ELIZABETH I,

born Sept. 7, 1533, Greenwich, near London, Eng. died March 24, 1603, Richmond, Surrey Elizabeth I, oil on panel attributed to George Gower, c. 1588 byname The Virgin Queen, or Good Queen Bess queen of England (15581603) during a period, often called the Elizabethan Age, when England asserted itself vigorously as a major European power in politics, commerce, and the arts. Elizabeth's childhood was marked by dangers from political and religious intrigue, and in the reign of her half sister, Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon, she was for a time imprisoned in the Tower of London. She became queen upon Mary's death (1558) and in the first 12 years of her reign established her popularity with the people. Her religious settlement of 1559 enforced the Protestant religion by law but was not unduly harsh to the Roman Catholics. This compromise, however, was shattered in 1570 by the interdict of Pope Pius V against Elizabeth, and thereafter the treatment of English Roman Catholics became increasingly severe. Despite various marriage plans designed to accommodate state interestsespecially the crucial interest of securing the successionand in spite of speculation about her friendships with several men, including Robert Dudley (Earl of Leicester), Elizabeth never married. Elizabeth's claim to the throne was threatened by Mary, Queen of Scots, a descendant of Henry VIII's sister Margaret; Mary's claim to the English throne was based on the questionable legality of Henry's second marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother. The queen finally had Mary executed (1587). In 1588 the Spanish Armada was destroyed by the English fleet that Elizabeth had built. The last years of her reign saw an economic decline and a series of disastrous military efforts to subdue the Irish. Public morale deteriorated. Elizabeth, who had outlived her most trusted friends and advisers, including Lord Burghley and Francis Walsingham, was left with more personally ambitious men, including Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was executed for high treason in 1601. Elizabeth reportedly acknowledged James VI of Scotland as her successor on her deathbed. Additional reading Writings by Elizabeth Some of Elizabeth's private letters appear in The Letters of Queen Elizabeth, ed. by G.B. Harrison (1935, reprinted 1981); others are included in The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth: A Narrative in Contemporary Letters, ed. by Frank A. Mumby (1909). Both of these volumes, however, include letters whose authenticity is doubtful. Elizabeth's translations of classical verse by Boethius, Plutarch, and Horace are published in Queen Elizabeth's Englishings . . . , ed. by Caroline Pemberton (1899, reprinted 1975); and her poetry appears in The Poems of Queen Elizabeth I, ed. by Leicester Bradner (1964). A brief sampling of her speeches may be found in The Public Speaking of Queen Elizabeth: Selections from the Official Addresses, ed. by George P. Rice, Jr. (1951, reissued 1966); a more complete selection is available in J.E. Neale, Elizabeth I and Her Parliaments, 2 vol. (195357, reissued 1966), which reprints complete transcripts of the queen's known addresses to Parliament. The speeches she made while on royal progresses are included in John Nichols, The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth, new ed., 3 vol. (1823, reprinted 1966). Biographies The standard biography of Elizabeth remains J.E. Neale, Queen Elizabeth (1934, reissued as Queen Elizabeth I, 1971). It should be supplemented by other scholarly biographies; among the most useful are J.B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth, 15581603, 2nd ed. (1959); Neville Williams, Elizabeth, Queen of England (1967; U.S. title, Elizabeth the First, Queen of England, 1968), which stresses the formation under Elizabeth of an English national consciousness; and Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I: A Biography (U.K. title, Elizabeth I: A Study in Power and Intellect, 1974). Jasper Ridley, Elizabeth I (1987; U.S. title, Elizabeth I: The Shrewdness of Virtue, 1988), emphasizes the role of religion in the queen's domestic and foreign policy. Popular biographies of Elizabeth, even when well researched, tend to be highly speculative about Elizabeth's emotions and motivations. Among the more recent biographies are Elizabeth Jenkins, Elizabeth the Great (1958, reissued 1972); Lacey Baldwin Smith, Elizabeth Tudor: Portrait of a Queen (1975); Carolly Erickson, The