Elizabethan revision resource (AQA GCSE)

Review of Elizabeth's life

Here are a few sources from Historians debating Elizabeth's successes and failures. (In the exam it is good to write a few historians as that can boost your grade)

Information in [.....] is my own notes to help understand the text and give examples.

(These examples of sources are taken from the A level workbook The Tudor century, 1485-1603. If you plan to take A level history, this is a must-have, as well as the AQA approved textbook)

Source A:

"Under Elizabeth, the nation regained self-confidence and sense of direction. At a time when the authority of the majority of her fellow monarchs was under threat or in decline, she upheld the interests of the Crown while not encroaching on those of her subjects, restored the coinage, and created a Crhuh which. for all its failing, came close to being truly national. While many European countries were being rent by civic war, insurrection and appalling acts of bloodshed, she predicted over a realm which (with the exception of her Irish dominions) was fundamentally stable and united...Besides this, Elizabeth was responsible for raising England's international standing, defying the most powerful nation in Christendom [Spain], and frustration Phillip II' attempts to overrun both England and France.."

Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I, 1991

Source B:

"Elizabeth's success owed much to luck -  and her peculiar combination of arrogance and charm, prudence and obstinacy, intelligence and prejudice. While absolutist to a degree when pressed, she also knew how to strike a patriotic note and enjoyed playing to a crowd [an example of this is her "Golden speech" (1601), were she wooed parliament to gain her way in the problem of monopolies]. Moreover, the general competence of her ministers and servants and their shared ideology gave the regime an internal coherence. On religious, social and economic issues, councillors were generally in agreement; major disputes were usually caused by foreign policy."

S Adams, Government and Politics, 1553-1625 in C Haigh (ed), The Cambridge Historical Encylopedia of Great Britain and Ireland, 1985.

Source C:

"Elizabeth died unloved and almost unlamented, and it was partly her own fault. She had aimed for popularity and political security by projecting herself as the ever-young and ever-beautiful Virgin mother of her people, bringing them peace and prosperity; she ended her days as an irascible old woman, presiding over war and failure abroad and poverty and factionalism at home. From 1558 to 1588, Elizabeth had successfully courted her politicians and entranced her people. She had made herself the focus of fervent devotion and earnest loyalty, the well-publicised source and guarantee of safety and international stability. But her reign had been thirty years of illusion followed by fifteen of disillusion."

C Haigh, Elizabeth I, 1988