Part IV

Rights or Royals? The Tudors and Stuarts

In this part . . .

Tudor England had two of the strongest monarchs ever to sit on the English throne: Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I. Their portraits spell power and control, and so did their governments, yet neither could crack the most basic problem of all: Who was to succeed them? Henry VIII’s desperate search for a male heir led him into his famous six marriages, while Elizabeth sought refuge in her image as the Virgin Queen. But as long as the succession was unclear, even these great monarchs could not lie easy.

Underlying all this was the terrible destructive power of religious conflict. As new religious learning found its way into Britain, the British people were divided between those who embraced change, and those who upheld their old faith. Through all of this, the English parliament was speaking with increasing confidence: There were arguments about religion and about the crown, but parliament became a central part of the political scene. It led to civil war, which heralded a short-lived republic.

Chapter 11

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown

In This Chapter

● Finding out how the Tudors seized the throne and tried to keep it

● Getting to know Elizabeth I, Queen of England and Mary, Queen of Scots

● Gaining security through succession: What the Tudors did to produce heirs to the throne

● Out-manoeuvring the Spanish Armada

● Seeing the first signs of an English Empire

The Tudors were a family to be reckoned with. Everything about these people spoke Power. You can see it in their portraits. But don’t be fooled. Power doesn’t mean security, and this was a deeply worried family.

Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) seized the throne by force, and others were only too ready to do the same. The Scots and the French had an “auld alliance” which meant that they would help each other fight the English. Henry VIII’s quarrel with the Pope meant that every Catholic was a potential rebel - or assassin - especially when the Catholic King of Spain turned his eyes on England and prepared to invade. It would have helped if they had been able to produce a few heirs. But producing heirs was one thing the Tudors were exceedingly bad at. (Figure 11-1 gives you an idea just how bad.)

Princes and Pretenders

England in 1483 was still getting over the great civil war between the Houses of York and Lancaster that nowadays we call the Wars of the Roses (see Chapter 9 for the full story). The Yorkists seemed to have won pretty comprehensively. They had more or less wiped out the Lancastrian royal family, and the Yorkist King Edward IV had been ruling peacefully for the past twelve years. (You might like to sneak a look at Figure 9-1 here). Edward had two young sons Edward (aged 12) and Richard, Duke of York (aged 10), but he caught a bad chill and died in 1483. His elder son now became King Edward V. Child kings always brought trouble, and Edward V was to prove no exception.

Figure 11-1: The Tudor family tree

Tricky Dicky, a.k.a. Richard III

Everyone’s heard of Richard III, though it’s usually through the Shakespeare play which is great drama but rotten history. Who was Richard, and why is there still so much fuss about him?

What a %@#! uncle

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, was the younger brother of King Edward IV. Before he died Edward IV had asked Richard to look after his two young sons, and after Edward died Richard sent them to the Tower of London “for safekeeping”. Richard also took the opportunity to make a bid for power. He arrested every one of Edward IV’s relatives-by-marriage - the Woodville family - that he could find. He had Lord Hastings, an important member of England’s ruling Council who was utterly loyal to Edward IV and his family, arrested on a trumped-up charge of conspiracy to murder, and executed.

Then he publicly announced that his late brother, King Edward IV, had not in fact been properly married. His two children - safely tucked away in the Tower of London, remember - were therefore illegitimate and could not inherit the crown. So who should be King? Parliament met and considered the matter, and offered the crown to Richard. “Well”, said Richard, “if you insist . . .” And so he was crowned King Richard III.

Little Edward V and his brother - the Princes in the Tower as they are known - were never seen alive again, but two small skeletons turned up in Charles II’s day (that’s the seventeenth century) which we reckon belonged to them.

Richard III is one of the most controversial figures in history. Shakespeare shows him as an evil hunchbacked murderer, but that was just Tudor propaganda. There’s next to no evidence for the hump, for example, but in Shakespeare’s day people regarded a hunched back as an evil sign. Most historians see Richard III in a much more positive way. He was an able King, a good soldier - he made very short shrift of a rebellion by the Duke of Buckingham and a Scottish invasion - he worked well with Parliament, encouraged overseas trade and was quite popular really, especially in his home base in the north. But what everyone wants to know about Richard is this: Did he murder the princes? We don’t actually know - and probably never will - and his fans (yes, folks, there’s even a Richard III Society!) deny it vehemently, but the evidence to suggest that he did is very compelling. In any case, in the circumstances he would have been crazy not to. Young princes grow up and seek revenge. Especially of wicked uncles.

