Elizabeth I Reign Flashcards
Who was Elizabeth I?
She was Queen of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty.
Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII by second wife, Anne Boleyn, who was executed two and a half years after Elizabeth’s birth. Anne’s marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate.
In 1558, Elizabeth succeeded her half-sister to the throne and set out to rule by good counsel. She depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers. Her rule was defined by factional rivalry.
Her reign was divided into two periods: 1558-1579 were known as the Golden Age. Whilst the 1580’s became known as the crisis years that saw war with Spain and economic problems.
Elizabeth and the Privy Council
Edward had 40 members in his council, Mary had as much as 50 at one point. Elizabeth’s first council had 19 members and during the 1590s it was reduced to 9 members. 10 of the 19 had been on Mary’s council and the majority had served during Henry and Edward’s reign.
William Cecil replaced Paget became the Secretary of State again in 1558. However, he had a rivalry with Robert Dudley, who irritated Cecil because he tried to woo Elizabeth and his radical views contrasted with Cecil’s moderate Protestantism.
Elizabeth’s Council’s lacked key religious figures and clerics; Whitgift was the only one of Elizabeth’s Archbishops of Canterbury to enter the council.
Elizabeth and Faction
In 1569/70, there was a plan to destroy Cecil due to jealousy of his influence over Elizabeth and the thought of his foreign policy damaging England. Cecil and Dudley clashed on the issue of intervention in the Dutch revolt.
Factional rivalry continued when Cecil’s son, Robert took over as the Queen’s Chief Minister and Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, who was successor to the Queen’s affections. The dispute was mainly over the Queen’s favour and patronage; although the Earl’s association with an aggressive, Protestant foreign policy also deepened the rift.
Elizabethan Economics
When Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, she inherited a difficult financial situation and a debt of £227,000.
By instinct, Elizabeth was a careful spender and believed in strict housekeeping. For most of her reign she avoided the expenses war - something which had crushed her fathers, brothers and sisters economy.
Under Elizabeth, ordinary revenue increased from about £200,000 a year to £300,000. With the tight control of expenditure, the Treasury was able to record a large annual surplus on the ordinary account, she was able to pay off the debts which Mary had left her. In 1576, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Walter Mildmay, said “Her Majesty hath most carefully delivered this Kingdom from a great and weighty debt”.
Crown land worth over £600,000 was sold, including virtually all of the remaining monastic property to make money for the wars. Parliamentary taxation was requested more frequently and in multiples.
Elizabeth Social and Finance Policy
To her credit, when Elizabeth died in 1603, the nation was only in debt to the tune of £350,000 - £123,000 more than in 1558, but this was spread over 40 years and was a remarkable achievement.
The recoinage of 1560-61 slowed inflation, but the English population continued to rise to about 3 million in 1558, and rose to 4.2 million in 1603 - an increase of about 40%. More people meant more demand, and food prices rose about 75%.
Elizabeth did a great deal for the working man - The Statue of Artificers (1563) made apprenticeships were to last 7 years. Justices of the Peace were to fix wages. It was reasonably effective at regulating industrial labour, but had little effect on poverty and vagrancy.
The English government passed various laws to try and cope with these social problems. Acts were passed throughout the reign and consolidated in the Poor Law of 1601. Elizabethan poor relief legislation distinguished the able-bodied from the the deserving poor, impoverished by misfortune and sickness - were to be given support and materials for a productive activity.
The resources of the English government were quite inadequate to the social and economic problems it faced, but the government did manage to maintain some stability. Even the dire harvests of the 1590s did not produce the rebellions and unrest of 1549.
Elizabeth and Overseas Trade
Elizabeth continued to maintain the diplomatic relations with the Tsar of Muscovy originally established by her deceased brother. She often wrote to Ivan IV (“Ivan the Terrible”), on amicable terms, though the Tsar was often annoyed by her focus on commerce rather than on the possibility of a military alliance.
Trade and diplomatic relations developed between England and the Barbary states during the rule of Elizabeth. England established a trading relationship with Morocco in opposition to Spain, selling armour, ammunition, timber, and metal in exchange for Moroccan sugar, in spite of a Papal ban.
Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to the Porte, William Harborne, in 1578.
The Dutch were England’s major client for cloth exports and the port of Antwerp, in the Netherlands, was the main commercial centre for both imports and exports. The Netherlands, however, were then a Spanish province and this meant that the stability of the European market for English cloth, and the availability of imports in return, were affected by the state of relations between Spain, England and the Netherlands.
The Religious Settlement 1559
Surrounded by her new council which consisted of former supporters of Edward, notably William Cecil, who had remained loyal to Elizabeth throughout the turbulant years. Elizabeth sought to revive the Royal Supremacy and reinstate the 1552 Prayer Book.
The 1st act of her first Parliament established her supremacy as monarch and supreme governor in all matters spiritual and temporal. The Catholic Bishops had opposed the Act of Supremacy in HoL, and refused to swear the oath of supremacy. They were deprived, imprisoned or allowed to resign. Elizabeth was able to appoint 27 new bishops, many of them men who had actively opposed Mary’s religious policies and who would support her in the HoL.
The new Act of Uniformity required the use of a Book of Common Prayer in all churches, and provided a system of punishment for those who failed to use it. The 1559 Book of Common Prayer was based on its 1552 predeccesor - with some amendments: it instructed the priest to say the words of the 1549 and 1552 books when offering the bread and wine - the ambiguity was a compromise between Catholics and Protestants. The Act also made it compulsory to attend Church, recusants would have to pay a fine of a shilling.
The overwhelming majority of the parish clergy accepted the new order. They were accustomed to change. Yet about 200 priests were deprived of their livings or resigned, though often they continued to live in England.
The 1552 Prayer Book took an even more conservative stance on vestments that went back to the second year of Edward VI’s reign. The alb, cope and chasuble were all to be brought back into use.
Elizabeth and the Catholics
The Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity imposed mild penalties for passive resistance by the Catholic laity involving a fine for recusants; whilst saying mass led to the death penalty with mere attendance resulting in a 100 mark fine.
According to a Privy Council survey, many Justice of the Peace were Catholic or at least sympathetic to the cause so were lenient in their punishments.
there were as many 40 recusant priests in Lancashire, a predominantly Catholic county - but the dominant trend of the early years was one of outward conformity to the Church of Engand among the Catholics.
There was a lack of spiritual guidance from the Pope, only in 1562 did the Vatican prohibit Catholic attendance at Anglican services. The Catholic Phillip II was too preoccupied with the Mediteranian and the Netherlands to take serious action with England.
Catholic threat came from individuals e.g. William Allen founded a seminary at Donai in the Southern Netherlands in 1568, to educate Catholics abroad and to train priests to return to England.
The Northern Rebellion of 1569
In the late autumn of 1569, in the eleventh year of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, insurrection, known as the “Rising of the North” took place at the head of which were Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and Charles Neville, Earl of Westmorland.
The Northern Earls were able to recruit a following of 6,000 rebels - nowhere near as many as the earls hoped for.
They captured Durham and restored Mass in the Cathedral. The Earl of Sussex marched out from York on 13 December 1569 with 7,000 men against the rebels’ 4,600, and was followed by 12,000 men under Baron Clinton.
Lord Dacre led a rebellion with 3000 men in January 1570 but they were crushed and the Northern Rebellion came to an end.
Religious Causes of The Northern Rebellion of 1569
In January 1568 MQofS arrived in England-provided focus for followers of the old religion; if Elizabeth died, a Catholic heir would lead them back into the fold. It was her return that seemed to spark the rebellion.
Enthusiasm for Catholicism seems to have motivated the lesser members: e.g. Richard Norton had worn the badge of the Five Wounds of Christ in 1536. Other leaders of the rebellion Thomas Markenfield and Dr Morton both had travelled the continent in the 1560s and had returned with a zeal to awaken the North. A proclamation was issued stating that the reason for their rebellion was to resist the ‘new-found religion and heresy’. However, it may have been a ploy to gather support.
In 1570 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth. By the terms of the Papal Bull, the English Catholics were absolved of any oath of allegiance and commanded to disobey the queen or also face excommunication.
