Mary and Elisabeth

Visitation (Christianity)

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Mary's initial popularity ebbed away in when she announced plans to marry Philip of Spain , the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and an active Catholic. In January and February , Wyatt's rebellion broke out; it was soon suppressed. Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence. Mary's closest confidant, Charles V's ambassador Simon Renard , argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and the Chancellor, Stephen Gardiner , worked to have Elizabeth put on trial. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock , where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield.

Crowds cheered her all along the way. On 17 April , Elizabeth was recalled to court to attend the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen. If, on the other hand, Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply. When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child. King Philip, who ascended the Spanish throne in , acknowledged the new political reality and cultivated his sister-in-law.

She was a better ally than the chief alternative, Mary, Queen of Scots , who had grown up in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. By October , Elizabeth was already making plans for her government. On 6 November, Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir. Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, and declared her intentions to her Council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance.

The speech contains the first record of her adoption of the mediaeval political theology of the sovereign's "two bodies": My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me.

And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel. As her triumphal progress wound through the city on the eve of the coronation ceremony , she was welcomed wholeheartedly by the citizens and greeted by orations and pageants, most with a strong Protestant flavour. Elizabeth's open and gracious responses endeared her to the spectators, who were "wonderfully ravished". She was then presented for the people's acceptance, amidst a deafening noise of organs, fifes, trumpets, drums, and bells.

Elizabeth's personal religious convictions have been much debated by scholars. She was a Protestant, but kept Catholic symbols such as the crucifix , and downplayed the role of sermons in defiance of a key Protestant belief. In terms of public policy she favoured pragmatism in dealing with religious matters. The question of her legitimacy was a key concern: For this reason alone, it was never in serious doubt that Elizabeth would embrace Protestantism. Elizabeth and her advisers perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. Elizabeth therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of English Protestants; she would not tolerate the more radical Puritans though, who were pushing for far-reaching reforms.

The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords , particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head , which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear.

The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May All public officials were to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters practised by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of an adapted version of the Book of Common Prayer compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy , or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.

From the start of Elizabeth's reign, it was expected that she would marry and the question arose to whom. Although she received many offers for her hand, she never married and was childless; the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships. Her last courtship was with Francis, Duke of Anjou , 22 years her junior. While risking possible loss of power like her sister, who played into the hands of King Philip II of Spain , marriage offered the chance of an heir. In the spring of , it became evident that Elizabeth was in love with her childhood friend Robert Dudley.

However, William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton , and some conservative peers made their disapproval unmistakably clear. Among other marriage candidates being considered for the queen, Robert Dudley continued to be regarded as a possible candidate for nearly another decade. He finally remarried in , to which the queen reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure and lifelong hatred towards his wife, Lettice Knollys.

After Elizabeth's own death, a note from him was found among her most personal belongings, marked "his last letter" in her handwriting. Marriage negotiations constituted a key element in Elizabeth's foreign policy. In , Elizabeth told an imperial envoy: They urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in Having promised to marry previously, she told an unruly House:. I will never break the word of a prince spoken in public place, for my honour's sake.

And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can conveniently, if God take not him away with whom I mind to marry, or myself, or else some other great let happen. By , senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem. Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity.

In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, not as a normal woman. Ultimately, Elizabeth would insist she was married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In , she spoke of "all my husbands, my good people". Elizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there.

Mary boasted being "the nearest kinswoman she hath". In Elizabeth proposed her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary, without asking either of the two people concerned. Both proved unenthusiastic, [90] and in Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley , who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular and was murdered in February by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.

Shortly afterwards, on 15 May , Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth confronted Mary about the marriage, writing to her:. How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.

These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle.

Elizabeth (biblical figure)

The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James VI , who had been born in June James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped from Loch Leven in but after another defeat fled across the border into England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth.

Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch; but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England, where she was imprisoned for the next nineteen years. Mary was soon the focus for rebellion.

In there was a major Catholic rising in the North ; the goal was to free Mary, marry her to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk , and put her on the English throne. Regnans in Excelsis gave English Catholics a strong incentive to look to Mary Stuart as the legitimate sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of which caused Mary's suitor, the Duke of Norfolk, to lose his head to the Babington Plot of , Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her.

By late , she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. The sincerity of Elizabeth's remorse and whether or not she wanted to delay the warrant have been called into question both by her contemporaries and later historians. Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the English occupation of Le Havre from October to June , which ended in failure when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port.

An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over whom the queen had little control. After the occupation and loss of Le Havre in —, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until , when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion.

Mary and Elisabeth Rejoice Together

The outcome was the Treaty of Nonsuch of August , in which Elizabeth promised military support to the Dutch. The expedition was led by her former suitor, the Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland, [] had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who wanted and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, wanted him "to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy". Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands, [] which so far she had always declined. She wrote to Leicester:. We could never have imagined had we not seen it fall out in experience that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name.

Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.

Elizabeth's "commandment" was that her emissary read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the Dutch Council of State, Leicester having to stand nearby. The military campaign was severely hampered by Elizabeth's repeated refusals to send promised funds for her starving soldiers. Her unwillingness to commit herself to the cause, Leicester's own shortcomings as a political and military leader, and the faction-ridden and chaotic situation of Dutch politics led to the failure of the campaign.

Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships in the Caribbean in and In he made a successful raid on Cadiz , destroying the Spanish fleet of war ships intended for the Enterprise of England , [] as Philip II had decided to take the war to England. On 12 July , the Spanish Armada , a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands.

A combination of miscalculation, [] misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships on 29 July off Gravelines , which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast, defeated the Armada. He invited Elizabeth to inspect her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. Wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she addressed them in one of her most famous speeches:. My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. If the late queen would have believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire in pieces and made their kings of figs and oranges as in old times.

