Queen Elizabeth The First

Queen Elizabeth I, also known as the Virgin Queen and Good Queen Bess, was the queen of England from 1558 to 1603, reigning during the Elizabethan Era, when England asserted itself as a great European power in politics, trade, and the arts. She was born on September 7, 1533, in Greenwich, near London, England, and died on March 24, 1603, in Richmond, Surrey.

Despite the fact that her small empire was torn apart by internal strife, Elizabeth's combination of wit, bravery, and glorious self-promotion encouraged fervent displays of patriotism and helped unite the country against foreign enemies. The adoration showered on her during her lifetime and in subsequent centuries was not accidental. It was the culmination of a carefully planned, well-executed strategy. The queen fancied herself as the glittering emblem of the nation's destiny in a beautifully performed campaign. This political symbolism, which is popular in monarchies, was deeper than normal, since the queen was something more than a mere figurehead. Although she did not have the full influence that Renaissance rulers fantasized about, she steadfastly maintained her authority to make important decisions and set policies. Both the state and the church's fundamental policies In England, the latter half of the 16th century is aptly dubbed the Elizabethan Age: nowhere has the collective life of a period been imprinted with such a distinctively personal seal.

It’s important to note that Elizabeth's childhood, let alone life was indeed not entirely a happy one. It was actually quite overwhelmingly complicated and just plain depressing even, despite the riches and glory attached to her name.

Queen Elizabeth was the daughter of Tudor king Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and was born at Greenwich Palace. Henry had defied the pope and freed England from the Roman Catholic Church's jurisdiction in order to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, with whom he had a daughter, Mary. Since the king wished fervently that he’d have a son, the birth of a second daughter, Anne Boleyn, was a bitter disappointment that dangerously undermined the new queen's status. The birth of a male successor was seen as crucial to secure dynastic succession, but the birth of a second daughter was a bitter disappointment that dangerously weakened the new queen's position. On accusations of adultery and treason, Elizabeth's father had her mother beheaded before she was three years old. Furthermore, at Henry's request, an act of Parliament proclaimed his marriage to Anne Boleyn to be declared invalid from the start, rendering their daughter Elizabeth illegitimate, as Roman Catholics had believed all along. (It appears that the king was unconcerned about the moral absurdity of invalidating the marriage and accusing his wife of adultery at the same time.) The social effect of these events on the little girl who had been raised in a different home since infancy. It is unknown who exactly lived in Hatfield's household; obviously, no one felt it was important enough to note. Her precocious severity was noted; at six years old, she had the gravitas, dignity, and seriousness of a 40-year-old, it was observed admiringly.

As Henry's third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to a son named Edward in 1537, Elizabeth faded even more into obscurity, but she was not forgotten. Despite his monstrous cruelty, Henry VIII showed love to all of his children, including Elizabeth, who was present at formal occasions and was proclaimed third in line to the throne. She spent a significant amount of time with her half-brother Edward and, beginning in her tenth year, benefited from her stepmother, Catherine Parr, (the king's sixth and last wife)’s caring love. Elizabeth pursued the formal education usually reserved for male descendants, consisting of a course of studies centered on the humanities, from a series of esteemed tutors, the most well-known of which is the Cambridge humanist Roger Ascham. Her connection to the Reformation is significant because it influenced the nation's future path, but it does not seem to have been a personal passion: commentators observed that the young princess was more interested in languages than religious dogma.

With her father's death in 1547 and her frail 10-year-old brother Edward's accession to the throne, Elizabeth's life took a dangerous turn. Her guardian, the dowager queen Catherine Parr, married Thomas Seymour, the Lord High Admiral, almost instantly. Seymour, handsome, ambitious, and dissatisfied, plotted against his influential older brother, Edward Seymour, the realm's guardian during the minority of Edward VI. Thomas Seymour was imprisoned for treason in January 1549, soon after Catherine Parr's death, and accused of planning to marry Elizabeth in order to control the monarchy. Following repeated interrogations of Elizabeth and her servants, it was discovered that even though his wife was alive, Seymour had acted in a flirtatious and excessively sexual way on many occasions towards the young, underage princess, Elizabeth (who would’ve been just 13 years OR YOUNGER at the time being), who despite this remained extremely circumspect and poised while being subjected to degrading, inappropriate, questionable actions and words, harassment, and being in danger.

