Elizabeth Tudor became Queen Elizabeth I of England in 1558, ruling for 45 years until her death in 1603. She faced significant challenges as a female Protestant monarch in a time when England was divided between Catholics and Protestants. Elizabeth skillfully established a religious settlement that balanced both faiths and established the Church of England. She faced threats from Catholic rivals like Mary, Queen of Scots and survived the Spanish Armada. By the end of her reign, Elizabeth had established England as a major European power and laid the foundations for the British Empire.

1. Elizabeth Tudor,
Queen Elizabeth I of England
BIOGRAPHY:
 Born to ‘Off With the Head’-Henry-8 and Survived
 Catholics Vs Protestants-Circumstances in England
 Reign of forty-five-years from 1558 to 1603.
 Claimed to Devote herself entirely to wise, just, moderate care
for the well-being of her people. Married not.

2. Elizabeth was born on the 7th of September, 1533. She
was named after her grandmother. Her family name
was Tudor. The king, her father, first had an act of
Parliament passed, solemnly recognizing and confirming
her claim as heir to the crown, and the title of Princess of
Wales was formally conferred upon her.
King Henry-VIII: Married and eventually executed
Catherine, Anne, and Jane successively; giving excuses
appropriate and as he wanted a male child as heir.
The little princess was left motherless and friendless
when only three years old.

3. The new queen, Jane Seymour, who succeeded
Elizabeth's mother, had a son named Edward. Thus Henry
had three children, Mary, Elizabeth, and Edward. The last
of them, the son, monopolized, for a time, the king's
affection and care.
The king died in 1547, leaving only these three children,
each one the child of a different wife. Mary was a maiden
lady, of about thirty-one years of age. She was a stern,
austere, hard-hearted woman. She was the daughter of
King Henry's first wife, Catharine of Aragon, and, was a
decided Catholic.

4. Next came Elizabeth, who was about fourteen years of
age. She was the daughter of the king's second wife,
Queen Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth had been educated a
Protestant.
She was not pretty, but was a very lively and sprightly
child, altogether different in her cast of character and in
her manners from her sister Mary.
Then, lastly, there was Edward, the son of Jane
Seymour, the third queen.

5. Edward was about nine years of age at his father's death.
He was a boy of good character, mild and gentle in his
disposition, fond of study and reflection, and a general
favorite with all who knew him. Edward was to succeed
the King; after him Mary, and Elizabeth, if the predecessor
deceased before them. Edward died at the age of fifteen.
Edward became King but did not live long.
 Mary became queen Mary-I. Mary had married King Philip
II of Spain at age thirty seven. Queen Mary was cruel to
the Protestants and became highly unpopular. She died in
1558. The return of the Catholic Church to England died
with her.

6. Perhaps the most influential woman in Elizabeth I’s life
was her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England (1516-
1558).
Both during their lifetimes and since, Elizabeth and
Mary have been set in opposition to one another:
religiously, personally, intellectually, and politically.
Mary I, like her sister, ruled England during a time of
religious and political change and it largely defined her
reign and therefore her legacy as a monarch.

7. During her reign, Mary I made several very impactful
decisions which were as much personal as they were
political.
Mary I saw it as her duty to return England to
Catholicism, reversing the actions (blasphemous in her
view) of her father Henry VIII who created the Church
of England.
Under Mary, England experienced a reign of economic
failure, political unease, and most of all fear of religious
persecution

8. Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England two months
after Mary’s end, finally safe after over a decade of fear
and insecurity at the hands of her siblings.
In 1558, at the age of twenty-five, Elizabeth succeeded
her sister Mary I as Queen of England becoming
Elizabeth I..
Elizabeth was an extraordinary ruler, but she was even
more extraordinary as a woman in that she successfully
ruled a country as an independent female monarch, not
as a wife or mother.

9. Marking the event as her
coronation, Elizabeth wears a
crown and holds the scepter in her
right hand and the orb in her left,
all symbols of her authority:
“the crown, the personal vesting of
authority in an individual: the orb,
the ruler’s hand upon the world or
her kingdom; the scepter, justice to
be combined with power.”

10. Mary’s death and Elizabeth’s coronation marked the
end of an era of danger and fear for Elizabeth.
Elizabeth didn’t take that fact for granted.
Highly aware of how narrowly she escaped her sister’s
reign with her life intact, Elizabeth ascended to the
throne determined to survive.
Elizabeth strove to embody the virtues and favored
characteristics of her sex while simultaneously
presenting herself as strong, independent, competent,
and in all ways beneficial to English prosperity.

11. • In her nearly three decades, Elizabeth had witnessed
the manipulation and destruction of countless
women—not least of whom, her mother and sister—
largely at the hands of men.
• She herself had been placed in danger by the schemes
of men countless times and had spent much of her
youth as a prisoner, including a spell in the Tower of
London.
• She learned a great deal as both witness and victim,
and as Queen, she did not intend to be compliant to
anyone, except for to her people.

