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Note: th was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. The daughter of Henry VIII, she was born a princess, but her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed two and a half years after her birth, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her brother, Edward VI, bequeathed the crown to Lady Jane Grey, cutting his sisters out of the succession. His will was set aside, and in 1558 Elizabeth succeeded the Catholic Mary I, during whose reign she had been imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.
Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel,[1] and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley. One of her first moves as queen was to support the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement held firm throughout her reign and later evolved into today's Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry, but despite several petitions from parliament and numerous courtships, she never did. The reasons for this outcome have been much debated. As she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity, and a cult grew up around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day. In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father and siblings.[2] One of her mottoes was "video et taceo" ("I see, and say nothing").[3] This strategy, viewed with impatience by her counsellors, often saved her from political and marital misalliances. Though Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs and only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France and Ireland, the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588 associated her name forever with what is popularly viewed as one of the greatest victories in English history. Within 20 years of her death, she was being celebrated as the ruler of a golden age, an image that retains its hold on the English people. Elizabeth's reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Francis Drake. Some historians are more reserved in their assessment. They depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered,[4] sometimes indecisive ruler,[5] who enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity to the point where many of her subjects were relieved at her death. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor, in an age when government was ramshackle and limited and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. Such was the case with Elizabeth's rival, Mary I, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and eventually had executed in 1587. After the short reigns of Elizabeth's brother and sister, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity
Early life
Elizabeth was the only child of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who did not bear a male heir and was executed less than three years after Elizabeth's birth.Elizabeth was born in Greenwich Palace in the Chamber of Virgins on 7 September 1533 between three and four o'clock in the afternoon and named after both her paternal and maternal grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard.[6] She was the second child of Henry VIII of England to survive infancy; her mother was Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. At birth, Elizabeth was the heiress presumptive to the throne of England. Her older half-sister, Mary, had lost her position as legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne.[7][8] King Henry VIII had desperately wanted a legitimate son, to ensure the Tudor succession. Anne had been crowned with St. Edward's crown, unlike any other queen consort, while carrying Elizabeth. Historian Alice Hunt has suggested that this was done because Anne's pregnancy was visible at the moment of coronation and she was carrying an heir who was presumed to be male.[9] After Elizabeth's birth, Queen Anne failed to provide a male heir. She suffered at least two miscarriages, one in 1534 and another at the beginning of 1536. On 2 May 1536, she was arrested and imprisoned. Hastily convicted on trumped-up charges, she was beheaded on 19 May 1536.[10][11] Elizabeth, who was 2 years 8 months old at the time, was declared illegitimate and deprived of the title of princess.[12] Eleven days after Anne Boleyn's death, Henry married Jane Seymour,[13] who died 12 days after the birth of their son, Prince Edward. Elizabeth was placed in Edward's household and carried the chrisom, or baptismal cloth, at his christening.[14]
Elizabeth Tudor, c. 1546, by an unknown artistElizabeth's first Lady Mistress, Lady Margaret Bryan, wrote that she was �as toward a child and as gentle of conditions as ever I knew any in my life�.[15] By the autumn of 1537, Elizabeth was in the care of Blanche Herbert, Lady Troy who remained her Lady Mistress until her retirement in late 1545 or early 1546.[16] Catherine Champernowne, better known by her later, married name of Catherine �Kat� Ashley, was appointed as Elizabeth's governess in 1537, and she remained Elizabeth�s friend until her death in 1565, when Blanche Parry succeeded her as Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber[17]. She clearly made a good job of Elizabeth�s early education: by the time William Grindal became her tutor in 1544, Elizabeth could write English, Latin, and Italian. Under Grindal, a talented and skillful tutor, she also progressed in French and Greek.[18] After Grindal died in 1548, Elizabeth received her education under Roger Ascham, a sympathetic teacher who believed that learning should be fun.[19] By the time her formal education ended in 1550, she was the best educated woman of her generation.[20]
The Miroir or Glasse of the Synneful Soul, a translation from the French, by Elizabeth, presented to Catherine Parr in 1544. The embroidered binding with the monogram KP for "Katherin Parr" is believed to have been worked by Elizabeth.[21]Thomas Seymour
