1558 onwards – ‘the Great Elizabethan Age’

Tudor monarch Henry VIII’s daughter by Anne Boleyn has been lauded through English history. As Queen Elizabeth I she’s viewed as presiding over a golden age. An age of national growth, prosperity and of military and naval triumphs. In the 44 year reign of Good Queen Bess, England saw a flowering of literature, theatre and music. A time of strong, confident and decisive government, with Treasury books balanced and the country’s reputation soaring. Surely this was a highpoint in England’s history, tied to a growing sense of national consciousness and identity.

Well we can accept the last point, though this process more accurately began with her grandfather, King Henry VII, first of the Tudor monarchs. And the Queen did have several virtues - a sound instinct for survival, being intelligent and well educated for the time (she spoke several languages, including French, Italian and maybe even Welsh). She also picked and kept good advisers. But personal flaws and policy errors surely leave a pretty negative balance. The problem is her perceived pluses are at the heart of a supposed age of peace and harmony.

Elizabeth as a Princess

Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 on a sea of optimism. The reign of her half-sister (Bloody) Mary had been a failure bordering on disaster. The new 25 year old queen was greeted in London as a saviour with a big fanfare of pageants, music and general merriment. She impressed with her first speeches. But by the end of her reign she left a starving country, heavily indebted, an army still fighting in Ireland, and the Spanish war not yet ended. Contemporary sources suggest many people were relieved at her death. For some years they had been wishing her gone.

Scottish and Irish challenges

Elizabeth's coronation procession 

Scotland was her first test. Mary of Guise, a leading French Catholic, married Scots King James V, but he died in 1542 leaving a baby daughter, Mary, later Queen of Scots. Guise became Regent, spending her life trying to keep Scotland as a pro-French, Catholic nation for her girl. But she faced the full force of the Protestant Reformation. The Scots Lords, vying for power by 1560, asked for Elizabeth’s help against Mary of Guise in Leith, the port of Edinburgh. A fleet and army were duly sent but Anglo-Scots losses were heavy. In the event Mary died and France agreed to end its fortification of Edinburgh. But the problem in various forms kept coming back.

Ireland presented perhaps a bigger, and certainly a more attenuated, issue. Successive military campaigns against different rebellions proved expensive in money and human life. In one period Elizabeth’s scorched earth policy there left at least 30,000 men, women and children to starve. She thought the Irish ‘rude and barbarous’. Poor commanders such as favourites like the earl of Essex, were appointed. At the end of her reign, fighting continued in the north against Hugh O’Neil. Peace only came after she died.

Policy failures 

Another policy failure was with the Dutch Protestants. Habsburg Spain had extended its influence in the Spanish Netherlands and along the French channel coast. In 1585 Elizabeth promised the Dutch military aid. But she sent scant support under Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, and held secret talks with Spain. Then she publicly pulled the rug from Leicester, ruining his standing and credibility with the Dutch. She blocked resources for her troops fighting in the Netherlands and never ensured supplies for any military or naval engagements. She left thousands of starving soldiers and sailors each time. Advisers like Walsingham had to use their own funds for State security. She seemed relaxed at seeing them bankrupt.

Lord Robert Dudley

She took shares in the booty from privateers. The actions were always deniable. She was lucky in that respect. But after the Armada in 1588 England suffered a series of costly naval failures which for some reason many of us never heard about in school. It was a major drain on the country and weakened Elizabeth’s popularity.

In later years after 1590, the so called ‘second reign’ was increasingly difficult. Key ministers had died. In a floundering economy Gloriana granted trading or product monopolies, rather than using Parliament to raise money. A cost free system of patronage, but it encouraged price fixing and other abuses. The result? To enrich a few courtiers at public expense. The tax burden on a struggling population of 4m (pretty well the same as in Roman times) rose. The high costs of Irish and French wars were compounded by poor harvests, bringing years of famine.

What of the supposed cultural bonus - the flowering of literature, theatre and music during Elizabethan times? Most of this happened towards the end of her reign, or in that of her successor James I. But while she enjoyed dancing, the queen seemed largely uninterested in Shakespeare, Marlowe or Byrd. She certainly didn’t support any of the arts, either with her own or state money. She was just there when it happened. To credit her with a cultural blooming is like praising Queen Victoria for railways, a development in which she had played no part.   

Personal weaknesses  

Elizabeth suffered from smallpox in 1562, when she was 29. This must have had a lasting effect as she tried to cover the scars all her life. She was short sighted, had a fear of the dark, and was narcissistic (stories of her extravagance with jewellery and her thousands of dresses are legion). She was short tempered and often indecisive, as in signing or not signing Mary Queen of Scots’ death warrant, and with an exasperating habit of avoiding commitment on numerous issues.

Elizabeth painted after her death

She had a mean and vengeful streak, too. Her dog in a manger attitude to Lettice Knollys after she had married Dudley, earl of Leicester, was obvious, as was her humiliation of Leicester in the Netherlands. And there was a cruel element to her makeup. In 1569, after a Catholic rising in the North, 750 rebels were executed on Elizabeth’s orders.

Successes?

So with all these policy and personal failings, were there any positives? Yes. A religious settlement, drafted by her advisers and launched at the start of her reign, was undoubtedly her main real achievement. A pragmatist in such affairs, she was a Protestant, who was declared illegitimate by the Catholic Church. Partly for home and partly for wider consumption, she sought a solution that Parliament would support, without riling Catholics too much. She wouldn’t tolerate extremes, such as with the more radical Puritans. The result was a Protestant Church of England with her as Governor, but with several Catholic elements, including vestments, later the subject of some religious strife.

The Act of Supremacy became law in May 1559. Public officials had to swear an oath of allegiance, heresy laws were repealed, and a new Act of Uniformity made church attendance and an adapted Book of Common Prayer compulsory. But ‘recusants’ and moderate non-conformists were not really punished harshly. The religious settlement led to peace, and spared England the debilitating and horrific religious conflicts seen in other European countries, notably France.

But in total, the public view of her reign remains far too charitable. Historians JE Neale and AL Rowse of an earlier generation viewed Elizabeth’s reign as a golden age of progress. Worryingly, they also idealised her personally. She could do little wrong. Her unlovely traits were ignored or perhaps excused as the result of stress. More recent historians have swung the other way.