Renaissance period

(middle age): Rulers

Submitted by: Ma. Bernadette Florween N. Sabar

Submitted to: Miss Nikki O. Fernandez

The Renaissance and early modern period led to a newly adapted type of monarchy in Europe, with
monarchs initiating voyages of discovery to other continents, developing new forms of mercantile trade, and,
most of all, building mass armies and large government bureaucracies that represented innovative forms of
political administration. Compared to their predecessors, the monarchs of this era were better able to monitor
and manage their own societies, to exact more taxes, and to decide on interstate war and conquest. The
Renaissance monarchs, such as Charles V (reigned 1519–56), Francis I (1515–47), and Elizabeth I (1558–1603),
unified their realms and strengthened their bureaucracies. However, later monarchs, such as Catherine the
Great of Russia (reigned 1762–96), Louis XIV of France (1643–1715), and Frederick the Great of Prussia
(1740–86), symbolized “absolutist” rule, as exemplified by Louis XIV’s declaration, “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am
the state”). Possessing complete administrative and military power, an absolute monarch could bypass the feudal
lords or subjugate independent city-states.

Yet in most cases absolute monarchy was absolutist only in appearance. In practice, most monarchs
remained dependent upon chosen administrators to whom they had delegated the authority to govern their states,
as was the case in France. These officials were checked by institutions such as Great Britain’s Parliament, or
balanced by factions of the landed aristocracy, as in Russia and Poland. Monarchs were thus able to exploit their
power, adding onto their traditional legitimacies while allowing for certain checks on their regimes, all of which
seemed to portend continuous stability, had changes in the prevailing social and economic order not challenged
the future of absolutist monarchies. One force of change, the Reformation (and the factionalism associated with
it), triggered protracted religious conflicts, while the Industrial Revolution unleashed social unrest and class
conflict—all of which occurred amid ongoing developments in international trade, investments, and other
complex financial transactions that provoked economic problems such as inflation.

Most importantly, new perceptions emerged, first in Europe and then in the Middle East, Asia, and
Africa, that reduced the monarchs’ authority. The concept of “divine right” was often eroded by the spread
of secularism. Emerging ideas of the individual’s natural rights (as espoused by the philosophers John
Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and further evidenced by the Declaration of Independence of the United
States) and those of nations’ rights (particularly regarding independence and self-determination) gained
prominence. Moreover, the monarchs’ traditional supremacy, anchored in their lineage as descendants of war
heroes and of leading notables, gradually weakened in favour of what the German-born American
sociologist Reinhard Bendix called “a mandate of the people.” Thus, a society’s “sovereignty,” or its principles
of independence, cohesion, and leadership, rested with its people as a whole and not with an individual and his
or her dynasty.

Monarchies were challenged by various opposition movements. Although the British monarchy was able
to cope with religious strife as well as social unrest among the rural and urban lower classes, the monarchies in
France (beginning in 1789), Russia (1917), and China (1911) were swept away by popular social revolutions.
The Austrian, German, and Ottoman monarchies collapsed after World War I, having been defeated militarily
and replaced by indigenous nationalist movements. It then became evident that monarchies could survive only if
they were built upon a foundation of broad nationalist-popular support.

In medieval times, the role of the king was to own land, lead his country and people in times of war and
set laws. A king was, essentially, the supreme ruler of his land. Medieval kings had systems of governance and
control that were formed primarily with the help of other people within their societies. Charles Homer Haskins
wrote in "The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century" that there were three main periods that saw resurgences in
the art and philosophy of antiquity: the Carolingian Renaissance, which occurred during the reign of
Charlemagne, the first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (eighth and ninth centuries).