Henry VIII died in 1547, when Elizabeth was 13 years old, and was succeeded by her half brother, Edward VI. Catherine Parr, Henry's last wife, soon married Thomas Seymour of Sudeley, Edward VI's uncle and the brother of the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. The couple took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea. There Elizabeth experienced an emotional crisis that some historians believe affected her for the rest of her life.[22] Seymour, approaching age 40 but having charm and "a powerful sex appeal",[22] engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth. These included entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her and slapping her on the buttocks. After Catherine Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs.[23][24] In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.[25]
Seymour continued scheming to control the royal family.[26][27] When Catherine Parr died of puerperal fever after childbirth on 5 September 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on wedding her.[28] The details of his former behaviour towards Elizabeth emerged during an interrogation of Catherine Ashley and Thomas Parry, Elizabeth�s cofferer.[29] For his brother and the council, this was the last straw,[30] and in January 1549, Seymour was arrested on suspicion of plotting to marry Elizabeth and overthrow his brother. Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, "I do see it in her face that she is guilty".[30] Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549. Mary I's reign
Mary I, by Anthonis Mor, 1554Edward VI died, probably of tuberculosis, on 6 July 1553, aged 15.[31] His will swept aside the Succession to the Crown Act 1543, excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession, and instead declared as his heir Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk.[32] Lady Jane was proclaimed queen by the Privy Council, but her support quickly crumbled, and she was deposed after reigning nine days.[33] Mary rode triumphantly into London, with Elizabeth at her side.[34]
The show of solidarity between the sisters did not last long. Mary, the country's first queen regnant,[35] was determined to crush the Protestant faith in which Elizabeth had been educated, and she ordered that everyone attend Mass. This included Elizabeth, who had to outwardly conform.[36] Mary's initial popularity ebbed away when it became known that she planned to marry Prince Philip of Spain, the son of Emperor Charles V.[37] Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies. In January and February 1554, uprisings broke out (known as Wyatt's rebellion) in several parts of England and Wales, led by Thomas Wyatt.[38]
Upon the collapse of the uprising, Elizabeth was brought to court and interrogated. On 18 March, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London, where Lady Jane Grey had been executed on 12 February to deter the rebels.[39] The terrified Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence.[40] Though it is unlikely that she had plotted with the rebels, some of them were known to have approached her. Mary's closest confidant, Charles V's ambassador Simon Renard, argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and the Chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, worked to have Elizabeth put on trial.[41] Elizabeth's supporters in the government, including Lord Paget, convinced Mary to spare her sister in the absence of hard evidence against her. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock, where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Crowds cheered her all along the way.[42][43]
The remaining wing of the Old Palace, Hatfield House. It was here that Elizabeth was told of her sister's death in November 1558.On 17 April 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court to be closely attended during the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen. If, on the other hand, Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply.[42] When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child.[44] Elizabeth's succession seemed assured.[45] Even Philip, who became King of Spain in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality. From this time forward, he cultivated Elizabeth, preferring her to the likely alternative, Mary I, Queen of Scots, who had grown up in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin of France.[46] When his wife fell ill in 1558, Philip sent the Count of Feria to consult with Elizabeth.[47] By October, Elizabeth was making plans for her government. On 6 November, Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir.[48][49] Eleven days later, Elizabeth succeeded to the throne when Mary died at St. James's Palace on 17 November 1558.
Accession
Elizabeth I in her coronation robes, patterned with Tudor roses and trimmed with ermine.Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25. As her triumphal progress wound through the city on the eve of the coronation ceremony, she was welcomed wholeheartedly by the citizens and greeted by orations and pageants, most with a strong Protestant flavour. Elizabeth's open and gracious responses endeared her to the spectators, who were "wonderfully ravished".[50] The following day, 15 January 1559, Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey and anointed by the Catholic bishop of Carlisle. She was then presented for the people's acceptance, amidst a deafening noise of organs, fifes, trumpets, drums, and bells.[51]
On 20 November 1558, Elizabeth declared her intentions to her Council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance. The speech contains the first record of her often-used metaphor of the "two bodies": the body natural and the body politic:
My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all...to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel.[52] Religion
Main article: Elizabethan Religious Settlement
Unfortunately for historians, Elizabeth's personal religious convictions will never be definitely known. Her religious policy favoured pragmatism above all in dealing with three major concerns. The first concern was that of her legitimacy. Although she was technically illegitimate under both Protestant and Catholic law, her retroactively declared illegitimacy under the English church was not a serious bar compared to having never been legitimate as the Catholics claimed she was. Perhaps most importantly, the break with Rome made her legitimate in her own eyes. For this reason, it was never in serious doubt that Elizabeth would embrace at least nominal Protestantism.