Political Causes of The Northern Rebellion of 1569
The Northern Earls disliked Elizabeth’s ‘new men’. Elizabeth was aware of Catholic sympathisers in the North so placed men she trusted in positions of authority in the region e.g. Earl of Sussex was appointed President of the Council of the North, James Pilkington Bishop of Durham»resentment at being passed over for offices they considered to be rightfully theirs was turned to outright anger by Pilkington’s aggressive evangelical style.
The Norfolk-Mary marriage plan, combined with the Duke of Norfolk’s imprisonment, added to their frustrations. They believed they had no choice to lead a rebellion against an uncaring, aggressive and an increasingly deaf Protestant regime.
Consequences of The Northern Rebellion of 1569
From this point on little mercy was shown from Elizabeth. Approximately 800 perished on the gallows, and 57 noblemen and gentlemen were attainted by parliament, and their estates confiscated. Severe penal enactments were passed, by which anyone refusing to attend the reformed service was liable to fine and imprisonment; to become a priest, or to harbour one, or be present at mass, were crimes punishable with death. At York alone, 28 priests were hanged, bowelled, and quartered for exercising their sacerdotal functions and 11 laymen were executed for harbouring priests.
The Catholic cause was not helped by the 1571 Ridolfi Plot involving MQofS and Norfolk as a married alternative to Elizabeth, backed by Spanish arms and cash. As a result Norfolk was executed in June 1572 and the Spanish ambassador expelled.
New legislation was passed such as The Treason Act of 1571 which was created to dispose of the Catholic Threat, however survivalism continued, Church Papistry (lip-syncing to the Church) replaced recusancy.
The Queen still sought to maintain her policy towards her Catholic subjects and resist pressure building up in Parliament to adopt a more draconian (harsh) legislation.
The Catholic Mission to England
The seminary at Douai, founded by William Allen in 1568, was established firstly to educate Catholics abroad and then to train a priesthood for England.
In 1580, Edmund Campion, a Jesuit, outlined his task: “to cry alarm against foul vice and proved ignorance wherewith my countrymen are abused”.
From the mid-1570’s onwards the Catholic threat increased as the influx of seminary priests began at the rate of about 20 per year, rising to 29 in 1580.
In June 1580 Campion and Robert Parsons became the first two Jesuit missionaries. They provided organisation and structure of the mission.
European situation also supported the tide of Catholic reformers coming to England - the election of Pope Gregory XIII in 1572 strengthened the Papacy’s resolve to overthrow Elizabeth as ‘the cause of such great harm to the Catholic faith”.
The Throckmorton Plot of 1583, whereby French Catholic forces were to invade back by Spanish and Papal money and liberate MQofS and start a Catholic uprising, involving the Jesuits. GOVT fears were intensified by the Treaty of Joinville signed by Phillip II and the Catholic League in France and the Duke of Parma’s clearing of the Netherlands for Catholicism at an alarming rate.
Elizabeth’s Response to the Catholic Threat
An Act of 1581 redefined treason to include those who withdrew English subjects from allegiance to the Queen or her church.
Recusancy fines were increased to £20.
In 1584, the Act Against Jesuits and Seminary Priests was passed - commanding all Roman Catholic priests to leave the country in 40 days or they would be punished for high treason, unless within the 40 days they swore an oath to obey the Queen.
In 1585, Parliament ordered the expulsion of priests - making it treason to become a priest, with a death penalty given to anybody who helped a priest.
This harsh legislation aimed to undermine the organisation of the Jesuit mission and between 1586 and 1603, 123 out of 146 Catholics were executed under this Statute.
Between 1581 and 1586, 30 priests were executed and 50 were put in prison, yet a further 176; in 1588, 21 priests were put to death and a further 53 between 1590 and 1603.
Importance of the Catholic Mission
After 1585, 50% of missionary priests travelled to the S-E where only 20% of detected recusants lived.
One group of Catholics opposed the militance of the mission - the Appellants, who wanted their religion to be tolerated once more.
By 1603, the CofE was an established Protestant country with the Catholics as the minority.