But if the princes were in no position to get revenge, there was someone else who could. In 1485 Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, landed with an army at Milford Haven in Wales and challenged Richard for the crown.

Enter Henry Tudor - and a succession of pretenders

Henry Tudor was a fairly distant relation of Richard’s, and he certainly didn’t have a good claim to the throne (see Figure 9-1 to see just how distant a relation Henry Tudor was). But he was Welsh, and the Welsh supported him. Richard raced to head him off and the two sides met at Market Bosworth, near Leicester. And there Richard’s luck ran out. The Stanley family, some of his most important supporters, decided to change sides and join Henry, and Richard was killed in the fighting. Someone found his crown and Lord Stanley placed it on Henry Tudor’s head. Henry was now King Henry VII.

Claiming the throne

Even with the princes dead (see the earlier section “What a %@#! uncle”), plenty of people had a better claim to the throne than Henry Tudor. The person with the best claim was Edward IV’s daughter, Elizabeth of York. So Henry married her. Good move. Their marriage united Lancaster (Henry) and York (Elizabeth) so that even Yorkists could accept Henry as their King. In theory. The Yorkists, however, didn’t see it that way.

The next best claim to the throne lay with the Earl of Warwick, the son of Edward IV’s brother George, Duke of Clarence (see Figure 9-1 to work out who everyone is in this section), and in 1487 the Yorkists crowned him King over in Ireland. Which was odd, because Henry VII said that the Earl of Warwick was in the Tower of London, and he paraded him through the streets of London to prove it.

Pretender No 1: Lambert Simnel

In fact, the “Earl of Warwick” in Ireland was a pretender - a (fake) claimant. His real name was Lambert Simnel and he was a baker’s son from Oxford - a fact that didn’t stop the Yorkists putting him at the head of an army and landing in England to claim the throne. So Henry had to fight another battle, this time at Stoke. Henry won, and poor Lambert ended up a prisoner. Henry was surprisingly merciful. He didn’t cut his head off. He sent him down to work in the royal kitchens.

Pretender No 2: Perkin Warbeck

Henry still couldn’t relax. In 1491 another pretender, Perkin Warbeck, claimed he was the little Duke of York, the younger of the princes in the Tower. This claim was a serious threat to Henry’s reign, because Warbeck had support from Henry’s enemies in France and Burgundy. When Warbeck finally invaded, however, Henry quickly captured him and put him in the Tower. Then the silly lad escaped, so Henry had him dragged back and executed. And, just for good measure, he had the poor little Earl of Warwick (the real one, not Lambert, the pretender-turned-kitchen-lad) executed too. The Earl of Warwick hadn’t done anything wrong, but Henry had had enough of people saying they had a better claim to the throne than he had. And Warwick really did.

And Then Along Came Henry (the VIII, that is)

Henry VII didn’t just spend his time fighting off pretenders. He married his children into the leading ruling houses in Europe and he negotiated good trading agreements with the Netherlands. So there was a lot of money in the treasury that he handed over to his handsome and gifted son, who in 1509 became King Henry VIII.

Bad Ideas of the Sixteenth Century - No 1: Marrying Henry Vlll

Henry VIII was a good example of the ideal Renaissance Prince (see Chapter 14 for a bit more on what the Renaissance was all about) - he was handsome, strong, good at jousting and wrestling but also highly educated, good at music, interested in theology, and a good mover on the dance floor. He seemed to have everything he could possibly want - except a son.

If you didn’t want lots of squabbling over the succession in the sixteenth century you needed a good supply of sons. (Daughters could succeed, but the last time a daughter assumed the throne, England had fallen into a civil war, explained in Chapter 7. As a result, folks weren’t too keen on trying that again). That’s why you get all those paintings of large Tudor families through the generations - nothin’ wrong with our virility, they’re saying - and why Tudor men wore those enormous codpieces to show off their manhood. Henry VII had managed two boys, Henry VIII and his older brother Prince Arthur, who died young, and two girls, Margaret and Mary (see Figure 11-1 for details here). Henry VIII wanted to do even better, and that meant finding the right wife.

