Queen Elizabeth the First

Posts Tagged ‘capable monarch’

In her first year, Elizabeth made brilliant appointments that had much to do with her later success. The most important of these was Sir William Cecil, her chief advisor, who worked with her through her entire reign.

She gave Cecil’s opinions the utmost respect and consideration but in the end, all decisions were made by her alone.

An envoy who met her early during her reign said:

She gives her orders and has her way as absolutely as her father did.

People often compared Elizabeth’s temperament to her father’s, as she herself did.

She refused to allow Parliament, or the public, to discredit her on the basis of gender, saying:

I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England, too.

Young as she was, Elizabeth immediately proved herself a competent and capable monarch. One nobleman described her this way:

All her faculties were in motion, and every motion seemed a well guided action; her eye was set upon one, her ear listened to another, her judgment ran upon a third, to a fourth she addressed her speech; her spirit seemed to be everywhere, and yet so entire in herself as it seemed to be nowhere else.

It truly was a Golden Age for England

In the 45 years of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign fewer people died in religious conflicts than in the three years Mary Tudor was queen. In all that time, Queen Elizabeth I of England burned only four men at the stake and although that seems like four too many by today’s standards, by the standards of the 1600’s it was almost negligible.

The four who died were Anabaptists, believers in total social equality, a concept that would have meant their deaths in any Christian country of the time. England’s religious conflicts were temporarily resolved, giving the country time to heal, grow, and prosper.