The last years

'The Ditchley Portrait', by
Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c. 1592
The queen stands upon England depicted
on top of a globe.
Public domain.

The 'second reign'

The fifteen years between the defeat of the Armada and Elizabeth's death was a troubled period, and we should not be deceived by the dazzling images of the Queen produced in the 1590s.

The Armada was a disaster for Spain but not a knock-out blow. In 1589 Drake headed a counter-attack, descending on Lisbon in order to put a pretender on the Portuguese throne and intercept the treasure fleet from the Indies, but this was an ignominious failure. The war with Spain dragged on.

From the point of view of Spain, Ireland was England’s greatest area of vulnerability. It was governed by a thinly-spread English colonial class headed by a Lord Deputy and it remained stubbornly Catholic. English attitudes to the Irish were profoundly racist - shown, for example in Edmund Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland.

The new men

On a personal level, the death of Leicester in September 1588 was a grievous blow to Elizabeth.  In November it was observed that she was ‘much aged and spent and very melancholy’.  Leicester’s death was the first of several events which steadily transformed the membership and profile of the Elizabethan establishment. Walsingham died in April 1590, his last years having been spent in comparative poverty because of the debts of his late son-in-law, Philip Sidney. The debt-ridden Lord Chancellor Hatton died from kidney disease in November 1591.

Sir Walter Raleigh seemed likely to become Elizabeth’s third favourite after Leicester and Hatton. She granted him most of the offices in the south-west vacated by the death of the second earl of Bedford, as well as lucrative monopolies in the east Midlands and Ireland. But he blotted his copybook, by seducing Elizabeth's maid of honour, Elizabeth Throckmorton, daughter of her first ambassador to Paris. In the summer of 1591 Bess discovered that she was pregnant, and the couple secretly married. In February 1592 she gave birth to a boy, but when the marriage was discovered on 31 May she was sent to the Tower.  

Raleigh at this time was on a privateering voyage to the Azores, but in July he was recalled and sent to the Tower. Although both were released in August, when his fleet captured the Madre de Dios, he remained under a cloud for the next five years. 

Burghley became more dominant than ever in the Privy Council, and he exploited his position to ensure that the former advocates of a more interventionist foreign policy were replaced by more cautious strategists. 

Elizabeth’s last years were dominated by factional conflict. Politicians jockeyed for position, ready for her death. The most deadly feud was between the followers of Essex and those of Robert Cecil.

The Armada

English ships and the Spanish Armada
English school, artist unknown.
Public domain.

There is an account of the Armada here. For this post, I am indebted to general histories by John Guy and Susan Brigden, and also to Garrett Mattingly's classic, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada and Henry Kamen's Philip II of Spain.

What was it about?

Philip II believed that he had been provoked into war by England's forays into the Netherlands and the New World. The preparations were already underway at the time of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, but her death made it a certainty.

Meanwhile the war in the Netherlands was going badly for England. At the end of 1587 Leicester resigned his commission and returned to England. The zealously propagated myth of the death of Philip Sidney could not disguise the political reality: English intervention in the Netherlands had achieved nothing, yet it was regarded in Spain as an act of war. From the end of 1585 Philip had been gathering maps and intelligence, and receiving optimistic reports of Catholic support for invasion. This might have been wishful thinking, but it was certainly true that the English forces were weak and unprepared.

The preparations for the Armada could hardly be kept secret, but  many believed it was intended for a final assault on the Netherlands. But the secret plan was for the conquest of England, which would itself assure the conquest of the Netherlands. The Armada was to sail 1500 miles to the ‘Cape of Margate’ and link with Parma to secure the safe passage of the army from Flanders. If he landed unscathed, his orders were to march through Kent, capture London and await Catholic risings. 

Most historians believe the plan could never have worked - there were too many incalculable forces. 

1. It depended on highly efficient communications, which were not available in the early-modern period.
2. It ignored the geography of the Flemish coast - the lack of natural harbours, the treacherous sandbanks.

Spanish preparations

The Marquis of Santa Cruz, one of the great military commanders of the age, a veteran of the great naval victory of Lepanto and the successful Portuguese campaign of 1580, was given the task of mustering ships and men. However the Armada was delayed by Drake’s surprise incursion into Cadiz harbour on 29 April 1587 (his ‘singeing of the king of Spain’s beard’), in which he destroyed between two and three dozen Spanish ships. This made it impossible to prepare the Armada for action that year and won a valuable few months for England. All this was extremely bad for Spanish morale. 

The years of danger

Elizabeth, by Marcus Gheeraerts,
the Elder, c. 1580s.
Public domain.

In the 1580s, England and Spain edged towards war. Both sides had provoked the other, Philip by intervening in Ireland, Elizabeth by backing the privateering voyages of Hawkins and Drake and by intervening in the Netherlands. From the Spanish point of view,  the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots was the final provocation, though the Armada was already in preparation at the time of the execution.

The Netherlands

The Netherlands became a area of tension after the ‘Spanish Fury’, the destruction of Antwerp and the massacre of over 6,000 people in November 1576. 

