, a Queen presided over the court. This summer would profoundly influence the young princess, the same year she was restored to the succession,” end quote. Catherine also ensured that Elizabeth was highly educated. She could speak six languages fluently by the time she was 11 years old: English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and Flemish. Later in life she would also add Scottish, Irish, and Cornish. So that right there, speaking 9 languages, girl was not dumb. She was clearly very intelligent. And Katherine ensured that she was trained by the best tutors. She paid special attention to the study of rhetoric, or public speaking, which would aid Elizabeth tremendously later in her life.
When Henry died in 1547, Catherine got remarried to her true love who actually really sucked, Thomas Seymour. Thomas Seymour was Henry’s third wife Jane Seymour’s brother which also made him uncle to the now king Edward VI, Henry’s only son, who was just 9 years old. Elizabeth is 13 and Catherine has her come live with her and her new husband at Sudeley Castle. Except, if you listened to my mini fix about the Seymour Scandal, mini fix number 22, you know this arrangement is a bit of a disaster. Because Thomas Seymour preys on young Elizabeth pretty much from the start with near constant sexual harassment and abuse. There’s a lot to it, check out mini fix number 22 for more, but ultimately, Catherine dies in childbirth in 1548 and Thomas Seymour is arrested and executed for treason for trying to marry Elizabeth and kidnap his nephew the king, Edward VI. He’s essentially plotting to put himself on the throne which is, yeah, that’s treason. So they chop his head off and Elizabeth is embroiled in this whole scandal and is forced to defend herself and try to prove that she wasn’t complicit, like she wasn’t in some sort of sordid love affair with her creepy step uncle willingly at the age of like 14. Give me a break. It seems she learned some valuable lessons through this terrible experience though that she would carry with her and that would, in many ways, define her future reign. Professor Susannah Lipscomb writes for History Extra quote “As a result of Seymour’s actions, Elizabeth knew that when a man came a-courting, he would have one eye on her and one on the throne, and she was determined not to let any of them get their hands on it, or her,” end quote. This will come into play later in a big way.
In 1553, little brother Edward VI died at the age of 15 which should have, according to how Henry left things, it should have left Mary the throne. However, his regent, a man by the name of John Dudley sort of pulled some strings and got Edward to change the line of succession right before he died, putting his cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey on the throne. Jane also happened to be married to John Dudley’s son so there were definitely some ulterior motives here. Anyway, more on that in episode 124 about Frances Grey, to sum things up. Mary and Elizabeth were not cool with Jane swooping in and snagging their throne so, in a moment of true sister solidarity, they teamed up, Mary was 37 and Elizabeth was 20 years old at this point and they basically gathered the support of the countrymen and stormed into London side by side on horseback and were like “it’s Mary’s. Give it to Mary.” And they did, which is pretty crazy actually.
So big sister Mary became Queen Mary I, the first ever queen regnant of England. Check out episode 107 for more specifics there. The main takeaway is that Mary plans to return England to Catholicism. Remember her father only did away with it to begin with so that he could divorce her mother and illegitimize her. So she’s like, yeah screw that, we’re reinstating the Catholic church. She’s also, shes’ 37 when she takes the throne so she has very little time left to produce an heir. So first order of business is for Mary to get married and have children. She makes plans to marry Prince Philip of Spain. Philip is her cousin once removed. This marriage is quite unpopular in England. They’ve never had a queen regnant before. They don’t know how this works. What happens when she gets married? Does her husband then take over and rule the country? We can’t let this Spanish guy rule England. Is she giving England to Spain. No, that’s not how that works, but they didn’t know, as I said they had never had a queen regnant before. So anyway, Mary’s upcoming marriage to Philip of Spain and plans to return the country to Catholicism spark a lot of controversy, including one rebellion in particular called Wyatt’s Rebellion that seeks to overthrow Mary and put protestant Elizabeth on the throne instead. Now, this rebellion is stopped and the guys in charge are executed for treason. But there is a question of whether or not Elizabeth was involved. She stood to gain the throne if the rebellion was successful after all. Was she part of it. I don’t think so. But Mary couldn’t be too sure so she actually has Elizabeth arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London for a time following the rebellion. Tracy Borman, Chief Historian of Historic Royal Palaces says quote “It was such a dangerous time for Elizabeth and she was almost executed…Mary waited until a certain date to release her sister, the 19th of May, the anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution. Elizabeth was so sure she was going to go the same way that she thought of writing to Mary and asking for a sword. To behead her just as her mother had had,” end quote. Which is much better than an ax. But Elizabeth is not executed. They find no evidence that she was involved in the rebellion and she is released from the tower. But Mary is still wary of her so Elizabeth is put on, essentially house arrest for another year after that.
