Elizabeth I
She never married, wore a face of white lead, and ruled for 44 years. Elizabeth I turned being a woman alone on the throne into England's greatest brand.
Published
Quick Facts
- Born
- 7 September 1533, Greenwich Palace
- Reigned
- 17 November 1558 to 24 March 1603
- Parents
- Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn
- Dynasty
- Tudor, the last monarch of the line
- Crowned
- 15 January 1559, Westminster Abbey
- Famous moment
- The defeat of the Spanish Armada, 1588
- Nickname
- The Virgin Queen, also Gloriana and Good Queen Bess
- Died
- Richmond Palace, 1603; buried in Westminster Abbey
The princess who was locked in the Tower
Elizabeth was two years and eight months old when her father had her mother, Anne Boleyn, beheaded. She was declared illegitimate and spent her childhood being shuffled in and out of royal favour. The worst came under her half-sister Mary I. In 1554, after Wyatt's rebellion, Elizabeth was suspected of plotting against the crown and sent to the Tower of London, the same fortress where her mother had died. She was later kept under guard at Woodstock. She survived by being cautious, learned and very good at saying nothing. Those habits shaped her entire reign.
Why she never said yes
Almost everyone expected her to marry. Suitors included Philip II of Spain, her late sister's widower, and later the Duke of Anjou, a French prince nicknamed her 'frog' by Elizabeth herself. Her favourite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was the man many believed she truly loved. Yet she kept every proposal hanging. A husband would have made her subordinate in the eyes of many, or tied England to a foreign power. An unmarried queen, on the other hand, had diplomatic cards to play for decades. The cost was an uncertain succession. She refused to name an heir, and it was only near her death that she is said to have indicated James VI of Scotland, son of her rival Mary, Queen of Scots.
The Armada and the speech at Tilbury
In 1588 Philip II sent a fleet of around 130 ships to carry an invasion force to England. English fireships, skilled seamanship and wild weather scattered it, and many Spanish vessels were wrecked off Scotland and Ireland on the long journey home. Elizabeth went to Tilbury in Essex to rally her troops. The speech attributed to her there includes the line that she had 'the heart and stomach of a king'. It is one of the best-known royal speeches in English history. The victory gave England a sense of confidence and Protestant identity that outlasted her, though the war with Spain dragged on until after her death.
A settlement, a theatre boom and a sea-going age
Elizabeth's religious settlement of 1559 restored royal supremacy and established a Protestant Church of England after Mary I had brought back papal authority. The break with Rome itself had come under her father in the 1530s. The settlement was never perfectly tidy, but it steadied a country exhausted by the swings of her father, brother and sister. Her reign overlapped with William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and the first purpose-built playhouses in London. Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe, finishing in 1580, and Walter Raleigh backed the attempts to found a colony at Roanoke, in what is now North Carolina. The East India Company received its royal charter from her on the last day of 1600, a quiet start for something that grew enormous. Not everything glittered. Harvests failed in the 1590s, the poor law of 1601 reflected growing hardship, and her Irish wars were costly and brutal.
White lead, black teeth and a thousand dresses
Elizabeth understood image. Her portraits show her in extravagant gowns, pearls and ruffs, and in later years she appears ageless. Artists were encouraged to follow approved patterns rather than show her wrinkles. She is often said to have worn a pale make-up that included lead, and she was known to have lost teeth later in life. Foreign visitors noted that she was fond of sweet things. She was also a gifted linguist, reportedly able to speak French and Italian and to read Latin and Greek. She wrote poetry and translated texts, and could interrupt an ambassador in his own language.
Where to find her today
Her tomb is in Westminster Abbey, where she lies in the same vault as her half-sister Mary I, under a marble effigy. The inscription describes them as sharing a throne and a grave. Hatfield House in Hertfordshire stands beside the old palace where she was told she was queen, reportedly while sitting under an oak tree. The Tower of London still shows where she was held prisoner. The Globe on the South Bank and the great houses of her courtiers, like Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, built by the formidable Bess of Hardwick, carry the architecture and appetite of her age.
Notable people
- Henry VIII
- Anne Boleyn
- Mary I
- Mary, Queen of Scots
- Robert Dudley
- William Cecil
- Francis Drake
- Walter Raleigh
- William Shakespeare
- Philip II of Spain
- James VI and I
- Francis Walsingham
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Mary, Queen of Scots
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She was Queen of Scotland at six days old, Queen of France at sixteen, and spent nineteen years as Elizabeth I's prisoner, writing in stitches what she couldn't say aloud.
William Shakespeare
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Winston Churchill
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He won the Nobel Prize in Literature, painted hundreds of canvases, laid bricks for fun and was born two months early at a palace. Meet Winston Churchill.