Transcription
From the moment she is born, the world knows that she should have been a son. Though strong-willed, intelligent, and passionate, beneath the image of this magnificent monarch is a vulnerable woman, keenly aware that her life is in constant peril. Elizabeth was the monarch, but it's a man's world. Her role was to produce heirs to continue the dynasty.
In an age of assassinations and intrigue, Queen Elizabeth is surrounded by enemies, scheming to steal her crown or take her life. She knows she must be both king and queen to a country in turmoil. Knowing that life would have been easier had she been born a man, the unlikely Elizabeth would become the son that Henry VII had always wanted, but never expected. Elizabeth is the queen who needed no king.
A crescent moon hangs in the night sky above Greenwich Palace. In September 1533, King Henry VII has spent almost 20 years married to his first queen, Katherine of Aragon, but she has failed to provide him with what he wanted most in the world: a son and heir. He has moved heaven and earth to ensure the annulment of his marriage to his first wife, so he and his new queen, Anne Boleyn, could be married and have a child. Anne enters the final stage of her pregnancy. Henry is sure that the child is the son and heir he's been praying for.
The flyers and announcements have been prepared in anticipation of the birth of a new prince, ensuring the stable succession of the Tudor dynasty. And to everyone's great relief, a healthy baby is born. But Henry is devastated to find out that it is another girl. They call her Elizabeth. Princess Elizabeth is proclaimed heir to the throne, at least until any future sons are born to the king. She's the first child of Henry VII and Anne Boleyn, the first since the break with Rome.
Now, some historians have suggested that Henry was furious at Anne for the delivery of a daughter, and indeed that this was the beginning of the end of their relationship. But actually, we have good evidence that Henry consoled Anne and suggested that the delivery of a healthy daughter was a good sign for the sons that would follow. Elizabeth's birth was disappointing, and he really did want to have a son, but he knew that both he and Anne were young enough to have more children, and Anne does quickly become pregnant again.
The following year, Anne is pregnant by Henry again. In 1536, but tragically miscarries. In February of the same year, Henry is injured in a jousting accident. Henry VII loved jousting, and it is an incredibly dangerous sport. According to some accounts, the king is carried back from the tournament fields unconscious. He will never recover from his injuries. He fell badly, and his horse landed on top of him. This really changed Henry's lifestyle. It, in many ways, emasculated him. One account suggested that he was unconscious for several hours, and there were also suggestions that perhaps there was some sort of brain damage.
I think this narrowing of his abilities, and I think this continual pain that Henry is in, really changes his personality. I think he becomes hotheaded and irrational and would lash out to a degree that he hadn't previously. And it really hammered home to the king and to his court, he still did not have a legitimate male heir. Not long after Henry's jousting accident, Anne tragically miscarries. The trauma of Henry's injury and Anne's miscarriage has put the couple at odds.
Thomas Cromwell and Anne, who once had been united in the pursuit of the same cause, are now warring over the king's favor. In the ensuing weeks, Cromwell makes a move against her and poisons Henry against his own wife. Queen Anne Boleyn is arrested, charged with adultery, incest, and treason, and is sentenced to death. Henry hires a French swordsman as one last act of mercy for his formerly beloved wife. Anne is executed on the 19th of May, 1536.
Following her mother's execution, Elizabeth's life changes drastically. Barely 3 years old, the princess is now considered illegitimate. Elizabeth's mother, Anne, is executed when she's 2 years old, and it is an enormous change for Elizabeth. She is no longer to be called Princess Elizabeth, but rather Lady Elizabeth. And although she is not yet 3 years old, Elizabeth is keenly aware of these changes. She actually says to her governor, "You know, why, why yesterday were you calling me Lady Princess, and now you're calling me Lady Elizabeth?" Because she notices a drop in status. Her mother's execution must have been the most traumatic event of her childhood, and possibly her entire life. She may well not have remembered her mother, but certainly she knew of the circumstances.
Henry does not have time to grieve Anne. For the day after her execution, he proposes to a new bride. Two weeks later, he marries Jane Seymour. The couple has a son, Edward, and he and Elizabeth, only four years apart in age, spend much of their childhood together at Hatfield House. Elizabeth was a highly intelligent young woman. She was gifted in education; indeed, she spoke eight different languages. Elizabeth was incredibly intelligent, and she spent most of her days as a teenager and young woman at her desk. I mean, it was actually later remarked of her that she would read Greek for fun, because that was seen as quite strange.