Wife No.1: Katharine of Aragon

When he came to the throne, Henry was married to Katharine of Aragon. Katharine’s family were the up-and-coming Kings of Spain, so marrying her was a major diplomatic coup. She had been married to Henry’s brother Arthur, but Arthur died, and in any case, according to Katharine, she and

Arthur never consummated the marriage (and she ought to know). Now, strictly speaking, the Bible said you couldn’t marry your deceased brother’s wife, but Aragon was too good a prize to miss, so Henry had a word with the Pope and the Pope gave him a special dispensation so that Henry and Katharine could get married.

At first, the marriage went well. Katharine trashed the Scots at the Battle of Flodden while Henry was away losing to the French (see the section “The Stewarts in a Stew” later in this chapter for info on that event). But then she gave birth to a daughter, Mary. That was no good. Henry wanted a son! Even worse, when she got pregnant again, with boys as it turned out, the children always died. Henry wasn’t just angry, he was worried: Was God trying to tell him something?

Henry got his Bible out. There it was, in black and white: Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy brother’s wife - Leviticus. Henry reckoned the dead babies were God’s way of punishing him for living in sin. But the Pope had given Henry a dispensation. He had specially put the rule aside. Could the Pope possibly put the rule back again?

Henry gets a divorce - and a new Church

Henry sent his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, to Rome to have a word with the Pope, but when Wolsey got there, he found the Pope had been taken prisoner by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, who just happened to be Katharine of Aragon’s nephew. Charles wasn’t going to let anyone insult - or divorce - his auntie. Wolsey went home to tell Henry the bad news.

Cardinal Wolsey

Wolsey was the man everyone loved to hate. He was a Cardinal, an Archbishop, and Lord Chancellor of England, but he wasn't a noble - his father was a butcher, and the people at court didn't forget it. Wolsey was good. He organised Henry's war with France, for example, and he got a good peace deal out of it too.

Some people see Wolsey as the last of the old-style prince-bishops. He certainly lived in state and had a great palace built for himself at Hampton Court. There was even a poem asking which court you ought to go to, the King's court or

Hampton Court? Others see Wolsey as a great moderniser, a sort of patron saint of civil servants. Whatever. Wolsey's accomplishments and riches didn't save him when he couldn't get Henry his divorce. He tried everything. He even offered Henry Hampton Court. Henry took it but sacked Wolsey anyway. Wolsey was on his way down to London for the chop when he died, at Leicester Abbey. "Had I but served God as diligently as I have served the King", he is supposed to have said, "he would not have given me over in my grey hairs" - nice thought, but a bit too late.

Henry was furious. First, he sacked Wolsey. Then he simply closed down the Pope’s Church and opened his own: the Church of England. And this Church gave him his divorce. Some people objected, like the statesman and writer Sir Thomas More and the Bishop of Rochester, John Fisher, but they got their heads cut off, so there weren’t many others.

Wife No.2: Anne Boteyn

Henry was crazy about Anne. Couldn’t resist her. He had spotted her when she was lady-in-waiting to Katharine of Aragon and he couldn’t take his eyes off her. As soon as he got his divorce from Katharine he married Anne in secret, and nine months later, he got his reward: a healthy baby. Another girl. This one named Elizabeth. He was not pleased.

From then on things went downhill for Anne. She had enemies at court, and try as she might she didn’t produce a boy. Three years after her glittering coronation Anne’s enemies struck. They had her arrested and charged with adultery - with her own brother, Lord Rochford, if you please. Henry sent for a special executioner all the way from France, who could cut Anne’s head off in one go with his sword, instead of hacking at it the way those axemen used to do it. Wasn’t that a kind thought?

Wives Nos 3-6: A Jane, an Anne, and two more Catherines

Jane Seymour was a lady-in-waiting to both Katharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. They were both dead by the time Henry married her so there was no problem about whether or not the marriage was valid. It was Jane who finally gave Henry the son he had been hoping for for so long, Edward. Edward was a sickly child (he’d probably inherited Henry’s syphilis), but he lived. Jane didn’t. She died giving birth.