In 1558 Mary dies childless which leaves Elizabeth in line for the throne at 25 years old. BBC writes quote “Elizabeth has inherited a country wracked by religious strife and knows she needs public support to remain queen. The celebrations for the coronation the following year are spectacular. As her procession makes its way through London on its way to Westminster she pauses to listen to congratulations and receive flowers from ordinary people on the street,” end quote. But she is up against a lot, a lot of discrimination towards women in power. Mary’s reign did nothing to help that. Mary was quite, and probably unfairly unpopular. According to Historic Royal Palaces quote “As Queen, Elizabeth I’s greatest difficulty was her sex. The Protestant revolution had done nothing to dispel the view of women as ‘the weaker vessel’ (a phrase used in one of the first English Bibles) during the Tudor period. The Scottish preacher John Knox had written an essay on the [quote] ‘monstrous regiment of women’, blaming them for most of the unrest and division of European politics. The brief reign of Mary I, Elizabeth’s sister, cursed by religious persecution and subservience to Spain, was, he claimed, resounding proof. But Elizabeth brought a more practical, more politically astute, form of queenship to the throne. She promised in her first speech as Queen to rule, [quote] 'by good advice and counsel',” end quote. And so that’s what she tried to do and she was quite popular because of it. She also returned the country to protestantism. But she wasn’t super strict about the way people worshipped taking a, what BBC calls a quote “pragmatic view of her subjects’ personal faith.” She said that she refused to quote “make windows into men's souls ... there is only one Jesus Christ and all the rest is a dispute over trifles,” end quote. Meaning she wasn’t going to poke and pry and make sure that everyone was worshipping the right way. She was going to sort of let things go and she hoped that would help with all the religious turmoil of late.
One of the main concerns immediately when Elizabeth became queen was who she was going to marry. The Tudors hadn’t produced a lasting male heir in 68 years and Elizabeth was really their last shot at it, at continuing the Tudor dynasty. But there really weren’t many good marriage prospects for Elizabeth. A foreign marriage like to a Spanish or French guy seemed out of the question because it had been so unpopular with Mary, this English distrust of foreign king consorts which was a concept they didn’t even understand, the king consort. So that means she would have to marry an English noblemen of sorts. The obvious choice is Robert Dudley who was quite handsome and charismatic and also Elizabeth’s childhood friend. If the name Dudley sounds familiar it’s because Robert Dudley was the fifth son of John Dudley who was the one who plotted to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne after Edward died. John Dudley had been executed for that when Mary took back the throne. Robert was imprisoned for it but later released. So Elizabeth and Robert are tight. They’d been friends since childhood, they both spent time imprisoned in the Tower under Mary’s reign. Now Robert is Elizabeth’s master of horse and frequent dancing partner at court. There are rumors that they are even lovers but none of that has ever been, nor really could it be substantiated at this point. So Robert seems perfect, right? Marry Robert. Well, the problem there is that Robert is already married. That is, he’s married until 1560 when his wife, Amy, falls down a staircase at a friend’s house and dies. Yeah. Super suspicious death. They write it off as a suicide actually, of all things. They say she was terminally ill and took her own life by hurling herself down the staircase. I have never heard of someone committing suicide that way, death by staircase. But yeah, I mean, I guess it’s possible. It’s a little too convenient for Robert and Elizabeth though, no? But, you know, they don’t get married. They don’t get married even after Amy’s death. Which is probably smart because rumors are flying left and right that Robert had his wife murdered in order to marry Elizabeth, his lover, and so actually getting married at this point would be a PR disaster.