 Charles V (reigned 1519–56)

 Charles V (24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was Holy
Roman Emperor and Archduke of Austria from 1519 to 1556, King of
Spain (Castile and Aragon) from 1516 to 1556, and Lord of the
Netherlands as titular Duke of Burgundy from 1506 to 1555. As he was
head of the rising House of Habsburg during the first half of the 16th
century, his dominions in Europe included the Holy Roman Empire,
extending from Germany to northern Italy with direct rule over the
Austrian hereditary lands and the Burgundian Low Countries, and a unified
Spain with its southern Italian kingdoms of Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia.
Furthermore, his reign encompassed both the long-lasting Spanish and the
short-lived German colonizations of the Americas. The personal union of
the European and American territories of Charles V was the first collection
of realms labelled "the empire on which the Sun never sets".
Charles was born in the County of Flanders to Philip the
Handsome of the Austrian House of Habsburg (son of Maximilian I, Holy
Roman Emperor, and Mary of Burgundy) and Joanna of Castile of the
Spanish House of Trastámara (daughter of Isabella I of Castile and
Ferdinand II of Aragon). The ultimate heir of his four grandparents, he
inherited all of his family dominions at a young age. After the death of
Philip in 1506, he inherited the Burgundian Netherlands, originally held by
his paternal grandmother Mary. In 1516, he became co-monarch of Spain
with his mother Joanna, and as such he was the first king of Spain to
inherit the country as dynastically unified by the Catholic Monarchs, his maternal grandparents. The Spanish
possessions at his accession also included the Castilian West Indies and the Aragonese Kingdoms of Naples,
Sicily and Sardinia. At the death of his paternal grandfather Maximilian in 1519, he inherited Austria and was
elected to succeed him as Holy Roman Emperor. He adopted the Imperial name of Charles V as his main title,
and styled himself as a new Charlemagne.
Charles V revitalized the medieval concept of the universal monarchy and spent most of his life
defending the integrity of the Holy Roman Empire from the Protestant Reformation, the expansion of the
Ottoman Empire, and a series of wars with France. With no fixed capital city, he made 40 journeys, travelling
from country to country; he spent a quarter of his reign on the road. The imperial wars were fought by German
Landsknechte, Spanish tercios, Burgundian knights, and Italian condottieri. Charles V borrowed money from
German and Italian bankers and, in order to repay such loans, he relied on the proto-capitalist economy of the
Low Countries and on the flows of gold and especially silver from South America to Spain, which caused
widespread inflation. He ratified the Spanish conquest of the Aztec and Inca empires by the Spanish
Conquistadores Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, as well as the establishment of Klein-Venedig by the
German Welser family in search of the legendary El Dorado. In order to consolidate power in his early reign,
Charles suppressed two Spanish insurrections (Comuneros' Revolt and Brotherhoods' Revolt) and two German
rebellions (Knights' Revolt and Great Peasants' Revolt).
Crowned King in Germany, Charles sided with Pope Leo X and declared Martin Luther an outlaw at the
Diet of Worms (1521). The same year Francis I of France, surrounded by the Habsburg possessions, started a
conflict in Lombardy that lasted until the Battle of Pavia (1525) led to his temporary imprisonment. The
Protestant affair re-emerged in 1527 as Rome was sacked by an army of Charles's mutinous soldiers, largely of
Lutheran faith. After his forces left the Papal States, Charles V defended Vienna from the Turks and obtained the
coronation as King in Italy by Pope Clement VII. In 1535, he annexed the vacant Duchy of Milan and captured
Tunis. Nevertheless, the loss of Buda during the struggle for Hungary and the Algiers expedition in the early 40s
frustrated his anti-Ottoman policies. Meanwhile, Charles V had come to an agreement with Pope Paul III for the
organisation of the Council of Trent (1545). The refusal of the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League to recognize the
council's validity led to a war, won by Charles V with the imprisonment of the Protestant princes. However,
Henry II of France offered new support to the Lutheran cause and strengthened a close alliance with the sultan
Suleiman the Magnificent, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire since 1520.
Ultimately, Charles V conceded the Peace of Augsburg and abandoned his multi-national project with a
series of abdications in 1556 that divided his hereditary and imperial domains between the Spanish Habsburgs
headed by his son Philip II of Spain and the Austrian Habsburgs headed by his brother Ferdinand, who was
Archduke of Austria in Charles's name since 1521 and the designated successor as emperor since 1531. The
Duchy of Milan and the Habsburg Netherlands were left in personal union to the King of Spain, but remained
part of the Holy Roman Empire. The two Habsburg dynasties remained allied until the extinction of the Spanish
line in 1700. In 1557, Charles retired to the Monastery of Yuste in Extremadura and died there a year later.