Anne of Cleves was a German princess. You can blame Henry’s marriage to her on Henry’s chief minister and staunch Protestant, Thomas Cromwell. At the time it looked like war with the Catholic Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, so scheming Thomas suggested to Henry that they should link up with the German Protestants. The best way, he said, was for Henry to marry a German princess, Anne of Cleves. To judge by Holbein’s portrait, Anne was a bit shy, but not bad looking. Henry, however, found her completely unattractive. “Good God, she’s like a Flanders mare”, he said, but he went through with the wedding anyway, all the time thinking, “This had better be worth it”. Then the Emperor changed his mind about attacking England. Henry had got married for nothing! He was the perfect gentleman. He divorced Anne and gave her a nice house and an income. Then he cut Cromwell’s head off.

Catherine Howard was a cousin of Anne Boleyn’s, which you would have thought might have taught her something. She was twenty and Henry was forty-nine when they were married: The typical older-man-falling-for-pretty-young-thing scenario. Catherine, however, had been in love before she married Henry and, silly girl, she carried on seeing her old lover, Thomas Culpeper, after her marriage. While Henry was away fighting the Scots, Catherine and Thomas saw each other openly. Stupid! Henry was bound to find out, and he did. He was so upset he had them both executed.

Catherine Parr was the postscript wife, the one who survived and about whom not much is said. But in fact, she was a highly ambitious lady, determined to make England a Protestant country. She was the first Queen since Katharine of Aragon to run the country while Henry was away. She didn’t get everything she wanted, but she managed to pass some of her Protestant ideas onto her step-daughter, Elizabeth.

Edward VI, Queen Mary, . . . and Jane Grey ?

Little Edward VI was Henry VIII’s son by Jane Seymour (see the section “A Jane, an Anne, and two more Catherines” earlier in this chapter for information about his mother). Edward VI was only nine when he came to the throne, and he wasn’t at all well. He was too young to do any governing, so the “Protector”, his uncle, Jane Seymour’s brother, the Duke of Somerset, handled that side of things.

The Duke of Somerset was very popular with the ordinary people - they called him the “Good Duke” because he tried to protect them from nobles who were fencing off the common land - but he had lots of enemies at court. And the year 1549 was a very bad year for the Good Duke: He faced two big rebellions, one in Devon and Cornwall about religion, and one in East Anglia against all those enclosures of common land. (See Chapter 12 to see what the religious problems were all about and Chapter 14 to find out what was wrong with enclosures). One rebellion might be counted a misfortune; two in the same year looked like carelessness - even by Tudor standards. Somerset’s enemies moved in for the kill, so Somerset grabbed the young King and ran off to Hampton Court. It was too late. He had to come quietly and hand power (and the little King) over to his arch-rival, the Duke of Northumberland.

Northumberland wanted to make England more Protestant, (see Chapter 12 for more details on what this meant) but when Edward VI died (and the way he was coughing, he could keel over any day), Katharine of Aragon’s daughter Mary would become Queen. Mary was a loyal Catholic, so not only would she get rid of the Protestant religion, there seemed a real danger that she would get rid of the Protestants - like the Duke of Northumberland - too.

So Northumberland hatched a plot to stop her. He married off his son, Lord Guildford Dudley to Lady Jane Grey, who was a sort-of-Tudor (grand-daughter to Henry VIII’s youngest sister, if you really want to know - have a look at Figure 11-1). When Edward VI died in 1553 (he was only 16), Northumberland moved fast and put Jane on the throne. But Mary played her cards just right. She claimed the throne as her father’s daughter, rode into London and had the whole lot of them, Northumberland, Jane and Guildford, packed off to the Tower. Jane had been queen for just nine days.

Queen Mary (no, not the ocean liner) is best known for putting Protestants to death, though, as you’ll see in Chapter 12, that portrayal isn’t really fair. Like every other Tudor, she was desperate for an heir, but she chose the wrong husband: King Philip II of Spain. Officially, Philip’s marriage to Mary made him King of England (you can find them both on the coins), which went down like a lead balloon with the people. Sir Thomas Wyatt led a big rebellion in protest, and he got to London before they stopped him. Spain was at war with France, so Mary joined in too, and that’s how she came to lose Calais.

Calais had been English since Edward Ill’s day (see Chapter 9 for more info about how Calais came to be English) and losing it seemed like a disaster. Mary was so distraught by the loss that she said that after she died you would find “Calais” engraved on her heart.

But the cruellest twist for Mary was when she thought she was pregnant. It was cancer of the stomach. And it killed her.

The religion question - Is England Catholic or Protestant? - and the subsequent battles between the two groups were huge issues shaping the reign of many of Britain’s monarchs. You can find out more about all this religion stuff - who did what to whom and why - in Chapter 12.