Seymour’s wife showed no remorse when she learned that Seymour had been beheaded. Elizabeth is said to have acted in a similar manner, despite her inexplicably, well-known good manners, undoubtedly due to Seymour’s disturbing actions and demeanour towards her. Elizabeth was very likely scarred at a very young age because of this.

It’s essential to include that she, Elizabeth herself, at some point of time wished to marry Seymour too, however her discovery of his betrayal in wanting to marry her simply in order to take control of the monarchy swayed her opinion of him, making her resentful and therefore turning all of his future previously “loving” remarks into harassment.

Elizabeth, who was “supposed” to marry from the onset of her reign, had the worldwide dilemma of who she would marry, and why. However, despite several offers for her side, she never married and had no children. Her treacherous experience with Thomas Seymour likely discouraged her from having intimate affairs due to his betrayal and harassment.

After the Protestant Edward's death in 1553 and the accession of Elizabeth's older half sister Mary, a religious zealot intent on restoring England to the Roman Catholic faith, through force if possible, the need for caution, self-control, and political acumen became ever stronger. This effort, as well as her unpopular marriage to Spain's ardently Catholic King Philip II, sparked bitter Protestant opposition. Elizabeth's life was in grave danger in a fraught atmosphere of treasonous insurrection and inquisitorial suppression. Since, despite conforming outwardly to official Catholic observance as her sister requested, she eventually became the target and apparent winner of attempts to overthrow the government and restore Protestantism. Following Sir Thomas Wyatt's death, he was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Elizabeth barely avoided her mother's fate during the January 1554 uprising. She was released from the Tower two months later, after intensive investigation and spying found no definitive proof of treason on her side, and placed in close detention for a year at Woodstock. Though she was never far from suspicious attention, the complexity of her case eased considerably.

Elizabeth had to constantly denounce her innocence, profess her unwavering allegiance, and declare her pious abhorrence of heresy during Mary's childless rule, with its burning of Protestants and military disasters. It was a long-term lesson in surviving through self-discipline and deception.

Elizabeth ascended to the throne after Mary's death on November 17, 1558, amid bells, bonfires, patriotic demonstrations, and other public displays of joy. Her arrival in London and the subsequent coronation procession were masterworks of diplomatic courtship. “If anybody had the gift or the elegance to attract the hearts of people, it was him,” one excited observer wrote.

Queen Elizabeth's every move was scrutinized for clues about the new regime's policies and tone: As an elderly man in the audience wept and turned his back to the new monarch, Elizabeth shouted proudly that he did so gladly. When a girl in an allegorical pageant presented her with a Bible in English translation—banned under Mary’s reign—Elizabeth kissed the book, held it up reverently, and then laid it on her breast; and when the abbot and monks of Westminster Abbey came to greet her in broad daylight with candles in their hands, she briskly dismissed them with the words “Away with those torches! we can see well enough.” Spectators were thus assured that under Elizabeth England had returned, cautiously but decisively, to the Reformation.

The first few weeks of her reign were not exclusively dedicated to symbolic acts and public rituals. The queen set about forming her government and issuing proclamations right away. She cut the composition of the Privy Council, in part to purge some of its Catholic members and in part to make it more effective as an advisory body; she began reorganizing the colossal royal household; she meticulously planned the royal wedding; and she carefully planned the royal wedding.

