Queen Elizabeth I

1533 – 1603 · Generation XXIII · Queen of England and Ireland (r. 1558–1603) · House of Tudor

Elizabeth I Tudor (1533–1603). Queen of England and Ireland (r. 1558–1603). The Virgin Queen: Armada weather, Shakespeare’s stage, and forty-five years of never marrying anyone’s choice but her own. Declared illegitimate at two after her mother’s execution, and imprisoned for nearly a year under her sister Mary on suspicion of favouring Protestant rebels, she came to the throne resolved to rule by good counsel, leaning on advisers led by William Cecil. Her early religious settlement, with the queen as supreme governor of an English church, grew into the Church of England. After the pope declared her illegitimate in 1570, repeated plots against her life were unpicked by Francis Walsingham’s secret service. Governing under the motto “video et taceo” — I see and keep silent — she avoided systematic persecution at home, steered warily between France and Spain abroad, and gave a kingdom fresh from two short, troubled reigns forty-four years of steadying rule.

One of 10 people of House of Tudor (1485–1603) in this archive. Welsh in origin and only a handful of monarchs long — it broke with Rome and ended with Elizabeth I.

Line of descent: Owen Tudor → Edmund Tudor → King Henry VII → King Henry VIII → Queen Elizabeth I.

Parents

King Henry VIII (1491 – 1547)
Anne Boleyn (1501 – 1536)

Siblings

Queen Mary I (1516 – 1558) (half)
King Edward VI (1537 – 1553) (half)

Life

1533 — Born
1558 — Elizabeth becomes Queen on the death of her half-sister, Mary.
1559 — Elizabeth is crowned Queen of England at Westminster Abbey in January.
1559 — Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity restore the Protestant Church in England and make Elizabeth Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
1559 — The Revised Prayer Book of Elizabeth I is issued. It is less extreme than its predecessors
1560 — Elizabeth founds Westminster School
1562 — Elizabeth gives aid to the Protestant Huguenots in the French Wars of Religion. English troops occupy Dieppe and Le Havre.
1566 — Elizabeth forbids Parliament to discuss her marriage prospects.
1568 — Mary Queen of Scots, flees to England from Scotland and is imprisoned by Elizabeth.
1569 — Elizabeth I approves Sunday sports
1570 — Pope Pius V excommunicates Queen Elizabeth from the Catholic Church.
1579 — Francis, Duke of Alencon, secretly comes to England to try and marry Elizabeth.
1581 — Francis Drake knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of _The Golden Hind_.
1584 — Sir Walter Raleigh founds the first American colony and names it Virginia after Elizabeth the Virgin Queen
1586 — Babington Catholic plot to assassinate Elizabeth I
1588 — Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and a favourite of Elizabeth, dies.
1589 — John Harrington invents the first flushing water closet at his house at Kelston, Bath. He calls it 'Ajax' a pun on the Elizabethan slang word 'Jakes' for a privy. Elizabeth I orders a Harrington WC to be installed at Richmond Palace.
1601 — Earl of Essex is executed for leading a revolt against Elizabeth.
1603 — Died
1603 — Elizabeth I dies at Richmond Palace, Surrey.