Gloriana: The Life and Times of Elizabeth 1, 1558 - 1603

She was called Gloriana! The Virgin Queen! Cynthia! Astraea! Flora! A goddess who would live for ever and guard her beloved England. The propaganda image created during her reign is still potent. She claimed to represent England, and England saw reflected in the Queen something of its hopes and ambitions.

It was a glittering time. The phrase 'the Elizabethan Age' still evokes a particularly exciting period in English history. It is crowded with famous names and events - Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins on the high seas laying the foundations of Empire; Cecil and Walsingham, the Queen's faithful counsellors; Leicester and Essex seeking the hand of the 'Virgin Queen;' Mary Queen of Scots going to her execution in Fotheringhay Castle; the poetry and plays of Shakespeare and Spenser; the image of the Queen as ageless and all powerful; the great prodigy houses such as Hardwick and Burghley, and, of course, the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. It was an age bursting with energy and confidence and at the heart of it all was Queen Elizabeth.

But like most images, that of Elizabeth as goddess and mother of her nation hid a far more complex reality. Elizabeth's early life had been fraught with danger and at times it looked very unlikely that she would ever succeed, or even survive!

Elizabeth's birth was a disappointment. Her father, Henry VIII, had turned the world upside down to marry her mother Anne Boleyn; defying the Pope and over a thousand years of Catholic orthodoxy to proclaim himself 'supreme head on earth' of the Church of England. Now he was free to annul his marriage to Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne. Henry had fallen in lust with Anne and expected her to provide the male heir he craved. But, disappointed that Anne only produced a girl and conscious that she was not as entertaining as a wife as she had been as a mistress, he determined to be rid of her. Accusations that she was not only unfaithful, but that she had plotted the king's death, sent her to the block in May 1536.

Her mother had been executed when Elizabeth was not yet three and she was declared illegitimate. For a number of years she remained on the fringes of the Court as 'the Lady Elizabeth,' receiving one of the best humanist educations available. Restored to the succession in the 1540s she was nearly executed by her half-sister Mary in 1554 after Wyatt's Rebellion and spent nearly two months in the Tower. Mary spared her life, but she was kept under house arrest until Mary died in November 1558 and Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen. If Mary had been able to produce an heir, Elizabeth's life would probably have been forfeit.

As an unmarried, female, ruler she was an anomaly in sixteenth-century Europe. Women were not rulers, but servants to their husbands. Her half-sister, Mary, had married the Habsburg Prince, Philip, and provoked a rebellion in the process which nearly cost Elizabeth her life. Elizabeth was a woman in a man's world. Would Elizabeth now choose a foreign Prince and play second fiddle? The question of the Queen's marriage occupied many weeks and years of the Privy Council's business. Many suitors presented themselves, many were entertained at court, yet all were kept at bay. Home ground suitors, such as Leicester and Essex, declared their love and loyalty to the Queen. But in a fiercely patriarchal world, how could Elizabeth be both a wife and a Queen? How could she be both subject and ruler? Yet Elizabeth succeeded in retained around her a core of faithful male counsellors and an important part of this course will be the way Elizabeth used and manipulated the men around her, whether lovers, suitors or counsellors.

Another important part of this course will be the religious question. Elizabeth was part of the first generation that was not brought up as Catholics, and at her accession she was determined to restore the Church of England created by her father. Elizabeth's religious settlement settled very little and her reign witnessed tense debates amongst different varieties of Protestants who found Elizabeth's Church of England riddled with the 'dregs of popery' which urgently needed purifying.

Puritan criticisms of the structure and ceremonial of the Church rose in pitch as the reign progressed, yet English puritans never constituted a military threat to Elizabeth. The presence of substantial numbers of Roman Catholics within her realm was considered a very potent threat. Despite that fact that the majority of English Catholics were loyal and simply wanted to be left in peace, they nevertheless suffered because of the actions of their more zealous brethren on the continent. In 1570 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth, and from then on internal and external plots arose against her. In England, the focus of these plots centred on Mary, Queen of Scots, under house arrest since she fled Scotland in 1568? Abroad the great power of Counter-Reformation Spain threatened England's independence and the Queen's power. This threat culminated in the Armada of 1588, during which Elizabeth displayed her courage and utilised every propaganda tope she possessed to rally her people to resist the threat of invasion.

Elizabeth's last decade was in many ways an anti-climax. Economic distress, foreign wars and the question of the succession cast lengthening shadows across her reign. She was flattered by the attention of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, a man young enough to be her nephew, but then she refused him the prerequisites of a favourite he launched an ineffective coup and was executed in February 1601. However, the following November, Elizabeth again demonstrated her ability to woe her subjects, stating, during her famous 'Golden Speech' to Parliament, that though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had nor shall have, any that will be more careful and loving.

Elizabeth died in March 1603 and almost immediately her posthumous legacy asserted itself. She was remembered as a magnificent monarch who sacrificed her own happiness so she could 'marry' and 'love' her people. She was portrayed as a committed Protestant who frustrated the ambitions of Catholic Spain and saved the Protestant cause. Ultimately, it is the image of Elizabeth which is remembered rather than the reality. This course will aim to look behind the mask and discover something of the reality about this remarkable woman and the world in which she lived.

Dr Andrew Lacey
February 2024

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