The UK pulled out the stops between June 2 and 5, 2022 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, marking her 70th year on the throne—the longest reign for any British monarch. Another Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth I (1533–1603), made history in the late 1500s, not for the length of her reign (“only” shy of 45), but for moving England into a booming period of politics, exploration, and the arts—a so-called Golden Age. Clever and strong-willed, she faced numerous obstacles along the way, each one seemingly more challenging than the next—yet nothing she couldn’t overcome.
Elizabeth wasn’t supposed to be queen. Born on September 7, 1533, to Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth lost her line to succession when her father had her mother executed for adultery and treason in 1536, and Henry disowned Elizabeth. Eventually she was welcomed back into the family and reinstated third in the line of succession.
(How Anne Boleyn won and lost the heart of Henry VIII.)
Upon Henry’s death in 1547, 10-year-old Edward, Elizabeth’s younger half-brother (and son of wife number 3 Jane Seymour), took the throne. The frail king died in 1553, and Mary, Elizabeth’s older half-sister, eventually became queen.
A religious zealot bent on returning England to the Roman Catholic faith, Mary I believed Elizabeth planned to overthrow the government to restore Protestantism. She arrested Elizabeth and sent her to the Tower of London in spring 1554, where the young woman barely escaped the fate of her mother.
After the death of Queen Mary on November 17, 1558, Elizabeth ascended to the throne in a joyful celebration in January 1559. But the religious conflict did not go away. Elizabeth’s subjects now embraced a wide range of religious beliefs. Where, precisely, on a wide range of doctrinal and other issues, did Elizabeth’s sympathies lie? Many believed Roman Catholic, but she kept her inner convictions to herself.
Realising it would be impossible to satisfy all parties in the religious conflicts that had torn the realm apart, and with her own legitimacy hinging on the break with Rome, the queen restored Protestantism. She made it clear there would be no return to Catholicism, but that there would also be religious tolerance for outward, if not inward, obedience.
Elizabeth’s next dilemma was marriage. Given the experiences of her mother, father, and half sister Mary, securing an heir and the succession was a fraught issue. Elizabeth realised that to marry a foreigner invited overseas entanglements and alliances; to marry an Englishman risked domestic factions and jealousies that could spill over into revolt. Her solution was equivocation: Instead of marrying, she would remain single indefinitely, wedded to her country and her subjects. “England,” said Elizabeth, “would have but one mistress and no master.”
As her reign progressed, circumstance inevitably forced Elizabeth to become more accommodating of dissent. Nowhere was this truer than in relations with Scotland, which by 1560 had experienced a reformation of its own, propelled into an austere Protestant position by hardliners such as the Calvinist John Knox. As in England, Scotland’s religious upheavals pitched Protestant against Catholic, and one Catholic in particular: Scotland’s monarch, Mary, Queen of Scots.
Mary was Elizabeth’s cousin once removed. As long as Elizabeth remained childless, Mary was next in line to the English throne; the fact that Mary had already born a male heir, James Stuart, in 1566, was also of concern to Elizabeth. Religious dissent and political scheming led to Mary’s forced abdication in 1567. Leaving her young son behind, she fled to England, where she would spend the rest of her life.
Mary’s Catholicism made her a figurehead for English Catholics, and thus a danger to Elizabeth’s Protestant rule. For 19 years, Mary was held as Elizabeth’s prisoner, confined to a variety of castles around the country. Things became worse for Elizabeth I in 1570, when Pope Pius V declared her a heretic and excommunicated her, releasing Catholics from any allegiance to the queen. Plot followed plot, and Elizabeth’s advisers pleaded in vain to execute Mary. It was not until 1586 that Elizabeth (reluctantly) ordered her cousin’s death, only after Mary was convicted of plotting to assassinate the queen and take her throne.
Foreign affairs also forced change on Elizabeth I. Spain ruled at the time as the world’s most powerful country, and the Spanish king, Philip II, plotted to dethrone Elizabeth. Although England was a small country with little wealth, Elizabeth effectively sanctioned acts of piracy—or privateering—against Spain and its colonial possessions by championing Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, and other seafarers who made their names in this period.
(Elizabeth I’s favourite sailor had a dark side.)
This plundering angered Philip immensely. He prepared a great fleet to invade England, and Elizabeth was left with no choice but to confront Spain. English soldiers and sailors met the Spanish fleet along the English shore, fighting furiously for their liberty. The Spanish Armada faced a humiliating defeat in a battle.
After 1588, the flavour of Elizabeth’s reign began to change as death deprived an ageing queen of friends and advisers. There were also military setbacks against Spain and in Ireland, along with higher taxes, failed harvests, and widespread unemployment in England. Yet Elizabeth’s carefully nurtured personality cult, along with her redoubtable will, survived to the end. She died a virgin queen, as promised, and thus brought an end to the Tudor dynasty: Her successor was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots—a Stuart named James VI of Scotland and James I of England and Ireland.
(James I’s obsession with black magic started Europe’s most brutal witch hunts)
Portions of this work have previously appeared in Atlas of the British Empire. Copyright © 2020 National Geographic Partners, LLC. To learn more, check out Atlas of the British Empire. Available wherever books and magazines are sold.