Chapter 20 Flashcards
Significance of marriage issue
Elizabeth’s status as a single woman created considerable difficulties. It meant that the succession, should she die prematurely, was at the forefront of her ministers’ thinking. Most were keen that she should marry to prevent the possibility of a Catholic inheriting the throne. However, the queen felt strongly that issues of marriage and succession lay within the royal prerogative and were not areas for discussion either in Parliament or round the Council table.
The unwillingness of Elizabeth’s councillors to acknowledge this viewpoint would cause repeated tension during her reign.
In the early years of the reign, the suitors for Elizabeth’s hand included:
Robert Dudley, the future Earl of Leicester (probably Elizabeths preferred choice). However, the prospect of Elizabeth marrying Leicester horrified Sir William Cecil, whose own influence would have been seriously eroded.
Furthermore, this marriage would have created many political risks, a consequence of the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Leicester’s first wife, Amy.
Philip II of Spain. He offered his hand in a polite gesture to Elizabeth but probably lacked serious intent partly because of his profound Catholicism.
•The archdukes Ferdinand and Charles, sons of the Emperor Ferdinand.
However, both were Catholic.
• Prince Erik of Sweden, a Protestant suitor, to whom Elizabeth gave little encouragement.
Occasions when marriage issue was raised
The House of Commons first raised the issue of marriage in January 1559, but Elizabeth deflected the pressure gracefully. When Parliament met again in 1563 the situation was very different: Elizabeth had been stricken with smallpox in October 1562 and for a time it seemed she might die, thereby creating a full-scale succession crisis. Councillors were perfectly aware of the disasters that might ensue should the queen die; civil war, foreign invasion and religious strife were all possible outcomes. The level of panic amongst ald beths councillors when the gravity of her illness became apparent should not be underestimated.
‘There was no consensus as to who the successor might be. This was hardly surprising given that there were significant misgivings about each of the potential successors, the disgraced Lady Catherine Grey and the ardent Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. The queen characteristically refused to commit herself She, and the nation, had survived, but it had been a close-run thing. Elizabeth was perhaps lucky that her characteristic procrastination did not lead to disaster.
To 1566 Parliament once again pressed Elizabeth to marry. Some MPs were prompted by members of the Privy Council, including Cecil and Leicester, but their motives differed. Elizabeth reacted furiously, banishing Leicester and the Earl of Pembroke from the Presence Chamber, publicly rebuking other members of the Council and summoning members of both Houses of Parliament for a ferocious tongue-lashing. Elizabeth thus reasserted her view that marriage and succession were matters of the royal prerogative.
In 1579, when Elizabeth was declared capable of still bearing a child, a possible marriage to François, Duke of Anjou, brother of King Henry III of France was suggested by Burghley and Sussex. Some of her councillors and members of the public were horrified that this would lead to an infant child - under French influence - as successor. However, nothing came of the suggestion, so the crisis passed
Implications of not marrying in later years
Elizabeth probably took a political decision not to marry, coming to the conclusion that the disadvantages of marriage outweighed the advantages, despite the potential risks of having no direct heir of her own. The execution of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, meant that Mary’s son, James VI of Scotland, had the best hereditary claim, even though the Stuarts had been excluded from the succession in Henry VIIl’s will. Furthermore, James was Protestant and by 1600 already had two sons.
Since Elizabeths councillors had a vested interest in ensuring that they remained in royal favour, once Elizabeths successor was in place they began wooing James, even before Elizabeth’s death in 1603. Essex, in particular, was in regular contact with James VI, and after Essex’s death in 1601, Sir Robert Cecil kept contact with James and eventually ensured his untroubled succession, for which he received due reward.
To the very end, Elizabeth refused to name a successor and there is no conclusive proof that she accepted James’s succession on her deathbed.
Nevertheless, her authority had ebbed away and the arrangements for succession were already in place. Never before in English history had a change of dynasty been effected so smoothly, and much of the credit for that must be
given to Cecil.
Why Mary QOS had to flee Scotland?
Relations between Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots were inextricably linked with the issue of religion and the succession. The Catholic Mary had incurred the wrath of both the Protestant lords and the English through her marriage to the Earl of Darnley. The marriage was a disaster, with Mary being implicated in her husband’s murder. A subsequent third marriage to Darnley’s presumed murderer, the Earl of Bothwell, set off a brief civil war, the outcome of which saw Mary flee to England in 1567.
Implications of Elizabeth’s excommunication on threat from Mary QOS
This problem was to grow worse following the excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570, which in the eyes of the Catholic Church absolved Elizabeths Catholic subjects from the need to obey their sovereign. This frightened Elizabeth and her Council, resulting in the tightening of the treason law. After the excommunication, Protestants were deemed loyalists and Catholics traitors.
Ridolfi Plot 1571 detail and significance
Involved a conspiracy for Mary to marry the Duke of Norfolk and to overthrow Elizabeth. Allowed Burghley to ensure the execution of Norfolk for treason.