12. Religious Settlement
 When Elizabeth (Bess) became queen, most English were Catholic
and she was Protestant, (member and Head of the Church of
England established by her father).
 Bess feared the religious conflict between the two Christian sects, as
there was an alternative claim to the her throne, from her cousin, Mary,
Queen of Scots who was a staunch Catholic.
 Also, there were those (Catholics mostly) who considered Elizabeth to
be illegitimate and therefore that she had no right to be queen.
 Elizabeth I’s religious settlement was designed to be accepted by as
many of her subjects as possible, be they Catholic or Protestant.
 The religious settlement was established in 1559

13. Elizabethan England
Elizabeth faced the problem of religion as the
country was divided between both Protestant
and Catholic. Elizabeth had to deal with the
prejudiced ideas of the role and limitations of
women which undermined her authority.
Economic difficulties included the decline of the
cloth industry, inflation and unemployment,
which in turn led to greater poverty and
vagrancy. The country was poor and England
was also at war with Catholic France which led
to increased taxation.

14. Elizabeth was a Protestant queen but England was not a
completely Protestant country.
 Protestant areas of the country were London, the south-
east and East Anglia, while Catholicism was especially
strong in the north and west of England.
 The religious settlement came in three parts.(See next
slide for the three)
 In some places, changing over to the new religious
settlement was very slow.
 Visitations enforced the religious settlement but
Elizabeth ordered them not to be too harsh.

15. The religious settlement came in three parts:
1) The Act of Supremacy made Elizabeth supreme
governor of the Church of England - all clergy and royal
officials had to swear an oath of allegiance to her as the
head of the Church. 2) The Act of Uniformity established
the appearance of churches and the form of services they
held. 3) The Royal Injunctions was a set of instructions,
issued by Sir William Cecil on behalf of the queen to the
clergy, on a wide range of issues to reinforce the acts of
Supremacy and Uniformity. It included instructions on how
people should worship God and the structure of services

16. Defeat of Spanish Armada
The Armada of 130 ships sailed up the English
Channel chased by the English ships. They
waited at Calais for the Duke of Parma’s army.
Dutch ships stopped the Duke of Parma’s army in
the Netherlands from joining up with the Armada.
The English set fire to some old ships and let
them drift into the Armada as fire-ships.

17. The Spanish panicked, cut their anchors and sailed
north. Near Gravelines, the English ships attacked
the Spanish. One Spanish ship sank. The Spanish
guns were unreliable but the English ones worked
well. 1000 Spanish men died and only 50 English
were killed.
The Armada was driven North by the winds and
headed back to Spain by sailing North around
Scotland.

18. Defeat of Spanish Armada
Philip’s ships tried to join a Spanish army from the Nether
lands. But luckily for England, the wind and an attack by
English boats, made it impossible. The Spanish ships were
defeated and decided to return home. But they hit a terrible
storm, and half the Spanish ships were destroyed.
Spain and the Catholics lost some of their power in Europe
and England continued to be a protestant country. When
Elizabeth died in 1603, after forty-five years as queen,
most of her people were strongly protestant.

21. Hierarchy of society in England

22. Social hierarchy of towns

23. BRITISH EMPIRE
 An enduring idea of the British Empire is described as
characteristically and uniquely Protestant, commercial,
maritime and free.
 When England had its detachment from its traditional
trading links with Europe, that opened it up to a
grander destiny as a central player in the emergent
Atlantic and global economy.
 It was an empire of commerce not conquest, defended
by its navy (ships) rather than being propagated by an
army.

24. England of free thought and commerce and
manufacture, was to plough the ocean with its navies,
and sow its colonies over the globe.
The first thunder birth of these enormous forces and
the flash of the earliest achievements of the new era
roll and glitter through the forty years of the reign of
Elizabeth.
It was with a grandeur which, when its history was
written, was seen to be among the most sublime
phenomena which the earth had yet witnessed.

25. British Empire was distinct from the English state but still
an extension of the English nation; that it was a product
of westward ‘expansion’ in a straight line across the
Atlantic, from England via Ireland to the American
colonies.
 For Tudor state-formation, matrix was the triangular set of
relationships among England, Scotland and Ireland.
It was also what post-colonial theorists would call a
‘derivative discourse’ that was inconceivable without
contemporary European contexts and comparisons. It
could hardly have been anything other than derivative.

26. The language of empire was common to all claims to
authority, sovereignty and territory in early modern Europe
and all such claims derived ultimately from Roman
conceptions of imperium.
Three such conceptions had been derived from the Roman
legacy by the late sixteenth century. In the first, empire
meant simply authority or sovereignty.
In the second, it meant the territory over which such
authority or sovereignty was claimed.
In the third, it meant rule over many dominions.

28. QUEEN ELIZABETH and MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
o Sixteenth century England is referred to as the Age of
Queens. Bess & Mary were cotemporary sovereigns,
reigning at the same time over sister kingdoms.
o They were cousins, and yet, precisely on account of the
family relationship which existed between them, they
became implacable foes.
o The rivalry and hostility, sometimes open and sometimes
concealed, was always in action, and, after a contest of
more than twenty years, Elizabeth triumphed.

29. Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I, Queen of England
Comparable are the scandal emerged on the political scene
in England after Amy Robsart, the wife of Elizabeth’s
alleged favourite lover, died and a conspicuously similar
affair surrounding Mary Queen of Scots after the death of
her husband and King, Henry Darnley.
By his marriage to Marie de Guise, James V also
strengthened the alliance concluded between Scotland and
France.
Profoundly anti-English Marie de Guise, the regent in
Scotland from 1554 to 1560, sent Mary to France.

30. Mary married French Dauphin Francis II in 1558, and the
following year, when Henry II died, Francis became King
and Mary became Queen consort of France. Scottish-
French alliance and increased the threat towards
England.
When Mary I, Tudor Queen, died in 1558, Mary Queen
of Scots asserted with her husband their right to the
English crown.
However, the English recognised Elizabeth as the
successor to the throne.

31. Many Catholics perceived Mary Queen of Scots, the
granddaughter of Margaret Tudor who was the older sister
of Henry VIII of England, was considered the rightful heir.
The promising expectations of Mary’s imminent
dominance over England were terminated by the death of
the French Dauphin in 1560, which resulted in her
departure to chaotic Scotland.
Nevertheless, Mary’s second Catholic marriage in 1565 to
Henry, Lord Darnley, great-grandson of Henry VII, was
another attempt to deflect the constant menaces of the
English that focused on the subjugation of Scotland.

32. By the birth of Mary’s and Darnley’s son, James VI, a
future intermediary for the union of Scotland and England
was provided, however, without contribution to the
improvement of the personal relationship of the royal
couple. After Darnley was murdered in 1567, Mary
married Earl of Bothwell.
Protestant Lords rose against the Queen and Mary had a
narrow escape south and sought support from Elizabeth.
The focus of a long series of Roman Catholic plots
against Elizabeth culminated in Mary’s execution in 1587.

34. QUEEN ELIZABETH and MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS
Elizabeth, however , kept Mary (Queen of Scots) as a prisoner for
almost twenty years. During that time Elizabeth discovered several
secret Catholic plots, some of which clearly aimed at making Mary
queen of England.
When Elizabeth finally agreed to Queen of Scots Mary's execution
in 1587, it was partly because Mary had named Philip as her heir to
the throne of England , and because with this claim Philip of Spain
had decided to invade England.
Elizabeth no longer had a reason to keep Mary alive. In England
Mary's execution was popular. The Catholic plots and the dangers
of a foreign Catholic invasion had changed people's feelings.

35. Sir William Cecil
 Sir William Cecil was chief secretary
 of state appointed by Queen Elizabeth.
 He was a man of great learning and ability, and he remained
in office under Elizabeth for forty years.
 He became her chief adviser and instrument, an able, faithful,
and indefatigable servant and friend during almost the whole
of her reign.
 His name is accordingly indissolubly connected with that of
Elizabeth in all the political events which occurred while she
continued upon the throne.

36. Catholics
The Catholic Queen Mary had been unpopular with many
but the Catholic faith was still strong, especially in the
North. Elizabeth initially had a policy of leniency and
tolerance towards Catholics wanting to avoid
confrontation.
However, the Papal Bull of 1570 and rebellions and plots,
such as the Northern Rebellion, 1569, The Rudolfi Plot,
1571, and the Throckmorton Plot, 1583 saw the Catholic
threat increase. Elizabeth was seen as weak and
indecisive in her response.

37. Elizabeth’s response changed from 1580 with the arrival
of the Jesuits, such as Campion, who provided leadership
for Catholic resistance. They also hoped to convert
people back to Catholicism.
Elizabeth now took a harsher response. Following the
Babington Plot, of1586 and the execution of Mary, Queen
of Scots, Catholicism was now seen as a political threat.
Jesuits were executed as traitors.
Catholic recusants were heavily fined, had their land
confiscated or were imprisoned. Greater use was made of
spies and informers.

38. Over time Catholic influences and ideas faded and many
Catholics conformed, wanting to show loyalty. By the end
of Elizabeth’s reign the number of Catholics had declined
significantly, with few new converts. The Catholic threat
was often exaggerated but was greater than that of the
Puritans. Puritans had returned from exile in Europe with
radical ideas and a hatred of Catholicism. They were
dissatisfied because they had wanted the Church to be
reformed and to remove the Catholic ideas of Mary’s
reign. Elizabeth did not confront the Catholics and so her
religious settlement was a compromise.

40. The year 2002 marked the 50th year in the reign of Queen
Elizabeth II—her Golden Jubilee—a milestone reached by
only five previous British monarchs.
In the 1800s, Queen Victoria, called the Empress of India,
came to reign over the largest empire in the history of the
world, encompassing “a quarter of the land mass of the
earth, and a third of its population”
Today, though, it seems that despite multiple nations still
looking to Queen Elizabeth as their head of state, the
British throne’s glory days are over. From being part of
Roman Empire to having a British Empire it is now U.K.