 Childhood

Charles of Habsburg was born on 24 February 1500 in the Prinsenhof of Ghent, a Flemish city of the
Burgundian Low Countries, to Philip of Habsburg and Joanna of Trastámara. His father Philip, nicknamed
Philip the Handsome, was the firstborn son of Maximilian I of Habsburg, Archduke of Austria as well as
Holy Roman Emperor, and Mary the Rich, Burgundian duchess of the Low Countries. His mother Joanna,
known as Joanna the Mad for the mental disorders afflicting her, was a daughter of Ferdinand II of Aragon
and Isabella I of Castile, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain from the House of Trastámara. The political
marriage of Philip and Joanna was first conceived in a letter sent by Maximilian to Ferdinand in order to seal
an Austro-Spanish alliance, established as part of the League of Venice directed against the Kingdom of
France during the Italian Wars.

The organization of ambitious political marriages reflected Maximilian's practice to expand the House of
Habsburg with dynastic links rather than conquest, as exemplified by his saying "Let others wage war, you,
happy Austria, marry". The marriage contract between Philip and Joanna was signed in 1495, and
celebrations were held in 1496. Philip was already Duke of Burgundy, given Mary's death in 1482, and also
heir apparent of Austria as honorific Archduke. Joanna, in contrast, was only third in the Spanish line of
succession, preceded by her older brother John of Castile and older sister Isabella of Aragon. Although both
John and Isabella died in 1498, the Catholic Monarchs desired to keep the Spanish kingdoms in Iberian
hands and designated their Portuguese grandson Miguel da Paz as heir presumptive of Spain by naming him
Prince of the Asturias. Only a series of dynastic accidents eventually favoured Maximilian's project.

Charles was given birth in a bathroom of the Prinsenhof at 3:00 AM by Joanna not long after she
attended a ball despite symptoms of labor pains, and his name was chosen by Philip in honour of Charles I
of Burgundy. According to a poet at the court, the people of Ghent "shouted Austria and Burgundy
throughout the whole city for three hours" to celebrate his birth. Given the dynastic situation, the newborn
was originally heir apparent only of the Burgundian Low Countries as the honorific Duke of Luxembourg
and became known in his early years simply as Charles of Ghent. He was baptized at the Church of Saint
John by the Bishop of Tournai: Charles I de Croÿ and John III of Glymes were his godfathers; Margaret of
York and Margaret of Austria his godmothers. Charles's baptism gifts were a sword and a helmet, objects of
Burgundian chivalric tradition representing, respectively, the instrument of war and the symbol of peace.
In 1501, Philip and Joanna left Charles to the custody of his aunt Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Savoy
and went to Spain. They returned to visit their son very rarely, and thus Charles grew up parentless in
Mechelen together with his sisters Eleanora, Maria and Isabella at the Duchess's court. He received
education from Willem II of Croÿ and Adrian of Utrecht. The main goal of their Spanish mission was the
recognition of Joanna as Princess of Asturias, given prince Miguel's death a year earlier. They succeeded
despite facing some opposition from the Spanish Cortes, reluctant to create the premises for Habsburg
succession. In 1504, as Isabella passed away, Joanna became Queen of Castile. Philip was recognized King
in 1506 but died shortly after, an event that drove the mentally unstable Joanna into complete insanity. She
retired in isolation into a tower of Tordesillas. Ferdinand took control of all the Spanish kingdoms, under the
pretext of protecting Charles's rights, which in reality he wanted to elude, but his new marriage with
Germaine de Foix failed to produce a surviving Trastámara heir to the throne. With his father dead and his
mother confined, Charles became Duke of Burgundy and was recognized as prince of Asturias (heir
presumptive of Spain) and honorific archduke (heir apparent of Austria).

