Accession of Elizabeth – 1558-1603.
At the time of her sister Mary’s death, Elizabeth was living quietly at Hatfield House near London, spending most of her time studying Greek and Latin. Hearing the news of her accession to her throne, she said, “It is the Lord’s doing; it is wonderful in our eyes.” Days later she traveled to London along the same path she had traveled on previous occasions when she was taken prisoner on the way to the Tower of London.
The question of the queen’s marriage.
It was not long before Parliament took up the issue of marriage because the well-being of the country largely depended on whom the Queen married. She responded by saying that she had decided to live and die as a maiden queen. Her ministers never received a straight answer, even when they continued to press her on the issue, because Elizabeth was smart and used words that could be interpreted in many ways.
The flirtatious queen
Although she never married, Elizabeth I was an incorrigible flirt and the court was constantly abuzz with scandals about her love life. When Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, was first her favourite, Elizabeth was still a young woman. She named him “Robin” and arranged for him to have apartments next to hers; there were even rumors at court that the queen intended to marry “her Robin of hers” of hers. But when Dudley’s wife died under mysterious circumstances, Elizabeth was guided by her head and not her heart. Later, the Earl of Essex became her favorite and, although she was more than thirty years older than him, for a long time this headstrong young man could not do anything wrong in her eyes – it is his name that is forever intertwined with her’s.
vanity and flattery
Elizabeth was so vain that she issued a proclamation forbidding anyone to sell her painting, lest she do her justice. Even when she was in her sixties, she still demanded flattery and a willing court provided it. Her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, wrote to her and said, “Your aversion to marriage stems from your not wanting to lose the freedom to force people to make love to you.” The great writers and great men of the age vied with each other in her praise of Elizabeth’s wisdom, beauty, and wit. Spenser composed her poem, the “Fairy Queen”, for her, Shakespeare is said to have written “The Merry Wives of Windsor” to amuse her and addresses her as the “vestal fair of the west”. in his “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. Her common subjects loved to sing the praises of “good Queen Bess” of hers.
Mary, Queen of Scots beheaded. 1587.
Elizabeth signed her cousin’s death warrant and then apparently erased this act from her mind. When Elizabeth received the news of Mary’s execution, she feared how the act would be viewed in Europe, so, with her usual duplicity, she angrily blamed the minister who had advised her and threw Davidson, her secretary, into the Tower of London. Elizabeth even had the nerve to write to Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland, telling him that her mother had been beheaded by mistake!
Elizabeth’s death (1603).
As Elizabeth’s brilliant reign drew to a close, much had changed. Most of her advisers and old friends had died, her subjects no longer received her with the same warmth as in the past, but above all the death of her favourite, Essex, who had been beheaded for leading a rebellion against her, provoked her. she becoming very sad and with a heavy heart. From that moment on she weakened and stayed in her palace. In her last days she sat muttering to herself “Mortua, sed non sepulta!” (Dead, but not buried). The queen died in Richmond and her body was transported down the River Thames to Westminster. Her recumbent effigy of her is placed in the tomb she shares with her half-sister, Mary I (Bloody Mary) in the Henry VII Chapel of Westminster Abbey. Nearby is the effigy and tomb of her cousin and rival, Mary Queen of Scots.