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History and Evolution:
By William E. Steinman:
Part 106, Elizabeth I:
April 4, 2005:
Before she came to power herself, life was a bit perilous for Elizabeth. Recall that her mother, Anne Boleyn had been offed by Henry VIII for birthing her instead of a boy. Later, when she was about 16, Elizabeth came under the dubious protection of Catherine Parr, the final wife of Henry. That was just the beginning. With Henry dead, Catherine had married a scheming climber, Thomas Seymour. This guy was trying to take out his big brother Edward Seymour, who was Edward VI's protector. Don't these plots and counter plots get a bit childish?
Well Catherine died in 1549 and Thomas got himself arrested for his plot. He was beheaded, and Elizabeth was suspected. She went through a tough examination, but came out clean. So she was still around when Mary came to power. Mary demanded she conform to the Catholic rituals, which she did. Just the same, people were beginning to make her the focus of plots to give Mary the boot. When Wyatt blew the rebellion, Liz was arrested and tossed into the Tower of London. Again she was interrogated and again she came out clean, She got out of the Tower, but she was essentially under house arrest. By being very careful, she managed to survive.
When Mary succumbed in 1558, there were not many mourners in the kingdom. In fact, church bells rang and jubilant revelers swarmed through the towns and over the land. There was one heck of a procession when Elizabeth I entered London for the coronation. It was pure theater and it won the hearts of the people.
In a decisive first move she reduced the size of the privy council to purge Catholics and dead beats. She then reorganized the royal household to make it more responsive to her needs. In addition she brought in her own people as advisers. While she was living her earlier days in constant danger, she had learned about the political landscape and she showed that in her choices. She put experienced and trustworthy people in place to serve her. One was William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Elizabeth made him her principal secretary of state on the morning of her accession. He must have been good for he lasted 40 years and ended up as Lord Treasurer. he also acted as her mouthpiece in Parliament.
Not everyone was tickled pink about Liz being the queen of England. We must remember that the medieval mentality was even stronger in men then than it is today. Many consider women unfit to rule. Not the least of these was John Knox of Scotland whom we discussed in Part 67. He toned down a bit when the Protestant Elizabeth came to the throne, but not cmpletely. Elizabeth handled the dissent by claiming she had acquired some kind of metaphysical merger with the body politic which was timeless and perfect when she ascended the throne. Go figure. The church does not have a monopoly on this holy trinity kind of double talk.
This did not fix everything, but it was a beginning. Still, the state was bankrupt, it had no army or effective police, and there was no effective bureaucracy in place. On top of that, she had to deal with the Parliament which was just as ugly then as America's 21st century congress with factions and infighting abounding. Her answer, which gradually evolved, was the development of the cult of love for Elizabeth the Virgin Queen. Is that class or what?
Well, there was a lot of pressure on this queen to get herself married and produce a male heir lest the Tudor line end with her. Without that, the heir apparent was Mary, Queen of Scots who was another Catholic with powerful support on the continent, bad news for the Protestants. Needless to say, Elizabeth had many royal suitors who wanted to turn England away from Protestantism. She also had Englishmen lining up for the honor of her hand. Liz played a waiting game and kept them all waiting. It seems, for her, it was about a reluctance to yield power. She insisted on ultimate authority in all matters and a marriage would have compromised that power.
With power, she did not fool around. Recall that this is the queen who had the right hands of John Stubbs and his publisher William Page chopped off. Their crime was offering public advice in a pamphlet opposing her proposed marriage to the Catholic Duke D'Alencon. The marriage never came off, but the hands did. In most things she was a bit less vehement, but she did manage to play a skillful game of working one faction against the other with a combination of charm, moodiness, wrath, and sometimes even concession. It mattered not if she was working the Parliament or the royal court, she exhibited remarkable skill.
In religious matters, she was solidly Protestant. She restored Protestantism, restored Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy, and all the other anti Catholic statutes. She also declared herself supreme governor of the church. Then she pushed through the Act of Uniformity which made the revised second Edwardian prayer book official. It took some time, but her version of Protestantism was installed throughout the land. Clerics, teachers, and most everyone with power had to swear an oath to her or lose their jobs, at the least. Reminds one of the old man, Henry VIII, doesn't it? In addition, anyone not in church on Sunday could be fined. Boy, our 21st century American evangelical Christians would love this.