Mutinous troops of the Army of Flanders
ransack the Grote Markt
during the Sack of Antwerp in 1576.
Engraving by Frans Hogenberg.
Public domain

There was strong pressure on Elizabeth to send help to William the Silent, the leader of the Dutch revolt, but she refused, and instead the Dutch turned to the Duke of Alençon, a Catholic, who put himself at the head of a largely Protestant revolt.

In October 1578 Philip appointed as Governor-General his nephew, Alessandro Farnese, Prince of Parma. 

The Prince (later Duke) of Parma,
charged by Philip with restoring
Spanish rule in the Netherlands.
Public domain.

He described Elizabeth’s diplomacy as ‘the weavings of Penelope’. She undid every night what was done the day before; 'and all to no conclusion save to weary her councillors and lose the trust of anyone who dealt with her'.

Parma’s policy was to reconquer the whole of the Netherlands for Spain and on 29 June 1579 he captured Maastricht In 1580, Philip, conquered Portugal, thus reinforcing Spain’s status as the only European super-power. Protestant Englishmen were confronted with the terrifying prospect of Catholic hegemony. In the same year, the Jesuits arrived in England.

In England, the atmosphere of crisis deepened. Philip Sidney wrote, 'How idly do we watch our neighbours' fires burn!' His father-in-law, Walsingham, was convinced from his intelligence reports that England was in danger of a Catholic-inspired invasion.

1568-72: the pivot of the reign

Mary, Queen of Scots in captivity
by Nicholas Hilliard.
Public domain.

The captive Queen

The period 1568-1572 is the pivot of the reign when Elizabeth entered a period of danger. The arrival of Mary, Queen of Scots in England posed an acute dilemma for Elizabeth. Her initial reaction was horror at the violation of the rights of a fellow-sovereign, an anointed queen. But Mary was a discredited figure. She could not send her back to Scotland, where her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was Regent for the young James VI, neither could she allow her to go to France.

She was a powerful presence in the north of England, where Catholic loyalties were still strong. She managed to persuade many Catholics of her innocence and she represented an alternative to Elizabeth’s Protestant settlement. Under these circumstances, Elizabeth felt she had no alternative but to imprison her; as long as she was in England she represented a threat.

In mid-July 1568, Mary was moved to Bolton Castle in Yorkshire. Elizabeth refused to see her, and her enemies produced a series of letters – the ‘Casket Letters’ – that ‘proved’ her complicity in Darnley’s murder. In January 1569 she was moved to the inhospitable Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire and was guarded by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury. (There were to be many other changes of places of imprisonment.)

The Duke of Norfolk and the Northern Rising

From the end of 1568, the Queen’s second cousin, Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, was planning to marry Mary. He was supported by Leicester, though not by Cecil. In November, after Elizabeth had learned of his plans (and of Leicester's apparent betrayal) he was placed in the Tower, and Mary was kept under stricter surveillance.

Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk,
by Hans Ewerth,
Public domain.

This provided the signal for Norfolk's Catholic allies. Thomas Percy, seventh Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, sixth Earl of Westmorland were summoned to court. Fearing to comply, they acted in traditional baronial fashion and mustered their forces. From November 1569, much of the far North was in the hands of the rebels. They marched to Durham, and on 14 November restored Mass in the cathedral.

The 1570s: the Catholic mission and the last courtship

The Sieve Portrait by
Quentin Metsys.
Elizabeth as the Vestal Virgin, Tuccia
Pinacoteca Nazionale (Siena)

The years 1568-1572 had been a period of intense crisis in Europe. The four main events (as far as England was concerned) were 

• the arrival of Mary Queen of Scots in England
• the excommunication of Elizabeth by Pius V
• the revolt of the Netherlands
• the St Bartholomew Massacre

All these events pointed to a Europe increasingly divided over religion. They also confirmed England’s dangerous isolation, as it increasingly saw itself as a beleaguered Protestant island surrounded by hostile Catholic powers. Elizabeth herself, however, was usually pragmatic, and tried to resist the demands of her more ideological councillors and members of parliament (a) to help the Dutch rebels, and (b) to execute Mary Queen of Scots. 

Elizabeth’s Councillors

Leicester: The rivalry between Cecil (created Baron Burghley in 1571) and Leicester was one of the factors Elizabeth had to live with. In the late 1560s Leicester had been involved in the plot to marry Norfolk to Mary Queen of Scots, but by the 1570s he had become the chief patron of the Puritan party within the Church. He was a ‘hawk’ in foreign policy, his goal being to lead an expeditionary force against the Dutch.  From being (probably) Elizabeth’s preferred choice of husband, he was now her companion - nicknamed her ‘Eyes’.

In July 1575 Elizabeth visited Leicester's home at Kenilworth Castle, where she was entertained with great magnificence. However, she left in a huff when she learned that he had been having an affair with the Countess of Essex, her cousin once removed, Lettice Knollys. When the Earl of Essex died, Leicester and Lettice married secretly in September 1578. Elizabeth was furious when she learned and for a time wanted to send him to the Tower: he couldn't marry her, but she didn't want him to marry anyone else!

