Kid biography of queen elizabeth 1

Bysenior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem. For her failure to marry, Elizabeth was often accused of irresponsibility. Her silence, however, strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup; she remembered the way that "a second person, as I have been" had been used as the focus of plots against her predecessor.

Elizabeth's first policy toward Scotland was to oppose the French presence there. She feared that the French planned to invade England and put her Catholic cousin Mary, Queen of Scotson the throne. Mary boasted being "the nearest kinswoman she hath". Elizabeth was persuaded to send a force into Scotland to aid the Protestant rebels, and though the campaign was inept, the resulting Treaty of Edinburgh of July removed the French threat in the north.

When Mary returned to Scotland in to take up the reins of power, the country had an established Protestant church and was run by a council of Protestant nobles supported by Elizabeth. Mary refused to ratify the treaty. In Elizabeth proposed her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary, without asking either of the two people concerned.

Both proved unenthusiastic, and in Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnleywho carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular and was murdered in February by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell.

Shortly afterwards, on 15 MayMary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Lochleven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James VIwho had been born in June James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant.

Mary escaped in but after a defeat at Langside sailed to England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England, where she was imprisoned for the next nineteen years.

Mary was kid biography of queen elizabeth 1 the focus for rebellion. In there was a major Catholic rising in the North ; the goal was to free Mary, marry her to Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolkand put her on the English throne. After the rebels' defeat, over of them were executed on Elizabeth's orders. In the belief that the revolt had been successful, Pope Pius V issued a bull intitled Regnans in Excelsiswhich declared "Elizabeth, the pretended Queen of England and the servant of crime" to be excommunicated and a hereticreleasing all her subjects from any allegiance to her.

Catholics who obeyed her orders were threatened with excommunication. The papal bull provoked legislative initiatives against Catholics by Parliament, which were, however, mitigated by Elizabeth's intervention. Into 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.

From the s missionary priests from continental seminaries went to England secretly in the cause of the "reconversion of England". Many suffered execution, engendering a cult of martyrdom. Regnans in Excelsis gave English Catholics a strong incentive to look to Mary as the legitimate sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of kid biography of queen elizabeth 1 Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of which caused Mary's suitor, the Duke of Norfolk, to lose his head to the Babington Plot ofElizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her.

At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By lateshe had been persuaded to sanction Mary's trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm diverse things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person.

After the execution, Elizabeth claimed that she had not intended for the signed execution warrant to be dispatched, and blamed her secretary, William Davisonfor implementing it without her knowledge. The sincerity of Elizabeth's remorse and whether or not she wanted to delay the warrant have been called into question both by her contemporaries and later historians.

Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the English occupation of Le Havre from October to Junewhich ended in failure when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from toand he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets.

An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over whom the queen had little control. After the occupation and loss of Le Havre in —, Elizabeth avoided military expeditions on the continent untilwhen she sent an English army to aid the Protestant Dutch rebels against Philip II. It also extended Spanish influence along the channel coast of France, where the Catholic League was strong, and exposed England to invasion.

The siege of Antwerp in the summer of by the Duke of Parma necessitated some reaction on the part of the English and the Dutch. The outcome was the Treaty of Nonsuch of Augustin which Elizabeth promised military support to the Dutch. The treaty marked the beginning of the Anglo-Spanish Warwhich lasted until the Treaty of London in The expedition was led by Elizabeth's former suitor, the Earl of Leicester.

Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland, had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who wanted and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, wanted him "to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy". Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands, which so far she had always declined. Elizabeth's "commandment" was that her emissary read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the Dutch Council of State, Leicester having to stand nearby.

This public humiliation of her "Lieutenant-General" combined with her continued talks for a separate peace with Spain irreversibly undermined Leicester's standing among the Dutch. The military campaign was severely hampered by Elizabeth's repeated refusals to send promised funds for her starving soldiers. Her unwillingness to commit herself to the cause, Leicester's own shortcomings as a political and military leader, and the faction-ridden and chaotic situation of Dutch politics led to the failure of the campaign.

Leicester finally resigned his command in December Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships in the Caribbean in and On 12 Julythe 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.

A combination of miscalculation, misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships on 29 July off Gravelineswhich dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast, defeated the Armada. The Armada straggled home to Spain in shattered remnants, after disastrous losses on the coast of Ireland after some ships had tried to struggle back to Spain via the North Seaand then back south past the west coast of Ireland.

Unaware of the Armada's fate, English militias mustered to defend the country under the Earl of Leicester's command. Leicester invited Elizabeth to inspect her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle.

The defeat of the armada was a potent propaganda victory, both for Elizabeth and for Protestant England. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. However, the victory was not a turning point in the war, which continued and often favoured Spain. The Spanish still controlled the southern provinces of the Netherlands, and the threat of invasion remained.

Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds, Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. 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". The English fleet suffered a catastrophic defeat with 11,—15, killed, wounded or died of disease and 40 ships sunk or captured.

