Gloriana: The Life and Reign of Elizabeth I

The 1998 movie Elizabeth introduced Elizabeth Tudor to millions who knew nothing about her. The film had other priorities than meticulous historical accuracy, but it is often accurate in the largest sense, painting the political dangers and religious conflicts that beset Elizabeth during her long life. Cate Blanchett, looking uncannily like her role model, portrayed a woman who has made deliberate choices in how most successfully to rule. The script captures Elizabeth's intelligence, doubt, genius, and her refusal to be controlled by those around her. More importantly, the film makes it clear that the greatest dangers of her reign came from the war of faiths between an endangered Catholicism and the radical Protestants, with England hostage to both. Due largely to the Queen's handling, the powder keg did not explode and England did not suffer the devastating religious wars that afflicted almost every other nation in Europe in her own time - although her successors were not so lucky.

There were many other dangers Elizabeth I also had to survive. But survival, from childhood, had been her gift.

	" The Queen poor, the realm exhausted, the nobility poor and decayed. Want of good captains and soldiers. The people out of order. Justice not executed. All things dear. Excess in meat, drink and apparel. Divisions among ourselves. War with France and Scotland. The French king bestriding the realm, having one foot in Calais and the other in Scotland. Steadfast enmity but no steadfast friendship abroad. "
	Armagil Waad, Clerk of the Council under Edward VI.

Sometimes history textbooks overlook the perilous state of England when the young Elizabeth became queen in 1558. The economy was in ruins after 11 years of political and religious turbulence following the death of her father, Henry VIII. Inflation was at unheard-of levels. Catholic and Protestant factions had alternately controlled the country for years and each now was determined on final supremacy. England's armies were scattered following a disastrous war in which Mary I had permitted her country to be dragged at the heels of Spain and France - and so lost Calais, last great citadel of England in Europe.

In addition to political woes, Elizabeth faced a stark dilemma: to provide an heir, she must marry; but who? To marry a foreign prince would subject England to foreign policies, to marry one of her own subjects risked dissatisfaction among her other nobles and a possible coup d'état. To do neither and remain single without an heir was - for a very long time - unthinkable to everyone except, apparently, Elizabeth herself. The personal cost of that decision can only be imagined.

The qualities Elizabeth brought to the task of rebuilding England, and in avoiding the pitfalls yawning all about her, have been argued from her own time to this. Was it luck or deliberate policy? Was it the Queen or her counselors? Was she the driving genius behind her reign or merely its symbol? Was she an overly emotional woman or a ruler of great craft and skill, using her perceived feminine weaknesses in a superb chess game with real kingdoms?

The story of Elizabeth is the story of the Elizabethan Age, a period when a woman, against the expectations of her time, provided strong rule for a nation and dragged it back from the brink of civil war to the age of its greatest prestige. By Elizabeth's death In 1603, England was the stable, prosperous bulwark of peaceful Protestantism and one of the great nations of Europe, the nation of Drake, Shakespeare, and the explorations of Virginia.

Daughter of a great king, Elizabeth idolized Henry VIII and emulated him throughout her life in all qualities save marriage. She often said that she brought to the task the body of a "meek and feeble woman" but with "the heart and stomach [courage] of a king." From first to last, she attributed her survival in the face of so many dangers to the mysterious grace of God.

There is much more to Elizabeth than any one film or mini-series can capture and more than the hundreds of books written about her can illuminate. To the end, she keeps her own counsel. This, then, is an introduction to the life of - arguably - England's most splendid monarch.

Specific sources for a given article will be acknowledged individually. General sources may be found under "Bibliography and Links." Quotation from Plowden, "The Young Elizabeth," p. 211. Portrait of Elizabeth by (?) Nicholas Hilliard, known as "The Penguin Portrait," by kind permission of Tudor and Elizabethan Portraits. Portrait of Cate Blanchett from the movie, "Elizabeth."