So they don’t get married and actually, Elizabeth never marries anyone. She had a lot of close male friends and there are a lot of rumors that she had love affairs with some of them, Robert Dudley, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Robert Devereux, but once again, there’s no way to prove any of that. What we do know is that she very intentionally never got married despite immense pressure from parliament to do so. They actually say they’re going to refuse to give her any more funds unless she gets married. And she tells them you know, “stay out of my personal life. The country is my priority, not marriage,” and she actually uses her skills in rhetoric, in public speaking to sort of smooth this over and get away with not getting married. And I think, you know, I think she resisted marriage because she didn’t want to share her power. She lived in this really patriarchal society where wives were subservient to their husbands. Marriage would mean that a man would have some form of power over her, maybe not as king, but as her husband, and she didn’t want that. But also, you have to consider, she couldn’t have had a very positive view of marriage. Look at the way her father had torn through wives, using and abusing these women. Marriage could not have been viewed as a loving, sacred, union to Elizabeth. It was a disaster. That was really her only context of marriage. Every marriage she had ever witnessed had been, more or less, a disaster.
During Elizabeth’s reign we see theatre flourish in England with Shakespeare and the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. We also see exploration. We see England getting in on the colonization of the Americas which Spain really has dominated since Ferdinand and Isabella first sent Columbus back in 1492. Elizabeth sends three groups to the coast of what is now North Carolina in 1584, 1585, and 1587 in order to establish a colony for England that she can use as a jumping off point, essentially to attack Spanish ships as they return to Spain laden with Incan and Aztec gold. If you’re familiar with the history of the Roanoke Colonies, you know these attempts end in failure for England, episodes 27, 28 and 114. And a lot of that has to do with a war with Spain that begins in 1585. Now, ironically, the King of Spain in 1585 is Philip II, who was married to Elizabeth’s sister Mary. So she goes to war with her brother in law for a lot of reasons, religious differences, piracy, English privateers attacking Spanish ships, stuff like that.
In 1587 some stuff goes down between Elizabeth and her cousin once removed Mary Queen of Scots. Mary was the granddaughter of Henry VIII’s sister Margaret. She had fled Scotland back in 1568 after some drama over a dead husband. Basically her husband was murdered and then she married the guy who everyone believed had murdered her husband. Kind of the whole reason Elizabeth and Robert Dudley never got married, but Mary Queen of Scots made this mistake and then was forced to flee to England to seek protection from her cousin Elizabeth. Mary was Catholic though and this posed a problem for Elizabeth’s very protestant reign. As the great granddaughter of Henry VII, Elizabeth was his granddaughter, Mary also had a claim to the English throne, weaker but still a claim. So she spent her time in England basically under house arrest to ensure that she couldn’t organize some kind of coup to overthrow Elizabeth. They were especially worried about this because Mary had a son, she had an heir and Elizabeth didn’t. As expected, Mary does become involved in a Catholic plot to overthrow Elizabeth. This was called the Babington Plot and Mary did actually seem to be guilty. She had given her consent to a plan to assassinate Elizabeth and take the throne herself and these encoded letters had been intercepted and decoded. With this kind of evidence, Mary was tried, found guilty of treason, and executed, beheaded in February of 1587. There is some question of whether or not Elizabeth approved Mary’s execution. She maintained adamantly that she did not. She had, we know, she had signed a death warrant for Mary. But according to Historic Royal Palaces quote “She later claimed that she had told her secretary William Davison not to issue the signed warrant to her councillors without her order. When told that Mary was dead just over a week later, Elizabeth flew into such a rage that William Cecil begged to lay at her feet, to catch [quote] ‘drops of your mercy to quench my sorrowful, panting heart.’ When interrogated in the Tower of London, however, Davison described Elizabeth’s ‘smiling countenance’ as she gave him permission to deliver the signed warrant in secret. Davison’s defence was in vain; Elizabeth pinned the blame squarely on him and kept him imprisoned at the Tower. In the aftermath, Elizabeth painted herself as the sorrowful victim of her councillors’ rash actions; she wore mourning clothes and took to her bed in a show of sorrow. She wrote to James VI of Scotland to express her innocence at the ‘miserable accident’ of his mother’s death. Was Elizabeth’s show of grief genuine, or just an attempt to avoid international backlash? We might never know,” end quote.
But, whoever was responsible for the death of Mary Queen of Scots, it certainly angered Spain who was already at war with England. Mary was a Catholic queen. They would have loved to see Mary claim the English throne. But, instead, Elizabeth had chopped her head off, and cousin Philip was not pleased. It’s very possible the execution of Mary Queen of Scots helped prompt the Spanish Armada to invade and attack England. And this is what has Elizabeth very busy when John White returns in 1587 for supplies to bring back to the Roanoke colony. He is unable to get a ship on which to return because they are all needed to defend against the Spanish Armada. It takes him 3 years to get a ship to return and, by then, the colonists are long gone. Most likely, they moved to Hatteras Island to live with the Indigenous people there as recent evidence suggests… episode 114.
