Life of Elizabeth I

elements bowing to her authority. Her Catholic subjects had proved themselves loyal, and the threat of insurrection had receded, paving the way for more tolerance towards recusants in the future. The conviction of the Protestant majority that God and Providence had intervened in England's hour of need gave a new stability to the Anglican Church. Above all, there was a surge of national confidence, which led to the flowering of literature and the decorative arts known as the English Renaissance.

After 1588, the fame of the Virgin Queen spread far and wide, while in England, where her people basked in the reflected glow of victory, her legend grew, giving rise to a new cult figure, . She was more convinced now than ever that God had destined her to rule her people, and that the victory was a signal manifestation of the divine will, and for the rest of her reign, writers and artists would portray the

Twelfth Night was also written for a performance at court in 1601

She was also a great lover of pageants, masques and dramas, and many plays, including some written by William Shakespeare and Benjonson, were performed at her court, usually at an average cost of 400 each. Tradition has it that after a 1597 production of The History of Henry IV, with the Humorous Conceits of Sir John Falstaff, Elizabeth was so taken with the character of Falstaff that she asked Shakespeare to write a play in which Falstaff falls in love. The result was The Merry Wives of Windsor, said to have been hurriedly written in a fortnight, but much enjoyed by the Queen

lizabeth spent lavishly on her court, since she understood the political importance of visible wealth. Court taste in painting, music, costume and other decorative arts, which naturally reflected the tastes of the Queen, set trends that were followed in the great country houses.

She did not, however, stint on outward show, because in an age of personal monarchy, pomp and splendour were regarded as the visual evidence of power. 'We princes are set as it were upon stages in the sight and view of all the world,' observed the Queen. Therefore no expense was spared on court ceremonial, furnishings and entertainments, nor on the Queen's wardrobe, for these were all aspects of sovereignty designed to impress foreign ambassadors and visitors to the court. It had, indeed, been the policy of successive Tudor sovereigns to maintain a magnificent court that would not only impress but also overawe all who visited it.

She hated executions and issued reprieves to condemned felons whenever possible, so long as justice had been seen to be done. She was, as Cecil called her, 'a very merciful lady'. She followed major trials with interest, and intervened if she felt it necessary.

Being a woman was to Elizabeth's advantage when it came to creating her own legend, because then she could assume the allegorical and mythological personae assigned her by chivalrous courtiers, writers and poets. She was the 'Rosa electa', the chosen rose, around whom a cult of adoration flourished, and who came to be regarded as little less than divine. By the end of her reign she was being referred to in Acts of Parliament as 'Her Sacred Majesty'. The composer John Dowland wrote a song entitled 'Vivat Eliza for an Ave Maria', which plainly showed how the worship of the Queen had replaced the people's need for a female deity in the post-Reformation years.
Elizabeth herself, making a virtue of a necessity, promoted the image and cult of the Virgin Queen who was wedded to her kingdom and people. She took for her personal emblems those symbols of virginity that had been associated in earlier times with the Virgin Mary: the rose, the moon, the ermine or the phoenix. She also, like Henry VII, made much of her alleged descent from King Arthur, whose legends were a dominant theme in the pageantry of her reign.

