On January 25th, 1533, without to have obtained from the pope the cancellation of his marriage with his first wife, Catherine d' Aragon, Henri VIII, eager to have a male heir, married in great haste Anne Boleyn. Less than nine months later, on on September 7th, Anne at the world a child put. With the disappointment of Henri, it was a girl. To affirm that it was legitimate and of royal line, Henri gave him the first name of several queens and royal children: Elisabeth.

Illegitimate child

The childhood of Elisabeth was marked by the drama. In 1536, his/her mother is victim of the intrigues of a faction of courtiers influential, close to the Spanishs and carried out by the chancellor Thomas Cromwell: shown without evidence of adultery and incest, it is carried out on on May 19th, 1536. Two days before, Elisabeth was declared illegitimate. She will however be thereafter associated with the significant events with the court and, 1544, the Attestation of inheritance will in September place it at the third rank, behind his/her Edouard half-brother (son of Henri VIII and its third wife, Jeanne Seymour) and his Marie half-sister. Raised in the Protestant religion, Elisabeth profits from an excellent education, lavished in particular by two eminent humanistic of Cambridge, William Grindall and Roger Ascham. Sharp and intelligent, it handles French, Italian and Spanish, and keeps throughout his reign the taste for Latin and the Greek.

Rejected by the catholic party

Elisabeth did not play any part during the court reigns of Edouard VI (1547-1553) and did not take any share with the coup d'etat assembled by John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, which carried the daughter-in-law of this one, Jeanne Grey, with the power during thirteen in July 1553 days. Its relations with Marie Tudor were tended much. The queen and the catholic party hardly relied on Elisabeth, who, remained Protestant, represented for them a potential political danger. Elisabeth passed major the five years part of reign of her half-sister (1553-1558) far from the court, avoiding expressing in public any hostility with the mode. Held in suspicion by the catholic party, it was however interned with the Tower of London, March to May 1554, after the failure of the rebellion carried out by Thomas Wyat against the project of marriage of Marie with Philippe II of Spain. No proof could be retained against it, but it was manifest that the goal of rising was to place it on the throne. That did nothing but increase hatred that his/her sister tested in her connection and Elisabeth remained nearly two years confined in her castle of Hatfield House.

The incident had made him fear for its life and marked deeply it. Nevertheless, its political skill enabled him to preserve the support of the Protestants without giving Marie Tudor pretexts to exclude it from the succession; when this one died, on on November 17th, 1558, Elisabeth was proclaimed queen without opposition.

One of the major difficulties to which Elisabeth had to face was to be at the same time woman, single person and queen. Contradiction between the role of the woman, to obey, and that of the monarch, to order, was at this point obvious that many contemporaries estimated that the government of a woman, only in addition, was against nature and that it could only carry damage to the kingdom.

Celibacy, political instrument

But could Elisabeth marry? To marry one of its subjects represented a double disadvantage: that of mésallier and, especially, that to revive the quarrels of factions which had marked the end of the reign of Edouard VI and had led to the usurpation of Jeanne Grey. To marry a foreign prince was quite as dangerous: that was likely to cause xenophobe reactions and to involve England in a system of alliances which it would not control completely. The marriage became then for it a political and diplomatic asset of which it the USA with dexterity, acceptor, under the pressure of the members of his Council, to plan to marry such subject or such foreigner, but concealing itself finally. Of its many sighing, two only held really the attention of the queen: Robert Dudley, in 1560-1561, and Hercules (known as François), duke of Alençon then of Anjou, brother of king de France Henri III, between 1572 and 1582. The celibacy of Elisabeth maintained also open the question of the succession to the crown. The queen always refused to designate her successor, thus reinforcing her power: maintained uncertainty removed on its subjects any possible choice of allegiance.

The “virgin Queen”

Elisabeth got busy to offer itself the image of a woman out of the commun run. Virgin, it was above the condition common of the women and close to Christ, but it was also the wife of all. Woman, it reigned because God had wanted it, and Elisabeth touched patients reached of scrofula throughout her reign. Queen, it was the mother of all her subjects. A skilful propaganda contributed to the diffusion of this triple image.

The Elizabethan worship

Elisabeth is the first English monarch with being become, of alive sound, the object of a true worship. Each one of its appearances in public was surrounded by a pageantry and a ceremonial - where ostentatious luxury, symbols and allegories were learnedly intermingled - intended to glorify it and idealize it. In 1576, the day of its accession to the throne became official festival. A standard portrait (known as “of Ditchley”, 1590) of the queen, young person, splendid and enigmatic, was distributed and copied. Innumerable ballades, lampoons and poems were dedicated to that which one called Eliza, Gloriana, Astraea, and the sermons of the Church pointed out without delay its virtues and the love which linked it on its subjects. All the forms of art and all the techniques were put at the service of this propaganda, whose impact was considerable.

Elisabeth reached the throne in nearly general joy, because it incarnated the innovation and the hope of better times, even if it inherited chaos, the disaster and misery. She chooses to exploit dissatisfactions and hatred that Marie Tudor had ended up causing, and affirmed that she was going to restore peace, prosperity and the true religion. Elisabeth succeeds in achieving this goal, at the cost of some sacrifices. Inside, it was by the payment of the religious quarrels and the resumption in hand of the Council.

