When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, her counselors searched through her belongings and found a letter buried deep among them. The contents moved them to their core. It was a letter from Robert Dudley, her old love, who had died in 1588. On it, Elizabeth herself had scrawled a note: his last letter to her.
The woman who had ruled England for 44 years, who had built a public image of untouchable strength, had kept this single piece of her private heart until the very end. Elizabeth was born in 1533 into the greatest scandal of her time. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, had won King Henry VIII’s affection, triggering his monumental divorce from Katherine of Aragon and setting off the English Reformation. But Anne’s fall was as dramatic as her rise.
In 1536, when Elizabeth was barely two years old, Henry had his own queen executed. Just eleven days later, Jane Seymour moved into the palace, and within a year she gave Henry the male heir he had so desperately wanted: Edward. Elizabeth grew up in the shadows of this turbulent court. She was highly educated, translating her stepmother Katherine Parr’s religious works into Italian, Latin, and French by the time she was twelve.
By the end of her schooling, she was likely one of the best-educated women in England. When Henry died, Elizabeth came under the protection of Katherine Parr, who quickly remarried Thomas Seymour, the new king’s uncle. Seymour, a man of about forty, soon began behaving in disturbing ways toward the teenage princess. He crept into her bedroom in his nightgown and tickled her.
Katherine Parr reportedly participated in these behaviors, even holding Elizabeth down while Seymour tore her dress to pieces. Then Parr made a chilling discovery: she found Seymour and Elizabeth locked in an embrace. Whether out of jealousy or fear, Parr sent Elizabeth away. Not long after, Katherine Parr died in childbirth, and the widowed Seymour turned his attention back to the princess.
The Royal Council had seen enough. He was charged with treason for plotting to marry Elizabeth and executed on March 20, 1549. In 1553, Elizabeth’s brother Edward died, naming their cousin Jane Grey as his successor. Mary and Elizabeth fought for their birthright, and Jane Grey became the nine days’ queen before being defeated.
Mary rode into London to claim the throne. The sisters were deeply divided, not just by their mothers but by religion. Mary was a strict Catholic; Elizabeth was Protestant. Mary’s rule quickly became unpopular for its brutal persecution of Protestants and for burning heretics at the stake.
When a rebellion broke out in 1554, Mary suspected Elizabeth and threw her into the Tower of London for three terrifying months. Elizabeth’s supporters at court convinced Mary to spare her. Elizabeth was placed under house arrest in the countryside. In 1558, childless and unwell, Mary died, and Elizabeth took the throne.
Her advisers expected her to marry to secure an heir. She considered suitors until she was fifty but never took a husband. Her refusal to marry became a defining feature of her reign and earned her the title of the Virgin Queen. Her closest relationship was with Robert Dudley, her handsome childhood friend.
The problem was that Dudley was already married. His wife, Amy Robsart, was battling breast cancer, and everyone assumed she would not live long. In September 1560, she died after falling down a flight of stairs. The coroner ruled it an accident, but many at court suspected Dudley had arranged her death to marry Elizabeth.
Even with the road to the altar seemingly clear, Elizabeth’s counselors warned her that she would not marry a man of such little political standing. Elizabeth reluctantly backed away, though she remained intensely jealous of Dudley’s affections. In 1578, Dudley secretly married Elizabeth’s distant relative Lettice Knollys. When Elizabeth discovered the betrayal, she was enraged and banished Lettice from court, never acknowledging the marriage as long as she lived.
Elizabeth’s reign was a golden age of exploration and culture. Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe between 1577 and 1580, earning a knighthood. Literature flourished with William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe writing masterworks. Poets celebrated Elizabeth as Gloriana and Good Queen Bess.
But the real woman behind the image was not perfect. Her famous heavy makeup was made with lead and vinegar, damaging her skin and health. She had a notorious sweet tooth and a fear of dentists; her teeth yellowed and decayed so badly that foreign dignitaries sometimes could not understand her when she spoke. Elizabeth’s most dangerous enemy was also one of her closest relatives: her Catholic cousin, Mary Queen of Scots.
Mary posed a constant threat to Elizabeth’s throne and religion. For a time, Elizabeth supported Scottish rebels against Mary and even awkwardly offered Robert Dudley as a husband for her, but the plan failed. Eventually, Mary’s position collapsed, and Elizabeth imprisoned her. Mary spent nineteen years under Elizabeth’s guard until Elizabeth discovered she was inciting rebellion from her jail cell.
On February 8, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots met the axe. Elizabeth later claimed she had signed the death warrant without realizing her advisers would carry it out immediately, but many historians remain suspicious of this backtracking. Elizabeth was most famous for the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. After Francis Drake raided Spanish ships, King Philip II of Spain sent his fleet to invade England.
To everyone’s surprise, the great naval power of Spain was driven back by English fire ships and returned home in shambles. Elizabeth used the crisis to present herself as a warrior queen. Inspecting her troops on August 8, 1588, she wore a silver breastplate under a white dress and delivered one of the most famous speeches in English history: “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too. ” Yet the victory was largely a propaganda triumph; it depended heavily on Spanish mistakes.
The very next year, England sent a fleet of 150 ships to Spain and was defeated, with up to 15,000 men lost. Spain held onto its naval dominance. Elizabeth’s personal life remained complicated. When courting Francis, Duke of Anjou, she wore a frog-shaped earring he gave her.
But her most lasting relationship was with her kingdom. In a speech near the end of her life, she referred to “all my husbands, my good people. ”
Her later years were shaped by the aging queen’s vanity and misplaced trust. As her beauty faded, she favored whoever complimented her most.
One such favorite, Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, rose quickly at court. In 1599, he deserted his military post, and Elizabeth placed him under house arrest. In 1601, Essex plotted to kidnap the queen. The plot was so weak it had almost no supporters, but Elizabeth, finally facing her own misjudgment, had him beheaded.
A year later, a courtier noted that her delight was to sit in the dark, sometimes shedding tears to bewail Essex. Elizabeth’s last months were full of heartache. In the fall of 1602, many of her friends and loved ones died, leaving her depressed. She spent her final days lying motionless on cushions in melancholy.
Just before she died, she chose a successor, at least unofficially: James VI of Scotland, the son of her fallen cousin Mary Queen of Scots. On March 24, 1603, Elizabeth I passed away in the early hours of the morning at Richmond Palace. She was 69 years old. Her instructions for her body were strange.
Breaking with royal tradition, she insisted on not being embalmed. People whispered that she was guarding her secrets, but her ladies in waiting honored her wishes. When her belongings were searched, the letter from Robert Dudley, marked as his last letter to her, was found. The House of Tudor, which began in 1485 with Henry VII, ended with her.
Though she kept it quiet for political reasons, Elizabeth had loved her mother, Anne Boleyn, deeply. She quietly honored her family’s positions at court and always kept her mother’s portrait in a locket around her neck. After Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign and Queen Victoria’s 63 years, Elizabeth I remains the longest-reigning British queen among them, having held the throne for 44 years.