Early modern Britain 1509–1745, Year 11: Elizabeth I, her court and Parliament (Elizabethan England option)

Anne Boleyn

提示Henry VIII's second wife.

为什么After the execution Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Under her Catholic half-sister Mary I she was held for a time in the Tower of London on suspicion of plotting. She came to the throne in 1558, aged 25, cautious and well educated.

Patronage

提示From the Latin for a protector or father figure.

为什么Nobles and gentlemen came to court to compete for the queen's favour. By giving and withholding rewards she kept rival groups balanced, so that none grew too strong.

William Cecil

提示His son Robert followed him into the queen's service.

为什么He was her Secretary of State from 1558 and later Lord Treasurer, serving her for forty years until he died in 1598. He was careful with money and wary of foreign wars.

Sir Francis Walsingham

提示He uncovered the Babington Plot.

为什么He was Secretary of State from 1573 until his death in 1590. A committed Protestant, he used agents, intercepted letters and code-breakers to watch for Catholic plots at home and abroad.

Progresses

提示They let her subjects see her, and they saved her money.

为什么Her hosts paid for feeding and entertaining the whole court, which could cost them a fortune. In return they had the queen's attention, and the chance of her favour.

The Privy Council

提示Its name suggests something private.

为什么Elizabeth cut it to about nineteen members, and to fewer still by the end of the reign. It handled the daily business of government: finance, defence, religion and order. The queen was free to ignore its advice.

John Knox

提示A leader of the Reformation in Scotland.

为什么His pamphlet, 'The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women', was aimed at Catholic queens, but it angered Elizabeth. Most people at the time believed that a woman was unfit to rule or to lead an army.

To grant her taxes

提示She could not raise this without its consent.

为什么Parliament met only when she summoned it, and she could close it when she chose. In a reign of forty-four years she called it only thirteen times.

He was sent to the Tower of London

提示The Commons itself ordered his imprisonment.

为什么Elizabeth forbade Parliament to discuss her marriage, the succession or religion unless she invited it to. Wentworth challenged that, and was imprisoned more than once. He died in the Tower in 1597, held there for raising the question of the succession.

Her 'frog'

提示An affectionate name taken from a small animal.

为什么He visited England in 1579 and 1581, when Elizabeth was in her late forties. He was a Catholic and heir to the French throne, and the proposal was unpopular in England. She never married.

Smallpox, which nearly killed her

提示A dangerous disease showed how suddenly the throne could fall empty.

为什么With no agreed heir, her death could have meant civil war or a Catholic ruler. She refused to name a successor, fearing that an heir would become a focus for plots against her.

James VI of Scotland

提示The son of Mary, Queen of Scots.

为什么He became James I of England. Robert Cecil had quietly prepared the way, and the crown passed peacefully. The Tudor line ended, and England and Scotland shared a monarch for the first time.

1601

提示Two years before the queen died.

为什么Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, had been the ageing queen's favourite. The 1590s were hard years, with bad harvests, high prices, war and quarrels at court as the older ministers died.

A truce with the rebel Earl of Tyrone

提示He had been sent to win a war, not to bargain.

为什么He then deserted his post and returned to England, where he was placed under house arrest.

His monopoly on sweet wines

提示It gave him the tax on a popular imported drink.

为什么It had been his main income, and he was deep in debt. It shows patronage at work: the queen could break a nobleman by withholding favour as surely as she could make one by granting it.

Robert Cecil

提示The leader of the opposing faction at court.

为什么Essex claimed that he meant to free the queen from evil advisers, not to harm her. Court politics in the 1590s were dominated by the rivalry between the two men and their followers.

It collapsed within a day, and he was executed

提示Few Londoners joined his march.

为什么He marched into the City of London with a band of nobles and gentlemen, but no one rose to support him. He surrendered that evening and was beheaded on 25 February. The speed of his failure suggests the queen's authority was still strong.