The religious compromise

Elisabeth did not have any intention to persevere in the Catholic religion, but it was to take into account a preserving House of Lords. Two texts voted by the Parliament into 1559 translate the religious compromise which it had to accept under the pressure of the catholic Lords: the Act of supremacy made of the queen the supreme governor of the Church (and not its chief) and the Act of uniformity restored, with some modifications, Prayer Book of 1552, clearly calvinist, while preserving the organization and the decorum (ornaments and clothing) of the Catholic church. But the compromise carried the adhesion of the large majority of the clergy, thus depriving the most intransigent catholics of an essential relay, the more so as Elisabeth showed flexibility in the implementation of the acts.

The controlled Council

To sit her authority with the Council, the queen returned two thirds of her members and replaced them by men devoted to his cause, such its Secretary of State and principal adviser of 1558 to 1572, to sir William Cecil, become Lord Burghley in 1571. Its government had a relatively restricted political base consequently, in particular because of exclusion of the notable catholics. The Council was not mined any more by the quarrels of factions and, on the great questions of the first years, its unit in front of the queen was real. This unit was all the more easy to realize that only six or seven of its nineteen members took part in the meetings and that most between them were linked by family ties (Leicester, Warwick, Sidney and Sussex; Walsingham and Mildmay; Cecil and Bacon).

The English revival

Outside, Elisabeth obtained with the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (April 1559) a honourable peace with France, even if Calais were temporarily lost, while maintaining, for a time, good relationships with Spain of Philippe II. However, excommunicated by the pope in 1570, Elisabeth was put away from the community of the European sovereigns, but its prestige near its subjects nothing but did increase with successes of the English corsairs (to sir John Hawkins) against the Spanishs, the exploits to sir Francis Drake (round the world tour in 1577-1580), the beginnings of colonization in America (Virginia, in 1584).

On demographic bottom of rise and economic growth (creation in 1570 of Royal Exchange; foundation, in 1600, of the English Company of the Eastern Indies), the defeat of Invincible Armada in August 1588 completed the return of England to the foreground of the international scene.

Protestant doubts and distrust

However, the role of sovereign in this transformation of England is discussed. Elisabeth was a preserving and generally hesitant queen in her decisions. Thus, its dogmatic retreat, in 1558, made indignant the Protestant bishops, who undertook to impose to him into 1563 very the calvinists Thirty-nine Articles of the religion. The hesitations of the queen to accept them, the projects of marriage with Dudley, then with Alençon, maintained until 1580 the rumors restoration Catholicism.

Elisabeth does not seem to have had precise aimings as regards foreign politics, except those to have a port (Calais or Le Havre) on the French coast and, in the years 1560-1580, to avoid any direct intervention in a conflict. When in June 1559 the Scottish threat was revived by the accession with the crown of France of François II, husband of Marie Stuart, rules over of Scotland and claiming catholic with the throne of England, Elisabeth sent only unwillingly soldiers to help the Protestants Scot. She supported without real conviction the party protesting in France in 1562-1564 (Calais was definitively lost in the business) and the calvinists of the United Provinces in 1577-1578. She sought as a long time as possible to make a pact with Philippe II.

When in 1585 it had to be solved to intervene militarily in the Netherlands against the catholics favorable to Spain, the duke of Leicester accepted the order to avoid launching offensives. The relations between Elisabeth and Marie Stuart illustrate these excuses. After her failure in Scotland, Marie took refuge in England (1568). She remained captive there during nineteen years but, in spite of the plots and the revolts fomented on her behalf (1569, 1571,1583,1586,1587), Elisabeth refused to exclude it from the succession, and it was the Council which obliged the queen to make it carry out on on February 8th, 1587.

Elisabeth was, actually, a queen jealous of her power and very conscious of her prerogatives and her row, especially after her excommunication. In this direction, its hesitation to support rebels, even Protestant, is explained by its refusal to guarantee any dispute of the monarchical authority.

An end of reign tormented

The fifteen last years of the reign are remembered by a fast deterioration of the relations between Elisabeth and her subjects. The economic factors and policies explain this inversion partly. The growth continued until 1592-1593, but harvests of 1594-1597 were very bad, involving the disastrous cycle high cost of living, decline of the production and rise of mortality. The first laws against the vagrants and the poor (1572 and 1576) were reinforced considerably, in 1598, in order to repress any social agitation. They were all the more unpopular as their application was the responsibility of the village community. Many military operations on the continent (United Provinces, France, Spain) and in Ireland, rare successes which they gained and heavy taxations which they involved (1593, 1598.1603) reinforced the hostility of the population with regard to the queen. Elisabeth gave the impression not to control her Council more: tiny room to about ten members, without large local base, it was controlled by Cecil (to sir Robert, the son of William, became Secretary of State in 1596) and their faction. Excluded turned to Robert Devereux, count d' Essex and sighing of the queen: this one will revolt and will be carried out in 1601. The stiffening with regard to the catholics, and particularly of the Jesuits, in the years 1580 did not prevent the emergence of the puritanism, that Elisabeth also had to fight.

A disputed image

However there was no decline of England. The colonial expansion continued (to sir Walter Raleigh), the debt of the country was weak and, especially, the end of the reign was a golden age for the thought (Francis Bacon), arts and the literature, and particularly the theater (Shakespeare, Marlowe, Greene, Chapman, Kyd, Tourneur).

What had broken, be the image of Elisabeth: the queen had not known to renew herself and Elizabethan propaganda had become inoperative. Aged and recluse, the queen let Robert Cecil organize her succession in 1602. When she died, on on March 24th, 1603, Jacques VI of Scotland was called with the throne. The natural order was restored. The Tudor dynasty had lived, but Elisabeth, idealized soon by disappointed reign of Jacques I, tie-beam in the legend.