Throckmorton Plot 1583 detail and significance
Foreign landing in Sussex followed by overthrow of Elizabeth and her replacement by Mary.
Foiled by the efficiency of Sir Francis Walsingham’s espionage network.
- Led to the creation of the
Bond of Association. - Worsened Anglo-Spanish relations.
- Tightened conditions of
Mary’s captivity.
Parry Plot 1585 Detail and significance
Plot to assassinate the queen. Led to the acceleration of parliamentary proceedings on a bill to ensure the queen’s safety.
Babington Plot 1586 detail and significance
Mary complicit in a plot to assassinate Elizabeth but exposed by Walsingham’s codebreaker, Thomas Phelippes. Enabled Burghley to secure
Mary’s execution.
Mary’s execution events
Elizabeth was reluctant to press for the execution of another anointed monarch.
Eventually, it was decided that Mary should face triat at Fotheringhay Castle in Northamptonshire where she was moved the day after Babington’s execution.
Privy councillors and nobles assisted by judges were ordered to try her, but several of those commissioned pleaded illness. Some feared regicide; others were more concerned that to condemn to death the mother of their possible future monarch might not be a particularly sensible career move. Mary was plainly guilty, but at Elizabeth’s command no sentence was pronounced.
There were four months of delays during which time Elizabeth patently shrank from ordering her cousin’s execution. Burghley, on the other hand, who had long held the view that Elizabeths personal safety and the security of the Protestant State required Mary’s execution, used his old tactic of parliamentary pressure to influence Elizabeth. Parliament duly petitioned Elizabeth, but she refused to sign the death warrant until 1 February 1587 and then gave contradictory orders about its despatch. Mary met her end with great dignity and composure. In the eyes of many English Catholics she had died a martyr for the Catholic faith.
Why was Elizabeth reluctant to execute Mary?
Elizabeth’s reluctance to seek
Mary’s execution stemmed from her developed notions of rulership.
Monarchs, even one like Mary who had lost her throne, were divinely ordained and to seek a fellow monarch’s death could be seen as a challenge to divine law. At a more basic level, Elizabeth feared that the execution of Mary could undermine her own security as a monarch.
Anglo-Spanish relations were usually cordial in the 1560s. However, they deteriorated towards the end of the decade because of: (6)
- The trading activity of John Hawkins. Hawkins attempted to break the Spanish trading monopoly in the Caribbean. He so infuriated Spanish interests that in September 1568 his fleet was blockaded in the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulúa and only two of his ships were able to escape.
- The situation in the Netherlands. Philip II wanted a tighter form of political organisation in the Netherlands under more direct Spanish control, which would help to root out heresy. Elizabeth came under pressure from Protestant councillors to aid the Dutch Protestants who feared danger. She was reluctant to take action, having suffered heavily from her French adventure, and had qualms about aiding rebels who were fighting sovereign authority.
- The English found opportunities to harass the Spanish. For example, when, in November 1568, a storm forced several Spanish vessels, carrying 400,000 florins which was intended to pay the army of the Duke of Alba, Philip’s general in the Netherlands, to seek shelter in English ports, Elizabeth impounded the money. (This led Alba to seize English ships and property in the Netherlands.)
- The breakdown in Anglo-Spanish and Anglo-Dutch trade,
- Philip’s encouragement to the Northern Rebellion in 1569 and the 6. Ridolf Plot in 1571
- The excommunication of Elizabeth in 1570
Background to Northern Rebellion and what was the intention
The only significant rebellion against Elizabeth took place mainly in Durham and the North Riding of Yorkshire in 1569, which linked to a rising in Cumberland in 1570. It was headed by the leading northern nobility, the earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, and genuine religious fervour among both leaders and ordinary participants played a part. However, the rebel leaders also had political motives. They considered themselves dishonoured by having been displaced from their traditional aristocratic role of controlling northern government. It has also been argued that the rebellion was tied in with a courtly conspiracy, at the centre of which was Westmorland’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk. It was proposed that Norfolk should marry Mary, Queen of Scots, who could be restored to the Scottish throne - a plan which triggered a volcanic response from Elizabeth when she discovered it.
What happened during the Northern Rebellion?
The rebellion began on 9 November. The rebels marched on Durham, seized the city on 14 November and heard Mass in the cathedral, thereby giving a clear indication of the Catholic character of the rebellion. The rebels then marched on York, camping for a time on Bramham Moor, west of the city. However, they made no attempt to capture it; neither did they march south in an attempt to pressurise the government. Instead, they moved back into the county of Durham and besieged the Crown’s stronghold of Barnard Castle, which fell to the rebels on 14 December. However, when news came to the rebel leaders that a Crown force was on its way north, the earls disbanded their forces and fled over the border into Scotland. The following month, Northumberland’s cousin, Leonard Dacre, restarted the rebellion in Cumberland, only for his force to be heavily defeated at Naworth, east of Carlisle, by a royal force under the command of the queen’s cousin, Lord Hunsdon.