 Inheritance
 The Burgundian inheritance included the Habsburg Netherlands, which consisted of a large number of
the lordships that formed the Low Countries and covered modern-day Belgium, Holland and Luxembourg. It
excluded Burgundy proper, annexed by France in 1477, with the exception of Franche-Comté. At the death
of Philip in 1506, Charles was recognized Lord of the Netherlands with the title of Charles II of Burgundy.
During Charles's childhood and teen years, William de Croÿ (later prime minister) and Adrian of Utrecht
(later Pope Adrian VI) served as his tutors. The culture and courtly life of the Low Countries played an
important part in the development of Charles's beliefs. As a member of the Burgundian Order of the Golden
Fleece in his infancy, and later its grandmaster, Charles was educated to the ideals of the medieval knights
and the desire for Christian unity to fight the infidel. The Low Countries were very rich during his reign,
both economically and culturally. Charles was very attached to his homeland and spent much of his life in
Brussels.

The Spanish inheritance, resulting from a dynastic union of the crowns of Castile and Aragon, included
Spain as well as the Castilian West Indies and the Aragonese Two Sicilies. Joanna inherited these territories
in 1516 in a condition of mental illness. Charles, therefore, claimed the crowns for himself jure matris, thus
becoming co-monarch of Joanna with the title of Charles I of Castile and Aragon or Charles I of Spain.
Castile and Aragon together formed the largest of Charles's personal possessions, and they also provided a
great number of generals and tercios (the formidable Spanish infantry of the time). However, at his accession
to the throne, Charles was viewed as a foreign prince. Two rebellions, the revolt of the Germanies and the
revolt of the comuneros, contested Charles's rule in the 1520s. Following these revolts, Charles placed
Spanish counselors in a position of power and spent a considerable part of his life in Castile, including his
final years in a monastery. Indeed, Charles's motto, Plus Ultra (Further Beyond), became the national motto
of Spain and his heir, later Philip II, was born and raised in Castile. Nonetheless, many Spaniards believed
that their resources (largely consisting of flows of silver from the Americas) were being used to sustain
Imperial-Habsburg policies that were not in the country's interest.

Charles inherited the Austrian hereditary lands in 1519, as Charles I of Austria, and obtained the election
as Holy Roman Emperor against the candidacy of the French King. Since the Imperial election, he was
known as Emperor Charles V even outside of Germany and the A.E.I.O.U. motto of the House of Austria
acquired political significance. Despite the fact that he was elected as a German prince, Charles's staunch
Catholicism in contrast to the growth of Lutheranism alienated him from various German princes who
finally fought against him. Charles's presence in Germany was often marked by the organization of imperial
diets to maintain religious unity. He was frequently in Northern Italy, often taking part in complicated
negotiations with the Popes to address the rise of Protestantism. It is important to note, though, that the
German Catholics supported the Emperor. Charles had a close relationship with important German families,
like the House of Nassau, many of which were represented at his court in Brussels. Several German princes
or noblemen accompanied him in his military campaigns against France or the Ottomans, and the bulk of his
army was generally composed of German troops, especially the Imperial Landsknechte.

It is said that Charles spoke several languages. He was fluent in French and Dutch, his native languages.
He later added an acceptable Castilian Spanish, which he was required to learn by the Castilian Cortes
Generales. He could also speak some Basque, acquired by the influence of the Basque secretaries serving in
the royal court. He gained a decent command of German following the Imperial election, though he never
spoke it as well as French. A witticism sometimes attributed to Charles is: "I speak Spanish/Latin
(depending on the source) to God, Italian to women, French to men and German to my horse." A variant of
the quote is attributed to him by Swift in his 1726 Gulliver's Travels, but there are no contemporary accounts
referencing the quotation (which has many other variants) and it is often attributed instead to Frederick the
Great.

Given the vast dominions of the House of Habsburg, Charles was often on the road and needed
deputies to govern his realms for the times he was absent from his territories. His first Governor of the
Netherlands was Margaret of Austria (succeeded by Mary of Hungary and Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of
Savoy). His first Regent of Spain was Adrian of Utrecht (succeeded by Isabella of Portugal and Philip II of
 Spain). For the regency and governorship of the Austrian hereditary lands, Charles named his brother
Ferdinand Archduke in the Austrian lands under his authority at the Diet of Worms (1521). Charles also
agreed to favor the election of Ferdinand as King of the Romans in Germany, which took place in 1531.
Therefore, it is by virtue of the Worms agreement that Ferdinand became Holy Roman Emperor and
obtained hereditary rights over Austria at the abdication of Charles in 1556.