She recruited a core of seasoned and trustworthy advisors, including William Cecil, Nicholas Bacon, Francis Walsingham, and Nicholas Throckmorton, to reconcile the need for considerable administrative and judicial stability with the need for reform. Cecil (later Lord Burghley) was the most prominent of these, having been named Elizabeth's principal secretary of state on the morning of her accession. He was to serve her for 40 years with extraordinary sagacity and ability (first in this capacity, then as lord treasurer after 1571).

“God hath proclaimed to those in this our era that it is more than a beast of nature for a woman to rule and hold empire over man,” wrote Scottish Calvinist preacher John Knox in his The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, written in the final year of Mary's reign. Knox's trumpet was rapidly silenced with the Protestant Elizabeth's accession, but there was also a common belief, strengthened by both tradition and instruction, that women were temperamentally, psychologically, and morally unfit to rule, despite the fact that men were automatically born with authority. Men regarded themselves as intelligent beings, while women were seen as animals prone to irrationality and emotion. Gentlemen were taught eloquence and the arts of war, while ladies were encouraged to keep quiet and concentrate on their needlework. A desire to conquer was revered or presumed in upper-class men; it was seen as dangerous or even so much as disgusting in women.

The queen's defenders countered that there had already been notable exceptions, such as Deborah, the biblical prophetess who judged Israel. Furthermore, Crown lawyers developed a magical legal doctrine known as "the king's two bodies." According to this hypothesis, the queen's whole being was radically changed as she ascended the throne: her earthly "body normal" was married to an immortal "body natural." She claimed that her body was being politicised into some sport of “body politic” which was eternally hurting her and other beautiful, empowering females like her, and something a man was unequally, significantly less likely to experience. In her accession address, Elizabeth proclaimed, "I am but one body, naturally considered, though by [God's] authorization a Body Politic to rule." Her body had the flaws that all humans have (including those exclusive to women), but her political body was eternal and flawless. In principle, what the queen was attempting to explain, and continued to implant into her kingdom’s heads by her actions and words, was that her gender posed no obstacle to the unity of the kingdom and therefore the nation's pride and glory wouldn’t be harmed nor affected by the difference in gender. Elizabeth made it known right away that she wanted to rule in more ways than one, and that she would not defer to the judgement of any one individual or group. Elizabeth had to invent a new paradigm for female authority because her sister's reign would not include a suitable model, one that would transcend her sex's significant cultural liability. Moreover, aside from that, every English ruler's power to compel compliance had its limits, and this responsibility was one of them. The monarch was at the apex of the empire, but it was impoverished and vulnerable, without a standing army, an adequate police force, and a well-developed, powerful bureaucracy. To be able to rule, the crown had to rely on subsidies and taxation from a potentially fractious and unruly population’s obstinate Parliament. In these trying conditions, Elizabeth devised a law strategy that combined imperious command with a lavish, histrionic love cult.

The worship of Elizabeth as the Virgin Queen wed to her kingdom developed gradually over several years, but its origins can be traced back to at least 1555. Queen Mary had offered to marry her sister to the staunchly Catholic duke of Savoy at the time, according to a story that reached the French court; the normally prudent and an impassive Elizabeth broke into tears, announcing that she had no need for a husband. Other pairings were suggested and quickly dismissed. But there were clear motives for Elizabeth to bide her time and keep her options open at this fragile phase in her life. No one, not even the princess herself, should have taken her stated intention to stay single so critically. When she became queen, there was instant speculation about a fitting match. intensified, and the solutions available were a source of serious, national concern. Aside from the ignorant yet widespread belief that a woman's proper position was that of a wife, the dynastic and diplomatic stakes in the proposed royal marriage were enormous. The Tudor line would come to an end if Elizabeth died childless. Mary, Queen of Scots, Henry VIII's granddaughter, was the closest successor to Margaret's sister. Protestants saw Mary, a Catholic whose claim was backed by France and other strong Catholic states, as a terrifying danger that could only be averted if Elizabeth gave birth to a Protestant heir (preferably a male of course).