Well, all this was not enough for the hardline Calvinists who were coming home from exile. They wanted real reform, can you believe it? What they wanted, in fact was blood. Lizzy did not approve of the more extreme measure. The last thing she wanted was a backlash. She did not really care what these folks thought in their secret hearts so long as they conformed to the rituals. She had a balancing act to perform. On one side she had a large number of closet Catholics and on the other a bunch of vindictive Protestants.
She kept things in check for a while, but ugliness reared its head around 1569. First there was a rebellion of English Catholic aristocrats in the North. That was put down with military force. Then a plot against the life of the Queen was discovered in 1571. The official conclusion was that Mary Queen of Scots was behind these moves. Mary was not really the Queen of Scots because the Scottish nobles had driven her out. she was hiding out in England, but she was really under house arrest. A Catholic, she was considered a threat to the English throne. Of course, the Roman church thought she was the rightful queen of England. Somehow or other she had Tudor blood. This is all about that convoluted inbreeding that seems to have riddled the royalty with excessive numbers of stupid genes.
Well, there were a lot of folks in England who though Mary should be offed and done with, as it were. Lizzy, still trying to maintain her balancing act, was against that. Then more crap came down. That was the time frame wherein the "very clever" Pope Pius V chose to excommunicate Lizzy and absolve all of the English Catholics from their oaths to her. A short time later, England got word of the Huguenot massacre in France. If English Catholics needed any more trouble those moves guaranteed they would get it. Sure enough, persecution increased.
Elizabeth was under great pressure to help Protestants on the continent. She did not want to get involved and she did not want to spend the treasury dry again, but she had to yield a bit. She sent a small expeditionary force to the Netherlands in 1585. They were to aid the rebels who were fighting the Spanish armies there. On top of all of her other problems, she had the risk of being assassinated. Kindly old Pope Gregory XIII, speaking of Elisabeth, allowed as how it would not be a sin to off this miserable heretic. A bit later someone really did off another Protestant leader, William of Orange. Lizzy just stood tall and hung tough. You got to admire that kind of guts.
While Liz was unperturbed there was a great deal of anxiety in the government. This resulted in the Bond of Association amongst the members of the privy council. They made it very clear that no claimant to the throne would live to ascend it if Elisabeth were assassinated. They did not try to hide that fact that this was a warning to Mary Queen of Scots. Everyone in the kingdom was convinced she was behind all of the plots. The fact is, real evidence of her complicity was discovered in intercepted correspondence.
Mary was picked up, tried, and sentenced to death. There was only one catch. Elizabeth had to sign the death warrant for the execution to take place. She waited for three months and, under extreme pressure, she finally gave in and signed it. As we would expect, there were boos and denunciations from the continent and cheers from Protestants everywhere.
Meanwhile, Spain was getting more and more angry with the Queen and everything English. This was not entirely unjustified. It was not just the English involvement in the Netherlands. It seems Sir Francis Drake, with state permission had been hijacking Spanish shipping. It came to a head when Phillip began putting together a big fleet aimed at invading and conquering England. This was the so called Invincible Armada. If it came off Protestant England would again become Catholic. Needless to say there was much at stake.
Well Lizzy was no dummy about war. She hated to spend money, but she had maintained a pretty good navy during her reign. It turned out, that was money well spent. England also had a sizable merchant fleet which could be put to the task of defense if needed. For sure, it was needed. In 1588 the Invincible Armada reached English waters and the English navy gave them a lesson in naval encounters. The Spaniards lost big time. They turned tail and ran, but they ran smack into one heck of a storm and lost most of their fleet.
Elizabeth was at the height of her power and popularity, but time was telling on her. So too were the problems of empire. There were problems of inflation and unemployment coupled with a few bad years of agriculture. Moral was down and there was a losing struggle to overpower Ireland which resulted in disaster. On top of that, there was ongoing corruption within her government and even insubordination. She even had to execute one of her court dandies when he tried overthrow the throne.
Still, Elizabeth hung in there and continued what had become
a charade, a parody of the former Queen. At the end, she simply
wore out. She died in 1603 after a rule of 44 years. Her death
marked the end of the Tudor reign. Her image of female power and
authority outlived her and has lasted to the present time. It
has ever been a source of national pride for her countrymen —
and women.
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