Charles V made ten trips to the Low Countries, nine to German-speaking lands, seven to Spain, seven to
Italian states, four to France, two to England, and two to North Africa. During his travels, Charles V left a
documentary trail in almost every place he went, allowing historians to surmise that he spent over 10,000
days in the Low Countries, 6,500 days in Spain, more than 3000 days in German-speaking territories, and
almost 1,000 days in the Italian peninsula. He further spent 195 days in France, 99 in North Africa and 44
days in England. For only 260 days, his exact location is unrecorded, all of them being days spent at sea
travelling between his dominions. As he put it in his last public speech: "my life has been one long journey".

 What did Charles V try to accomplish during his reign as Holy Roman Emperor?

Although establishing a universal empire was chief among Charles V’s goals as Holy Roman emperor,
he was unable to do so. Protestantism’s growing momentum made it impossible for Charles to prevent the
fragmentation of his Catholic empire, and his attempts to unite Europe were further confounded by his
enmity with France. He was also unable to establish profitable landholdings overseas: his attempts to
conquer North Africa failed, and Spain’s territories in the Americas wouldn’t become lucrative until the
reigns of later kings. Charles V abdicated in 1556 without achieving his goal of a universal empire.

 Francis I of France (1515–47)

Francis I (French: François Ier; Middle French: Francoys; 12

September 1494 – 31 March 1547) was King of France from 1515
until his death in 1547. He was the son of Charles, Count of
 Angoulême, and Louise of Savoy. He succeeded his first cousin once removed Louis XII, who died without
a son.

A prodigious patron of the arts, he promoted the emergent French Renaissance by attracting many Italian
artists to work for him, including Leonardo da Vinci, who brought the Mona Lisa with him, which Francis
had acquired. Francis' reign saw important cultural changes with the growth of central power in France, the
spread of humanism and Protestantism, and the beginning of French exploration of the New World. Jacques
Cartier and others claimed lands in the Americas for France and paved the way for the expansion of the first
French colonial empire.

For his role in the development and promotion of a standardized French language, he became known as
le Père et Restaurateur des Lettres (the 'Father and Restorer of Letters'). He was also known as François au
Grand Nez ('Francis of the Large Nose'), the Grand Colas, and the Roi-Chevalier (the 'Knight-King')[1] for
his personal involvement in the wars against his great rival Emperor Charles V, who was also King of Spain.

Following the policy of his predecessors, Francis continued the Italian Wars. The succession of Charles
V to the Burgundian Netherlands, the throne of Spain, and his subsequent election as Holy Roman Emperor,
meant that France was geographically encircled by the Habsburg monarchy. In his struggle against Imperial
hegemony, Francis sought the support of Henry VIII of England at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. When this
was unsuccessful, he formed a Franco-Ottoman alliance with the Muslim sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, a
controversial move for a Christian king at the time.

 Early years

Francis was the son of Charles de Valois-Orleáns, comte d’Angoulême, and Louise of Savoy. On the
accession of his cousin Louis XII in 1498, Francis became heir presumptive and was given the Duchy of
Valois. With his sister Marguerite, he was raised by his mother, who had been widowed at the age of 20 and
whom he deeply revered; he knelt whenever he spoke to her. No one had as much power over him as these
two women. Idolized, he grew up following his own whims, without discipline and more infatuated with
chivalrous romances, songs, and violent exercise than with classical studies. He was greatly admired by the
gay, young circle of his mother’s cultured court for his athletic build and the elegance of his demeanour and
manners. His need for female companions stemmed from this upbringing, as did his lack of realism and his
chivalrous imagination.