The precocious Elizabeth, even at an early age, excels in her studies of language and law. Under the tuition of Roger Ascham, she learned theology, history, and moral philosophy. Of her, he wrote, "Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up." Elizabeth also learned, I think, a great deal through her childhood and adolescence about the politics at court. She learned how to bend, she learned how to stand her ground too. Really was a gifted individual.
So, Elizabeth's relationship with her siblings varied, particularly with Mary. So, with Edward, she always had a strong relationship. He's only four years younger than her, and they were raised together until he was six and left the Royal Nursery. They were also both raised as Protestants, so they had this affinity with religion. With Mary, the relationship is a lot more complex. Mary is much, much older than Elizabeth; she's 17 years old when Elizabeth is born, and Elizabeth is very much born at a traumatic period in Mary's life. Mary has been declared illegitimate, she's been separated from her beloved mother, and her parents' marriage has been annulled. When Elizabeth is born, she becomes heir to the throne instead of Mary, and Mary is then told that she has to join Elizabeth's household as effectively a servant. She has to take her meals in the dining hall rather than in private, which her princess would expect, and she's very much second to Elizabeth. So the relationship is quite tricky.
When King Henry VIII died in 1547, Elizabeth was only 13 years old. The prince, and Elizabeth's half-brother, Edward, came to the throne upon the death of their father. The boy is only 9 years old at his accession. This is when Elizabeth's life takes a perilous turn. She is placed into the care of her most recent stepmother, Katherine Parr. She is newly married to King Edward's uncle, Thomas Seymour. Seymour is handsome, but 30 years Elizabeth's senior. This probably is one of the most tumultuous periods in Elizabeth's life. It's certainly a confusing and dangerous period for her. Thomas Seymour is an incredibly handsome man; he's the uncle of the new King Edward VI, brother of Jane Seymour, very, very eligible, very good-looking, very charming, although one contemporary describes him as somewhat empty of matter, so he's perhaps not as clever as he thinks he is.
Elizabeth seems to have been quite charmed by Thomas Seymour. She is a young girl, a teenager, just approaching her 14th birthday, and she does seem to have had a bit of a crush on him, but he very much exploits this. Soon, it's made apparent that Seymour is more interested in the teenage Elizabeth than his own wife, Catherine. And we know from the accounts of Elizabeth's servants that very soon after he joins Catherine's household, Thomas Seymour starts coming into Elizabeth's bedchamber early in the morning. It's really, really inappropriate. Catherine Parr soon discovers the affection Seymour harbors for Elizabeth, and the young princess is sent away.
The Regency Council realized Thomas's bid for power and his plan to potentially marry Elizabeth and seize the throne for himself. In January 1549, he is arrested, for apparently trying to kidnap the king. He's certainly trying to bring down his brother, who is the Lord Protector. Thomas Seymour is tried for treason. Elizabeth herself does not realize that she has become embroiled in a treasonous scandal until her governor, Kat Ashley, is arrested. Elizabeth's servants are arrested, and she is interrogated, and she comes very close to disaster. Elizabeth is also arrested and questioned, but the princess manages to plead for her life and her freedom. Thomas Seymour is not so lucky, and having been convicted of 33 charges of treason by the council, he is executed. This early relationship, whether it was consensual romance or sexual harassment, and all the dangers that came with it, were an early indication to Elizabeth of how love could lead to death and self-destruction.
Edward VI was a highly intelligent young man. He was well-versed in most subjects, and he was also a radical religious thinker. This was certainly encouraged by his uncles, who shared the Protestant faith. Though their father, Henry, began the break with Catholic Rome, it is under Edward's zealous rule that the English Reformation begins in earnest. Elizabeth, as the daughter of the radical Evangelical Queen Anne Boleyn, is comfortable in Edward's new Protestant England.