The Stewarts in a Stew

Three years after Richard Ill lost his throne at Bosworth (see the earlier section “Enter Henry Tudor - and a succession of pretenders” for details), King James Ill of Scotland lost his throne at the battle of Sauchieburn. Scottish rebels, led by James’ own son (who, to his credit, had told the rebels not to harm his father), found him after the battle and did him in. At James’ Ill’s death, his son became King James IV.

James IV attacks the English - and loses

James IV was a tough customer: He brought the rebellious Scottish clan chiefs under royal control, encouraged scholars and printers, and set up a rich and glittering court. He married Henry VII’s daughter, Margaret, though that wasn’t going to stop him from taking on the English. In 1513, with Henry VIII off fighting the French, James IV marched south - into disaster. He ran into an English army led by Katharine of Aragon (Henry VIII’s first wife) at Flodden, near Edinburgh. The English cannon blew the Scots to pieces, and when the Scots charged with their long spears, the English used their halberds to chop the spearheads off. It was a massacre. The English took no prisoners. Nearly 12,000 Scots died that day, and James IV was one of them.

A new King and another power struggle

When James IV was killed at Flodden (see the preceding section for details), the new King was his son, James V, a wee bairn of 17 months which meant that power in Scotland was up for grabs. And the two opposing sides were led by

Queen Margaret: James IV’s widow and Henry VIII’s sister, Margaret who was now married to the Earl of Angus. She led the pro-English party.

The Duke of Albany: He wouldn’t have minded seizing the throne for himself. He led the anti-English (and therefore also the pro-French) party.

It was up and down between them. First Margaret held power, then Albany took over, then Margaret and Angus staged a coup and pushed Albany out again, then she and Angus divorced, and Angus kept hold of James V and refused to give him up (you are following this, aren’t you?) until in 1528 James decided it was time to remind everyone who was King. He escaped from Edinburgh, gathered an army, and put the Earl of Angus under arrest. James V had grown up. He was 16 years old!

But which way would James go? Would he be pro-English or anti-English? James hadn’t forgiven his English mother or the Earl of Angus for the way they had kept him confined. So, no pro-English line for him. The Auld Alliance, the special pact between France and Scotland that said they’d work together against England, was back with a vengeance, and James wanted to seal it by marrying a French princess. His first French Queen died within weeks of arriving, but in 1538, he married the powerful, very anti-Protestant, Mary of Guise. James V and Mary had a daughter, also called Mary. She had only just been christened when James went to war with England. The war did not go well for the Scots. The English destroyed the Scottish army at the Battle of Solway Moss. James V was stunned. He lay down, turned his face to the wall, and died. His baby daughter - only a week old - was now Mary, Queen of Scots.

The Auld Alliance

The English spent a lot of time fighting the French and Scots. This was no coincidence. The French and the Scots had a special relationship and would always try to act together against the English. The Scots called this relationship the Auld Alliance. The English called it a wretched nuisance. But the alliance could be a nuisance for the Scots, too. The French got far more out of it, and Scottish Protestants didn't like fighting alongside French Catholics against fellow Protestants, even if they were English. They also hated being told what to do by the French ultra-Catholic Guise family, the most fanatical anti-Protestants in France. Scotland was going through even more serious problems than England (as you'll find out in the section "Stewarts in a Stew") and the Auld Alliance was making them worse.

Bad ideas of the sixteenth century - No 2: Marrying Mary, Queen of Scots

Everyone seemed to want to marry Mary. Henry VIII wanted her for his son, Edward, and when the Scots played hard to get, Henry sent an army to invade them. The Scots called this event the “rough wooing”, and had to sign a treaty agreeing to the betrothal, though they quickly denounced it. Once Edward was actually on the English throne, the English came back and won yet another victory at the Battle of Pinkie, but they still didn’t get Mary for their King. The Scots weren’t going to give in. They got French reinforcements and packed Mary off to safety in France. She was going to marry the dauphin, the eldest son of the King of France, and the English would just have to get used to it.

