Laura Brennan - Elizabeth I; The Making of a Queen

ELIZABETH I

In memory of my late mother;

Breda Linehan (1956-2019) who always encouraged my love of reading & the past

This is book dedicated to the many women in history

Who have been forgotten through time;

Although you were not queens

You too faced many of the trials highlighted in this book.

To Ophelia my little shadow

THE MAKING OF A QUEEN

LAURA BRENNAN

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

PEN AND SWORD HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Laura Brennan, 2020

ISBN 978 1 52671 457 2

eISBN 978 1 52671 459 6

Mobi ISBN :978 1 52671 458 9

The right of Laura Brennan to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Innocently and probably somewhat naively, I thought that writing a second book would mean that I found the whole process easier than the first time around. How wrong I was; which is why I need to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to the people who have helped me to keep going and cheered me on through this whole process.

Once again, thanks go to Jon Wright and Laura Hirst at Pen & Sword for your constant patience. Thanks also goes to my agent Kate Bohdanowicz for making this possible, and to Lucy Benyon for her thorough and sensitive editing of this book. Lastly, thanks must go to the great staff at the British Library, especially within the humanities reading room, for their patience and help in finding primary sources.

Special thanks go to my brother Mark Linehan, who showed total faith in this project and never doubted my abilities even when I did; supplying me with beer and money when required. To my uncle, Paul Brennan for lunches, gin and chocolate - all total necessities when finishing a draft. To Ruth, Chris and Babs thank you for always being there - I need to take a day trip to the seaside very soon! To Julia Hopkins, thank you for the pep talks from New Zealand, for being a great sounding board, and for pictures of Lottie. To Haley Foster, thank you for your encouragement and kind words. And to Rob Leadbeater, we must have drinks to celebrate in London very soon.

Honourable mention needs to go towards John Broad, my BA Hons dissertation supervisor at London Metropolitan University as he pointed me in the direction of many of the books and sources used in this work. It was him who liked to tell me to edit said dissertation as I was not writing a book. This meant that I always had that extra knowledge and words in my head, wanting to be used, and it was this that eventually made this book possible.

Lastly, thanks go to everyone who has brought this book as well as the first one. Youve not only used your valuable time to read my words, but youve also spent hard-earned cash to purchase them. Your support and kind words mean a lot so thank you.

There have been hundreds, if not thousands of historical biographies written about Englands greatest queen, Elizabeth I. This work is not supposed to be a full blow by blow biography, with details on every single event in Elizabeths life or reign, it is instead a selection of events that I feel after years of reading about Elizabeth, the period and the social and political environments of the time, help to demonstrate who Elizabeth was and why she acted and made the choices she made both as a very public queen and as a private woman. This book is essentially the undergraduate dissertation I wanted to write for my BA but was told it was far too broad a topic. My dissertation ended up looking at the relationship between Mary Queen of Scots and Elizabeth - a subject which is, almost fifteen years later, very much en vogue with new books and movies coming out on the subject all the time.

Upon starting this work, it felt natural to split the book into two; looking first at Elizabeths life before and then life after becoming the last Tudor monarch. Each chapter aims to give the historical narrative as well as summing up how I feel the topic affected her decisions and life and why she acted as she did both personally and publicly. This selection of events, spanning the life time of Elizabeth Tudor (1533-1603), are what I considered to be the key to shaping Elizabeth, but they are of course subjective and not everyone will agree with these choices but difference is good as it starts debate and encourages closer examination by the reader.

Included within this work are events that took place outside of England, namely the assassination of William The Silent of Orange, the St Bartholomews Day massacre as well as a brief look at the reign of Mary Queen of Scots prior to her abdication and exile and imprisonment in England. Both the assassination of William of Orange and the St Bartholomews day massacre help give context to the plight of Protestants in Europe during Elizabeths lifetime and an idea of the post-reformation religious struggles in both Europe and England during her reign.

I included the sections dealing with Marys disastrous return to Scotland to give context in two ways: firstly, to see how and why she ended up crossing the border and seeking help from Elizabeth and also, to give a contrasting depiction of two very different styles of queenship. These two women never met in life and both achieved different aims, one ruled strongly with her head, the other with her heart and passion. Although Mary personally lost the battle, she would ultimately win through the succession of her son James I of England.

The second part of the book looks at Elizabeth the queen, politician and woman, and it attempts to explain why and what may have influenced her decisions and how her past affected the choices she made until her death in 1603. I hope by the end of the book you will get a picture of why I feel Elizabeth ruled as she did during her reign - which is also considered to be a golden age of English monarchy.

Many of the topics covered in these chapters have entire books dedicated to just them; therefore, limited by the confines of the theme and aims of this work, I hope to give you, the reader, a starting point to seek further reading for the events and people mentioned if you want to know more.