Queen Elizabeth and Religion

Obviously, Queen Elizabeth had an interest to be Protestant. By Catholic law, Henry VIII was still married to Katherine when Liz was born so that makes her a bastard to all Catholics and therefore illegitimate.

What if (by brain fart probably) she tries to reconcile the English church with the Roman Catholic church?In effect, this is undermining her own authority.

The Catholics support Mary, Queen of Scots as the rightful heir. Let's suppose Mary (14 years old?)'s first instruction to her English supporters is to appoint Elizabeth as "regent of England" and her supporters are not to defy her regent unless Elizabeth stops the reconciliation or Mary revokes the position. In other words "stop revolting." Mary then proceeds to do nothing active to help or hurt her cousin and focuses on trying to keep the Scottish rural aristocracy as pro-Catholic as possible.

So how many weeks before someone throws a palace coup? In TTL, you have a self-admitted bastard on the throne. That's not going to last long.
 
Just my observation, but I don't think Elizabeth I cared one way or the other about religion. She probably hated both sides of the issue because it caused so much strife in her own life and family. She was an intellect and may well have been a secret atheist.

I think the Catholics would have supported Mary (of Scots) if she hadn't first married a Frenchman. And by the time she returned to Scotland, it was highly Calvinist. She (like cousin Liz) tried to remain neutral about religion to some degree.

You need a different POD. Elizabeth was a legal bastard when she took the throne and cared not one whit about her legitimacy: she was queen, she was crowned, fuck you if you didn't like it. She was an heir (except for maybe between her mother's death and Edward's birth) all her life. Edward did not change Henry's will, he started to, but he didn't. Mary I tried to turn back the clock, but dithered more about her marriage. Had Mary concentrated more on ruling and less on the boys, she might have brought the country back.

Elizabeth I was the palace coup. And she lasted quite a while.
 
Alex and demirelle,

I disagree with Elizabeth was irreligious or atheist. Let's not forget that her recorded reaction to her her half-sister Mary's death (and her own queenship) was to quote Psalm 118 'This is The Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes!'

Yes, not even the slightest semblance of sadness over the older woman's suffering or death and I know that she had no reason to have had any affection for Mary but one would have thought, considering how she'd been imprisoned after being openly accused of plotting against Queen Mary, that she'd have attempted to have mustered some diplomacy there. In any case, she truly seemed to have believed that she'd been Ordained by God Himself to rule and for THAT reason she was very religious!
Also, it was no accident that she encouraged her subjects to openly venerate her as the Virgin Queen (with a halo of stars depicted orbiting her head in one painting) the same way they'd venerated the Virgin Mary just a generation earlier!
I think had not Mary, Queen of Scots jauntily declared herself the true Queen after Mary Tudor's death and John Knox had not published the "Monstrous Regimen of Women" sermon, it's likely Elizabeth would have openly encouraged the Catholics to join her personality cult!
 
At least half of what Elizabeth I did was for posterity and her audience, so I don't think anything she did in public counts as her true beliefs. She was the mistress of PR and that's why she encouraged her subjects to venerate her. She was enough of her father's child to believe she was God's Gift to England, I will give you that. But then Mary thought the same thing when she came to the throne - family trait, I suppose. She was afraid of losing power, having seen what came of that (Seymour brothers, anyone?) and therefore it was safer to have her subjects love and adoration (as a woman) than try the fear that a lot had of her father.

You don't have to be religious to believe you are where you are supposed to be. Hitler thought the same thing and he wasn't religious.
 
She did sort of try to reconcile the two. Anglicanism under Elizabeth was between the uber-Protestantism of Edward VI and the uber-Catholicism of Mary.
 
Just my observation, but I don't think Elizabeth I cared one way or the other about religion. She probably hated both sides of the issue because it caused so much strife in her own life and family. She was an intellect and may well have been a secret atheist.

I'm sorry but this is absurd. There is plenty of evidence that she was a believing Christian and specifically a Protestant. She was a defender of the Protestant cause even when it gained her no political advantage - the Pope excommunicated her and encouraged her subjects to disobey her, while the greatest power of the age (Spain) broke its alliance and went to war against her.

Elizabeth did not have to do this. Her accession in 1558 was accepted by most of Europe, the papacy included. It was when she converted the Church of England to Protestantism that she became viewed as a "bastard" that needed to be overthrown. She also wasn't under any domestic pressure to change the church: England in 1558 was a mostly Catholic country, to the point that she had trouble finding enough Protestant clergy for a long time. The conversion of the English population was a slow process that succeeded simply because she reigned a long time.
 
She was a defender of the Protestant cause even when it gained her no political advantage - the Pope excommunicated her and encouraged her subjects to disobey her,

Ummm, that means defending Protestantism is politically advantageous.

