Quote:
The petition reminded Elizabeth that it would be better for her 'and her kingdom if she would take a consort who might relieve her of those labours which are only fit for men', and the Speaker, Sir Thomas Gargrave, kneeling, candidly reminded her that, while princes are mortal, commonwealths are immortal. If she remained 'unmarried and, as it were, a vestal virgin', such a thing would be 'contrary to the public respects'.
When she heard his words, the Queen was plainly astonished at his boldness in broaching such a delicate issue, but she recovered herself and responded graciously, saying, 'In a matter most unpleasing, pleasing to me is the apparent goodwill of you and my people.' She stated that she had chosen to stay single despite being offered marriage by 'most potent princes', and that she considered she already had a husband and children. Showing them her coronation ring, she declared, as she was to do on many subsequent occasions: 'I am already bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England.' As for children, 'Every one of you, and as many as are Englishmen, are children and kinsmen to me.' She was gratified that the deputation had not named any potential husband, 'For that were most unbeseeming the majesty of an absolute princess, and unbeseeming your wisdom, who are subjects born.' [...] Concluding, she declared: 'In the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.' Thus was born the legend of the Virgin Queen, upon which Elizabeth would capitalise to full advantage, and which would achieve cult status in the years to come.
Quote:
Privately, she was inclined towards a single existence. In 1559, she confided to a German envoy that 'she had found the celibate life so agreeable, and was so accustomed to it that she would rather go into a nunnery, or for that matter suffer death', than be forced to renounce it. The Imperial ambassador was informed by her that she would much prefer to be a 'beggarwoman and single, far rather than a queen and married'. [...] She seems to have regarded marriage as a refuge for those who could not contain their lust: in 1576, she told Parliament that she held nothing against matrimony, nor would she 'judge amiss of such as, forced by necessity, cannot dispose themselves to another life'. She herself was determined not to give in to such fleshly weakness.
Quote:
Many people believed, and some still do, that because Elizabeth loved courtship and flirtation she was sexually immoral, but in fact she lived a very circumscribed life – she was hardly ever alone, being (as she said herself) 'always surrounded by my Ladies of the Bedchamber and maids of honour', who slept in her room – and she valued herself and her honour highly: it would have been unthinkable for the Queen of England to become some man's plaything. 'My life is in the open, and I have so many witnesses,' she once said, having learned what was being said about her abroad. 'I cannot understand how so bad a judgement can have been formed of me.' She had, moreover, learned what happened to queens – and, for that matter, princesses – who were suspected of overstepping the bounds of morality, and it had been a grim lesson. Besides, while she remained unattainable, she remained in control of her relationships, and that was how she liked things to be.
Quote:
Queen Elizabeth had from adolescence been imbued with the beliefs and teachings of the Cambridge reformers who tutored her, yet although she grew up in and professed the Protestant faith, she was no reformer herself; it was the traditional ritual and ceremony of religion, the glorious anthems and motets sung by her choristers, and the intellectual satisfaction of theological literature that appealed to her. She knew that literature well, informing Parliament in 1566 that ‘I studied nothing but divinity till I came to the Crown.’ Furthermore, in an age in which people were burned for their beliefs, she held surprisingly enlightened views. ‘There is only one Jesus Christ,’ she declared to one French ambassador, André Hurault, Sieur de Maisse. ‘The rest is a dispute over trifles.’
Quote:
When she learned that King Philip was persecuting Protestants in the Spanish Netherlands, she wrote to ask him why it mattered to him if his subjects chose to go to the Devil in their own way. She shocked one of Philip’s ambassadors by flippantly expressing her hope that she would be saved as well as the Bishop of Rome, as English Protestants called the Pope. Later in the reign, she refused to allow Sir Walter Raleigh’s suspected atheism to be investigated, on the grounds that she enjoyed theological arguments with him.
Quote:
Sermons – one of the chief features of morning services in Protestant churches – were her particular bugbear, and woe betide those clergymen who preached for more than an hour. She had even less time for those who attempted to instruct her from the pulpit as she sat in the royal closet with its lattice window, which she might have open or shut, according to her mood. ‘To your text, Mr Dean! To your text!’ she would shout, or she would send a message to the preacher, warning him to desist from an offending theme.
Quote:
Yet there were more cogent reasons for Elizabeth’s dislike of sermons: preaching offered a forum for men to air their opinions, which, given the religious climate of the times, could only lead to disputes and cause public unrest. Those extreme Protestants who would come to be known as Puritans were heartily disapproved of by Elizabeth, not only for their fanaticism, but also because they insisted upon a ‘preaching ministry’. Most of her subjects applauded her stand against Puritanism, especially after 1585 when she quashed a Puritan Bill aimed at banning all sports and entertainments on Sundays. The Queen felt that her people had a right to spend their only day of rest enjoying themselves as they pleased, without interference from killjoys. She also refused to agree to the suggestion – again from a Puritan source – that heresy, adultery and blasphemy be made criminal offences. In her opinion, those things were matters of conscience, not of law.
Quote:
Like most of her subjects, the Queen was horrified and repelled by reports of the mass burnings of heretics by the Inquisition in Spain. As far as she was concerned, a man’s conscience was his own. According to Sir Francis Bacon, she lived by the maxim, ‘Consciences are not to be forced’, and she ‘would not have any unnecessarily sifted to know what affection they had towards the old religion’. Her Majesty, he wrote, had no ‘liking to make windows into men’s hearts and secret thoughts’. All she wanted from her subjects was loyalty to herself and the state and outward conformity to her laws governing religion.