By the time the king is 12, multiple Catholic rebellions have been quelled, prayer books published in his native English, and his uncle and protector, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, has been executed. In 1553, Edward is gravely ill. He has not had a chance to marry and sire an heir and is loath to let his new Protestant England fall into his sister Mary's Catholic hands. Edward is a boy king and a fiercely Protestant one too, and his heir at the time is his elder sister, Mary, who is a devout Catholic and a Roman Catholic too. This causes enormous tensions between the two. Their differences are so great that Edward cannot conceive of his sister Mary succeeding to the throne and undoing the Protestant Reformation that he has enacted upon the country. And he goes to great lengths in order to disinherit his sister from the line of succession.
By June, he knows that he is dying. He redrafts his will, naming his cousin, the 16-year-old Lady Jane Grey, his successor. But support lies overwhelmingly with Mary. Henry VIII's eldest Catholic daughter, Mary, arrives in London with an army of men and seizes the Tower of London. Lady Jane Grey is arrested and later executed, and Mary takes her rightful place on the throne of England.
The eldest child of Henry VIII, Mary is a devout Catholic. She swiftly unravels all of the Protestant policies of her brother and declares her parents' marriage valid. The new queen repeals the last of Henry VIII's religious laws, thus returning the English church to Roman jurisdiction and restoring papal supremacy in England. Elizabeth's life hangs in the balance throughout Mary's reign. Her Protestant faith places her at risk of treason, as to believe in a different God than that of the monarch was an act of disloyalty. So, heresy was both a civil and religious offense, punishable by death.
During Mary's Catholic reign, many Protestants are arrested, imprisoned, and executed. Desperate to avoid a similar succession crisis as her brother Edward, and to ensure her own Catholic rule of England, Mary is desperate for a son and heir. Now 37, she marries King Philip II of Spain. As a result, rebellion sparks. Early in 1554, there is a great rebellion against Mary. It is led by Sir Thomas Wyatt and it begins in Kent. Thomas Wyatt rebels in favor of Princess Elizabeth ascending to the throne. Wyatt marches his troops up to London, and actually, it's really, it's a very, very dangerous situation for Mary, and she is urged to flee her capital by her advisors. She refuses and actually makes a speech at the Guild Hall in London, and it's absolutely the speech of her life. And we can see Elizabeth modeling later speeches on this. Mary talks about being married to her country, and it really rallies the people of London in her support. So that when Wyatt's troops cross the river into London, they are met with a substantial army and they are defeated.
That day, Mary believes that Elizabeth is part of this conspiracy and arrests her sister, imprisoning her in the Tower of London. Indeed, it is likely she is held in the very same rooms that her mother was once held in. This must have been terrifying for Elizabeth. However, Mary ultimately knew that Elizabeth was her only heir. There was no one else to succeed her, so therefore she had no choice but to let Elizabeth go.
Mary believed that she came to the throne with God's favor, that God had supported her. So she sees her queenship as divinely inspired. So it seems only natural that she will give birth to a Catholic heir to the throne to keep her half-sister away from the crown. Mary was determined to have a son and heir, and at one point, she believed very much that she was pregnant. So she has all the symptoms of pregnancy, the doctors agree, everyone is very, very excited, and she makes preparations for the birth. She then retires for her lying-in, which is usually about a month before a woman believes she'll give birth. And so she waits, and then she waits, and she waits some more, and nothing happens. Tragically, this was a phantom pregnancy, and no children ever came from her marriage to Philip. Heartbroken and grieving, following several phantom pregnancies, Mary considers her false pregnancy to be God's punishment.
By the start of 1558, it is clear that it's only a matter of time before Elizabeth takes the throne. Mary is not going to have a child, and her health is declining. After only 5 years on the throne, and having provided no heir, Mary dies in 1558, leaving her throne begrudgingly to her Protestant sister, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is immediately proclaimed queen, and she is told at Hatfield while she is sitting reading under an oak tree. Given the fact that it's November and it's very, very cold, this looks very much like a stage scene that she is waiting to be told that she is now queen. There was something of a sigh of relief in the country, who had been exposed to quite radical measures to return the country back to the Catholic faith, and they hoped that the young Elizabeth would provide more stability, more peace, and harmony.
