Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth I (7 September, 1533 – 24 March, 1603 ) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen (since she never married), Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth I was the fifth and final monarch of the Tudor dynasty, having succeeded her half-sister, Mary I. She reigned during a period of turmoil in English history.

Conflict with Spain and Ireland

In 1580, Pope Gregory XIII sent a force to aid the Desmond Rebellions in Ireland; but by 1583, the rebellion had been put down after a campaign waged by fire, sword and famine, in which a large part of the population of the western part of the province of Munster appears to have died; chilling, albeit approving, observations on the campaign are set out in A View of the Present State of Ireland by the poet, Edmund Spenser (first licensed for publication in 1633, four decades after it was written).

Related Topics:
1580 - Pope Gregory XIII - Desmond Rebellions - Edmund Spenser

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Also in 1580, Philip II annexed Portugal, and with the Portuguese throne came the command of the high seas. After the assassination of the Dutch Stadholder William I, England began to side openly with the United Provinces of the Netherlands, who were at the time rebelling against Spanish rule. This, together with economic conflict with Spain and English piracy against Spanish colonies (which included an English alliance with Islamic Morocco), led to the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War in 1585 and in 1586 the Spanish ambassador was expelled from England for his participation in conspiracies against Elizabeth. Fearing such conspiracies, Parliament had passed the Act of Association 1584, under which anyone associated with a plot to murder the Sovereign would be excluded from the line of succession. However, a further scheme against Elizabeth, the Babington Plot, was revealed by Sir Francis Walsingham, who headed the English spy network. Having put the court on full proof of the charge, Mary Stuart was convicted of complicity in the plot on production of evidence produced by one of the earliest non-trivial code-breaking endeavours. She was subsequently executed against Elizabeth's wishes at Fotheringhay Castle on 8 February, 1587.

Related Topics:
Portugal - William I - United Provinces - Spanish colonies - Anglo-Spanish War - 1585 - 1586 - Act of Association 1584 - Babington Plot - Code-breaking - Fotheringhay Castle - 8 February - 1587

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Elizabeth had stalled on the question of Mary's execution until this final, undeniable, evidence because she feared that establishing the principle that a monarch theoretically choosen by God could be tried – much less executed – for temporal crimes could lead to the end of the monarchy. In this she was to be proven correct and it was less than fifty years after her own death that Charles the First was executed by a parliament of "commoners".

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In her will, Mary had left Philip her claim to the English Throne; under force of the threat from Elizabeth's policies in the Netherlands and the east Atlantic, Philip set out his plans for an invasion of England. In April 1587, Sir Francis Drake burned part of the Spanish fleet at Cádiz, delaying Philip's plans. In July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a grand fleet of 130 ships bearing over 30,000 men, set sail in the expectation of conveying a Spanish invasion force under the command of the Duke of Parma across the English Channel from the Netherlands. Elizabeth encouraged her troops with a notable speech, known as the Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, in which she famously declared, "I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a King, and of a King of England too."

Related Topics:
April - Francis Drake - Cádiz - July - 1588 - Spanish Armada - Duke of Parma - English Channel - Speech to the Troops at Tilbury

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The Spanish attempt was defeated by the English fleet under Charles Howard, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham and Sir Francis Drake, aided by bad weather. The Armada was forced to return to Spain, with appalling losses on the north and west coasts of Scotland and Ireland; the victory tremendously increased Elizabeth's popularity.

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The battle, however, was not decisive, and the war continued in the Netherlands, where the Dutch Estates were seeking independence from Spain. The English government was also concerned with the conflict in France and the claim to the throne of a protestant heir, Henry (later Henry IV). Elizabeth sent 20,000 troops and subsidies of over £300,000 to Henry, and 8,000 troops and subsidies of over £1,000,000 to the Dutch. Emboldened by the defeat of the ominious Armada, a massive English expedition in 1589, the Drake-Norris Expedition, was repulsed by Spain, with great losses.

Related Topics:
Henry IV - Drake-Norris Expedition

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English privateers continued to attack Spanish treasure ships from the Americas; the most famous privateers included Sir John Hawkins and Sir Martin Frobisher. In 1595 and 1596, a disastrous expedition on the Spanish Main led to the deaths of the aging Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake. Also in 1595, Spanish troops under the command of Don Carlos de Amesquita landed in Cornwall, where they routed a large English militia and burned several villages, before celebrating a mass and retiring in the face of a naval force led by Sir Walter Raleigh.

Related Topics:
Privateers - Sir John Hawkins - Sir Martin Frobisher - 1595 - 1596 - Spanish Main - Don Carlos de Amesquita - Cornwall - Walter Raleigh

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In 1596, England finally withdrew from France, with Henry IV firmly in control. He had assumed the throne, commenting with double-edged irony that, "Paris is worth a mass;" the Holy League, which opposed him, had been demolished, and Elizabeth's diplomacy was beset with new problems: at the same time, the Spanish had landed a considerable force of tercios in Brittany, which had expelled the English forces that were present and presented a new front in the war, with an added threat of invasion across the channel. Elizabeth sent a further 2,000 troops to France after the Spanish took Calais. Then she authorised an attack on the Azores in 1597, but the attempt was a disastrous failure. Further battles continued until 1598, when France and Spain finally made peace. The Anglo-Spanish War, meanwhile, reached a stalemate after Philip II died later in the year. In part because of the war, Raleigh and Gilbert's overseas colonisation attempts came to nothing, and the English settlement of North America was stalled, until James I negotiated peace in the Treaty of London, 1604.

Related Topics:
Holy League - Tercios - Calais - Azores - 1597 - 1598 - Anglo-Spanish War - James I - Treaty of London, 1604

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