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'''Queen Elizabeth I''' '''Elizabeth I''' (1533–1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 1558 until her death, the last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Her reign, remembered as the Elizabethan era, saw the consolidation of the English Reformation, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and a flowering of English literature, exploration and national confidence. She is among the most celebrated and studied rulers in English history.

== Early Life and Accession ==
Elizabeth was born on 7 September 1533 at Greenwich Palace, the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Her mother was executed when Elizabeth was two and a half years old, and the child was declared illegitimate. She grew up in a precarious position at court, educated by the finest tutors of the age in Latin, Greek, French, Italian and theology, and she learned early to guard her words and her intentions.

When her half-brother Edward VI and then her half-sister Mary I occupied the throne, Elizabeth's Protestant sympathies made her suspect. She was imprisoned in the Tower of London for a time after a rebellion against Mary. On Mary's death in November 1558 Elizabeth acceded to the throne, and her careful, pragmatic approach to religion produced a settlement that held for generations.

At her accession the kingdom was divided and at war, its treasury exhausted and its religion unsettled. Elizabeth's first actions were to restore the Protestant church by the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity and to conclude peace with France. She chose as her chief adviser William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, whose cautious counsel shaped much of her policy for forty years.

== The Elizabethan Religious Settlement ==
The religious settlement of 1559 established the Church of England with the monarch as its supreme governor, a moderate Protestant liturgy, and a measure of outward tolerance for those who conformed. Elizabeth famously declared that she had no desire to make windows into men's souls, and she resisted the more radical Puritan demand for further reform. The via media, or middle way, she established became a defining feature of English religious life.

The settlement was tested throughout her reign. The papal bull of 1570 excommunicating her encouraged Catholic plots, and repeated conspiracies, including the Ridolfi, Throckmorton and Babington plots, threatened her life. Her policy hardened in response, and in 1587 she reluctantly signed the death warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots, the focus of much Catholic intrigue. The execution removed a rival claimant but alarmed Europe.

The compromise also shaped England's identity. By combining moderate doctrine with royal supremacy once more, Elizabeth gave the nation a church that could survive both the Puritan pressure from within and the Catholic pressure from abroad. When war came with Spain, the religious question merged with the question of national independence, and the queen became a symbol of resistance to foreign domination.

== Defeat of the Spanish Armada ==
By the 1580s Spain, the most powerful state in Europe, had decided to end English support for the Dutch revolt and English raids on Spanish shipping. King Philip II assembled a great fleet, the Armada, to escort an invasion army from the Netherlands. Elizabeth's navy, smaller but faster and better armed, met the Armada in the Channel in the summer of 1588.

The English ships harried the Spanish formation up the Channel and, in a celebrated night attack with fireships off Calais, broke its defensive crescent. A fierce battle off Gravelines drove the Armada into the North Sea, and the prevailing winds forced it to return to Spain around Scotland and Ireland, where storms and shipwreck destroyed much of the fleet. The deliverance was celebrated as a Protestant and national triumph.

Elizabeth's speech to the troops at Tilbury on the eve of invasion became one of the most quoted in English history: she declared that she had the body of a weak and feeble woman but the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too. The victory over the Armada secured her reputation as a warrior queen and made England a serious naval power.

== Legacy and Image ==
Elizabeth's reign saw the careers of William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser and Ben Jonson, and the voyages of Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and Martin Frobisher. It also saw the establishment of English power in Ireland and the beginnings of overseas expansion, including Raleigh's failed attempt to found a colony at Roanoke. The period came to stand for a golden age of English culture and self-confidence.

Elizabeth never married, and the question of the succession haunted her later years. She cultivated the image of the Virgin Queen, devoted to her people, and used pageantry, portraits and progresses through the country to build loyalty. The cult of majesty she fostered was a deliberate instrument of rule, and the diplomatic use of her marriage prospects kept potential allies and suitors guessing for decades.

She died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603 and was succeeded by James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, who united the crowns of England and Scotland. Historians have debated how far Elizabeth controlled events and how far she merely reacted to them, but her skill at delay, at compromise and at managing a faction-ridden court is widely acknowledged. She remains one of the best-known monarchs of the British Isles.

== See also ==
* Mary, Queen of Scots
* Philip II of Spain
* William Cecil
* Spanish Armada

== References ==

<ref name="r1">J. E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth I: A Biography, Cape, 1934.</ref>
<ref name="r2">Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991.</ref>
<ref name="r3">David Starkey, Elizabeth: Apprenticeship, Chatto and Windus, 2000.</ref>
<ref name="r4">Wallace MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I, Edward Arnold, 1993.</ref>

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[[Category:History]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:England]]

Queen Elizabeth I - Revision history

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