Elizabeth I

V

Accession to the Throne

Elizabeth acceded to the throne on Mary’s death on November 17, 1558. Her coronation, on January 15, 1559, was spectacular, but was more complicated than it appeared. The coronation pageants acclaimed her as a Protestant saviour, or as Deborah, 'the judge and restorer of Israel'. But these were paid for by the Protestant citizens of London, and while Elizabeth was undoubtedly not a Roman Catholic, the precise nature of her faith was still a matter of conjecture. At the ceremony itself, she wore a robe of cloth of gold with a high collar bedecked with jewels, surmounted with a mantle of ermine. This was her sister's coronation robe, worn as a tribute to her lineage. She also wore her hair hanging loosely over her shoulders, as Anne Boleyn had done at her coronation. She was crowned by Bishop Oglethorpe (the only Marian bishop who would officiate), but the Communion was celebrated by her own chaplain to avoid the Elevation of the Host according to the Catholic rite.

Elizabeth was cheered on her route to Westminster Abbey. As she reached the entrance, the crowd surged forward to cut away pieces of the purple carpet on which she had walked to take as souvenirs. Her popularity seemed assured, but was still fragile. At this stage, Elizabeth relied on the popularity of her father and on comparisons with Mary, who had lost Calais shortly before her death and was deeply resented in London for her burnings of Protestants. The key question was less what the Londoners would think than what the nobility and gentry would say in the country at large. The first major test would be the religious settlement.

VI

Religious Settlement

Parliament assembled on January 23, 1559. By the end of April, a settlement had been enacted that restored the royal supremacy and a version of the Protestant Prayer Book modelled on the Second Edwardian Prayer Book of 1552. The ex-monastic lands were assured to those who had purchased them in the reigns of Henry VIII or Edward VI. The architect of this settlement was William Cecil, whom Elizabeth had appointed as her chief minister. For gender reasons, Elizabeth took the title of 'supreme governor' rather than 'supreme head' of the Church of England. The Marian bishops had scoffed at the idea that a woman could be 'supreme head' of the Church. Elizabeth disagreed, but was sensitive to public opinion. Cecil drew up lists of new bishops, and the entire episcopal bench as well as a small number of dissident parochial clergy were replaced with Protestants, many of whom were drawn from the humanist circle of Cheke and Ascham in Cambridge, or who had been exiles abroad in Mary's reign.

A new Privy Council was appointed. This mingled counsellors and servants who had been loyal to Elizabeth in Mary's reign with representatives of the nobility and leading administrators. Elizabeth tried to avoid creating a partisan regime. Divisions were circumvented by ensuring that the members of the inner court circle and of the privy council were largely the same people or members of their immediate families. There had been rivalry between privy counsellors and courtiers in the reigns of Henry VIII and Mary, but Elizabeth's appointments sidestepped this factionalism. Here the Queen's gender was a positive advantage, since, to augment the ranks of her former Hatfield servants, she appointed the wives and daughters of her privy counsellors to the positions of ladies and gentlewomen in the privy chamber, thereby reducing the scope for conflict at court.

VII

Iconography of the Queen

A public relations campaign was launched to stimulate Elizabeth's popularity. As a woman ruler, it was essential to project her image in a way that inspired national unity. She came to symbolize for her people all they most loved. But the process whereby her appearance, virtue, intellectual talents, and especially her virginity were appropriated as national icons was stage-managed. In the course of the reign, the actual queen and woman were transformed into the perfect sovereign and lady. The concept of Gloriana was shaped, to be complemented and reinforced by the classical and mythological images of Cynthia, Diana, and Belphoebe, and the religious images of Deborah, Judith, and the Virgin Mary.

The campaign was inaugurated in 1563, when Cecil drafted a proclamation to regulate the production of images of the Queen, whether painted or engraved. It forbade artists from drawing the Queen's picture until 'some special person, that shall be by her allowed, shall have first finished a portraiture thereof'. Thereafter, all other painters or engravers 'shall and may at their pleasures follow the said pattern of first portraiture'. A series of 'official' templates lay behind Elizabeth's images. The most copied model was that of the 'Darnley' portrait (National Portrait Gallery, London). Other portraits derived from patterns were the 'Pelican' portrait (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool), the 'Phoenix' portrait (Tate Gallery, London), and the 'Armada' portrait (Woburn Abbey). Less influenced by templates were the 'Ditchley' portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger (National Portrait Gallery), the 'Sieve' portrait by Quentin Metsys the Younger (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena), and the 'Ermine' portrait attributed to William Segar (Hatfield House).