Chapter 13
'Gloriana'
'To be a king and wear a crown is more glorious to them that see it than it is a pleasure to them that bear it,' Queen Elizabeth once famously said. At the same time, she revelled in and jealously guarded the privileges of sovereignty: 'I am answerable to none for my actions otherwise than as I shall be disposed of my own free will, but to Almighty God alone.' God, she believed, had preserved her through many trials to bring her to the throne, and she was convinced that she reigned by his especial favour. In 1576, she told Parliament, 'And as for those rare and special benefits which many years have followed and accompanied me with happy reign, I attribute them to God alone. These seventeen years God hath both prospered and protected you with good success, under my direction, and I nothing doubt that the same maintaining hand will guide you still and bring you to the ripeness of perfection.'
As 'God's creature', a divinely-appointed queen, hallowed and sanctified at her coronation, Elizabeth believed that she alone was able to understand fully the complexities and mysteries of Church and State. 'Princes', she declared, 'transact business in a certain way, with a princely intelligence, such as private persons cannot imitate.' If she felt that anyone was encroaching upon this sacred privilege, she was quick to reprimand them. 'She was absolute and sovereign mistress,' remembered one courtier, Sir Robert Naunton. 'She is our god in Earth', declared Lord North, 'and if there be perfection in flesh and blood, undoubtedly it is in Her Majesty.'
What was more important to Elizabeth than anything, however, was that she reigned with her subjects' love. She proudly pointed out that she was There English', as they were, and constantly proclaimed that she was as a mother to her people, and cared deeply for the 'safety and quietness of you all'. 'She is very much wedded to the people and thinks as they do,' observed one Spanish envoy. She had their interests at heart and her instinct told her what was best for them. A stickler for justice, she 'condescended' to 'the meaner sorts', received their petitions on a daily basis, and often stood up for their rights. Sir Walter Raleigh told James I that 'Queen Elizabeth would set the reason of a mean man before the authority of the greatest counsellor she had. She was Queen of the small as well as the great, and would hear their complaints.' Her affection for her subjects is evident in contemporary sources, where her most frequently repeated utterance is, 'Thank you, my good people.'
Sir John Harington, the Queen's godson, reveals how well she understood how to deal with her subjects:
Her mind was oft-time like the gentle air that cometh from a westerly point in a summer's morn: 'twas sweet and refreshing to all around. Her speech did win all affections, and her subjects did try to show all love to her commands; for she would say her state did require her to command what she knew her people would willingly do from their own love to her. Herewith did she show her wisdom fully: for who did choose to lose her confidence, or who would withhold a show of love and obedience, when their sovereign said it was their own choice, and not her compulsion? Surely she did play her tables well to gain obedience thus, without constraint. Again, she could put forth such alterations, when obedience was lacking, as left no doubt whose daughter she was.
In an age of personal monarchy, it was important that the monarch was on show as often as possible, and Elizabeth ensured that she was highly visible, travelling on annual progresses, riding out frequently through the streets of London or being rowed in her state barge along the Thames.
She also thought it important to justify her actions to her subjects in a series of carefully composed speeches, many of them written by herself, printed pamphlets and proclamations. She was a gifted orator and actress who could speak 'extempore with many brilliant, choice and felicitous phrases', and who knew well how to manipulate her audience so that she had them eating out of her hand. 'Princes' own words be better printed in the hearers' memory than those spoken by her command,' she told Parliament. In the latter decades of her reign, her style of writing and public speaking became more florid, mannerist and extravagant, in keeping with the prevalent trend for Euphuism, a prose form invented by John Lyly in the earliest English novel, Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit, and at which Elizabeth became one of the foremost exponents.
Few realised how subtly the Queen dealt with them. 'I have seen her smile - with great semblance of good liking to all around,' recorded Harington, 'and cause everyone to open his most inward thought to her; when, on a sudden, she would ponder in private on what had passed, write down all their opinions, draw them out as occasion required, and sometimes disprove to their faces what had been delivered a month before. She caught many poor fish, who little knew what snare was laid for them.'
Not for nothing was she Henry VIII's daughter: she expected instant obedience and respect, and would have her way 'as absolutely as her father'. 'Majesty', she declared, 'makes the people bow.' She was fond of talking about Henry, and even seems to have modelled some of her speeches on his. She liked to remind her councillors how much sterner her father had been, and when they had the temerity to challenge her views, she would thunder, 'Had I been born crested, not cloven, you would not speak thus to me!' In 1593, she acknowledged her debt to Henry VIII before Parliament, as one 'whom in the duty of a child I must regard, and to whom I must acknowledge myself far shallow'. Nevertheless, she admitted that her style of government was 'more moderate' and benign than Henry's had been.
Elizabeth's command of politics and statesmanship was as exceptional as her intelligence was formidable. She was astute, pragmatic, very hardworking, and never afraid to compromise. In the face of rebellion and war, she displayed remarkable courage. The coarse buccaneer, Sir John Perrot, her deputy in Ireland, once said of her, 'Lo! Now she is ready to be-piss herself for fear of the Spaniards!' but was later forced to revise his opinion and admit that she had 'an invincible mind, that showeth from whence she came'.
Elizabeth's chief concern was to provide England with stable, orderly government. She had the gift of knowing instinctively what was right for her kingdom, her priorities being to maintain the law and the established Church, avoid war and live within her means. She told her judges, whom she selected herself, that they must 'stand pro veritate (for truth) rather than pro Regina (for the Queen)'. She loved peace, and frequently offered to mediate between warring foreign powers. Not for nothing did James VI of Scotland describe her as 'one who in wisdom and felicity of government surpassed all princes since the days of Augustus'.
'There was never so wise woman born as Queen Elizabeth', wrote Cecil in tribute, 'for she spake and understood all languages, knew all estates and dispositions and princes, and particularly was so expert in the knowledge of her own realm as no counsellor she had could tell her what she knew not before.'
For all this, there still remained in Elizabethan society a deeply ingrained prejudice against female sovereigns in general. The unhappy example of Queen Mary seemed to confirm the general view that women were not born to rule. In 1558, in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, John Knox wrote: 'I am assured that God hath revealed to some in this our age that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman should reign and bear empire over man.' Women, he asserted, were naturally weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish, the port and gate of the Devil, and insatiably covetous. The Swiss reformer John Calvin believed that the government of women was 'a deviation from the original and proper order of nature, to be ranked no less than slavery'.
A typical example of male prejudice occurred when a French envoy asked for the Council to be present at his audience with the Queen, implying that the matters of state he had come to discuss were beyond female understanding. Back came a furious answer from Her Majesty: 'The ambassador forgets himself in thinking us incapable of conceiving an answer to his message without the aid of our Council. It might be appropriate in France, where the King is young, but we are governing our realm better than the French are theirs.'
Elizabeth herself was no early feminist; she accepted the creed of her day, that women had serious limitations, speaking of herself as 'a woman wanting both wit and memory'. In a self-composed prayer, she thanked God 'for making me, though a weak woman, yet Thy instrument'. To combat prejudice and underline her position, she invariably referred to herself as a prince, comparing herself with kings and emperors, and with some success, for according to William Cecil, she was 'more than a man and, in truth, something less than a woman'. 'My experience in government', she told Henry IV of France at the end of her reign, 'has made me so stubborn as to believe that I am not ignorant of what becomes a king.'
'Although I may not be a lioness', she was fond of saying, 'I am a lion's cub, and inherit many of his qualities.' Her apologists felt bound to point out that her reign fulfilled one of the ancient prophecies of Merlin: 'Then shall a Royal Virgin reign, which shall stretch her white rod over the Belgic shore and the great Castile smite so sore withal that it shall make him shake and fall.' The 'great Castile' was, of course, Philip of Spain, whose kingdom incorporated that of Castile.

Her apologists felt bound to point out that her reign fulfilled one of the ancient prophecies of Merlin: 'Then shall a Royal Virgin reign, which shall stretch her white rod over the Belgic shore and the great Castile smite so sore withal