Elizabeth, Queen of England

ELIZABETH, Queen of England. - B. at Greenwich on 7 Sept. 1533, d. at Richmond on 24 March 1603. Daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, she succeeded her half-sister Mary at a grave moment in the nation's history (1558).

As the daughter of Boleyn, Catholics could not regard her as the legitimate heir to the throne; therefore they looked to the Catholic Mary Stuart, queen of Scotland, the nearest legitimate relative of Henry VIII. Catholics, on the other hand, were displeased by the pro-Spanish policy followed by the late Queen Mary and were not sorry that E. emancipated herself from it in order to follow other directions. But education and "reason of State" led E. to a pro-Protestant policy such as had been that of her half-brother Edward VI. In fact, with the able cooperation of Sir William Cecil, she from the outset succeeded in having herself universally recognized, but she also immediately made her religious policy felt. With the year 1559 (27-28 Feb.) she imposed the "Act of Supremacy," drafted on the model of that of her father, and again made the crown arbiter "in all things spiritual or ecclesiastical or temporal," enjoining lay and ecclesiastical officials not to recognize the interference of any foreign power in the Church of England, and on 26-28 Apr. she imposed the "Act of Uniformity," by which the Mass was prohibited and the new liturgy of Edward VI's Book of Common Prayer was introduced, with the obligation to conform to it. With this she repeated the gesture of Henry VIII; but while maintaining the hierarchical order that he had preserved, she instead continued along the line of Edward VI as regards dogma and liturgy, orienting them toward Calvinism; she deposed the bishops appointed under Queen Mary, permitted marriage to ecclesiastics, and in 1563 summarized the doctrine in 39 articles that all were required to profess; thus making the condition of Catholics, deprived of pastors, extremely difficult. With the bull of 25 Feb. 1570 Pius V, after having hoped in vain for a repentance, excommunicated E. as a heretic, releasing her subjects from the obligation of allegiance.

But the persecuting laws grew harsher with new and more restrictive edicts, both to counterbalance the consequences of the bull of excommunication (2 Apr. 1571), and for the preservation of the Queen from alleged papist conspiracies (23 Nov. 1584), going so far as to order priests to leave the kingdom, to forbid young men to become seminarians on the continent and to warn them, should they ever do so, not to return, on pain even of death (Jan. 1585). Not content with this, there came the edicts of 1590 and 1591 against priests and the laity who harbored them or attended their Mass, and finally on 2 Nov. 1602 there came the edict of the absolute exile of all the clergy.

Nevertheless, neither did the priests fail, nor did the laity surrender to the false injunctions. During E.'s reign, 200 Catholics, priests and laity, are counted as killed for their faith, many of whom were beatified by the Church or proposed for beatification; the number of those who, without losing their lives, either lost their goods or had to go into exile or languished in foul prisons, exceeds a thousand by a good deal.

E., while keeping at bay the princes who yearned for her hand, was unwilling to contract marriage with anyone; while following a cautious policy of supporting the Protestant cause on the continent, she was unwilling to compromise too openly the security of the country and of the crown. She aided the Protestant Netherlands, in revolt against Spain, and the French Huguenots against the Catholic League. She participated with her own private capital in the enterprises of corsairs and colonizers which, by attacking the Spanish convoys that transported precious metals from America to Spain and by opening new territories to English commerce, undermined the foundations of Philip II's power. But she refused for decades, against the express opinion of her counselors, to enter into open conflict against him, and only after much hesitation did she adopt that radical policy toward Mary Stuart which led to the latter's condemnation to death and execution (1587).

The conflict with Spain, inevitable once the nation's maritime and colonial expansion threatened the supremacy of the Catholic king in American waters, finally broke out, on the initiative of Philip II, who had prepared a powerful Armada, in 1588. E.'s victory, while it marked the beginning of English maritime preponderance, definitively caused the collapse of Philip II's hopes of establishing Spanish-Catholic predominance in northern Europe. The last years of E.'s reign marked a further advance in the economic development and internal cohesion of the nation. When the queen died, in 1603, the material conditions of the country were among the best that English history remembers; but religious intolerance against Catholics was also at its height.

Ottavio Buriè