As the Queen aged, her portraits became more magnificent. The 'Ditchley' portrait, painted in c.1592, exemplified the process. Elizabeth by this date was unattractive. Her skin was wrinkled, she wore a wig, her teeth were bad, and she wore a perfumed silk handkerchief in her mouth before receiving visitors. Yet the portrait depicted a stunningly attractive woman in middle age. The challenge was to show that time took no toll on her beauty. In a masque performed in 1594, when she was 60, she was told that 'Time, which catcheth everybody, leaves only you untouched'. The climax was the 'Rainbow' portrait (Hatfield House), which followed a pattern known as the 'Mask of Youth'. Elizabeth is shown as a beautiful young woman, who holds a rainbow and plays the role of the sun itself. Her gown is decorated with ears and eyes, representing her privy counsellors and servants who watch and listen, but do not pronounce. In an allusion to Aristotle's Politics, they are her 'friends' who maintain, but also restrain, her power. At one level, the 'Rainbow' portrait depicted Elizabeth in Augustan majesty, but at another it was an icon of constitutionalism.

The 'Mask of Youth' was created by Nicholas Hilliard, the leading miniaturist. Although portraits were sought to decorate long galleries, what patrons most genuinely desired were miniatures, which were often set in lockets or jewels. Elizabeth kept her own collection wrapped in paper in a cabinet in her bedchamber. They were originally tokens of love or courtly dalliance, but in the later years of the reign were turned into political symbols which were framed and worn as badges. By the 1590s, Hilliard and his studio were mass-manufacturing them. The 'Mask of Youth' followed Elizabeth's encounter with Isaac Oliver, whose mistake as a miniaturist was to paint the Queen's true likeness. In 1596, the Privy Council ordered all officers to seek out and deface 'unseemly portraits of the queen', and thereafter the 'Mask of Youth' became the model for 'official' representations of the Queen.

VIII

Patronage and the Arts

Literature and drama were also used to propagate the Queen’s image, but in less focused and direct ways. Despite Elizabeth’s accomplishments as a scholar and linguist, which encouraged innumerable dedications of books and verses to her, she was not herself a notable patron of authors. Literary patronage was left to her courtiers and privy counsellors, who directed it towards practical and political rather than aesthetic ends. In 1595-1596 Edmund Spenser dedicated the second instalment of his poetic masterpiece, The Faerie Queene, to “the most high, mighty, and magnificent empress renowned for piety, virtue, and all gracious government”, but the most he could achieve by way of preferment was an appointment as Sheriff of Cork in Ireland. By contrast, companies of players were retained by nobles and privy counsellors such as the Earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Sussex for their private entertainment and for the dissemination of court and Protestant values. In 1574 the company known as “Leicester’s Men” secured a royal patent to perform without hindrance in every part of the realm. London became the busiest city for theatre, but all the companies of players toured for much of their time. Elizabeth took a keen personal interest in drama. Plays were a notable feature of the Christmas and New Year revels and of the festivities in honour of the Queen in London. Leicester’s players brought the best talent to Elizabeth’s attention. In 1583, at the instigation of Sir Francis Walsingham, the best actors from each of the companies were taken directly under the Queen’s patronage and an elite company of “Queen’s Men” formed. At this time, Shakespeare was still a teenager, Marlowe was a student at Cambridge University, and even the older generation of Elizabethan dramatists such as George Chapman, Thomas Kyd, Michael Drayton, and Thomas Lodge had still to make their mark. It was, however, Walsingham’s desire to propagate “official” Protestant and “national” values and the Queen’s love of dramatic entertainments that laid the material foundations of what modern scholars call the “golden age” of the English Renaissance.