The queen's marriage was crucial not only in terms of succession, but also in terms of foreign diplomacy's tangled web. England, which was divided and militarily vulnerable, desperately needed the big partnerships that a beneficial marriage might bring about. Important suitors rushed in with bated breath: Philip II of Spain, who wished to strengthen the Catholic-English bond; Archduke Charles of Austria. Austria, King Erik XIV of Sweden, Henry, Duke of Anjou and later King of France, François, Duke of Alençon, and others. Many historians believe Elizabeth never wanted to marry either of these suitors because the risks still outweighed the potential rewards, but she skillfully pitted one against the other and kept the marriage talks running for months, even years, being on the verge of approval one moment and then veering backwards from promises of eternal abstinence the next. The French ambassador remarked, "She is a Princess who can play whatever role she wants."

Elizabeth was courted by English suitors as well, with her main favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, courting her most assiduously. Leicester was regularly in attendance on the queen, who showed all the symptoms of a passionate emotional devotion with him as master of the horse and a member of the Privy Council. When Leicester's wife, Amy Robsart, died in a mysterious fall in September 1560, though the queen's behavior against him tended to produce scandalous rumors, the favorite appeared poised to wed his royal mistress—or so widespread rumours had it—and because of this, the decisive step was never taken. Elizabeth's opposition to a marriage she seemed to want may have been political, as Leicester had many enemies at court and a bad name in the country to the entire world. The queen however was nearly killed by smallpox in October 1562, and with the possible prospect of a disputed succession and civil war looming, even frival factions were likely to support the marriage.

Elizabeth's refusal to give up her dominance was probably at the root of her decision to stay single. When Leicester wanted to get a favor from the queen, she yelled loudly, "I would have here but one mistress and no master," according to Sir Robert Naunton. She remained steadfastly obedient to her ministers, encouraging their candid suggestions and weighing it, but she did not cede. Sometimes the most trustworthy people have absolute power. Despite politely receiving pleas and listening to worried advice, she zealously maintained her right to make definitive decisions on all important state matters. Unsolicited advice could be risky at times, as when a pamphlet was published in 1579 vehemently opposing the queen's proposed marriage to the Catholic duke of Alençon, the poet, John Stubbs and his editor, William Page, were arrested and their right hands were severed.

Close advisors were frequently persuaded by Elizabeth's performances—her shows of infatuation, her overt desire to marry the suitor of the moment—so that the degree of intrigue and fear, which was often strong in royal courts, often reached a feverish pitch. Rather than calming the anxiety, the queen appeared to amplify and exploit it, since she was an expert at exploiting factions. This ability grew in importance beyond marital negotiations and became one of her regime's defining characteristics. A rich nobleman would be led to think that he had unrivaled authority over the queen, only to find that a despised rival had been duped into believing the same thing. The bestowal of such valuable perquisites as land grants and monopolies would give way to a golden shower of royal favor—apparent intimacies, civic honors, and the bestowal of such valuable perquisites as land grants and monopolies to royal aloofness or, most of all, royal rage Challenges to what she saw as her prerogative (whose extent she could nily, were left undefined) and indeed any unwanted signs of freedom incited the queen's wrath. The queen's conduct, as her godson Sir John Harington put it, would "chill out" the courtly environment of vivacity, wit, and romance. “There were no doubts on whose daughter she was.” The queen herself, who never mentioned her mother, often invoked this association of Elizabeth with her father, especially his capacity for wrath.