England eventually does defeat the Spanish Armada which is a major major victory of Elizabeth’s reign. No one really officially wins the war, the Anglo-Spanish war that ran from 1585 to 1604, it sort of ends in a stalemate when both countries basically ran out of money, but England famously won against the Armada at the cost, of course, of losing their American colony. Which, let’s be honest, was probably going to fail anyway. Ralph Lane saw to that back in 1586 when he chopped off Wingina’s head.
Elizabeth delivered her final speech to Parliament in November of 1601. I’d read you some excerpts but it’s like unreadable. You wouldn’t absorb a single word. It is linked in the description if you want to try to read it though. Good luck. But basically, in this speech she says that her love for the people of England was far greater than any treasure and that there was quote “no prince that loves his subjects better.” It’s known for being super heartfelt and emotional, like parliament members were openly crying during it. A banger of a speech which is why it became known as the Golden Speech. I think it’s really highly remembered too because it was, although they didn’t know it at the time, it was Elizabeth’s last speech and so in many ways it was a farewell.
Elizabeth died at the age of 69 on March 24, 1603. We aren’t totally sure how she died but it is suspected that she suffered from quinsy which is a bacterial infection caused by tonsillitis. So, nowadays, she would have been cured by antibiotics but those, of course, did not exist back then. We think this because, during her final days, the Venetian ambassador reported that she had a quote “defluxion in the throat,” which is an abscess. She clearly had some kind of throat infection. Is that what killed her? No way to know for sure but it is a likely culprit. She was buried in Westminster Abbey, originally in the vault of her grandfather Henry VII. Later, her successor, James I, who was the son of Mary Queen of Scots whom Elizabeth may or may not have had executed, had her reinterred under a monument dedicated to her and next to her sister Mary I. An inscription reads quote “Partners both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in the hope of one resurrection,” end quote.
Elizabeth was clearly a very beloved queen and she was very successful throughout her 44 year reign in many ways. Chronicler John Stow reported at her funeral quote “There was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man,” end quote. But Historic Royal Palaces argues that the ways in which she was remembered and immortalized after her death don’t accurately depict the England she left behind. They claim that, towards the end of her life quote “High taxes, bad harvests, unemployment, stagnant wages, inflation and crime created discontent, and Elizabeth’s popularity waned,” end quote.
Elizabeth, who died childless never having married, marked the end of the Tudor dynasty. But, although it was controversial at first and she was facing ultimatums from Parliament, her decision to never marry was eventually viewed in a positive light. She was the Virgin Queen. It became a symbol of her purity, virtue, and sacrifice. Like she had saved her body for England. In some ways she was viewed as being married to England as opposed to a flesh and blood man with all of his human weaknesses.
I love the story of Elizabeth because of how everything was really stacked against her for the first part of her life. I mean from the moment of her birth, a girl, a disappointing girl when everyone expected, needed a boy, she was mourned. Her birth was not celebrated, it was mourned. And then soon after her mother was killed and she was illegitimized and disinherited and she was really just supposed to be a nobody. And instead she rose up to become one of the great\est, if not the greatest queen England, and possibly even the world has ever known. And, she did it in this way where she’s able to preserve these really tumultuous, complicated relationships. She does it in this really loyal and honorable way a lot of the time. She helps Mary claim the throne from Jane Grey, rides in side by side even though they don’t really see eye to eye, even though Mary will have her thrown in the Tower of London and put under house arrest not long after. She supports Mary through all of that and is eventually buried next to her, “partners both in throne and grave.” Then we have James I, her successor, her cousin twice removed, son of Mary Queen of Scots whom Elizabeth willingly or unwillingly had executed. James could have hated Elizabeth for that, but instead he builds her a monument, a statue in Westminster Abbey and he picks up the England that she built, the “Golden Age” of England under her reign when she established it as a major European power, when the arts flourished, when English exploration began. And that would continue of course under the reign of King James who would establish Jamestown, in the Virginia colony named, of course after the Virgin Queen Elizabeth. Shockwaves through history good, bad, and ugly, but shockwaves that helped forge the world we live in today, all traced back to the birth of a very disappointing baby.
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