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S]he united the great body of the people in her and their common interest, she inflamed them with one national spirit, and, thus armed, she maintained tranquillity at home, and carried succour to her friends and terror to her enemies abroad.
The wisest woman that ever was; for she understood the interests and dispositions of all the princes in her time, and was so perfect in the knowledge of her own realm, that no counsellor could tell her anything she did not know before. Lord Burghley, memorandum (29 January 1559), quoted in Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1558–1559, preserved in the State Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office, ed. Joseph Stevenson (1863), p. 107 Richard Bucholz and Newton Key, Early Modern England, 1485-1714: A Narrative History (2009), p. 116Unallied and alone, queen Elizabeth maintained a glorious and successful war against the greatest power and the richest potentate in Europe. She distressed him in the West Indies. She insulted him in Spain. She took from him the empire of the sea. She fixed it in herself. She rendered all the projects of universal monarchy vain; and shook to the foundations the most exorbitant power, which ever disturbed the peace, or threatened the liberties of Europe... She, who seemed to have every thing to fear in the beginning of her reign, became in the progress of it terrible to her enemies... [S]he preserved her subjects in peace and plenty. While the glory of the nation was carried high by achievements in war: the riches and the strength of it were raised by the arts of peace to such a degree, as former ages had never seen, and as we of this age feel in the consequences. For even our enemies hold our nation resolute and valiant, which though they will not outwardly show, they invariably know. And whensoever the malice of our enemies should cause them to make any attempt against us, I doubt not but we shall have the greatest glory, God fighting for those that truly serve Him with the justness of their quarrel. Duke of Feria to Gonzalo Perez (14 December 1558), quoted in Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs: Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas. Vol I. Elizabeth. 1558–1567, ed. Martin A. S. Hume (1892), p. 7
Queen Elizabeth, of Blessed Memory, ruled over her people for forty-five years, about half as long as most of them had any cause to expect to live. When she herself died, nearly seventy years old, there were very few alive who could even recall that another sovereign had ever sat on the throne of England. And though towards the end she had been not only old but also somewhat out of touch with the attitudes and ambitions of a new generation, she retained to the last the love and worship of a nation accustomed to a monarchy clothed in the splendour of divine right but also embodied in palpably real people. Whatever else the Tudors may have been, they were aggressively alive, sculpted in the round, formidable personalities of the kind that create living legends in their own lifetime and do not lose their vitality even in death. The Queen's long reign accomplished the promise of her father's rule; the age of Elizabeth is rightly regarded, not only by historians but also in the popular memory, as a time of greatness breeding greater things still than it actually witnessed. Elizabeth insisted that her cousin suffer no discomfort, and so Bess refurnished Talbot’s castle at Tutbury for her arrival. The arrangement also required the couple to stay at Tutbury, rather than their beloved Chatsworth or wherever they fancied. In a sense, they, too, were prisoners. In addition, though Bess and Mary were close and spent a lot of time together, Talbot baulked at the prisoner’s ludicrous demands for the upkeep of herself and her enormous retinue, which far exceeded the stipend allocated by Elizabeth. Over the next 15 years, Mary was moved between several of Bess’s homes across the country.I know the title of a King is a glorious title, but assure yourself that the shining glory of princely authority hath not so dazzled the eyes of our understanding, but that we well know and remember that we also are to yield an account of our actions before the great judge. To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it than it is pleasant to them that bear it. In their political correspondence, the English and the Ottomans used the argument that they “were alike haters of the ‘ idolatries’ practiced by the King of Spain”. Elizabeth I wrote a letter to Murad calling herself the “most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all the idolatry of those unworthy ones that live among Christians, and falsely profess the name of Christ”. So, in essence, Elizabeth framed her hopes of political alliance as being a partnership between the pious monotheists of England and Turkey against the idolatrous Spanish Habsburgs. It’s awful. Can you imagine waking up and there’s this much older guy sitting at the end of your bed in his night shirt, his bare legs showing? She considered herself as queen of a country cut off from the Continent, and separated by the sea from all other countries, except Scotland... The situation of an island affords great advantages, when they are wisely improved; and when they are neglected, as great disadvantages may result from this very situation. The reign, now before us, is a glorious and unanswerable proof, that the halcyon days, so much boasted of, and so seldom found, days of prosperity, as well as peace, may be enjoyed in an island, while all the neighbouring continent is filled with alarms, and even laid waste by war.
Says Clark Hulse, dean of the graduate college at the University of Illinois at Chicago and curator of the Newberry Library’s exhibition, “Elizabeth’s popularity had a lot to do with her manner—riding in an open carriage and all that. If her sister Mary was sober and inclined to burn people at the stake, Elizabeth projected the idea of ‘Merry England.’ ” Many, however, were horrified at the prospect of a queen reigning without a king. In a manifesto published the previous year, “The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,” a fiery Calvinist named John Knox had pronounced female rulers “repugnant to nature,” women being “weak, frail, impatient” and “inconstant.” Elizabeth I - the last Tudor monarch - was born at Greenwich on 7 September 1533, the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Fast-forward four centuries, and another young woman, also called Elizabeth, is facing her destiny across what Shakespeare called “the gap of time”. By this time she had wielded it for 43 years. In November 1601, in her emotional “Golden Speech” to members of Parliament, the queen, now 68, reflected on her long reign. “Though you have had and may have many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat,” she declared, “yet you never had or shall have any that will be more careful and loving.” She owed her success, she said, to the loyalty and affection of the English people. “Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown—that I have reigned with your loves.”Roger Ascham to Sturm (4 April 1550), quoted in The Whole Works of Roger Ascham, now first Collected and Revised, with a Life of the Author, Vol. I. Part I (1765), p. lxiii The expansive notions of religious authority and godly activism that found expression in Knox and Goodman's resistance theories would also continue to shape Protestant thought and activism under Elizabeth. English Protestants literally saw Elizabeth's accession as a godsend, and when James Pilkington called for reformation in 1560, he depicted the monarch as playing an important and helpful role in establishing true religion. Rather than making the prince the necessary source of religious authority in England, however, he cast the monarch as a powerful partner in a task that God Himself laid upon all His people, a task that must proceed, with or without the monarch's assistance. Elizabeth completely rejected this limited view of her authority- just as she rejected the notion that even her most exalted subjects could demand that she name a successor or execute a fellow monarch- but to her great consternation, many of her most fervent subjects did not. Lord Bolingbroke, The Idea of a Patriot King (1738), quoted in Lord Bolingbroke, Political Writings, ed. David Armitage (1997), p. 272 With 1588 the crisis of the reign was past. England had emerged from the Armada year as a first-class Power. She had resisted the weight of the mightiest empire that had been seen since Roman times. Her people awoke to a consciousness of their greatness, and the last years of Elizabeth's reign saw a welling up of national energy and enthusiasm focused upon the person of the Queen. In the year following the Armada, the first three books were published of Spenser's Faerie Queene, in which Elizabeth is hymned as Gloriana. Poets and courtiers alike paid their homage to the sovereign who symbolized the great achievement. Elizabeth had schooled a generation of Englishmen.
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