Born: 7 September 1533, United Kingdom
Died: 24 March 1603
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: NA
This biography, written by Johanna Strong, is shared with permission from Team Queens, an educational history blog run by a collective of historical scholars. All rights reserved; this material may not be republished without the author’s consent.
Elizabeth I was born on 7 September 1533 at the Palace of Placentia at Greenwich in England. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, had recently married Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII and Anne had been crowned queen consort only a few months before Elizabeth’s birth.
Throughout her childhood, Elizabeth was taught by some of the great scholars of the age, including Roger Ascham. By a young age, she was fluent in Latin and was praised for her linguistic and musical abilities. Influenced by the reformers around her, Elizabeth remained a committed Protestant throughout her brother Edward VI’s reign and was imprisoned at the Tower of London – partly for religion, partly for suspected dynastic ambitions – during her sister’s reign.
On 17 November 1558, Elizabeth became queen. At her ascension, she re-introduced elements of the reformed faith, but remained relatively neutral in the religious discussions in England. One of the defining moments of her reign was England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, led by Philip II of Spain in 1588. While the Elizabethan Religious Settlement remained rather neutral, the Armada and suspicions of Catholic plots against Elizabeth led to harsher measures against English Catholics. Often known as the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth had many suitors both domestic and international, but she never married. Throughout her marriage negotiations, though, Elizabeth was adept at creating, maintaining, and dissolving alliances as necessary.
Elizabeth died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, leaving her throne to James VI of Scotland (who would become James I of England). She is buried at Westminster Abbey over the body of her sister and predecessor Mary I in the tomb built for them by order of James VI/I in 1606. Though both women are buried in the same tomb, it is Elizabeth alone who appears in effigy on their shared tomb.
Recommended Reading
Carole Levin, The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
Estelle Paranque, Elizabeth I of England Through Valois Eyes. Power, Representation, and Diplomacy in the Reign of the Queen, 1558–1588 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
Susan Doran, Queen Elizabeth I (London: British Library Publishing, 2003).
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Elizabeth (1533-1603), Queen of England, daughter of Henry V III and Anne Boleyn. After her mother had been beheaded (1536) both she and her sister Mary were declared bastards, but finally she was placed after Prince Edward and the Lady Mary in the order of succession. In November, 1558, Mary died, and Elizabeth began her memorable reign of 44 years. Her adviser through the whole of it was William Cecil, afterward Lord Burleigh, who had already been a minister under Edward VI, and continued for the rest of his life to be one of the chief councilors and ablest ministers of Elizabeth, to whom he was in many respects a congenial spirit. Her first parliament approached her on a subject which, next to religion, was the chief trouble of her reign, the succession to the crown; they requested her to marry. She replied in a long speech, declaring her intention to live and die a virgin, and though there were many suitors for her hand, among them Philip II of Spain, she never married.
The policy of her ministers, on the whole, was one of peace and economy. No war was undertaken in her reign for the sake of territorial conquest. Her diplomacy was swayed by innumerable changes of mind, but she usually attained her ends. The chief political blunder of Elizabeth’s policy was the treatment of Mary Queen of Scots who in 1568 sought refuge in England, and after nineteen years’ confinement was condemned and executed in 1587. This led Philip II to make war on England, his pretext being to avenge the death of a Catholic queen, while his chief desire was to restore the Catholic faith. In 1588 his “Invincible Armada” sailed from the Tagus, and meeting the English fleet under Howard and Drake was broken and destroyed.
With the defeat of the Spanish Armada Elizabeth’s work was done and the last fifteen years of her reign was a period of gradual transition to the conditions of Stuart times. In 1601 a rebellion led by her favorite, the Earl of Essex, was crushed and Essex was beheaded. Elizabeth never forgave herself his death.
In the long reign of Elizabeth the true greatness of England begins, for besides its political glories, her reign was the golden age of English literature. If all else could be for-gotten, it would be remembered as the age of Spenser, Bacon and Shakespeare.
Under Frobisher, Drake and Raleigh maritime adventure began, and the foundations of the British navy were laid. The Royal Exchange of London was opened and in the charter to what became later the East India Company may be seen one of the beginnings of the vast colonial British Empire.
As a sovereign, Elizabeth is entitled to her surroundings and as an aboslute ruler, as to a great extent she undoubtedly was, she must have her share of praise for the good that was done in her name. She may fairly be considered the first constitutional English monarch, and her reign may be said to mark the transition from medieval to modern England.
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Born at Greenwich, September 7th, 1533: died at Richmond, March 24th, 1603. Queen of England from 1558 to 1603. She was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. As the Princess Elizabeth she had the advantage of the best teachers and masters.
She was in her twenty-fifth year when she ascended the throne in 1558, succeeding her half-sister. Queen Mary. Her first act was to release the Protestants who had been imprisoned in Queen Mary’s reign and to re-establish Protestantism. Next she concluded a peace with France and Scotland. Early in her reign she was troubled by the pretensions of the friends of Mary Queen of Scots, who was the next heir to the throne. In 1586, as the result of plots, the object of which was to restore the Papacy, Mary Queen of Scots was executed. In 1588, Elizabeth had to contend with a more formidable enemy in Philip II of Spain, who avowed his resolution to annihilate Protestantism.
His threatened invasion of the country was prevented by the defeat and destruction of the Spanish Armada.
Thus a considerable portion of Elizabeth’s reign was occupied in defending her kingdom against attacks brought against her chiefly because she adhered to the reformed faith. But the firmness and sagacity of Elizabeth’s advisers, especially of Cecil, Lord Burleigh, protected her against these dangers; and. at the close of her reign, which lasted for forty-five years, England was stronger and greater than it had ever been before. To this reign belong the discoveries of Hawkins, Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh (who founded the first British settlement in North America and called it Virginia after the Virgin Queen) . Spenser, Shakespeare and Bacon belong also to the Elizabethan age. Elizabeth granted their first charter to the East India Company which was destined to win a new Empire for England. The encouragement she gave to seamen and discoverers generally caused her to be called “the Restorer of the English Navy” and “the Queen of the Northern Seas.” She died at the age of seventy and was buried in Westminster Abbey. She was the last of the Tudor dynasty.