However, this source cannot be said to be completely accurate as to the majority, or even some of the views of Puritans, as it is only one account of one puritan’s beliefs and therefore is only useful for showing what some of the attitudes of Puritans to the Elizabethan church, though it is useful in showing that not all protestants were completely happy with Elizabeth’s new church settlement, showing that not even all the protestant were on her side.
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Is the “Rainbow portrait” an accurate picture of the Queen?
I do not think that this would have been an accurate portrait of the Queen. The portraits of Elizabeth were not made to tell the truth – they were made to show Elizabeth in as nice a manner as possible, and this portrait is no exception. To that extent, they are unreliable in showing what she looked like. The portraits of Elizabeth show what she wanted to look like in her subjects’ eyes – a strong, powerful, young woman fully capable of ruling England. This was only a wistful fantasy. As Elizabeth got older her “young” portraits became more and more absurd and false. Indeed, there is one portrait of the Queen, which shows her as an old, weaker person – probably painted after she died. There is only one way to obtain an image of Elizabeth; by reading written records. These are usually created by upstanding community members, and a simple description of Elizabeth whilst she proceeded past a town etc. would not be biased.
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In her portraits, Elizabeth wanted to show a very “strong” personality – England at that time was very much a man’s world, and the Queen needed to show she was not weak and “second class” (as most women were). She needed to show herself like a man, as it were, to keep the men from turning her off the throne. If she portrayed herself with any weaknesses, she would have had serious problems. She also wanted to show herself as being regal and dignified, so better than common peasants. She wore expensive, extravagant costumes and placed crowns and jewels in the background to show to the English just how rich she really was, and made her skin pale to show she didn’t need to work. She also tried to control the royal portraits that circulated widely in England and abroad, and her appearances in public were dazzling displays of wealth and magnificence.
Elizabeth wanted to be painted younger than she really was. Age was a sign of weakness, and she needed to be seen strong and fit. If a painter couldn’t do so, he both wouldn’t be paid and would have his work destroyed. Finally, Elizabeth always had a set pose for portraits – showing her left side. There was no point to this, as the smallpox from earlier in her life had not left her severely blemished. However, she merely considered it her “better side”.
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During the reign of Elizabeth I, many people were encouraged to begin to travel the world and explore areas that were previously undiscovered.
There were a number of explorers from parts of Spain and Portugal who had discovered large areas of South America. This was mainly due to the encouragement they received from people like Price Henry of Portugal. He believed that the people of Portugal should make use of the new navigational instruments and new, faster ships to discover new lands, which could bring wealth to the country.
After the collapse of the cloth trade England was forced to look for new means of wealth. This resulted in merchants having to find new markets for their goods and this inevitably involved them travelling to new parts of the world.
There were a number of recognised English explorers, the best known of these were; John Hawkins, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. John Hawkins was known for slave trading. On a number of his voyages, he would capture people from West Africa, store them on board his ships, sail to Spanish settlements in South America and sell them as slaves. This was just the start of Hawkins encroachment on Spanish trading, which finally resulted in hostilities from Spanish traders and the Spanish Navy.
Even though Hawkins did not make huge sums of money, for the crown, from his exploits his activities were still encouraged by Queen Elizabeth as his trading with the new Spanish colonies was taking some of the wealth from the Spanish empire which would have been important to the English as it would be killing two birds with one stone, getting money from trading and parting the Spanish with their wealth, the thing that made the Spanish empire so powerful at this time.
Francis Drake went a step further that Hawkins when making voyages to the Spanish colonies. From 1577 to 1580 he made voyages to attack Spanish colonies and from these attacks he captured huge quantities of gold, silver and jewels. These actions would have pleased Queen Elizabeth, although she may not have been able to show that publicly, because she would have been able to take a large cut from the sale of the riches on board Drake’s ship and it was slowing the progress of the Spanish colonies, taking wealth away from them and ultimately challenging their dominance as the world super-power of that time.
Walter Raleigh set sail from South America in the late sixteenth century. He was hoping to find a legendary city of gold (El Dorado), this shows that by this time the prerogatives of the English explorers was to find extraordinary amounts of precious metals, remove them from the Spanish colonies and sell them, becoming extremely wealthy in the process. So from this it could be said that the English “explorers” were just bandits who plundered the new Spanish colonies.
However, this would have still been seen as an achievement for England, as was coming out of an economic decline (from the collapse of the cloth trade) and was simultaneously removing wealth and ultimately power from the Spanish.
The English explorers did not find much new land, they seemed to be more intent of establishing trade with the local people of places such as Moscow, Turkey, the far east and countries in the Mediterranean, and if they couldn’t do that they would take battleships to steal items such as gold, silver and tobacco.
