Elizabeth I Takes Throne: England Enters Its Golden Age

Mary I died at St. James's Palace, and England passed to her 25-year-old half-sister Elizabeth, a woman who had spent much of her youth under suspicion, imprisonment, and the constant threat of execution. The accession of Elizabeth I inaugurated a 45-year reign that would produce Shakespeare, defeat the Spanish Armada, establish England as a naval power, and give its name to an entire era of cultural flowering. Elizabeth's path to the throne was lethally precarious. She was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, who had been beheaded when Elizabeth was two. Declared illegitimate, she was restored to the line of succession but occupied a dangerous position throughout her siblings' reigns. Under Mary, a devout Catholic, Elizabeth was imprisoned in the Tower of London for two months on suspicion of involvement in a Protestant rebellion. She survived by carefully avoiding any commitment that could be used against her, a skill in calculated ambiguity that would define her reign. Her first challenge was religious. England had whipsawed between Protestantism under Edward VI and Catholicism under Mary. Elizabeth's settlement, enacted through the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity in 1559, established a moderate Protestantism that retained some Catholic ceremonies and vestments. The compromise satisfied neither ardent Protestants nor committed Catholics, but it prevented the religious civil wars that would devastate France for decades. Elizabeth also mastered the politics of marriage, or rather the politics of not marrying. She entertained proposals from Philip II of Spain, Archduke Charles of Austria, and Francis Duke of Anjou, among others, using the prospect of a match as a diplomatic tool without ever committing. Her refusal to marry and name an heir drove her counselors to desperation but kept potential factions from coalescing around a rival claimant.