Mary loved life in France. She lived at court like a French princess. But she was in line for a lot more than that: Mary stood to inherit three thrones:

Scotland, obviously

France, because she had married the heir to the French throne

England, because the English were running out of Tudors, and Mary was next in line

Mary’s claim to the English throne was more complex than simply being next in line. According to Catholics, Henry VIII’s marriage to Katharine of Aragon had been valid and above board; his marriage to Anne Boleyn, on the other hand, had been false. And that meant that Anne Boleyn’s child, Elizabeth, was illegitimate. And if Elizabeth was illegitimate, she had no right to be Queen.

So Mary should be. Now.

And then everything started going horribly wrong for Mary.

In 1558, Mary married Prince Francis of France.

In 1559, Francis became King Francis II, and Mary became Queen of France.

In 1560, Francis II died. No longer Queen of France, Mary had to go back to Scotland.

Mary’s reign in France was short but sweet, and she hated Scotland: It was cold and damp. Worse, thanks to a gloomy old thunderer called John Knox, Scotland had become Protestant while she had been away, meaning that Mary would have to keep her religious beliefs private.

Mary married a distant cousin, also in line to the English throne, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. At first Darnley was charming, and soon a little prince was born. The child was called James (named after his grandfather. And his great-grandfather. And his great-great-grandfather. And his great-great-greatgrandfather . . .). But then Darnley changed. He was a drunken, violent brute. Mary was desperately unhappy and made friends (and it may only have been friends) with her music teacher-cum-secretary-cum-shoulder-to-cry-on David Riccio. One night, Darnley and his mates burst into Mary’s chamber, dragged Riccio away from her, and murdered him. And then things really hotted up.

1. Darnley was lured to Kirk o’ Fields House by Mary’s close “friend”, Lord Bothwell.

2. Kirk o’ Fields House blew up.

3. Darnley’s body was found in the garden - strangled - and the chief suspect was Lord Bothwell.

4. Mary married Lord Bothwell.

Well! Talk about scandal! This sequence of events was just too much.

The Scottish lords rose up in rebellion. Bothwell fled (he ended up going mad in prison in Denmark), and the lords took Mary prisoner. They searched Bothwell’s house and found a casket full of letters from Mary planning Darnley’s murder (in fact, these letters are almost certainly forgeries - “and wen we ave dun him in, I will mary you” sort of thing - but who was going to believe that?) Mary managed to escape, but where could she go? France? Too far. No, she decided to hop over the border to England and throw herself on the mercy of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth.

Elizabeth immediately locked her up. Apparently, Bad Idea No. 3 of the sixteenth century was throwing yourself on the mercy of Queen Elizabeth. It’s time to meet Queen Elizabeth.

The First Elizabeth

Elizabeth I was Anne Boleyn’s daughter and nobody’s fool. Her sister, Queen Mary, had put her in the Tower because she thought Elizabeth was plotting against her. Elizabeth, therefore, knew all about how dangerous sixteenth century politics could be. When she became Queen, she needed to see to three things straight away: Religion, security, and getting married.

Religion was urgent, and Elizabeth and Parliament set up a not-too-Protestant Church of England which, she hoped (wrongly) both Catholics and Protestants could go to (head to Chapter 12 for more on the religion issue).

Security was always a problem - the Tudors knew all about people trying to seize the throne. The best way to guard against danger was to have an heir, and that meant that Elizabeth needed to find a husband. Here were her options:

King Philip of Spain: No kidding: he did offer. The English couldn’t stand him, and - more importantly - if Elizabeth married him, England would become some sort of Spanish province. No thank you.

A French prince: This made political sense. It would mess up France’s alliance with Scotland and set the King of Spain’s nose out of joint. The French king sent his son the Duke of Anjou over, and Elizabeth seemed very interested. Danced with him, called him her “frog”, and kept him hanging on. And on. Until in the end, he gave up and went home.

Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester: Ah, Elizabeth liked him! He was her “Robin”. But there was a problem. He was already married, to a lady called Amy Robsart - at least he was until they found poor Amy lying dead at the foot of the staircase one day. Very fishy. After that, there was no way Elizabeth could marry her Robin. Just think of the scandal.

Whoever Elizabeth chose, there would be trouble: Either there would be protests, or her husband would try to take over. So she decided not to choose. She would remain a virgin, married only to her people, and not share her power with anyone. Not an easy decision to make.

The Virgin Queen vs. the not-so-virgin Mary

Elizabeth didn’t like talking about the succession, but other people had to.

She had only been on the throne for a few years when she nearly died of smallpox. She might not be lucky enough to survive the next illness. Her closest adviser, Sir William Cecil, was desperately worried and with good reason.