I think that this shows that the Elizabethan Voyages of Discovery achieved a great deal because the country not only became extremely wealthy from trading; it established England as a powerful, seafaring nation that could rival the likes of Spain and Portugal.
These numerous voyages to parts of South America, Africa and the far East also had a positive effect of the skills of the English sailors in fighting at sea, which increased the skill and credibility of the English Navy, making England even more powerful, and more of a threat to it rival Spain.
However, the underlying reason for most of these voyages was still wealth. Many wealth people invested in the voyages to capture large quantities of gold and silver and became very wealthy, whilst the majority of England’s population remained relatively poor.
There were also a number of voyages that were horrifically unsuccessful. England, attempting to follow in the footsteps of the Spanish attempted to establish several colonies in parts of the America’s, the most documented being the colony called ‘Virginia’ which was founded in what is now part of the United States of America. This failed like the rest, for a verity of reasons, making this a prime example of one of the cases where the Elizabethan Voyages of Discovery achieved nothing.
Despite this catastrophic failure, I think that The Elizabethan Voyages of Discovery achieved a great deal as they increased the overall power of the Navy, which helped England to victory against the Spanish Armada and combined with the wealth gained from the ‘trading’ with other parts of the world made England the greatest sea-power in the world.
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In 1558 Elizabeth I came to the throne of England but even before the beginning of her rein she had many problems, the first of which was that because of her move toward Protestantism, she faced a serious threat from Mary Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart).
From very early on in Elizabeth life she faced enormous challenges that she would need to overcome in order to rule England.
Among other uncertainties of Elizabeth’s early life, was the fact that her chances to succeeding the throne seemed slight over her half-brother, Edward, who was born in 1537. She would be third in line between Edward and her half-sister, Mary. It was, perhaps, by chance that Elizabeth ascended to the throne of England. Edward reigned only a short five years after the death of Henry VIII before he succumbed to tuberculosis.
Mary assumed power in 1553 with the intentional plan to reverse the religious storm and restore the Catholic Church to full religious authority of England. Mary’s short reign of 5 years was a complete failure. The popular notion that England might become a mere colony of Spain gave rise to revolt. Mary suffered huge military defeats at the hand of France and left the country in turmoil for Elizabeth who would assume the throne in 1558 after Mary was overthrown.
The Catholic monarchs of Europe and her own Catholic subjects considered Elizabeth illegitimate and felt that Mary was the lawful queen of England, especially as she was Roman Catholic. She became the focus of many conspiracies and Elizabeth had her imprisoned. She was held captive for many years until Elizabeth ordered to have her executed in 1587, after her Secretary of State, Sir Francis Walsingham discovered the Babington Conspiracy in 1586, a plot to have Elizabeth assassinated and Mary put on the throne.
Elizabeth had another problem to face throughout her reign. Her single status often raised political concern. People wanted her to marry a strong man for guidance and so there would be an heir to the throne. Parliament even petitioned her several times to marry, but she refused replying that she intended to live and die a virgin. That she did and she became known as “the Virgin Queen”. However, she did have a number of suitors, many of whom she courted when it was her diplomatic advantage to do so. Overcoming these problems of the economy, religion, war, and public pressures, Elizabeth led England into a golden age known as the Elizabethan era. This is an age celebrated for its theater, music, literature, and natural sciences. It was also a time of expanded sea power, rising prosperity, religious tolerance, and rapid industrial growth.
Elizabeth came to the throne at a time of crisis in leadership for England. She “inherited a tattered realm: dissention between Catholics and Protestants tore at the very foundation of society; the royal treasury had been bled dry by Mary and her advisors, Mary’s loss of Calais left England with no continental possessions for the first time since the arrival of the Normans in 1066 and many doubted Elizabeth’s claim to the throne”.
Continental pressures added to the complex England that Elizabeth needed to salvage. France had a substantial amount of power already in Scotland and Spain posed an incredible threat to the security of England. How was Elizabeth to change the role of England in the world and lead the nation through this time of turmoil into a new age of progress and innovation?
Luckily, Elizabeth came to the throne as an already intelligent, well educated, and determined woman. She was fluent in six languages and inherited the intelligence, determination, and shrewdness of her parents. Elizabeth used her wisdom and strong will to overcome the challenges that stood in her way of uniting England under strong rule of the British monarchy. Her first issue at hand was the elimination of religious unrest. During her reign Elizabeth achieved a compromise between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism. Her constituents accepted this compromise as the basis of their faith. The settlement between the two dominant religions saved England from religious wars like those in France during the second half of the 16th century.