But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness. Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds, [] Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, "to be transported with an haviour of vainglory". The English fleet suffered a catastrophic defeat with 11,—15, killed, wounded or died of disease [] [] [] and 40 ships sunk or captured.

It was her first venture into France since the retreat from Le Havre in Henry's succession was strongly contested by the Catholic League and by Philip II, and Elizabeth feared a Spanish takeover of the channel ports. The subsequent English campaigns in France, however, were disorganised and ineffective. He withdrew in disarray in December , having lost half his troops. In , the campaign of John Norreys , who led 3, men to Brittany , was even more of a disaster.

As for all such expeditions, Elizabeth was unwilling to invest in the supplies and reinforcements requested by the commanders. Norreys left for London to plead in person for more support. In his absence, a Catholic League army almost destroyed the remains of his army at Craon, north-west France, in May The result was just as dismal. Essex accomplished nothing and returned home in January Henry abandoned the siege in April.

Although Ireland was one of her two kingdoms, Elizabeth faced a hostile, and in places virtually autonomous, [] Irish population that adhered to Catholicism and was willing to defy her authority and plot with her enemies. Her policy there was to grant land to her courtiers and prevent the rebels from giving Spain a base from which to attack England. During a revolt in Munster led by Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond , in , an estimated 30, Irish people starved to death.

Luke 1:39-55

The poet and colonist Edmund Spenser wrote that the victims "were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same". Between and , Elizabeth faced her most severe test in Ireland during the Nine Years' War , a revolt that took place at the height of hostilities with Spain , who backed the rebel leader, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. To her frustration, [] he made little progress and returned to England in defiance of her orders. He was replaced by Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy , who took three years to defeat the rebels.

O'Neill finally surrendered in , a few days after Elizabeth's death. Elizabeth continued to maintain the diplomatic relations with the Tsardom of Russia originally established by her half-brother. She often wrote to Ivan the Terrible on amicable terms, though the Tsar was often annoyed by her focus on commerce rather than on the possibility of a military alliance.

The Tsar even proposed to her once, and during his later reign, asked for a guarantee to be granted asylum in England should his rule be jeopardised. Upon Ivan's death, he was succeeded by his simple-minded son Feodor. Unlike his father, Feodor had no enthusiasm in maintaining exclusive trading rights with England.

File history

Feodor declared his kingdom open to all foreigners, and dismissed the English ambassador Sir Jerome Bowes , whose pomposity had been tolerated by Ivan. Elizabeth sent a new ambassador, Dr. Giles Fletcher, to demand from the regent Boris Godunov that he convince the Tsar to reconsider. The negotiations failed, due to Fletcher addressing Feodor with two of his many titles omitted. Elizabeth continued to appeal to Feodor in half appealing, half reproachful letters. She proposed an alliance, something which she had refused to do when offered one by Feodor's father, but was turned down. Trade and diplomatic relations developed between England and the Barbary states during the rule of Elizabeth.

Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to the Porte , William Harborne , in The period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in brought new difficulties for Elizabeth that lasted until the end of her reign. Prices rose and the standard of living fell. One of the causes for this "second reign" of Elizabeth, as it is sometimes called, [] was the changed character of Elizabeth's governing body, the privy council in the s. A new generation was in power.

With the exception of Lord Burghley, the most important politicians had died around Lopez, her trusted physician. When he was wrongly accused by the Earl of Essex of treason out of personal pique, she could not prevent his execution, although she had been angry about his arrest and seems not to have believed in his guilt. During the last years of her reign, Elizabeth came to rely on the granting of monopolies as a cost-free system of patronage, rather than asking Parliament for more subsidies in a time of war.

Who keeps their sovereign from the lapse of error, in which, by ignorance and not by intent they might have fallen, what thank they deserve, we know, though you may guess. And as nothing is more dear to us than the loving conservation of our subjects' hearts, what an undeserved doubt might we have incurred if the abusers of our liberality, the thrallers of our people, the wringers of the poor, had not been told us! This same period of economic and political uncertainty, however, produced an unsurpassed literary flowering in England. During the s, some of the great names of English literature entered their maturity, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

During this period and into the Jacobean era that followed, the English theatre reached its highest peaks. They owed little directly to the queen, who was never a major patron of the arts. As Elizabeth aged her image gradually changed. Her painted portraits became less realistic and more a set of enigmatic icons that made her look much younger than she was.

In fact, her skin had been scarred by smallpox in , leaving her half bald and dependent on wigs and cosmetics. Many of them are missing, so that one cannot understand her easily when she speaks quickly. The more Elizabeth's beauty faded, the more her courtiers praised it. She became fond and indulgent of the charming but petulant young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was Leicester's stepson and took liberties with her for which she forgave him. After Essex's desertion of his command in Ireland in , Elizabeth had him placed under house arrest and the following year deprived him of his monopolies.

He intended to seize the queen but few rallied to his support, and he was beheaded on 25 February. Elizabeth knew that her own misjudgements were partly to blame for this turn of events. An observer wrote in His political mantle passed to his son, Robert Cecil , who soon became the leader of the government. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret.

James's tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: Neale's view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with "unmistakable if veiled phrases". The Queen's health remained fair until the autumn of , when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February , the death of Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham , the niece of her cousin and close friend Lady Knollys , came as a particular blow.

In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a "settled and unremovable melancholy", and sat motionless on a cushion for hours on end. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James King of England. While it has become normative to record the death of the Queen as occurring in , following English calendar reform in the s, at the time England observed New Year's Day on 25 March, commonly known as Lady Day. The official position taken by the Wikimedia Foundation is that " faithful reproductions of two-dimensional public domain works of art are public domain ".

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