Following her accession at Hatfield, Elizabeth makes her way to London. She is met by cheering crowds. She is Henry VIII's daughter, and in fact, her coronation portrait is very much reminiscent of her father. She's displaying herself as Henry VIII's daughter. It was entirely customary for monarchs to be crowned within a couple of months of their accession to the throne, but Elizabeth was keen to choose the most opportune date in which the crown was to be placed on her head, and therefore she employed the court astrologer John Dee to look at her birth map and choose the most opportune date for her ascension.
Elizabeth was the monarch, but it's a man's world. Monarch is really the only office that is open to a woman in Tudor England. So Elizabeth's government is made up entirely of men, and she immediately sets about appointing her council.
For centuries before her father's Reformation, England had been a Roman Catholic country. Under the policies of her father, brother, and then sister, England's religious tensions had resulted in battles verging on civil war. I think it is safe to say that Elizabeth was a Protestant, but when she came to the throne, she knew that she had to be pragmatic. When Elizabeth became queen, England was a Catholic country, and so the question of what the state religion would be was really on everybody's lips, because she was well known to be a Protestant.
In 1559, she created her religious settlement, where she set the state religion, and it was a Protestant church. The Church of England was Protestant. However, it wasn't as staunchly Protestant as it had been in her brother Edward's reign. So Elizabeth tried to take something of a compromise approach, something of a middle way. She stated that she had no desire to open windows into men's souls, and this must have been something of a relief to her kingdom.
When Elizabeth accedes to the throne, she returns the country to Protestantism but is much more moderate than her siblings in her policy towards religion. Her own inclination wasn't to be quite as Puritan, which is the hotter sort of Protestant, as her brother had been. And, for example, she liked to keep a silver crucifix in the Chapel Royal on the altar, something that was hugely offensive to the Puritans at her court. However, there were Catholic factions who were entirely opposed to Elizabeth's rule. They deemed her as illegitimate because of how her mother had been executed, and therefore, I think it's safe to say that Elizabeth became increasingly intolerant of those with a Catholic faith. She saw them as foreign; she didn't believe that they could be trusted. And this was compounded by numerous plots against her life that were enacted by Catholics. Parliament passes the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity and only asks for outward confirmation to Protestantism. Mary's heresy laws were repealed to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters practiced by her sister.
The new queen is 25 years old and beautiful, so she is never short of suitors. Foreign kings and princes from all over Europe wish to wed her: Archduke Charles of Austria, Eric XIV King of Sweden, Henry Duke of Anjou, and later King of France, François Duke of Alençon, and even her elder sister's widower, Philip II of Spain. Tudor women had very few rights. They were expected to marry, and they would then become effectively the property of their husband. I think Elizabeth learned a huge amount about the risks that came with marriage from her mother's downfall. Indeed, I think these risks were also compounded when, at only 9 years old, the same thing happened again to her stepmother, Catherine Howard. Although a reigning queen does retain some authority, their husband will become king and will be deferred to and become the dominant party. And we can see this with Mary I, who marries Philip of Spain, and he becomes King of England. We can see this in Scotland, where Mary Queen of Scots marries Henry Lord Darnley, and he becomes King Henry of Scots. And Elizabeth was also keenly aware that in order to rule as a woman in your own right, you really had to do so alone.
Elizabeth is expected to marry and give England a king. Elizabeth actually receives a deputation from the House of Commons not long after she becomes queen, where they petition her to marry, and she takes it in very good grace. But she says to them, "You know, since I have been a child, I have decided that I am going to remain unmarried. That I am going to be a virgin. I am going to reign as a Virgin Queen." It doesn't really cause any stir, which is surprising, but really, it's because just nobody believed her. I mean, it was a ridiculous suggestion that this young girl of 25 would hope to reign as queen. Of course, she had to marry; of course, she had to give England the king. Her role was to produce heirs to continue the dynasty.
Taking a vow of celibacy and promising that she will never marry, she states that she will rule as a Virgin Queen. Elizabeth had watched Mary's disastrous marriage to a foreign king, which resulted in a bloody rebellion and England being forced into wars with France. As well as this, her own father had been married six times. She had been left incredibly vulnerable by the downfall of her mother. She knew that if she had married, her husband would automatically have become a King Regnant, and Elizabeth wanted control, not only of her own destiny but that of her kingdom too.