Elizabeth and her advisors perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. Elizabeth therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of English Protestants; she would not tolerate the more radical Puritans though, who were pushing for far-reaching reforms.[53] As a result, the parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many superficially Catholic elements, such as priestly vestments.[54]
The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords, particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury.[55][56]
This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May 1559. All public officials were to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters practised by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of an adapted version of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.[57]
Marriage question
Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1560s. Elizabeth's friendship with Dudley, her foremost favourite, lasted for over thirty years.From the start of Elizabeth's reign, the question arose whom she would marry. She never married, and the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships, or that she knew herself to be infertile.[58][59] Until bearing a child became impossible, she considered several suitors. Her last courtship, ending in 1581 when she was aged 48, was with Fran�ois, Duke of Anjou, 22 years her junior. Elizabeth had no need of a man's help to govern, and marrying risked a loss of control or of foreign interference in her affairs; as had happened to her sister Mary. On the other hand, marriage offered the chance of an heir.[60]
Lord Robert Dudley
Elizabeth often received offers of marriage, but she only seriously considered three or four suitors for any length of time. Of these, her childhood friend Lord Robert Dudley probably came closest. Early in 1559, Elizabeth's friendship with the married Dudley turned to love. Their intimacy soon was talk in court and country and abroad.[61] It was also said that Amy Robsart, his wife, was suffering from a "malady in one of her breasts",[62] and half a year later, that Lord Robert and the Queen had a "secret understanding" to marry after Amy would at last have been "sent into eternity".[63] Yet this was not a welcome idea: "There is not a man who does not cry out on him and her with indignation...she will marry none but the favoured Robert", the Spanish ambassador described the situation at the beginning of 1560.[64] Accordingly, when Dudley's wife died in September of the same year from a fall from a flight of stairs, a great scandal arose.[65] For a time, Elizabeth seriously considered marrying Dudley; but William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton, and other politicians were very alarmed and made their disapproval unmistakably clear.[66] The opposition was so overwhelming, that there were even rumours that the nobility would rise if the marriage took place.[67]
The "Hampden" portrait, by Steven van der Meulen, ca. 1563. This is the earliest full-length portrait of the queen, made before the emergence of symbolic portraits representing the iconography of the "Virgin Queen".[68]Despite several other marriage projects, Dudley was regarded as a serious candidate for nearly another decade.[69] Elizabeth encouraged him in his suit, remaining extremely jealous of his affections, even in case she never meant to marry him herself.[70] Finally, after Dudley, whom she had created Earl of Leicester in 1564, had remarried in 1578, the queen reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure towards him for having done so.[71] His wife had to cope with the queen's lifelong hatred.[72] Nevertheless, Dudley retained a special place in her heart. After Elizabeth's death, a note from him, who had died in 1588 shortly after the Armada, was found among her most personal belongings, marked "his last letter" in her handwriting.[73]
Political aspects
Elizabeth kept the marriage question open but often only as a diplomatic ploy.[74] Parliament repeatedly petitioned her to marry, but she always answered evasively.[75] In 1563, she told an imperial envoy: "If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married".[74] In the same year, following Elizabeth's illness with smallpox, the succession question became a heated issue. Parliament urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April, she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in 1566. The House of Commons threatened to withhold funds until she agreed to provide for the succession. In 1566, Sir Robert Bell boldly pursued the issue despite Elizabeth's command to desist and became the target of her anger, saying, "Mr. Bell with his complices must needs prefer their speeches to the upper house to have you my lords, consent with them, whereby you were seduced, and of simplicity did assent unto it."[76] In 1566, she confided to the Spanish ambassador that if she could find a way to settle the succession without marrying, she would do so. By 1570, senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem.[74] For this stance, as for her failure to marry, she was often accused of irresponsibility.[77] Elizabeth's silence strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup.[78]
Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, not as a normal woman.[79] At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin".[79] Later on, particularly after 1578, poets and writers took up the theme and turned it into an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. In an age of metaphors and conceits, she was portrayed as married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, Elizabeth spoke of "all my husbands, my good people".[80]
Foreign policy
Fran�ois, Duke of Anjou, by Nicholas Hilliard. Elizabeth called the duke her "frog", finding him "not so deformed" as she had been led to expect.[81]Apart from the Dudley courtship, Elizabeth treated the marriage issue as an aspect of foreign policy.[82] Though she turned down Philip II's own offer in 1559, she negotiated for several years to marry his cousin Archduke Charles of Austria. Relations with the Habsburgs deteriorated by 1568. Elizabeth then considered marriage to two French Valois princes in turn, first Henri, Duke of Anjou, and later, from 1572 to 1581, his brother Fran�ois, Duke of Anjou.[83] This last proposal was tied to a planned alliance against Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands.[84] Elizabeth seems to have taken the courtship seriously for a time, and wore a frog-shaped earring that Anjou had sent her.[85]
Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the disastrous occupation of Le Havre from October 1562 to June 1563, when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Elizabeth had intended to exchange Le Havre for Calais, retaken by France in January 1558.[86] She sent troops into Scotland in 1560 to prevent the French using it as a base.[87] In 1585, she signed the Treaty of Nonsuch with the Dutch to block the Spanish threat to England.[88] Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. This paid off in the war against Spain, 80% of which was fought at sea.[89] She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, and he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets. An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over which the queen had little control.[90][91] Her reign also saw the first colonisation or "planting" of new land in North America; the colony of Virginia was named by her when she modified the name of a Native American regional "king" named "Wingina" that had been recorded in 1584 by the Sir Walter Raleigh expedition, noting her status as the "Virgin Queen".[92][93]
Scotland
Mary, Queen of Scots, she was Elizabeth's first cousin once removed by descendance from Henry VIIElizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there.[94] She feared that the French planned to invade England and put Mary, Queen of Scots, who was considered by many to be the heir to the English crown,[95] on the throne.[96] Elizabeth was persuaded to send a force into Scotland to aid the Protestant rebels, and though the campaign was inept, the resulting Treaty of Edinburgh of July 1560 removed the French threat in the north.[97] When Mary returned to Scotland in 1561 to take up the reins of power, the country had an established Protestant church and was run by a council of Protestant nobles supported by Elizabeth.[98] Mary refused to ratify the treaty.[99]
Elizabeth offended Mary by proposing her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband.[99] Instead, in 1565 Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular in Scotland and then infamous for presiding over the murder of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio. In February 1567, Darnley was murdered by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Shortly afterwards, on 15 May 1567, Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth wrote to her:
How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.[100]
These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James, who had been born in June 1566. James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped from Loch Leven in 1568 but after another defeat fled across the border into England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch; but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England. She was imprisoned there for the next nineteen years.[101]
Signature of Elizabeth I of EnglandMary was soon the focus for rebellion. In 1569, plotters in the Rising of the North talked of freeing her, and a scheme arose to marry her to Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. Elizabeth reacted by sending Howard to the block. Pope Pius V issued a papal bull in 1570, called Regnans in Excelsis, declaring "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be a heretic and releasing all her subjects from any allegiance.[102] English Catholics thus had an additional incentive to look to Mary Stuart as the true sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her.[103] At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586 she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot.[104] Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm divers things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person."[105] On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire.[106] She was 44 years old.[107]
Spain
After the disastrous occupation and loss of Le Havre in 1562�1563, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until 1585, when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. This followed the deaths in 1584 of the allies William the Silent, Prince of Orange, and Fran�ois, Duke of Anjou, and the surrender of a series of Dutch towns to Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, Philip's governor of the Spanish Netherlands. In December 1584, an alliance between Philip II and the French Catholic League at Joinville undermined the ability of Anjou's brother, Henry III of France, to counter Spanish domination of the Netherlands. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion.[88] The siege of Antwerp in the summer of 1585 by the Duke of Parma necessitated some reaction on the part of the English and the Dutch. The outcome was the Treaty of Nonsuch of August 1585, in which Elizabeth promised military support to the Dutch.[108] The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish War, which lasted until the Treaty of London in 1604.
The expedition was led by her former suitor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland,[109] had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who wanted and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign. Elizabeth on the other hand, wanted him "to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy".[110] He enraged Elizabeth by accepting the post of Governor-General from the Dutch States-General. Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands,[111] which so far she had always declined. She wrote to Leicester:
We could never have imagined (had we not seen it fall out in experience) that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour....And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.[112]
Note: Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 � 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabe
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