Elizabeth I, called the Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, ruled as Queen of England and Ireland from November of 1558 until her death in March of 1603. She followed her two half-siblings Edward VI and Mary I to the throne and was the last ruler in the Tudor line. The time during her rule has become known as the Elizabethan era and is considered the golden age of the English Renaissance, during which art, poetry, and theater flourished. The Elizabethan era was marked by Queen Elizabeth firmly but diplomatically returning England to the Protestant Reformation and concretely establishing the Church of England.
Ascending to the throne at age 25, Elizabeth was unmarried and was immediately pressured by advisors to marry. Just one year before her half-sister Mary’s death, Calvinist preacher John Knox wrote in his
God hath revealed to some in this our age that it is more than a monster in nature that a woman should reign and bear empire above man. While this particular assertion was likely in direct response to the violence experienced by England under Mary’s rule, similar patriarchal sentiments about Elizabeth were widely held, as it was believed a woman needed a man to curb her unruly nature. Critics of the time considered Elizabeth’s rule improper or even incomplete until she was married.
But Elizabeth never married, remaining presumably celibate and childless. Though some believed this departure from the normal path for women was to her detriment, she used it her advantage. Elizabeth may not have had a bloodline successor, but remaining unmarried ensured that she held maximum power over the affairs and crown of England, rather than her falling subject to the rule of a husband. Elizabeth also manipulated foreign and domestic suitors into thinking they had a hold on her heart, and therefore, the crown. Elizabeth’s romantic posturing convinced even close advisers and friends, also effectively manipulating her councilors into never forcing her into marriage.
Some historians speculate that an early negative relationship may have soured Elizabeth on marriage. Thomas Seymour was the last husband of Elizabeth’s stepmother, Catherine Parr, King Henry VIII’s widow. Elizabeth spent formative years of her adolescence living with Parr and Seymour, where Seymour showed questionable and potentially abusive interest in Elizabeth. Following Parr’s death, history suggests Seymour intended to marry Elizabeth, possibly as a political grab foreseeing her ascension to the English throne.
Celibacy was expected of women until they were married, and even with the reformed ideas of the Protestant faith, chastity and virginity were considered a woman’s greatest assets. Chastity had a broader definition than we know it today and extended to behaviors and thoughts in and out of marriage. A married woman who was faithful to her husband was considered chaste; a young maid who was a virgin, yet shrewish and disobedient to her father, was not.
For Elizabeth, her chastity extended beyond that of even the typical definition of the time. Her celibacy birthed her nickname the Virgin Queen, and this title led to an almost cult-like praise of Elizabeth’s chastity. Inscribed on copper plate from 1641 reads the following, She was, she is, what can there more can be said, / In Earth the first, in Heaven the second maid
. Allusions such as this by artists and other figures comparing Elizabeth to the Virgin Mary were common, linking her divine mandate as queen to a higher kind of divinity.