Elizabeth I the Not So Great

I take all "compliments" and veneration of all historical figures, ESPECIALLY POLITICIANS, with massive grains of salt.

However, it seems that there is a very one-sided historical precedent for Elizabeth Tudor, proclaiming her as the finest English monarch in history.

I am just curious, what would be some examples of her not so greatness?
 
Well, in terms of politics of the time, the failure to produce an heir of the body at a time when the succesion was particularly fragile (1 heir in the Scottish line at the start of her reign, and again 1 at the end, several children of dubious legitimacy and IIRC 2 others in the Brandon line) would have been viewed as a major failure.
 

iddt3

Donor
She was a vacillator, couldn't keep control of her generals, and mortgaged the monarchies future by selling off all the nice clerical property her father gained. If you want negatives you can start there.
 

Thande

Donor
The so-called veneration of Liz the First comes almost entirely from the United States in my experience,* which for some reason seems to think we have some kind of particular hard-on for female monarchs (we don't). Elizabeth's reign is mainly thought of as a golden age because 1) the Spanish Armada was defeated, 2) it was a 25-year period of peace in the kingdom, and 3) consider the fact that she came after Bloody Mary.

*This is the second time I've heard an American call her "Elizabeth the Great". This is explicitly not a title she possesses: the only English monarch to be given the title "the Great" is Alfred. Elizabeth was known as Elizabeth Gloriana.
 
She was a vacillator, couldn't keep control of her generals, and mortgaged the monarchies future by selling off all the nice clerical property her father gained. If you want negatives you can start there.

Hadn't Henry already run through the church property? Henry was the profligate spender.
 
Hadn't Henry already run through the church property? Henry was the profligate spender.


Yes, and whatever he left Mary squandered by participating in her Spanish husband's wars. Elizabeth inherited a virtually empty treasury. She wasn't stingy from choice, but necessity.
 
I think she did fairly well all things considered. She didn`t screw up much. But yeah, I agree it`s pretty one sided. Maybe it`s different in Britain.

Did she not care about the succession, think about what would happen after her death. That`s a pretty big minus I guess. Being the last Tudor monarch is sort of a failure.
 
Elizabethan times are also thought of as a golden age because the private market started to tap into Spanish wealth through the piracy of the likes of Hawkins and Drake. It was also her reign when there was a flourishing of playwrights like Marlowe and Shakespeare.
 
I suppose massive grains of salt would be called blocks. (scnr)

There is one great obstacle to an unbiased view on Elisabeth -
she takes a primary role in English / British national self-definition.

It's not that this came as a secondary reinterpretation of her reign:
She herself planted and fostered this view. Of course, she couldn't have known
that she would be so sustainably successful with her story.
 
I suppose massive grains of salt would be called blocks. (scnr)

There is one great obstacle to an unbiased view on Elisabeth -
she takes a primary role in English / British national self-definition.

It's not that this came as a secondary reinterpretation of her reign:
She herself planted and fostered this view. Of course, she couldn't have known
that she would be so sustainably successful with her story.

Indeed, she essentially set out her entire reign to win the hearts and minds of the populace, and so probably was the most popular monarch at the end of her reign for quite a while.
 
I think she did fairly well all things considered. She didn`t screw up much. But yeah, I agree it`s pretty one sided. Maybe it`s different in Britain.

Did she not care about the succession, think about what would happen after her death. That`s a pretty big minus I guess. Being the last Tudor monarch is sort of a failure.


Did she really need to?

After 1587 it was virtually certain to be James. Few people took the others really seriously, though it suited Elizabeth to keep their names "in play" in case wee Jamie got any ideas above his station.
 
On the bad side her reign saw a large number of Catholics killed and the fruitition of an English secret police (or whatever you want to call them), as well as massive Royal PR (and very effective PR at that).
 
On the bad side her reign saw a large number of Catholics killed and the fruitition of an English secret police (or whatever you want to call them), as well as massive Royal PR (and very effective PR at that).

Catholics killed for being Catholic, or Catholics killed when they were a threat to the Queen? As in, Protestants doing the same thing would have suffered exactly as much, but they weren't the ones who were told by the Pope to commit treason.

Secret police?

And what's wrong with royal PR?
 
Catholics killed for being Catholic, or Catholics killed when they were a threat to the Queen? As in, Protestants doing the same thing would have suffered exactly as much, but they weren't the ones who were told by the Pope to commit treason.

Secret police?

And what's wrong with royal PR?

The question was about bad things she did (or that were done in her name), and the fact remains that Catholics did die in numbers during her reign, mainly for plottting against her - I didn't say that the deaths where needless just that they occurred.

What else would you call Walsingham's network at home and abroad? Secret police just seems a handy name for them.

Again I am not saying that royal PR is a negative, just that we hear alot about the good things and little or nothing about the bad. If our current leaders tried the same we would consider it bad hence why I included it.

As someone who thinks the Elizabeth managed to stabilise England and to start it on the road to greatness I am a huge fan, hence my difficulty in thinking of bad things. (Guess that PR still working!)
 
The question was about bad things she did (or that were done in her name), and the fact remains that Catholics did die in numbers during her reign, mainly for plottting against her - I didn't say that the deaths where needless just that they occurred.

Well, I think listing "people died for plotting against her" as a negative is pretty far fetched.

What else would you call Walsingham's network at home and abroad? Secret police just seems a handy name for them.
A proto-MI5?

Again I am not saying that royal PR is a negative, just that we hear alot about the good things and little or nothing about the bad. If our current leaders tried the same we would consider it bad hence why I included it.
I dunno, I think trying to win popular support is neutral. Its not as if she's doing it by sleeping around or anything.

As someone who thinks the Elizabeth managed to stabilise England and to start it on the road to greatness I am a huge fan, hence my difficulty in thinking of bad things. (Guess that PR still working!)

I have trouble too. Vanity would be one of the things that came to mind. Elizabeth took great pride in her appearance even as she got old and less attractive.

This isn't a flaw as a ruler, but while listing reasons she's flawed...
 
hmmmmm.... Virgin Queen? Not so sure, her and Dudley seemed to have rather more than a platonic relationship.

Possibly. I just meant in regards to the PR building, I don't know enough to even begin to guess at whether her and Dudley were involved.

I would say that it would have been rather hard to hide it, though.
 
Well, given the appalling state that Mary I left England in, with severe religious problems from Mary's desire to convert England back to Catholicism, I'd say that Elizabeth didn't do too bad a job of knitting the country back together. She only had one major internal crisis, The Rising Of The North and that was put down with a fairly small body count of around 600 people IIRC. She also operated a fairly cautious and pragmatic foreign policy.
Ok, so she wasn't the greatest of monarchs - I can't think of any that were, but the list of appallingly bad ones is quite a long one - but she wasn't bad.
 
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