Burghley: Leicester’s influence never matched Cecil’s (a much more trustworthy character). He was raised to the peerage as Baron Burghley in February 1571 and when the Marquis of Winchester died in June 1572 Elizabeth appointed him Lord Treasurer. There was a bond of trust between him and Elizabeth, though she never shared his visceral hatred of Catholicism or his implacable enmity towards Mary. Queen of Scots. She named him her ‘Spirit’.

Sir Francis Walsingham: was the son of a Kentish family. He was ambassador to Paris at the end of 1570 and Secretary of State in 1573 (in effect, Foreign Secretary). A dark-visaged man, Elizabeth named him her ‘Moor’. His politics were dominated by a single-minded, intense anti-Catholicism. In the developing crisis of foreign policy, he was the steady advocate of intervention in France and the Netherlands and he was outspoken in his hostility to Spain.  He was the most single-minded ideologue on the Council. 

Christopher Hatton (1540-91): became captain of the queen’s bodyguards in 1572, and entered the Council in 1577. He had been for some years an established royal favourite, Leicester’s rival.  HAs the queen’s junior by seven years he cast himself, in the Renaissance tradition of courtly love, as the perpetual suitor, paying court to an adored but inaccessible mistress. His letters to her were signed as her ‘(eye)Lids’ or her ‘Sheep’.

New, rising young men included Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester’s nephew and putative heir and Sir Walter Raleigh, the, son of a small Devonshire squire, who, like Hatton, rose through personal magnetism. Neither of these ever reached the inner sanctum. 

Elizabeth's counsellors were ambitious politicians, frequently divided along ideological lines, but they did not pose a threat to the monarchy. England was far more stable than France or Scotland, two countries rent apart by rivalries among the nobility. The failure of the Northern Rising and the execution of Norfolk had confirmed the fundamental strength of the Tudor monarchy. 

Marriage and the succession

Mary, Queen of Scots
by François Clouet
Public domain

The European context and Mary, Queen of Scots

The domestic politics of the 1560s centred on the succession to the throne, Elizabeth’s matrimonial problems, the European political and religious situation, and the Scottish question, all of which were inter-linked. John Guy, Tudor England (1990), p. 268

Mid-sixteenth-century Europe was in the grip of two lethal conflicts: an ideological war between revived Catholicism and radical Protestantism, and the continuing Habsburg (the Holy Roman Empire and Spain) and Valois (France) struggle for supremacy. England was a small, vulnerable country with an uncertain succession.

For Catholics, Mary, Queen of Scots, the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, was the rightful Queen. Since 1548, when she was five, she had been living in France and was a pawn of French politics. On 24 April 1558, she and the Dauphin François were married in Notre Dame.  

When Queen Mary Tudor died in 1558, Mary asserted her claim to the throne against Elizabeth by quartering the arms of England on her shield, a gesture the English regarded as extremely provocative. 

On 10 July 1559, Henri II died following a jousting accident and François became king. Mary was now Queen of Scotland and France and at the same time asserting a claim to the English throne. Her prestige and her importance had never been higher. She was a serious rival to Elizabeth.

Early life: reversals of fortune

The most comprehensive account of Elizabeth's early life is found in David Starkey's Elizabeth. Apprenticeship (Vintage 2001)

Reversals of fortune

Before Elizabeth was three, her life had seen an astonishing reversal of fortune. There were more reversals to follow.

She was born at Greenwich Palace on 7 September 1533. In spite of the disappointment at her sex, she was named Princess of Wales and the heir to the throne. Then in May 1536, her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed. Her marriage to Henry was declared invalid, leaving Elizabeth illegitimate. She was no longer a princess but simply 'the Lady Elizabeth'.

After her mother’s death she experienced a series of stepmothers – Jane Seymour, Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr. Her relationship with the devout and scholarly Katherine Parr was warm and friendly, and Elizabeth's first extant letter (written in Italian and surviving as a fragment) was sent to her.

By 1544, Henry VIII had achieved the male heir he had been seeking, but in an age of high child mortality, that was not enough to secure the succession. By the Act of Succession of that year, his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, were named as heirs to their half-brother, Edward, though they were not legitimised. After eight years of exclusion, Elizabeth was back in the succession, though her status remained ambiguous. 

Elizabeth at about the age of thirteen,
restored to the succession but
still illegitimate.
Public domain.

The Thomas Seymour affair

When Henry VIII died in January 1547, Elizabeth went with her governess, Katherine Ashley, to live with the widowed Katherine Parr and her new husband, the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, uncle of the young Edward VI and brother of the Lord Protector, the Duke of Somerset. 

Thomas Seymour: uncle to a king,
 husband to a queen,
guardian to a princess.

Now that he had the king's sister in his house, Seymour began to play a dangerous game. He and Katherine indulged in horseplay with her, behaviour that to modern eyes might seem very like sexual grooming. In May 1548, possibly realising that matters had got out of hand, Elizabeth left for the Hertfordshire home of Kate Ashley's brother-in-law.