Elizabeth I: The Reality Behind the Mask

Queen Elizabeth I and her times have left behind an extraordinary image of a dazzling era of excitement and achievement, nearly superhuman heroes and daring deeds, with the Queen, larger than life, radiating inspiration at the centre of it all.

When her namesake, Queen Elizabeth II, came to the throne in 1952, her subjects hoped that another ‘golden age was at hand — that the British would once again stun the world with their brilliance and panache, just as the English had done in the days of the first. The second Elizabethan age never transpired, not only because the expectation was unreasonable, but because the first age of Elizabeth never existed as it has long been perceived.

The misperception was deliberately created to hide the crucial weaknesses in 16th-century England and its vulnerable Queen. The House of Tudor, of which Elizabeth became the fifth and last monarch, excelled at propaganda, and Elizabeth I needed favourable press. When she came to the throne on 17th November 1558, she quickly realized she had inherited a poor, ill-equipped country highly vulnerable to attack. Religious upheavals over the previous 30 years had deeply divided her exhausted subjects.

The Queen’s own status was just as depressing. Much of Europe regarded her as an illegitimate child of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, since the Pope had not sanctioned Henry’s divorce from his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. As a bastard, Elizabeth had no right to the English throne. Furthermore, her father’s break from the Roman Catholic Church made her anathema to Catholics both in and outside England who regarded her distant cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, as the rightful sovereign. Especially in the early years of Elizabeth’s reign, England always faced the danger of attack from the great Roman Catholic powers, Spain and France, egged on by the Pope. Against these perils, the Queen could rely only on her own wits, her gambler’s instinct, and above all, her talent for creating a cult of personality. Elizabeth secured her position by creating a glorious public image that overwhelmed religious differences and appealed directly to English patriotism. In order to win her subjects over, she needed to be visible and, in an age of slow communications, that meant undertaking many royal progresses.

We princes, Elizabeth told the English Parliament, are set as it were upon stages in the sight and view of the world. Elizabeth’s progresses, accordingly, resembled travelling theatre, and every summer of the first 20 years of her reign saw her moving in splendid procession through the major towns and cities of England. The centrepiece was, of course, the Queen herself. A dazzling figure almost submerged in the jewels, brocade, and ornaments of her dress, she was more like a living icon than a human being. The layers of this theatrical front Elizabeth presented to the outside world have hidden the real person within from historians seeking a truer understanding of the Queen. Much about her personal as well as her public life remains mysterious, and this is probably just what she wanted.

However, if she herself was the chief author of this persona, Elizabeth had backup of the highest order. Poets, playwrights, painters, the creators of water pageants and masques at court, propagandists, pamphleteers, and ballad-makers all conspired to intensify the image of Elizabeth as Gloriana, the Virgin Queen or the Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser’s fantasy. Artists also promoted Elizabeth in all her bejewelled glamour, surrounded by a glittering court full of lusty young men whose dauntless deeds she inspired.

Through most of her life, and certainly in her early years as Queen, Elizabeth lived dangerously so that she and England could survive. England’s principal enemies, France and Spain, enjoyed far greater wealth, influence, and military might. England had little chance of resisting a direct onslaught from them. Elizabeth relied, therefore, on guile, smokescreens, and confusion. She deliberately exploited the enmity between France and Spain, hinting at aid for one against the other, never committing herself, but always holding out hope. As long as she kept her enemies guessing, she could be reasonably sure that neither would risk a war on two fronts by attacking England.

Elizabeth always drew back from courses of action that might provoke her enemies. At the same time, she kept her options open and never gave in to pressure. When her reign began, for instance, Elizabeth hinted to Henri II of France that she would break with King Philip of Spain if Henri would restore Calais to England. (Calais, a former English possession, had been taken by France in January 1558.) At the same time, she persuaded Philip that she would be willing to marry him and so ally England with Spain. As a result, Elizabeth gained compensation for Calais while Philip went on living in hope.

The Queen confounded even the Pope with her wiles. He watched England closely to see whether Elizabeth would reverse the policy of her Roman Catholic half-sister and predecessor, Queen Mary I, and turn her realm into a fully Protestant state. Try as he might, though, the Pope was never able to decide whether she would or would not. On the one hand, Elizabeth kept the Catholic mass in her own private chapel and sent an ambassador to the Papal Court. On the other, the Queen and her advisors slowly steered legislation through Parliament that gave first place to the Protestant faith, with concessions to make the religious settlement palatable to Catholics. Then again, Elizabeth allowed outrageous fun to be made of the Roman church at court mummeries, where crows were dressed up as cardinals and asses as bishops. However, she made it clear that she would force no one’s conscience to conform to the Protestant faith and make no one a martyr in the cause of religion. Elizabeth took blatant advantage of the fact that her enemies expected a woman to be indecisive. She took care, of course, to conceal the devious mind, keen political instinct, and strong urge to survive that lay at the root of her protean proceedings. All that showed on the outside was a monarch who offered hope and then backtracked, gave half a promise and then denied it.

Where she could not follow such an indeterminate course, Elizabeth fell back on the royal prerogative to decide important matters unilaterally. Very often, when no safer option presented itself, that meant doing nothing. This was certainly true when it came to naming the successor to her throne. If she named a Catholic heir she would alienate her Protestant subjects — they remembered only too well the fires that had consumed those Mary had considered heretics. The other choice, a Protestant heir, would inevitably lead to the foreign invasion and conquest Elizabeth feared. She chose no one until the last possible moment, when she was dying in 1603. A third alternative, one constantly urged on her, was for Elizabeth to marry and produce her own heir. There was no shortage of applicants — from Philip of Spain to the heir to the Swedish throne; from assorted foreign dukes and English nobles to the spectacularly squat and ugly Duc d’Alenon, whom Elizabeth called her frog. Elizabeth kept the Duke dangling for years, and he was still seriously, but hopelessly, wooing her when she was in her mid-forties. Meanwhile, of course, Elizabeth could avoid considering marriage with anyone else.