Pathways: Grade 5 Good Queen Bess: The Story of Elizabeth I of England Trade Book: The Story of Elizabeth 1 of English

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Jae Jerkins, “Islam in the Early Modern Protestant Imagination: Religious and Political Rhetoric of English Protestant–Ottoman Relations”, (1528-1588), (Florida State University), Eras, Edn13, Issue 2, (June 2012), pp. 10-11.

Four years later, in 1558, Elizabeth took to the throne with alacrity, slipping into the royal plural on learning that Mary Tudor was dead of cancer: “This is the doing of the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes,” she declared on becoming queen, quoting Psalm 118. After Mary’s unpopular reign, much of England was elated at Elizabeth’s accession. She was now 25 years old, slender, with long golden-red hair and a suitably regal comportment. Accompanied by 1,000 mounted courtiers the day before her coronation, in January 1559, she rode smiling through the streets of London. She stopped the procession from time to time to accept bouquets, a purse of coins, a Bible, even a sprig of rosemary from an old woman. “I will be as good unto you as ever queen was to her people,” she vowed to the delight of onlookers. Queen Elizabeth, of Blessed Memory, ruled over her people for forty-five years, about half as long as most of them had any cause to expect to live. When she herself died, nearly seventy years old, there were very few alive who could even recall that another sovereign had ever sat on the throne of England. And though towards the end she had been not only old but also somewhat out of touch with the attitudes and ambitions of a new generation, she retained to the last the love and worship of a nation accustomed to a monarchy clothed in the splendour of divine right but also embodied in palpably real people. Whatever else the Tudors may have been, they were aggressively alive, sculpted in the round, formidable personalities of the kind that create living legends in their own lifetime and do not lose their vitality even in death. The Queen's long reign accomplished the promise of her father's rule; the age of Elizabeth is rightly regarded, not only by historians but also in the popular memory, as a time of greatness breeding greater things still than it actually witnessed. Karl Gunther, Reformation Unbound: Protestant Visions of Reform in England, 1525-1590 (2014), p. 157 So it was that in 1585, with the Anglo–Spanish War nearly upon Elizabeth’s shore, Elizabeth and Murad discussed an Anglo–Ottoman alliance against Catholic Spain grounded in religious commonality. Though the alliance never came to fruition, the resulting trade agreements between the two peoples gave England the impetus to become a worldwide empire of its own. Because England was a Protestant state, outside of papal authority, it was in a favored position to seek an alliance with the Ottoman Empire. Further, as a consequence of ignoring the 1578 papal ban on Christians dealing in arms with Muslims, England was in an ideal position to trade prosperously with the Ottomans—to the neglect of the Catholic states.As a likely successor to Elizabeth, Mary spent 19 years as Elizabeth's prisoner because Mary was the focus for rebellion and possible assassination plots, such as the Babington Plot of 1586. Daniel Neal, The History of the Puritans or Protestant Non-Conformists, From the Reformation to the Death of Queen Elizabeth (1732), p. 602 Elizabeth II smiled. That was a new look for monarchs. As royal photography moved from the stagey theatre of Cecil Beaton to the fast informality of Princess Margaret’s husband, Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon, snapping overtook the staged portrait, followed by the real-time impact of the moving image, and the Queen realised she would be on show constantly, and judged accordingly. Better to grin and bear it.

Queen Elizabeth of famous memory,—we need not be ashamed to call her so! ...that Lady, that great Queen. William Averell, A Mervalious Combat of Contrarieties (1588), quoted in Bertrand T. Whitehead, Brags and Boasts: Propaganda in the Year of the Armada (1994), pp. 83-84 William Camden, The History of the Most Renowned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, Late Queen of England: Selected Chapters [1625] (1970), p. 326 Elizabeth I was born on 7 September 1533 at Greenwich Palace. She was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife Anne Boleyn. Her mother was executed for alleged adultery and treason in May 1536 and within two months of her mother's death Parliament had confirmed that Elizabeth's parents' marriage was invalid and that Elizabeth was illegitimate.

Elizabeth I ( 7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana or Good Queen Bess, the childless Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth insisted that her cousin suffer no discomfort, and so Bess refurnished Talbot’s castle at Tutbury for her arrival. The arrangement also required the couple to stay at Tutbury, rather than their beloved Chatsworth or wherever they fancied. In a sense, they, too, were prisoners. In addition, though Bess and Mary were close and spent a lot of time together, Talbot baulked at the prisoner’s ludicrous demands for the upkeep of herself and her enormous retinue, which far exceeded the stipend allocated by Elizabeth. Over the next 15 years, Mary was moved between several of Bess’s homes across the country. In their political correspondence, the English and the Ottomans used the argument that they “were alike haters of the ‘ idolatries’ practiced by the King of Spain”. Elizabeth I wrote a letter to Murad calling herself the “most mighty defender of the Christian faith against all the idolatry of those unworthy ones that live among Christians, and falsely profess the name of Christ”. So, in essence, Elizabeth framed her hopes of political alliance as being a partnership between the pious monotheists of England and Turkey against the idolatrous Spanish Habsburgs. The end came a little more than a year after the Golden Speech. According to one account, “her appetite to meate grew sensibly worse & worse; whereupon shee became exceeding sad, & seemed to be much grieved at some thing or other.” Enfeebled by rheumatism and possibly pneumonia, the queen died March 24, 1603. She was 69.