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This book is a response to a demand for a history which is no less social than political, investigating what it meant to be a citizen of England living through the 1570s and 1580s. It examines the growing conviction of ‘Englishness’ in the sixteenth century, through the rapidly developing English language; the reinforcement of cultural nationalism as a result of the Protestant Reformation; the national and international situation of England at a time of acute national catastrophe; and through Queen Elizabeth I, the last of her line, who remained unmarried throughout her reign, refusing to even discuss the succession to her throne. The book explores the conviction among leading Elizabethans that they were citizens and subjects, also responsible for the safety of their commonwealth. The tensions between this conviction, born from a childhood spent in the Renaissance classics and in the subjection to the Old Testament of the English Bible, and the dynastic claims of the Tudor monarchy, are all explored at length. Studies of a number of writers who fixed the image of sixteenth-century England for some time to come; Foxe, Camden and other pioneers of the discovery of England are also included.
The visual images of Queen Elizabeth I displayed in contemporary portraits and perpetuated and developed in more recent media, such as film and television, make her one of the most familiar and popular of all British monarchs. This book is a collection of essays that examine the diversity of the queen's extensive iconographical repertoire, focusing on both visual and textual representations of Elizabeth, in portraiture, literature, contemporary sermons, speeches and alchemical treatises. It falls into three sections. The first part looks at the diverse range of religious and quasi-religious images that were employed by and about Elizabeth, such as the Prophetesse Deborah, the suggestive parallel with Joan of Arc, and finally Lady Alchymia, the female deity in alchemical treatises. When Queen Elizabeth I, the first female Protestant monarch, was enthroned in 1558, male poets, artists, theologians, and statesmen struggled to represent this new phenomenon. The second part turns to one of the major enterprises of the Elizabethan era, the attempt to colonise the New World, during which the eastern seaboard of America was renamed Virginia in celebration of the Virgin Queen. The last part focuses on the ways in which the classical world was plundered for modes of imaging and figuring the queen. Finally, the book summarises the enormously wide range of Elizabeth's iconographical repertoire of its appeal, and provides a fitting end to a book which ranges so widely across the allegorical personae of the queen.
Sir Christopher Hatton is one of the least well-understood of major Elizabethan politicians. He rose from a humble gentry background to become a leading courtly favourite of Elizabeth I, a councillor, Lord Chancellor of England and towards the end of his life one of the most powerful men in the country. Despite serving as a leading member of Elizabeth’s Protestant regime, however, he was deeply linked with English Catholics. He was a patron of numerous Catholics within his own family, his household and servants, his artistic and academic patronage and his links with powerful local gentry. In spite of the risk to his own position, he both protected many Catholics and encouraged them where possible towards outward conformity to the church. Simultaneously, he staunchly supported those within the Church of England who sought to repress puritanism. This book, the first major study of Hatton in over seventy-five years, provides a full account of his life and career. It looks at his rise to prominence at court and his role as a royal favourite, assessing his relationship with the Queen and the rewards of office. It addresses his role in the political debates of the mid-Elizabethan period, from the question of the Queen’s marriage to the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots and the war with Spain. It discusses his consistent efforts to steer the Church of England away from puritanism, and finally asks how a man so closely associated with Catholicism could operate within Elizabeth I’s Protestant government.
–8. 60 Roy Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Pimlico, 2003), pp. 121–2; see also Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Pimlico, 1999 ), and Helen Hackett, Virgin Mother, Maiden Queen: Elizabeth I and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995
pattern of subsequent manifestations as Diana, Cynthia, Gloriana, and the Virgin Mary. My analysis focuses on this gesture as a rhetorical and performative move. By examining this self-declared (albeit never inscribed) tombstone inscription in light of other statements made by Queen Elizabeth I throughout her life (as well as in conjunction with the contemporary discourse surrounding
youth and virginity, and, thereby, perpetual health, beauty, and honour. In Jonson’s satire this feminised opus – a process of ‘virginification’ – provides a measure both for the absurdity of the alchemical enterprise, and for the self-delusion to which he believes the Jacobean court has descended. Importantly, Jonson’s poetic opus invokes the memory of Queen Elizabeth I, who
environment of tolerance in England which followed the accession of Queen Elizabeth I (1558) and her ‘Religious Settlement’ of 1559. In Shakespeare’s England it was possible for a Copernican universe and a Catholic Purgatory to coexist, just as Elizabeth had shown it was possible for her Protestant and Catholic subjects to coexist without treason, without bloodshed, and most important, without surrendering
been a difficult choice, but in the current mood Ralegh was placed not amid the men of letters – Alexander Pope, Sir Thomas Gresham, Inigo Jones, John Milton, William Shakespeare, John Locke, Sir Isaac Newton, and Sir Francis Bacon – but rather with those famed for their actions in political and military service to their country: King Alfred, the Black Prince, Queen Elizabeth I, King William III, Sir Francis Drake, John Hampden, and Sir John Barnard. Ralegh was placed between King William III and Sir Francis Drake. George Lyttelton’s inscription read: ‘Sir Walter
This first chapter introduces Sir Philip Sidney’s contribution to the Elizabethan political imaginary, paying particular attention to his relationship, as a would-be court counsellor, with Queen Elizabeth. I begin to elucidate the particular contribution made by Sidney’s Arcadia to the beliefs and practices of Tudor political culture. The Old Arcadia , Sidney’s first attempt to negotiate his relationship with Elizabeth in the form of an extended prose work, his ‘Letter to Queen Elizabeth, Touching her Marriage with Monsieur’ and Astrophil and Stella form