The advantage England had won upon the destruction of the Spanish Armada was lost, and the Spanish victory marked a revival of Philip II's naval power through the next decade. It was her first venture into France since the retreat from Le Havre in Henry's succession was strongly contested by the Catholic League and by Philip II, and Elizabeth feared a Spanish takeover of the channel ports.

The subsequent English campaigns in France, however, were disorganised and ineffective. Peregrine Bertie, 13th Baron Willoughby de Eresbylargely ignoring Elizabeth's orders, roamed northern France to little effect, with an army of 4, men. He withdrew in disarray in Decemberhaving lost half his troops. Inthe campaign of John Norreys, who led 3, men to Brittanywas even more of a disaster.

As for all such expeditions, Elizabeth was unwilling to invest in the supplies and reinforcements requested by the commanders. Norreys left for London to plead in person for more support. In his absence, a Catholic League army almost destroyed the remains of his army at Craonnorth-west France, in May The result was just as dismal. Essex accomplished nothing and returned home in January Henry abandoned the siege in April.

As usual, Elizabeth lacked control over her commanders once they were abroad. Although Ireland was one of her two kingdoms, Elizabeth faced a hostile, and in places virtually autonomous, Irish population that adhered to Catholicism and was willing to defy her authority and plot with her enemies. Her policy there was to grant land to her courtiers and prevent the rebels from giving Spain a base from which to attack England.

In the course of a series of uprisings, Crown forces pursued scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child. During a revolt in Munster led by Gerald FitzGerald, 14th Earl of Desmondinan estimated 30, Irish people starved to death. Elizabeth advised her commanders that the Irish, "that rude and barbarous nation", be well treated, but she or her commanders showed no remorse when force and bloodshed served their authoritarian purpose.

He tired of her manipulations and inability to birth a son. He ordered her executed based on false accusations concocted by her enemies at court. Their daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was just 2 years old when she lost her mother. Elizabeth quickly learned that life can change in an instant: one minute she was a princess and the next she was abandoned by her father and kicked out of the line of succession, meaning she would never sit on the throne.

She determined that she must study and learn all she could to survive in this world. She studied people and their personalities, learning valuable skills about diplomacy and public relations. She cultivated her charm, poise, cunning, and intelligence. When she was 10, her father changed his mind about Elizabeth and restored her princess title and her succession to the throne behind Edward and Mary.

He died four years later and Elizabeth, then 14, was sent to live with his last wife, Catherine Parr, and her new husband. Elizabeth tried to dress very early in the morning, or have her servants around her at all times, so that her stepfather would not try something tricky, like marry her in secret, in the hopes of becoming king if Elizabeth ever became queen.

But Edward was very sickly and died when he was 15 from tuberculosis. Before he died, Edward, a Protestant, drafted a will to make his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, also a Protestant, the next ruler instead of his older sister, Mary, who was a Catholic. And Mary thought so, too! Mary quickly gathered troops and rode to London, throwing Jane off the throne and locking her in the Tower of London.

As you can see, kings and queens in those days did not sit easily on a throne. Anything could happen to throw them off of it — angry enemies, untrustworthy family members, manipulative counselors, or faithless friends. Mary then took the throne and became Mary I. Elizabeth, now 19, possessed a charming personality and keen intelligence.

It was unusual to be ruled by a woman, because at the time, they were seen as weak and not as clever as men. She didn't expect to be Queen. She was third in line to the throne. Both her brother and sister died without having children so Elizabeth became Queen. To show people she could rule the country well, she had portraits painted of her as strong, mighty and rich, just as a queen should be.

Inhe sent the Spanish Armada, a fleet of more than ships, to invade England. Elizabeth stayed strong. She told her soldiers and sailors: "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. England and Elizabeth had won!

Kid biography of queen elizabeth 1

There were many great artists and writers. William Shakespeare, the most famous playwright ever, performed his plays in front of her. Her forces defeated the Spanish Armada and saved England from invasion, she reinstated Protestantism and forged an England that was a strong and independent nation. But she had a very difficult childhood and was fortunate to make it to the throne at all.

She was stripped of her inheritance and was imprisoned in the Tower of London. News of her birth causes rejoicing across the country, but is a bitter disappointment to her father Henry. He is desperate for a male heir to continue the Tudor dynasty. Although Elizabeth is made next in line to the throne, the King prays his next child will be male — superseding her claim to the throne.

Elizabeth is two years and eight months old when her mother Anne Boleyn is accused of adultery and beheaded on the orders of Henry VIII. Elizabeth is declared illegitimate and removed from the royal succession. Elizabeth is neglected for a number of years until Henry's final wife Catherine Parr takes charge and makes sure she is educated to the highest standards and, crucially, taught the art of public speaking by renowned Cambridge scholar Roger Ascham.

Her nine-year-old half-brother Edward becomes King. Elizabeth joins the household of her stepmother Catherine Parr. In Catherine dies in childbirth and Seymour is subsequently executed for plotting to marry Elizabeth and kidnap Edward VI. When Elizabeth is questioned by the authorities she protests her innocence and escapes prosecution.