Titans of History

Elizabeth had a difficult childhood. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been sent to the executioner’s block by her father, Henry VIII, and she herself was declared a bastard. Henry had left the throne to his only son, Edward VI, a determined youth during whose short reign Protestantism was imposed on England. On Edward’s premature death, Elizabeth’s elder half-sister Mary took the throne, and with considerable bloodshed restored the Catholic faith and the pope’s authority. Although Elizabeth clung to her Protestant beliefs, she was careful to make a pretense of Catholic practice. In the face of investigations by Mary’s inquisitors, she learned the valuable political lesson of keeping her own counsel.

When Elizabeth succeeded Mary as queen of England in 1558, she further showed her political good sense by making the extremely capable Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burghley) her chief minister, and he continued to serve her until his death in 1598. One of the first challenges Elizabeth faced as an attractive, young and highly eligible queen was whom she should marry. Through her reign she had a succession of male favorites, most notably Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, but she never married. She herself claimed that she was wedded to her realm and could not give her love (or, indeed, obedience) to just one man. Whatever her inner feelings, it seems that she realized that marrying a foreign prince would threaten England with foreign domination, while marrying an English nobleman would sow dissension among the court factions and possibly plunge England back into the civil strife of the previous century, the time of the Wars of the Roses.

Elizabeth deployed a cautious approach to matters of religion. The Church of England that she created, although technically Protestant, blended both Protestant and Catholic elements. She expected people to conform outwardly, and to respect her position as head of the Church, but was not concerned about their inner beliefs: “I would not open windows into men’s souls,” she said.

Such tolerance was not on the agenda at the Vatican, and in 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth, denying her right to sit upon the throne of England. For some Catholics, the rightful queen of England was Mary, Queen of Scots, Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin, who had been ousted from the throne of Scotland and taken refuge in England, where she was effectively put under house arrest. Mary became the focus of numerous Catholic plots against Elizabeth’s life. After years of conspiracies, and numerous warnings by her counselors as to the threat Mary represented, Elizabeth had finally had enough, and in 1587 Mary was tried and executed.

By now, religious tensions across western Europe were reaching boiling point. Outraged by the execution of Mary and by the raids of English privateers on Spanish ships and possessions in the New World—not to mention the support Elizabeth was lending to the Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands—Philip II of Spain, the champion of Catholic Europe, sent a massive Armada against England. The plan was for the fleet of 130 ships to sail from Spain to the Spanish Netherlands, where they would pick up a Spanish army under the duke of Parma and head for England.

As the invasion fleet was spotted in the Channel in July 1588, beacon fires flared across England. The English navy, under the command of such men as Lord Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake, made ready, while in Tilbury the queen herself addressed her troops with one of the most inspiring speeches in English history:

I am come amongst you all, as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too. And think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm!

The English navy and the weather scattered the invasion fleet, to the eternal ignominy of Spain and the glory of Elizabeth.