The queen's ties with Parliament, on which she had to depend for revenue, were marked by a certain mix of charisma and imperiousness. Many sessions of Parliament, particularly in the early years of the queen's reign, were more than cooperative with her; they had the rhetorical air of celebrations. The celebratory tone, which obscured the tension of the marriage-and-succession question, was strained under the pressure of the marriage-and-succession question. Over time, severe policy disagreements wore thin, and the meetings were complex, often acrimonious discussions between the crown and the commons. The queen's spokesmen fought to limit open speech to government bills because more conservative members of Parliament wished to incorporate wider fields of public policy in debate. Elizabeth had a unique talent for combining measured expressions of emotion. Intransigence combined with well-timed demonstrations of graciousness and, on special occasions, a cautious readiness to admit She turned the language of politics into the language of love wherever she could, comparing herself to the husband or mother of her kingdom. Her famed "Golden Speech" of 1601, for example, exemplified this rhetorical technique which she pledged changes in the face of legislative resistance to royal monopolies:.

“I do assure you, there is no prince that loveth his subjects better, or whose love can countervail our love. There is no jewel, be it of never so rich a price, which I set before this jewel; I mean, your love: for I do more esteem of it, than of any treasure or riches.”

As a result, a conversation about rights or desires becomes a conversation about shared appreciation, duty, and affection. “We all liked her,” Harington wrote, ironically, “because she said she loved us.” The queen managed to turn her gender from a significant disadvantage into a distinct asset in her relations with parliamentary delegations, suitors, and courtiers.

One of Elizabeth’s most notable achievements was how she re-established Protestantism in England. The Act of Supremacy, passed by Parliament and authorised in 1559, resurrected Henry VIII's antipapal statutes and made the queen sole governor of the church, while the Act of Uniformity made a slightly altered edition of the second Edwardian prayer book the official order of worship. Elizabeth's government worked slowly but gradually to get these institutional and liturgical changes from the statute books to the parishes throughout the kingdom. Priests, temporal officers, and men pursuing university degrees were required to swear an oath to the royal supremacy or risk losing their jobs; failure to attend Sunday church services was punishable by a fine; and royal officials were required to swear an oath to the royal supremacy or risk losing their offices. The commissioners aimed for doctrinal and liturgical consistency. Many nobles and gentry, as well as the bulk of the common people, remained faithful to the old religion, but Protestants occupied all of the key roles in the government and church, relying on patronage, coercion, propaganda, and intimidation to ensure outward observance of the religious settlement.

These reforms, however, seemed hopelessly pusillanimous and ineffective to radical Protestants, including exiles from Queen Mary's reign who had recently returned to England from Calvinist Geneva and other centers of continental change. They demanded sweeping changes to the church hierarchy and judiciary, as well as the removal of all remaining Catholic features from the prayer book and tradition, as well as a thorough investigation. Recusants are being hunted down and persecuted. The queen objected to both of these requests. She believed that the changes had gone far enough, and that any more disruption would result in public unrest, a risky need for innovation, and a loss of trust in existing authority. Furthermore, Elizabeth had little interest in probing her subjects' inner beliefs if she could access public information. She was able to hide her heart's private convictions in the name of uniformity and conformity. This agenda was in line with her own survival plan, deep conservatism, and personal distaste for religious zeal. When Edmund Grindal, the archbishop of Canterbury, defied the queen's instructions to ban such reformist educational activities known as "prophesyings" in 1576, Grindal was imprisoned. In the interests of uniformity and conformity, she was able to conceal her heart's private beliefs. This policy aligned with her own survival strategy, conservatism, and dislike for religious zeal. Edmund Grindal, the archbishop of Canterbury, was imprisoned in 1576 after defying the queen's orders to prohibit such reformist educational practices known as "prophesyings."