Louis XII, distrustful of Francis, did not allow him to dabble in affairs of state but sent him off at the age
of 18 to the frontiers, which had been attacked in force. There, Francis learned more about warfare and,
being of a sensual nature, about the licentiousness of camp life than about how to govern the state or, even
more, to govern himself. Shortly before his death, Louis XII married him to Claude, his 15-year-old
daughter. On Jan. 1, 1515, at the age of 20, Francis became king of France.

His quick and shrewd mind, his amazing memory, and his universal curiosity compensated for his
inexperience. But, because he was outgoing and trusting and incapable of dissembling, he was always a bad
politician. The pomp of the Reims coronation, the sumptuous cortege of the solemn entry into Paris, and the
lavish feasts revealed his love of ceremony and also pleased the people of Paris, who had been disheartened
by a long succession of morose and sickly sovereigns.

 Rivalry With Charles V

Nineteen years old, secretive, cool-headed, and a clever politician, the Emperor had his mind set on a
universal monarchy. His chief obstacle was the King of France. A mortal hatred emerged from this rivalry,
leading to 27 years of savage warfare, interrupted by truces that were invariably violated. In 1520, on the
 Field of Cloth of Gold near Calais, where both displayed unprecedented magnificence, Francis vainly sought
an alliance with Henry VIII.

Hostilities between Charles V and France began in 1521 in the north and in the Pyrenees, while the two
brothers of the King’s mistress were losing Milan. The soldiers remained unpaid, and the army was
disintegrating. The King, unconcerned, arose late, paid little attention to his council, and gave orders without
seeing that they were carried out. Money disappeared into thin air. A few paymasters were hanged, though in
vain.

In 1523 the King demanded the return to the French state, according to law, of the vast provinces that
the great feudal duke Charles de Bourbon thought he had inherited from his wife. Incensed, Bourbon turned
traitor and joined the Emperor’s service, claiming that the French, weary of the prodigality of their
sovereign, would rise up on an appeal from him. Commanding the imperial army, he invaded Provence, was
driven back near Marseille, and withdrew toward Italy. Francis I was pursuing him when he learned of the
death of his wife Claude, at the age of 24, exhausted from seven pregnancies. The death of his second
daughter followed soon after. Meanwhile, the English and the Germans were advancing in the north. In vain,
his mother begged him to return: “Our good angel has abandoned us. Your horoscope forecasts disaster!” At
the Battle of Pavia in 1525, defeated and wounded, he was taken prisoner. “Madame, to inform you of the
rest of my misfortune, I have nothing left to me save my honour and my life.”

As the price for the King’s freedom, the Emperor demanded one-third of France, the renunciation of
France’s claim to Italy, and restitution to Bourbon of his fiefs, with the addition of Provence. “I am resolved
to endure prison for as long as God wills rather than accept terms injurious to my kingdom!” replied the
King.

Imprisoned in a dismal tower in Madrid, the recluse composed melancholy poems, songs, and letters to
his subjects, heartrending in their humility and their tender nobility. The mortifying defeat, the dangerous
situation of his country, and the confinement aggravated his habitual migraines, the consequence of old
wounds and of newly contracted syphilis. When he was struck down by an abscess in his head, his people,
loyal in bad fortune as in good, prayed for him. The Archbishop of Tournon said a mass at his bedside, in the
presence of his sister Marguerite, who had hastened to Madrid.

 What was Francis 1 famous for?

He continued the consolidation of monarchical authority and the expansionist foreign policy of his
predecessors. He supported humanist learning and was a patron of the arts.

 Elizabeth I (1558 – 1603)

Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England
and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death in 1603. Sometimes
called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the
last of the five monarchs of the House of Tudor.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second
wife, who was executed two-and-a-half years after Elizabeth's birth. Anne's
marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared
 illegitimate. Her half-brother, Edward VI, ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane
Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, the Roman Catholic Mary and the younger Elizabeth, in
spite of statute law to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane
Grey. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant
rebels.

Upon her half-sister's death in 1558, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne and set out to rule by good
counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers, led by William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley.
One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became
the supreme governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. It
was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir; however, despite numerous courtships, she
never did. She was eventually succeeded by her first-cousin twice-removed, James VI of Scotland, laying
the foundation for the Kingdom of Great Britain. She had earlier been responsible for the imprisonment and
execution of James's mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.