But by 1559, it is clear that Elizabeth has formed a romantic attachment to her childhood friend and Master of the Horse, Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester. Her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, had married for love. In 1567, Mary married James IV Earl of Bothwell, whom many believed to have murdered her second husband, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, only a few weeks prior. Thus, Mary was forced to abdicate the throne amidst a rebellion. All this serves as a constant reminder to Elizabeth how dangerous love can be. So she decided to be both queen and king of England, forever alone on the throne.
It became important for Catholics to undermine Elizabeth's legitimacy. This was exacerbated by people like the Catholic recusant Nicholas Sander, who wanted to cast Anne Boleyn in the role as a witch. He suggested that she had six fingers, three breasts, and also suggested that she was actually the illegitimate daughter of King Henry VIII and that Elizabeth had been born as a product of incest. This monstering of Anne Boleyn as a witch really was designed to undermine Elizabeth's authority, legitimacy, and to encourage people to remove her from the throne. Even Pope Pius V declared her illegitimate in 1570 and released her subjects from obedience to her, calling her a criminal impostor. From this point onwards, several conspiracies and assassination attempts would threaten her life.
In 1568, Mary Queen of Scots seeks refuge in England. Mary Queen of Scots is undoubtedly Elizabeth's rival. Mary was born in 1542, and when she was 6 days old, she became reigning Queen of Scotland. Mary is undoubtedly the biggest threat to Elizabeth, and this is because of her place in English succession. So Mary is effectively her heir; she is the next hereditary heir to the throne. Mary Queen of Scots was Elizabeth's first cousin, and she had something of a tempestuous reign in Scotland. She had been forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in favor of her one-year-old son, James. However, when she arrives in the country, the Catholic queen is put under house arrest. She will be imprisoned for almost 20 years, and it was the absolute worst decision she could have taken because Elizabeth was the one person who could never allow Mary to have her freedom because Mary is such a threat to her rule. Mary becomes a figurehead for Catholic resistance under Elizabeth's Protestant rule. Indeed, people already thought that Mary had a more legitimate claim to the English throne, and this really matters to Elizabeth because Elizabeth is still legally illegitimate. So legally, she has no title to the throne other than by Act of Parliament and by her father's will.
In 1569, there was a major Catholic uprising led by a number of Earls in the North of England. They were to marry Mary to Thomas Howard, the fourth Duke of Norfolk, and declare them king and queen of England. After the rebellion had been quashed, Elizabeth had 750 rebels executed. In 1580, Pope Gregory XIII issued a clarification to the initial papal bull, explaining that Catholics in England should obey the queen outwardly in all civil matters until such time as a suitable opportunity presented itself to overthrow her, going as far as to say that it would be no sin to rid the world of such a miserable heretic. Plots against Elizabeth hasten in response. As her endless imprisonment continues, Mary of Scots' own support for the murder of Elizabeth is evident if that would lead to her own liberation and Catholic restoration of England. Thus far, Mary has avoided direct involvement in the plotting and scheming for the throne, but this is about to change.
In 1587, correspondence is intercepted by Elizabeth's men that will damn Mary beyond a shadow of a doubt. The letter reads, "Let the great plot commence," signed Mary. It had been proved without doubt that Mary had consented to murder Elizabeth. Elizabeth knew that Mary wanted her dead. Elizabeth now has no other choice than to sign the death warrant.
For years, Elizabeth had conducted her statecraft masterfully and had avoided war despite rising tensions between France and the rest of Catholic Europe. But when news of Mary's execution reached Spain, a war began. King Philip of Spain had assembled a huge fleet of ships and sailed to the Netherlands to meet the Duke of Parma. From there, they set anchor at Calais and planned a naval invasion of Elizabeth's Protestant England. The Spanish have a much larger fleet, and the odds are stacked against the queen. The English were expecting an invasion from Spain, and Philip built a great fleet, the Spanish Armada. So Elizabeth goes to her troops at Tilbury to try and ready her forces.