First there was Mary, Queen of Scots who was already saying that she was the rightful Queen of England and having the royal arms of England put into her own coat of arms. Second, but even worse, was the major blow that fell in 1570 when the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth. Like it or not, she was now in serious danger.

Excommunication was the most dire punishment the Catholic Church could issue. It meant casting someone out of the Church, with no hope of salvation after death unless they performed a very big act of penance. In the case of a monarch, like Elizabeth, it could also mean that they had no right to be on the throne, and that loyal Catholics were allowed - supposed, even - to overthrow her.

Cathode plots against Elizabeth

The following are the Catholic plots to kill Elizabeth and put Mary, Queen of Scots on the throne:

Revolt of the Northern Earls, 1569: Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland stage a major rising to rescue Mary. Revolt defeated; Earls flee to Scotland; hundreds of their followers executed.

● Ridolfi Plot, 1571: Florentine banker Roberto Ridolfi and the Catholic Duke of Norfolk plan a coup with help from Philip II of Spain and the Pope. Plot discovered. Both plotters executed.

● Jesuits, 1580: Jesuit missionaries Robert Parsons and Edmund Campion arrive secretly in England and are suspected (wrongly) of plotting against the Queen. Campion is arrested and executed; Parsons escapes to Spain.

● Throckmorton Plot, 1584: Catholic Francis Throckmorton arrested and tortured. Reveals plot with Spanish ambassador to murder Elizabeth and stage a French invasion. Throckmorton executed, ambassador sent home.

These plots are getting more serious. Cecil and Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham decide to play dirty. Mary is kept in ever-closer confinement in England, and they keep a close watch on her. In particular, they read all her letters, especially the secret ones hidden in kegs of ale - which reveal that she is up to her neck in the Babington Plot.

The Babington Plot (1586) and the end of Mary

Catholic Anthony Babington plotted to murder Elizabeth, and he got Mary, Queen of Scots, to agree to it. That’s when Cecil and Walsingham, who’d been reading Mary’s correspondence, decided to pounce. They had Mary just where they wanted her.

Off with her head!

Even before the Babington Plot came to light Cecil was desperate for Elizabeth to put Mary to death. Keeping her alive was far too dangerous - well, you can see why. But Elizabeth wouldn’t hear of it. First, Mary was her cousin (well, first-cousin-once-removed). Second, Mary wasn’t an English subject, so how could you accuse her of treason? And third, but most important, Mary was a Queen and so was Elizabeth. Start putting monarchs on trial and executing them and heaven knows where it’ll end up.

But even Elizabeth couldn’t ignore the Babington Plot. So Mary, Queen of Scots, went on trial, and the court found her guilty. All they needed was a death warrant, and all that needed was Elizabeth’s signature. Elizabeth didn’t want to sign the warrant, so her secretary put it in the middle of a lot of other papers that needed signing so that Elizabeth could “pretend” she hadn’t known it was there. (This ruse nearly cost the secretary his life: Elizabeth tried to make out that she hadn’t known anything about it and had the poor fellow sent to the Tower. If Cecil hadn’t stepped in, he’d have been executed.)

Mary went to her execution in a black velvet dress. She whipped it off to reveal a blood-red dress underneath. Everyone was in floods of tears. It took three gos to chop her head off, and when the executioner finally held her head up by the hair for everyone to see, the head fell out - her fine “hair” was a wig. Even after death, Mary could upstage them all.

English sea dogs vs. the Spanish Armada

During Elizabeth’s reign is when the English first really started messing about in boats. There were two main reasons: one was adventure and the other was money. You could try and make your fortune finding a way round the top of Canada (the “Northwest Passage”) to the wealthy spice islands of Asia, or you could just steal from the Spanish.

The Spanish were sitting on gold and silver mines in their colonies in South America, so sea dogs like John Hawkins and Francis Drake simply sailed to the Spanish colonies, opened fire, took what they could, and ran - and very wealthy this enterprise made them. Drake even sailed all the way round the world to show the Spanish that they could run from him, but they couldn’t hide. Hawkins found a nice lucrative market supplying the Spanish colonies with African slaves. All this experience was to be very useful for the English when Spain decided to turn the tables and attack England.