In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and half-siblings had been. One of her
mottoes was "video et taceo" ("I see and keep silent"). In religion, she was relatively tolerant and avoided
systematic persecution. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570 and released her subjects from
obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life, all of which were defeated with the help of her
ministers' secret service. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, manoeuvring between the major powers
of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military
campaigns in the Netherlands, France, and Ireland. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war
with Spain. England's victory against the Spanish Armada in 1588 associated Elizabeth with one of the
greatest military victories in English history.

As she grew older, Elizabeth became celebrated for her virginity. A cult of personality grew around her
which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. Elizabeth's reign became known as
the Elizabethan era. The period is famous for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as
William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such
as Francis Drake. Some historians depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who
enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military
problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged
survivor in an era when government was ramshackle and limited, and when monarchs in neighbouring
countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. After the short reigns of her half-siblings,
her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national
identity.

 Childhood

Elizabeth’s early years were not auspicious. She was born at Greenwich Palace, the daughter of the
Tudor king Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Henry had defied the pope and broken England
from the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in order to dissolve his marriage with his first wife,
Catherine of Aragon, who had borne him a daughter, Mary. Since the king ardently hoped that Anne Boleyn
would give birth to a male heir, regarded as key to stable dynastic succession, the birth of a second daughter
was a bitter disappointment that dangerously weakened the new queen’s position. Before Elizabeth reached
her third birthday, her father had her mother beheaded on charges of adultery and treason. Moreover, at
Henry’s instigation, an act of Parliament declared his marriage with Anne Boleyn invalid from the
beginning, thus making their daughter Elizabeth illegitimate, as Roman Catholics had all along claimed her
to be. (Apparently, the king was undeterred by the logical inconsistency of simultaneously invalidating the
marriage and accusing his wife of adultery.) The emotional impact of these events on the little girl, who had
been brought up from infancy in a separate household at Hatfield, is not known; presumably, no one thought
it worth recording. What was noted was her precocious seriousness; at six years old, it was admiringly
observed, she had as much gravity as if she had been 40.
 When in 1537 Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, gave birth to a son, Edward, Elizabeth receded still
further into relative obscurity, but she was not neglected. Despite his capacity for monstrous cruelty, Henry
VIII treated all his children with what contemporaries regarded as affection; Elizabeth was present at
ceremonial occasions and was declared third in line to the throne. She spent much of the time with her half
brother Edward and, from her 10th year onward, profited from the loving attention of her stepmother,
Catherine Parr, the king’s sixth and last wife. Under a series of distinguished tutors, of whom the best known
is the Cambridge humanist Roger Ascham, Elizabeth received the rigorous education normally reserved for
male heirs, consisting of a course of studies centring on classical languages, history, rhetoric, and moral
philosophy. “Her mind has no womanly weakness,” Ascham wrote with the unselfconscious sexism of the
age, “her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.” In
addition to Greek and Latin, she became fluent in French and Italian, attainments of which she was proud
and which were in later years to serve her well in the conduct of diplomacy. Thus steeped in the secular
learning of the Renaissance, the quick-witted and intellectually serious princess also studied theology,
imbibing the tenets of English Protestantism in its formative period. Her association with the Reformation is
critically important, for it shaped the future course of the nation, but it does not appear to have been a
personal passion: observers noted the young princess’s fascination more with languages than with religious
dogma.

 The queen’s image

Elizabeth’s parsimony did not extend to personal adornments. She possessed a vast repertory of
fantastically elaborate dresses and rich jewels. Her passion for dress was bound up with political calculation
and an acute self-consciousness about her image. She tried to control the royal portraits that circulated
widely in England and abroad, and her appearances in public were dazzling displays of wealth and
magnificence. Throughout her reign she moved restlessly from one of her palaces to another—Whitehall,
Nonsuch, Greenwich, Windsor, Richmond, Hampton Court, and Oatlands—and availed herself of the
hospitality of her wealthy subjects. On her journeys, known as royal progresses, she wooed her people and
was received with lavish entertainments. Artists, including poets like Edmund Spenser and painters like
Nicholas Hilliard, celebrated her in a variety of mythological guises—as Diana, the chaste goddess of the
moon; Astraea, the goddess of justice; Gloriana, the queen of the fairies—and Elizabeth, in addition to
adopting these fanciful roles, appropriated to herself some of the veneration that pious Englishmen had
directed to the Virgin Mary.

