[167][168][135] During this time, repression of Catholics intensified, and Elizabeth authorised commissions in 1591 to interrogate and monitor Catholic householders. On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. Somerset, 102. [91][92], In 1587, a young man calling himself Arthur Dudley was arrested on the coast of Spain under suspicion of being a spy. A Patent of Monopoly gave the holder control over an aspect of trade or manufacture. Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall, on a barge lit with torches. In 1561, she was mysteriously bedridden with an illness that caused her body to swell. [33] Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies. The adulation bestowed upon her both in her lifetime and in the ensuing centuries was not altogether a spontaneous effusion. Although she received many offers for her hand, she never married and was childless; the reasons for this are not clear. One of the most successful, and rather famous, English explorer was … "Where he is, or what he doth, or what he is to do," she wrote of Essex, "we are ignorant". An issue that troubled her reign for its entirety was her lack of a husband and heir, a situation which she and others realized could potentially ignite a successional crisis upon her death. By the mid-1580s, England could no longer avoid war with Spain. One of her first actions as queen was the establishment of an English Protestant church, of which she became the supreme governor. [194] In February 1601, the earl tried to raise a rebellion in London. However, William Cecil, Nicholas Throckmorton, and some conservative peers made their disapproval unmistakably clear. Her older half-sister, Mary, had lost her position as a legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne, with the intent to sire a male heir and ensure the Tudor succession. Elizabeth I enjoyed hunting, dancing, and horseback riding well into her 60s. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, "to be transported with an haviour of vainglory". Despite the combination of financial strains and prolonged war after 1588, Parliament was not summoned more often. The war against Spain was not very successful after the Armada had been beaten and, together with other campaigns, it was very costly. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of an adapted version of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme. After the occupation and loss of Le Havre in 1562–1563, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent until 1585, when she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. [184] The first signs of a new literary movement had appeared at the end of the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, with John Lyly's Euphues and Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender in 1578. King Philip, who ascended the Spanish throne in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality and cultivated his sister-in-law. "[114] On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire. Elizabeth and her advisers perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. (Apparently, the king was undeterred by the logical inconsistency of simultaneously invalidating the marriage and accusing his wife of adultery.) Her early life was full of uncertainties, and her chances of succeeding to the throne seemed very slight once her half-brother Edward was born in 1537. [9], Elizabeth was two years and eight months old when her mother was beheaded on 19 May 1536,[10] four months after Catherine of Aragon's death from natural causes. Having previously promised to marry, she told an unruly House: I will never break the word of a prince spoken in public place, for my honour's sake. A combination of miscalculation,[131] misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships on 29 July off Gravelines, which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast, defeated the Armada. Full document reproduced by Loades, 36–37. [227] Historians note that in her day, strict Protestants regarded the Acts of Settlement and Uniformity of 1559 as a compromise. Though Elizabeth followed a largely defensive foreign policy, her reign raised England's status abroad. [60] However, the choice of a husband might also provoke political instability or even insurrection. One of her biggest trials—at least in the foreign policy realm—came when Spain tried to invade England in 1588. Queen Elizabeth I was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Still, she never married, perhaps because she preferred to keep power to herself. The arts flourished during Elizabeth's reign. Norreys left for London to plead in person for more support. [209][233][234] Elizabeth was the first Tudor to recognise that a monarch ruled by popular consent. Unlike his father, Feodor had no enthusiasm in maintaining exclusive trading rights with England. [154] "I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel." In 1563 Elizabeth proposed her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary, without asking either of the two people concerned. She died at Richmond Palace on 24 March 1603, having become a legend in her lifetime. [46] The following day, 15 January 1559, a date chosen by her astrologer John Dee,[47][48] Elizabeth was crowned and anointed by Owen Oglethorpe, the Catholic bishop of Carlisle, in Westminster Abbey. [121] The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish War, which lasted until the Treaty of London in 1604. An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over whom the queen had little control.[118][119]. [55][56] This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. [24] However, after Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs. [199] The advice worked. At her funeral on 28 April, the coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey on a hearse drawn by four horses hung with black velvet. [57], From the start of Elizabeth's reign, it was expected that she would marry and the question arose to whom. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow. [111] In 1581, to convert English subjects to Catholicism with "the intent" to withdraw them from their allegiance to Elizabeth was made a treasonable offence, carrying the death penalty. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement was to evolve into the Church of England. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. However, the 'Virgin Queen' was presented as a selfless woman who sacrificed personal happiness for the good of the nation, to which she was, in essence, 'married'. Elizabeth became queen at the age of 25, and declared her intentions to her council and other peers who had come to Hatfield to swear allegiance.