While Protestant rebels posed a danger to Elizabeth's religious settlement, English Catholic recalcitrance and resistance posed an equal threat. This opposition seemed to be relatively passive at first, but a series of crises in the late 1560s and early 1570s revealed its capacity for extreme, perhaps fatal, danger. In 1569, a revolt of imperial aristocrats and their supporters erupted in the Netherlands. In 1571, the queen's informers and informants discovered a foreign coup against her life known as the Ridolfi Plot, which was put down by savage military action in the staunchly Catholic north of England. Both threats were attributed, at least in part, to Mary, Queen of Scots, who had fled to England after being expelled from her own kingdom in 1568. The appearance was more like that of an inmate than a visitor. The presence of the woman whom the Roman Catholic Church viewed as England's legitimate queen presented a major political and diplomatic issue for Elizabeth, which was made worse by Mary's restless ambition and penchant for conspiracies. Elizabeth decided that allowing Mary to leave the country was too risky, but she also strongly refused Parliament's and many of her advisors' advice. Mary was to be executed like she deserved, according to the councillors. Mary remained a prisoner, ominous, malevolent, and pathetic all at once.

The unprecedented rise in religious tensions, diplomatic intrigue, and crime was not only a problem for the English. Elizabeth was excommunicated by Pope Pius V in 1570, and her subjects were absolved of all oaths of allegiance they might have taken to her. The immediate result was to make it more difficult for English Catholics, who had become the target of growing mistrust in 1572 since news of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of Protestants (Huguenots) in France hit England. Following the bold covert missionary efforts of English Jesuits educated on the Continent and smuggled back to England, tensions and official repression of recusants rose. Elizabeth was facing a lot of scrutiny to become more involved in the Roman-Byzantine war on the continent. Catholics and Protestants, in particular, to help the insurgents in the Netherlands who were resisting the Spanish armies. Yet she was apprehensive about getting engaged, partly because she despised insurrection, even though it was committed in the name of Protestantism, and partly because she despised spending. After a series of vacillations that made her councillors insane, she finally decided to offer some assistance first. With insufficient finances, she sent a small expeditionary force to the Netherlands in 1585.

After Pope Gregory XIII declared in 1580 that it would be no sin to rid the world of such a wretched heretic, fears of an assassination attempt against Elizabeth grew. William of Orange, Europe's other main Protestant king, was assassinated in 1584. Elizabeth herself displayed little symptoms of worry—she was a person of exceptional personal bravery in her life—but the governing elite's fear was palpable. In an ominous atmosphere of intrigue, imprisonment and execution of Jesuits, and rumors of foreign attempts to assassinate Elizabeth and conquer England, Elizabeth's Privy Council drawn up a Bond of Association, pledging its signers, in the event of a foreign attempt to murder the queen and invade England. The Association was specifically directed at Mary, whom government spies, led by Sir Francis Walsingham, had learned to be deeply involved in schemes against the queen's life by this time. When Walsingham's men discovered the Babington Plot in 1586, another plot to assassinate Elizabeth, the wretched Queen of Scots, her secret correspondence was intercepted, and her presence was clearly doomed. Mary was convicted and found guilty, and she was sentenced to death. Parliament requested that the sentencing be carried out as soon as possible. The queen paused for three months before signing the death warrant with an indication of serious hesitation. As Elizabeth learned that Mary had been beheaded on February 8, 1587, she reacted with a powerful display of sorrow and fury. She had never meant for the execution to take place, she wrote to Mary's uncle, James VI of Scotland, and she arrested the man who had given the signed warrant. It's hard to say how many people believed Elizabeth's grief declarations; Catholics on the Continent penned bitter denunciations of the queen, while Protestants throughout the kingdom rejoiced over the death of a woman that they felt threatened by, dreaded, and ultimately just quite frankly despised.

For years, Elizabeth had deftly navigated the competing interests of France and Spain in a political game akin to her domestic exploitation of rival factions. State-sanctioned privateering raids on Spanish ships and ports, led by Sir Francis Drake and others, alternated with conciliatory gestures and peace talks. By the mid-1580s, however, it was apparent that England could no longer escape a direct military conflict with Spain. The news reached London that Philip II, the Spanish king, had begun assembling a massive fleet that would sail to the Netherlands, join hands with a waiting Spanish army commanded by the Duke of Parma, and then invade and conquer Protestant England. About her aversion to spending money, the queen had allowed enough funds during her rule to sustain a fleet of maneuverable, well-armed warships, to which other merchant fleet vessels could be attached. As the Invincible Armada arrived in English waters in July 1588, the queen's ships routed the enemy fleet in one of history's most prominent naval battles, and was then almost devastated by terrible storms as it attempted to return to Spain.