So trying to reconcile London and Rome is basically political suicide. That's why I asked how many weeks she lasts
 
Ummm, that means defending Protestantism is politically advantageous.

So trying to reconcile London and Rome is basically political suicide. That's why I asked how many weeks she lasts

No it doesn't. England was a majority Catholic country. Trying to convert the population to Protestantism - and even supporting Protestants abroad - made no political sense. It led to numerous plots against her life. The much safer course of action would have been to keep the Church of England Catholic and stay allied with Spain. That she managed to survive and reign 45 years doesn't mean that she didn't take a major risk. It just means she beat the odds.
 
No it doesn't. England was a majority Catholic country. Trying to convert the population to Protestantism - and even supporting Protestants abroad - made no political sense. It led to numerous plots against her life. The much safer course of action would have been to keep the Church of England Catholic and stay allied with Spain. That she managed to survive and reign 45 years doesn't mean that she didn't take a major risk. It just means she beat the odds.

But trying to keep the English Catholic while claiming to be Queen in TTL means you have someone who is tacitly self admitting to be a bastard on the throne. Doesn't that invite another palace coup?
 
Ummm, that means defending Protestantism is politically advantageous.

No, because she was only excommunicated after she started trying to turn England Protestant again. Had she remained a Catholic, she wouldn't have been excommunicated.

But trying to keep the English Catholic while claiming to be Queen in TTL means you have someone who is tacitly self admitting to be a bastard on the throne. Doesn't that invite another palace coup?

To be fair, it wouldn't be the first time a Tudor ruled with a flimsy claim to the throne -- Henry VII's legal right to be King of England could be generously described as "tenuous", and more accurately described as "completely non-existent".
 
But trying to keep the English Catholic while claiming to be Queen in TTL means you have someone who is tacitly self admitting to be a bastard on the throne. Doesn't that invite another palace coup?

The Catholic Church accepted her accession in 1558. It wasn't an issue until she broke with the Pope. Even IOTL she wasn't excommunicated until 1570.
 
To be fair, it wouldn't be the first time a Tudor ruled with a flimsy claim to the throne -- Henry VII's legal right to be King of England could be generously described as "tenuous", and more accurately described as "completely non-existent".

Henry VII was the Lancaster claimant after literally everyone else was killed. His ancestor agreed not to let his descendants (such as the unborn Henry Tudor) with a certain woman claim the throne... except every other heir of John of Gaunt that didn't go through that was dead.

The Catholic Church accepted her accession in 1558. It wasn't an issue until she broke with the Pope. Even IOTL she wasn't excommunicated until 1570.

That may be so, but the Catholics in England support Mary, Queen of Scots even though Rome accepts Liz's accession. If you have a faction in England (the Catholic nobles) and a claimant who isn't backing down (Mary, who in OTL didn't back down and in TTL is sort of dithering) that's a recipe for trouble. So how do you think she can possibly stabilize the situation in TTL as a self admitted bastard?

If she stays on, I wonder what this means for the Dutch Revolt which won't have English support. Or maybe even a small expdiarary force of 3,000 English cavalry go down to suppress it (small in numbers, big in terms of morale to the Hapsburgs)
 
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That may be so, but the Catholics in England support Mary, Queen of Scots even though Rome accepts Liz's accession. If you have a faction in England (the Catholic nobles) and a claimant who isn't backing down (Mary, who in OTL didn't back down and in TTL is sort of dithering) that's a recipe for trouble. So how do you think she can possibly stabilize the situation in TTL as a self admitted bastard?

You're putting the cart before the horse. Catholics didn't originally prefer Mary to Elizabeth. (Mary was a foreigner after all.). They did when it became clear that Elizabeth wanted to make the country Protestant while Mary would keep it Catholic.

If Elizabeth stays Catholic, the matter of her birth just gets swept under the rug. IOTL it was used as a justification to overthrow her by her opponents. Converting to Protestantism earned her a lot more opponents than staying Catholic would have. The Protestant minority would call her a bastard but they weren't likely to ever overthrow her.
 
Henry VII was the Lancaster claimant after literally everyone else was killed. His ancestor agreed not to let his descendants (such as the unborn Henry Tudor) with a certain woman claim the throne... except every other heir of John of Gaunt that didn't go through that was dead.

The House of Tudor was descended from the union between Catherine of Valois and Jasper Tudor. Henry VII had no Plantagenet blood in him, and so didn't have any legal right to inherit the throne.
 
Actually he did :p

He was the Great-Great Grandson of John of Gaunt, via one of his younger sons.

And that son signed a paper saying he and his descendants were not to inherit because of the Henry Bolingbroke line... which was dead by Henry VII's time.
 
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