By 1588, King Philip II of Spain had had enough. Not only were Drake and Hawkins and Co. attacking his ships, but Elizabeth was knighting them for it. It was time to teach England a lesson once and for all. And so Philip put together the largest fleet in history, the Great Armada, and sent it against England. And it was a total disaster.

Sir Walter Raleigh: An Elizabethan gentleman

Sir Walter Raleigh didn't need to go round the world or rob Spanish ships to get his knighthood: He was a genuine Elizabethan gentleman, a courtier, an MP, and a soldier as well as an explorer. That story about him laying his cape over a puddle for the Queen to walk over is probably just a story, but it shows how he liked to be remembered, as a chivalrous royal courtier. He spent a small fortune trying to make a go of his colony in the New World, which he named Virginia after the Virgin Queen (you can't beat flattery!), but it didn't work: Too many colonists died, and no-one was really interested in the tobacco and potatoes he brought back. But Raleigh did help to start a different sort of colony: planting English Protestants in Catholic Ireland. You can read more about that in the section "Protestants in Ulster".

Battle in the Channel

Everything went wrong. Philip’s best commander died, so he had to put the Duke of Medina Sidonia, who had never fought at sea and suffered from seasickness, in charge. Then Drake suddenly appeared at Cadiz and burned the still harbour-bound fleet - “singeing the King of Spain’s beard” Drake called it. Finally in 1588, the massive Armada set sail up the Channel in a tight crescent shape that the English weren’t able to break. What the English did instead was to prevent the Spanish from landing in England. The Spanish, kept on the move, had to put into Calais, which meant that they couldn’t pick up the powerful Spanish army in the Netherlands. Then the English sent fire ships - think floating bombs - into Calais harbour. Panicking, the Spanish scattered any which way, enabling the English to pick them off one by one. Then fierce storms forced the Spanish to keep going north, round Scotland and Ireland, where many of them sank. Less than half of Philip’s Grand Armada limped back to Spain.

The seeds of an Empire

Henry VII started the practice of sending English expeditions overseas when he sent John Cabot to the New World to see what he could find (you can find out more about all this in Chapter 19) - and he found Newfoundland. But there didn’t seem much to do in Newfoundland, and it wasn’t until Elizabeth’s reign that the English had a serious go at settling in North America. In the 1580s Sir Walter Raleigh set up a colony at Virginia, but it didn’t take off. The English had better luck trading in Russia and the Baltic. In 1600 the Queen granted a charter to the East India Company which went on to lay the foundations for the British Empire in India and the east. See Chapter 19 for the full story.

Protestants in Ulster

By the end of her reign, Elizabeth’s troubles were really mounting up. She was arresting Protestant dissidents now, as well as Catholics (see Chapter 12 to find out what was going on), and Parliament was giving her grief about trading monopolies and the succession and heaven knows what else. And then in 1594 a serious rebellion broke out in Ulster. She sent the dashing Earl of Essex over to deal with it, but he proved hopeless and came tearing back to England to plan a coup - he had mad ideas of marrying Elizabeth and ruling the country. She soon dealt with him - had him arrested and cut off his head - but that still left the Irish rebels, and by now they were getting Spanish help. She found a much better general in Lord Mountjoy, who ran rings round the rebels and forced their leaders to flee.

Then the English had a clever idea. Why not “plant” Protestant settlers in Ulster? Then they could control Ireland and make sure it didn’t cause any more trouble. So they did. They started sending strong, anti-Catholic Scottish Protestants to go and settle in Ulster. They’re still there: the Protestant Loyalists of Ulster.

Don't let the sun go down on me

Elizabeth hated the idea of getting old. She plastered herself with make-up and hid her thinning hair under a great red wig. Artists had to use a stencil of her face which showed her as a handsome young woman. Even when she was dying, Elizabeth was still a prince and proud of it. When her chief minister, Lord Robert Cecil (son of old Sir William - they were a family on the up) told her she must rest, she turned on him: “Must! Is must a word to be addressed to princes? Little man, little man! Thy father, if he had been alive, durst not have used that word.” Ouch!

As death approached, Elizabeth was carried to the throne room and laid down on the steps of the throne. Almost her last words were to say who should succeed her: King James VI, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots. Henry VII had married his daughter Margaret to the King of Scotland and now a King of Scotland was to inherit his throne. The Tudor wheel had come full circle: How would the Stewarts fare? Find out in Chapter 13.

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