First Elizabeth (1983); and Alison Plowden, The Young Elizabeth (1971), and Elizabeth Regina: The Age of Triumph, 15881603 (1980). Selections and extracts of contemporary accounts of Elizabeth may be found in Joseph M. Levine (ed.), Elizabeth I (1969); Richard L. Greaves (ed.), Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1974); and Lacey Baldwin Smith (ed.), Elizabeth I (1980). Elizabethan government and politics For the controversy over women's right to rule a nation, see Paula Louise Scalingi, The Scepter or the Distaff: The Question of Female Sovereignty, 15151607, Historian, 41(1):5975 (1978). The doctrine of the king's two bodies is explained in Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (1957, reissued 1987); and applied to the case of Elizabeth in Marie Axton, The Queen's Two Bodies: Drama and the Elizabethan Succession (1977). Allison Heisch, Queen Elizabeth I: Parliamentary Rhetoric and the Exercise of Power, Signs, 1(1):3155 (Autumn 1975), analyzes the strategies and effects of Elizabeth's masterful parliamentary speeches.The structure and practice of Tudor administration is analyzed in Penry Williams, The Tudor Regime (1979, reissued 1981), which may be supplemented by Christopher Coleman and David Starkey (eds.), Revolution Reassessed: Revisions in the History of Tudor Government and Administration (1986); and David Loades, The Tudor Court (1986). The operations of Elizabeth's government are treated in detail in Wallace MacCaffrey, The Shaping of the Elizabethan Regime (1968, reissued 1971), which addresses the early years of her reign, and Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 15721588 (1981). Joel Hurstfield, Elizabeth I and the Unity of England (1960, reissued 1971), deals with Elizabeth's largely successful efforts at creating national unity in the face of profound religious, social, and political changes. For the ways in which Elizabethan politics led to 17th-century revolution, see Lawrence Stone, The Causes of the English Revolution, 15291642, 2nd ed. (1986); and Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (1965, reprinted 1980).Aspects of the succession question are addressed by Mortimer Levine, The Early Elizabethan Succession Question, 15581568 (1966); and by Joel Hurstfield, The Succession Struggle in Late Elizabethan England, in S.T. Bindoff, Joel Hurstfield, and C.H. Williams, Elizabethan Government and Society (1961), ch. 13, pp. 369396. Elizabeth's religious policies are studied in William P. Haugaard, Elizabeth and the English Reformation: The Struggle for a Stable Settlement of Religion (1968). The religious affiliations of her councillors are addressed in Winthrop S. Hudson, The Cambridge Connection and the Elizabethan Settlement of 1559 (1980). For foreign policy, see R.B. Wernham, The Making of Elizabethan Foreign Policy, 15581603 (1980); and Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy (1955, reprinted 1988).Useful overviews of Elizabethan government are given in Alan G.R. Smith, The Government of Elizabethan England (1967); S.T. Bindoff, Tudor England (1950, reprinted 1979); and Christopher Haigh (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I (1984). The image of Elizabeth The iconography of the queen's image is examined in Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, rev. ed. (1987), and The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (1977, reprinted 1986), which also treats the chivalric revival under Elizabeth. Elizabeth's image in literature is exhaustively treated in Elkin Calhoun Wilson, England's Eliza (1939, reissued 1966); and in Frances Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (1975, reissued 1985). The relations between Elizabeth's image and literary representations of her are investigated in Louis Adrian Montrose, Eliza, Queene of shepheardes,' and the Pastoral of Power, English Literary Renaissance, 10(2):153182 (1980), and Shaping Fantasies': Figurations of Gender and Power in Elizabethan Culture, Representations, 1(2):6194 (Spring 1983). For the staging of the self in this period, see Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (1980). Bibliography A comprehensive bibliography of works relating to Elizabeth and her times is the Bibliography of British History: Tudor Period 14851603, ed. by Conyers Read, 2nd ed. (1959, reissued 1978). More recent bibliographies include Mortimer Levine, Tudor England 14851603 (1968); and G.R. Elton, Modern Historians on British History, 14851945: A Critical Bibliography, 19451969 (1970). Stephen J. Greenblatt