Elizabeth really showed her mettle at a speech that she gave at Tilbury. She talks about having the body of a weak and feeble woman, but having the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England. The English rally their troops, preparing themselves for invasion. But then the weather breaks, and the tides turn. Storms form, and winds blow, scattering the Spanish fleet. Her commanders, Lord Howard of Effingham and Francis Drake, are able to scatter the Spanish fleet, partly by aid of a Protestant wind that blows in the English favor. England sends burning fire ships, which scorch and sink the Armada's galleons. The English sail back to Plymouth victorious.
This is where the mythology of Elizabeth really starts. The truth of the matter is that it was more the weather than anything that Elizabeth had done that was the downfall of the Armada. But this is where Elizabeth, the powerful Virgin Queen, really comes into prominence. From this point onwards, she becomes Gloriana, the Virgin Queen, the semi-divine monarch of myth and magic. The defeat of the Armada was the high point of Elizabeth's reign, and we know Elizabeth was a great propagandist, and she was determined to use this to create capital on a European stage. And one way that she did this is actually through iconography. We've got the Armada Portrait, which was commissioned, and it shows Elizabeth in her absolute prime.
The Armada Portrait, as the name suggests, is painted in the immediate aftermath of the Armada crisis and it celebrates the victory that the English have achieved and sort of strengthens Elizabeth's power as a result. I think what's really interesting about this portrait is on the one hand, it belongs to a really specific moment in time; it is directly alluding to the Armada crisis in 1588. But at the same time, it projects an image of timelessness. And we see this most clearly in Elizabeth's face. You know, she's in her mid-50s when this portrait is painted, and yet she still has the white skin and the red hair that had become central to her image from the moment that she took the throne decades earlier. In real life, she was maintaining this appearance through heavy makeup and through a wig, and in her portraiture, she always ensured that she was depicted as a kind of youthful figure and ageless beauty. This served the purpose of propaganda, particularly in the latter stages of her reign, because it sort of offset potential problems that would arise and instability that would arise from her lack of an heir. It created this appearance of a continuous and sort of unaging, powerful monarch. And in the Armada Portrait, that image becomes particularly seductive, particularly powerful, because it's associated with the imagery of maritime triumph and also imperial expansion. She's resting her hand on a globe. This image is sort of saying that Elizabeth's legacy, her power, will continue through the empire that she's building for the future. It shows Elizabeth as the monarch that she wants to present to the world. She is a warrior queen; she is at the absolute height of her powers.
Elizabeth really refined her image over the years. She understood the power of dressing powerfully, of covering herself in jewels, of accentuating her femininity. And I think this is where the myth of the Virgin Queen really comes from. It's not only a statement about the fact that she is ruling in her own right, that she isn't touched by man; she also very much uses her femininity to her advantage in her propaganda because, actually, being a woman is a major disadvantage for a ruler in the period. And yet, actually, she is able to use this and to turn it around. Contemporaries talk of being in love with Elizabeth. She's seen as ageless, eternally beautiful; she's the Fairy Queen, she's Gloriana. And actually, again, we can see this in her portraits because she doesn't age. When we see portraits of Elizabeth, we're seeing Elizabeth through the mirror of propaganda. So her face remains white and unlined and beautiful throughout her reign. It's only paintings painted after her death where we actually start to see the aging queen, because any portrait that was unflattering would simply be destroyed.
Elizabeth was destined to be the last of her dynasty, and of course, she knew this. She had no children; she had no nephews and nieces. There was no one else to carry on the Tudor line. Elizabeth died childless, and at the end of her reign, became the end of the Tudor dynasty. Although she's not the first English reigning queen, or the first reigning queen in the island of Britain, she was undoubtedly the woman that proved that women could reign in England. She reigned for over 40 years, and she reigned independently. She didn't have a king, and she was very much in control of her kingdom. And I think that's her greatest legacy, really. It is her contribution to English queenship. All subsequent reigning queens have to some extent modeled themselves on Elizabeth. We see this with Queen Anne in the 18th century, for example, who, when she becomes queen, she actually takes as her motto, Semper Eadem, always the same, and this was the motto of Elizabeth I. And so this is her legacy. She is the first truly great reigning queen on the island of Britain. Actually, I think one of Elizabeth's greatest legacies was demonstrating that a queen could rule in her own right without a man. She was a queen who did not need a king.