The Reign of Elizabeth I

Those of you who read my notes in another place will be aware that I recently finished this book:

Levin, C., The Reign of Elizabeth I (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2002).

It goes along with my interest in the Elizabethan age generally, of course, and seems to be at about the level of an undergraduate textbook, to my untutored eye. I really got it because of the chapter on the problems of the Succession to Elizabeth. Obviously, she had no children and for a considerable chunk of the reign the heir presumptive was Mary, Queen of Scots, her cousin, a Catholic, and a former Queen of France.

The first chapter is an overview of Elizabeth’s reign. It describes her birth, the difficulties she had under her sister’s reign, and then her own accession to the throne. It then discusses the problems facing Elizabeth concerning religion, foreign policy (including, of course, Scotland), her own future marriage, and, as mentioned, the succession.

There were problems in all areas. The country was more or less conforming Roman Catholic at Elizabeth’s accession. Her own religious persuasion is a little difficult to discern, no doubt deliberately. After all, she kept William Byrd, an avowed Catholic, in the Chapel Royal. On the other hand, Levin notes that while the bulk of the country followed Catholic rites, they did not see why they should be ruled by the Pope. On the other hand, Elizabeth wanted to be Queen of all the English and so needed to carry the bulk of the nation, at least, with her.

The religious settlement of the early part of Elizabeth’s reign can be considered, I think, something of an enduring monument to her, although the current form of Anglicanism owes quite a lot to the next century. Be that as it may, she did carry many people with her into a new sort of church, not Catholic but not entirely Calvinist either. This, of course, upset some people at both ends of the spectrum. The Catholics were dangerous in the earlier part of the reign, due to foreign links and meddling (the Spanish ambassadors in particular), assorted religious crises and massacres in France, and, of course, the advent of Mary, Queen of Scots after she fled from Scotland in the 1560s.

These strands all came together in the 1570s and 1580s with Elizabeth’s excommunication, the Ridolfi plot, the rising of the northern earls (1569), the Throckmorton plot, and so on, down to the Armada. Some of the plots, at least, were thoroughly penetrated by Walsingham’s agents, and there is some doubt as to whether they really existed aside from the government. Others, however, were highly dangerous.

Foreign policy was tricky, of course. Elizabeth wanted to support her co-religionists in Europe – the Huguenots in France and the Dutch, in rebellion against the Spanish. There was also the issue of Ireland, regarded as a back door for the Spanish into England, and Scotland. Elizabeth was, on the whole, fairly pacific, regarding warfare as wasteful of both money and lives. However, the policy of keeping England safe and free was paramount and, of course, culminated in the 1588 Armada. Whether the Armada could have succeeded is a question for another day – the money is on ‘possibly’ at the moment, but English foreign policy was, in the main, defensive.

The execution of Mary Queen of Scots and the failure of the Armada stopped neither plots nor warfare. In fact, the wars got worse (and more expensive) during the 1590s, with further rebellions in Ireland and English interventions in France and the Low Countries. There were also, as I am sure my reader will know, further attempts at Armadas, aimed either at England, Ireland, or the Netherlands. These were defeated by the weather, but English countermeasures were not much more successful. The burden of war taxation, impressment for foreign service, and a series of poor harvests in the 1590s rather tarnished the end of the reign. Levin observes that if Elizabeth had died 15 years before she actually did, her reign would be one of unparalleled success and embellishment. As it was the wars thrust upon her, and, perhaps, the feeling of the age coming to an end with an elderly monarch, made the country rather restive and parliament rather less cooperative.

Still, we should not forget that at the end of the reign, there were spectacular cultural achievements as rarely befall a country in any age. The start of Shakespeare’s career is, of course, the jewel in the crown, but he did not drop out of nowhere. The systems of plays and theatres, and theatre-going for most people (even the relatively poor could afford to go to a play every once in a while) meant that Shakespeare stepped into an already flourishing scene. It just so happened that he was a genius.

It probably also helped that England’s view of the world was widening. The voyages of discovery and increased sailing activity beyond home waters brought stories of the exotic, the foreign, and, on occasion, the downright weird. This had the consequence of widening England’s cultural field, although it was distinctly shaded by racism. Thus Shakespeare can, through Othello, both play to the expectation of the behaviour of a Moor (any person of colour seems to have been classified as a Moor) and also break it. We have a similar situation with Jews, of course, such as Shylock and the case of Elizabeth’s physician, Roderigo Lopez, of Portuguese Jewish extract, who was accused of attempting to poison her.

England was not a multicultural country at the time. In 1601 Elizabeth issued a decree banning Blackamoors from the country. They were, it seems, coming over and living of poor relief, as well as being infidels. She appointed Captain Caspar van Zenden of Lubeck to transport them out of the country (p. 120-1). Given more recent events in the UK regarding immigration, we can see that, perhaps, some things do not change.

Overall, a very useful book as a short introduction to the reign of Elizabeth I. While the actual warfare content might be a bit limited, for those who want their drums and trumpets, there is a lot in it, not least about the plots around Elizabeth in the 1570s and 1580s. These are surely worthy of a role-playing or skirmish game series. I mentioned that on Facebook and someone commented that I should sharpen my quill. Perhaps. Perhaps….