When the Spanish attack seemed imminent, Elizabeth decided to inspect a detachment of soldiers assembled at Tilbury in person. She rode through the camp, dressed in a white gown and a silver breastplate, and delivered a well-received speech. She said that while some of her councillors advised her against standing in front of a massive, armed audience, she did not and would not betray her faithful and caring people. She was also unconcerned about Parma's army: “I know I have the body of a frail and poor woman,” Elizabeth proclaimed, “but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of an English king as well.” She went on to promise, “In the word of a Prince,” she promised to lavishly reward her faithful soldiers, a vow she, predictably, failed to fulfill. Many of the queen's characteristics are exemplified in this scene: Her princely parsimony, her histrionic mastery of grand public events, her diplomatic blending of magniloquence and the language of passion, her strategic identification with male martial virtues, and even parsimony.

Personal adornments were not exempt from Elizabeth's austerity. She had a large collection of fantastically intricate gowns and priceless jewelry. Her love of fashion was intertwined with political calculations and a keen sense of self-consciousness over her appearance. Her public appearances were lavish shows of riches and magnificence, and she attempted to monitor the royal portraits that circulated extensively in England and abroad. Throughout her reign, she hopped from one palace to the next—Whitehall, Nonsuch, Greenwich, Windsor, Richmond, Hampton Court, and Oatlands—and took advantage of her affluent subjects' hospitality. She wooed her subjects and was lavishly entertained on her travels, known as royal advances. Poets like Edmund Spenser and painters like Nicholas Hilliard praised her in a number of mythological guises—as Diana, the chaste goddess of the moon; Astraea, the goddess of justice; Gloriana, the queen of the fairies—and Elizabeth, in addition to accepting these monikers, adopted these monikers she appropriated some of the holy Englishmen's veneration for the Virgin Mary for herself.

“She imagined,” Francis Bacon wrote a few years after the queen's death, “that the shimmer of her jewels will distract the citizens, who are much influenced by externals, from seeing the deterioration of her personal attractions.” Bacon's cynicism reflects the darkening mood of Elizabeth's reign in the last decade, when her influence over her country's political, religious, and economic powers, as well as her representation of herself, began to sag. Harvest failures, persistent inflation, and unemployment wreaked havoc on the economy and lowered public confidence.

Many of the queen's favorites, to whom she had granted lucrative and much-despised monopolies, became widely reviled due to accusations of collusion and greed. A string of failed military efforts to subjugate the Irish resulted in a power struggle with her last great ally, Robert Devereux, the proud Earl of Essex, who had taken on the task of defeating rebel forces led by Hugh O'Neill, Tyrone's earl. Essex returned from Ireland against the queen's wishes, mocked her in front of her, and then attempted a desperate, foolish insurgency. On February 25, 1601 he was tried for treason and executed.

Elizabeth continued to give excellent remarks, exercise her influence, and collect lavish compliments from her admirers, but she was “a lady stunned by time,” as Sir Walter Raleigh put it, and her long reign was coming to an end. She had been down and sick for a long time, and she was showing symptoms of debility.

Her more astute advisors, including Lord Burghley's son, Sir Robert Cecil, who had replaced his father as her principal advisor, secretly corresponded with James VI of Scotland, the most likely claimant to the throne. Elizabeth died peacefully after allegedly naming James as her successor. The people greeted their new king with joy. However, within a few years, the English started to pine for the reign of "Good Queen Bess." She had turned herself into a powerful symbol of feminine authority, regal magnificence, and national pride long before her passing, and that image has survived to this day.