Elizabeth I

Elizabeth I reigned over England and Ireland for more than four decades, the last monarch of the house of Tudor. Born at Greenwich in September 1533, she was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Her mother's execution in 1536 was followed by a statute declaring Elizabeth illegitimate, though the succession act of 1544 restored her place in line to the throne after Edward and Mary. She received an exceptional humanist education and was fluent in several languages.

Her position under her Catholic half-sister Mary I was precarious; suspected of complicity in Wyatt's rebellion, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1554 and then held under house arrest, though nothing was proved against her. On Mary's death in November 1558 Elizabeth succeeded peacefully. The religious settlement of 1559, enacted through the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, re-established a Protestant national church with the queen as supreme governor, a moderate framework that endured despite pressure from both Catholics and more radical reformers.

Elizabeth never married, despite prolonged negotiations with foreign suitors including Habsburg and French Valois princes, and the succession remained unsettled throughout her reign. The strongest hereditary claim belonged to her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, of the house of Stuart, a descendant of Henry VII through his daughter Margaret Tudor's marriage to James IV of Scotland. Mary fled to England in 1568 and was held in custody for nineteen years; after repeated Catholic plots in her name, she was executed in 1587 following the Babington conspiracy.

The later reign was dominated by war with Spain. Philip II, once the husband of Mary I, launched the Armada of 1588, which was repulsed by the English fleet and scattered by storms; the Anglo-Spanish war continued at sea and in the Netherlands until after Elizabeth's death. Her government, served by ministers such as William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and Francis Walsingham, also faced prolonged rebellion in Ireland and economic strain in the 1590s. The era nevertheless saw a notable flowering of English literature and overseas enterprise. Elizabeth died at Richmond on 24 March 1603 and was succeeded, by peaceful arrangement, by Mary Stuart's son James VI of Scotland, uniting the English and Scottish crowns in the house of Stuart.