“She imagined,” wrote Francis Bacon a few years after the queen’s death, “that the people, who are
much influenced by externals, would be diverted by the glitter of her jewels, from noticing the decay of her
personal attractions.” Bacon’s cynicism reflects the darkening tone of the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign,
when her control over her country’s political, religious, and economic forces and over her representation of
herself began to show severe strains. Bad harvests, persistent inflation, and unemployment caused hardship
and a loss of public morale. Charges of corruption and greed led to widespread popular hatred of many of
the queen’s favourites to whom she had given lucrative and much-resented monopolies. A series of
disastrous military attempts to subjugate the Irish culminated in a crisis of authority with her last great
favourite, Robert Devereux, the proud earl of Essex, who had undertaken to defeat rebel forces led by Hugh
O’Neill, earl of Tyrone. Essex returned from Ireland against the queen’s orders, insulted her in her presence,
and then made a desperate, foolhardy attempt to raise an insurrection. He was tried for treason and executed
on February 25, 1601.

Elizabeth continued to make brilliant speeches, to exercise her authority, and to receive the extravagant
compliments of her admirers, but she was, as Sir Walter Raleigh remarked, “a lady surprised by time,” and
her long reign was drawing to a close. She suffered from bouts of melancholy and ill health and showed
signs of increasing debility. Her more astute advisers—among them Lord Burghley’s son, Sir Robert Cecil,
who had succeeded his father as her principal counselor—secretly entered into correspondence with the
likeliest claimant to the throne, James VI of Scotland. Having reportedly indicated James as her successor,
 Elizabeth died quietly. The nation enthusiastically welcomed its new king. But in a very few years the
English began to express nostalgia for the rule of “Good Queen Bess.” Long before her death she had
transformed herself into a powerful image of female authority, regal magnificence, and national pride, and
that image has endured to the present.

 How did Elizabeth I come to be queen of England?

Queen Elizabeth I’s right to the throne wasn’t always guaranteed. Her father, King Henry VIII, had
Parliament annul his marriage to Elizabeth’s mother—his second wife, Anne Boleyn—thus making
Elizabeth an illegitimate child and removing her from the line of succession (although a later parliamentary
act would return her to it). After Henry’s death in 1547, two of Elizabeth’s half-siblings would sit on the
throne: first the young Edward VI, who reigned for six years, and then Mary I (“Bloody Mary”), who
reigned for five years. Suspicious that her half-sister would try to seize power, Mary placed Elizabeth under
what amounted to constant surveillance, even jailing her in the Tower of London for a short period of time.
Elizabeth skillfully avoided doing anything that Mary might have used as grounds for her execution and,
upon Mary’s death in 1558, went on to become one of England’s most illustrious monarchs.

 What were the biggest issues facing England during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign?

o Queen Elizabeth I inherited several issues from the reign of her predecessor, Queen Mary I,
including an unpopular war with France and the religious divisions that Mary’s campaign against
Protestantism had left behind.
o The threat posed by the former subsided with the 1562 outbreak of the War of Religion in France,
and Elizabeth responded to the latter by returning England to Protestantism and having Parliament
formalize certain aspects of the Church of England’s doctrine.
o An issue that troubled her reign for its entirety was her lack of a husband and heir, a situation which
she and others realized could potentially ignite a successional crisis upon her death. Still, she never
married, perhaps because she preferred to keep power to herself.
o One of her biggest trials—at least in the foreign policy realm—came when Spain tried to invade
England in 1588. The ensuing naval battle would go down as one of the most famous ones ever and
ended with England’s defeat of the Spanish Armada, which had until then been supposed invincible.