IX

Elizabeth’s Courtships and Favourites at Court

The philosopher Francis Bacon recalled how Elizabeth had 'allowed herself to be wooed and courted, and even to have love made to her', which 'dalliances detracted but little from her fame and nothing at all from her majesty'. She used 'courtship' as a diplomatic lever to get her own way. It was often said that to succeed at court, men had to pretend to be in 'love' with her. In reality, her use of 'courtship' in the course of normal working relationships, especially those with William Cecil and his son, Robert, has been exaggerated. The 'game' of 'courtship' mostly applied to her relations with her favourites: Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, Sir Christopher Hatton, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. Otherwise, there was relatively little distinction between the role of the 'favourite' and that of the other leading courtiers and privy counsellors. The difference was that the 'favourites' were there solely at the Queen's choice and her relations with them had a distinct sexual edge.

Lord Robert Dudley was the leading favourite. He was Master of the Horse, in which function he rode directly behind the Queen when hunting and on all ceremonial occasions. He was rarely absent from court in the first 18 months of the reign. The Spanish ambassador reported that 'Lord Robert has come so much into favour that he does whatever he likes with affairs and it is even said that her Majesty visits him in his chamber day and night”. By the autumn of 1559, their intimacy was a source of public criticism, since Dudley was married to Amy Robsart, who was still alive. Elizabeth was in love. There was talk of future marriage. The scandal broke in September 1560, when news reached the court that Amy had died in suspicious circumstances. She had fallen down the stairs at her home in Cumnor Place, near Oxford. A coroner's jury brought in a verdict of accidental death, but whether Amy died accidentally or as an act of suicide, has neither been proved nor refuted. Elizabeth would hear nothing against Dudley, but by the end of the year had decided that marriage to him was too risky. In November, she drew back from ennobling him at the last moment, taking a knife to slash the patent. In January 1560, she decided to pass him over for the post of Master of the Court of Wards, preferring William Cecil to the position. Dudley was admitted to the Privy Council in October 1562, and finally ennobled as Earl of Leicester in 1564. Thereafter, he and Cecil worked largely in concert, with their overlapping clienteles—Cecil's mainly at court, Leicester's mainly in the country—complementing each other. Elizabeth had an undying affection for Leicester, whose portrait miniature she kept in her closet, and whose last letter she lovingly preserved, but she also had the will to put him in his place, even exiling him from court when he had presumed too much.

Sir Christopher Hatton first distinguished himself in a tournament at Westminster in 1565. He was granted generous gifts of land and appointed a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and Captain of the Guard (1572). His relationship with Elizabeth was extremely close. When he fell ill in 1573, she visited him daily and sent her own physician to attend him. He wrote her love letters, and she addressed him in terms of endearment. In 1575 she settled on him an annuity of £400 and gave him Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire. He also obtained the freehold of Ely Place in London. In 1578 he was appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Queen's Household, and admitted to the Privy Council. Raleigh was rising in Elizabeth's esteem by 1582, and Hatton was jealous, sending her tokens and a reproachful letter. He withdrew from court in 1584, and remained in Northamptonshire until the Queen recalled him. On April 25, 1587, he was appointed Lord Chancellor. The news caused indignation in the legal profession, since his knowledge of law was slight. He was nicknamed the 'dancing chancellor', on the grounds that he had 'danced' his way into favour. This was unfair, since he was impressive as a privy counsellor and relied on expert advice as a judge, but his career was the classic instance of Bacon's view of 'courtship'.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a dashing adventurer who had fought in France in 1569 as a volunteer in the Huguenot army. In 1578 he sailed to the Azores and the Caribbean. He also served in Ireland. By 1579, he had returned to court, where he caught Elizabeth's eye. The story that he spread out his cloak for her to walk on is most likely apocryphal, but there is no doubt that she instantly favoured him. He was granted most of the offices in the south-west vacated by the death of the 2nd Earl of Bedford, as well as lucrative monopolies and estates in the East Midlands and Ireland. His grants included a monopoly of wine licences. He succeeded Hatton as Captain of the Guard, but was barred entry to the Privy Council and finally disgraced in 1592, when Elizabeth discovered he had seduced Elizabeth Throckmorton, one of the queen's maids of honour. He was sent to the Tower, and exiled from court, the victim of Elizabeth's sexual jealousy. She was enraged that a man she had chosen to favour had broken the rules of 'courtship'.

Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was a dazzling but paranoid figure. He became the Queen's last favourite after the death of his stepfather, the Earl of Leicester. She granted him the right to control the import and sale of sweet wines, a highly valuable perquisite that had been Leicester's main source of liquidity. But Essex took a major risk when he married Walsingham's daughter, Frances, who was Sir Philip Sidney's widow. The marriage was bitterly resented by Elizabeth. Essex only regained his position when he consented that his wife should live 'very retired in her mother's house'. He was appointed Master of the Horse. Admitted to the Privy Council in 1593, he championed an aggressive military strategy against Spain. Soon he was rivalling the Cecils for patronage and power. But his illicit sexual conquests earned him Elizabeth's rebuke. Matters came to a head in July 1598 during discussion of the appointment of a successor to Lord Burgh as lord deputy in Ireland. Elizabeth proposed Sir William Knollys, while Essex countered by recommending Sir George Carew. In the ensuing furious exchange, Essex turned his back on the Queen, who immediately recalled him and struck him across the face, telling him to 'go and be hanged'. Essex apologized three months later, and sought the appointment in Ireland himself. The following March, he arrived in Ireland, where he proved a failure. Essex petitioned for the renewal of his patent of sweet wines and begged for an audience, but his pleas were ignored. By depriving Essex of his patent, the Queen ruined him financially. On February 8, 1601, he led his supporters in a botched revolt through the streets of London. He was sent to the Tower, tried for treason, and executed.

Of her favourites, Leicester was the only one with whom Elizabeth contemplated marriage. By rejecting that option, she showed that she had learnt to separate her personal emotions from political and diplomatic realities. Thereafter, she deployed the issue of matrimony primarily as a tool of her European diplomacy. Before Francis, Duke of Anjou, to whom Elizabeth was briefly engaged in 1581, her principal suitors included Philip II; Eric XIV, King of Sweden; Adolphus, Duke of Holstein; the Archduke Charles of Austria, third son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V; and Henry, Duke of Anjou, younger brother of Charles IX of France, older brother of Francis, Duke of Anjou, and himself later Henry III of France. Elizabeth amused herself with each and all of these candidates, and played off one against the other.

The Archduke was considered between 1563 and 1567. At that time, the Habsburgs were thought to be more flexible in religion than was really the case, but the main value of the negotiations was to foster the impression abroad that England was not as radically Protestant as might have been thought. The project collapsed when the Archduke insisted on celebrating the Catholic Mass in the royal household, which was unthinkable to Elizabeth and the Privy Council. The same obstacle stood in the way of the negotiations with Henry, Duke of Anjou, in 1570-1571. Almost certainly, Elizabeth pursued this match for no other reason than that she thought the French would never condone an entente in the absence of a dynastic marriage, but this issue was overtaken as Henry's unrealistic demands for Catholic liturgical worship throughout the year ended any prospect of marriage. This is not to deny that Elizabeth might have married Henry if the terms had been exactly right, but since they never were, it must be assumed that political objectives predominated.

Of the Queen's remaining suitors, only Francis, Duke of Anjou, the youngest son of Catherine de Médicis, seemed to catch her attention. When the negotiations opened in earnest in 1579, she greeted Anjou's agent with a courtesy and coquetry that astonished most observers. She held lengthy and intimate interviews with the envoy, where the talk was of love rather than of alliances or treaties. She entertained him at feasts, dances, masques, and jousts, and showered him with gifts and love tokens for the Duke. When Anjou himself arrived in England, Elizabeth played to perfection the role of a woman in love. She sported his portrait miniature on her person or carried it in her prayer book, and sent him letters and a poetic lament on his departure. During his final visit in November 1581, Elizabeth 'drew off a ring from her finger and put it upon the Duke of Anjou's upon certain conditions betwixt them two”. According to the Spanish ambassador, she actually said, 'he shall be my husband'. When their 'courtship' began in 1579, Elizabeth was almost forty-six; when Anjou died in 1584, she was fifty-one. Whether the episode was merely play-acting or infatuation, how much was real and how much pure diplomacy to maintain the French entente and therefore England's security is a debate that may never be finally resolved.