Elizabeth I: Evil or Genius?

Elizabeth I is often celebrated as one of the greatest English monarchs - but should she be? From her commanding portraits and grand speeches to her brutal suppression of dissent and controversial decisions, we explore whether Elizabeth’s legacy is one of power and stability or one marked by bloodshed and negligence. Renowned historian Anna Whitelock joins us to delve into the duality of Elizabeth’s reign. Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore and Matthew Wilson. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on. You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Dan Snow?

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• 1:59Dan Snow?

  Hi everybody, welcome to the podcast. Elizabeth I, she regularly tops those polls as the greatest English monarch, but should she be there? She projected power and beauty through grand speeches and art, and she was charismatic, and she obviously had a bit of a cool head, but underneath all that, she was unafraid to silence and suppress and oppress and spill a lot of blood to protect her crown and expand her realm. Was that just what was required for a dangerous age? Or was she a cold and calculating monarch who deepened the divisions of that time and created a whole host of new ones?

• 2:43Dan Snow?

  What should we think about Elizabeth I? It's such a difficult one. And here to help us get into the murky details is Anna Whiteknock, historian, author and professor of the history of monarchy at City, University of London. Let's get into it.

• 3:04Dan Snow?

  Anna Whiteknock, good to see you.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Dan Snow, good to see you.

• 3:07Dan Snow?

  Let's just cut to the chase here. Queen Elizabeth, Elizabeth Tudor, overrated.

• 3:11Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 3:12Dan Snow?

  Really?

• 3:13Speaker 05

  I think so, I know, I can hear.

• 3:15Dan Snow?

  Careful you say in this town.

• 3:16Speaker 05

  I know Helen Caster's on text, speed dial, straight away. I think so, I just want to suggest for a second that the whole idea of Elizabeth I, one of the greatest Britons, is more style over substance. I give her that she was the queen of spin.

• 3:34Dan Snow?

  Well, those portraits.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  The portraits.

• 3:37Dan Snow?

  Oh, the Amada portrait, I'd follow that woman into battle.

• 3:40Speaker 05

  Oh my goodness, the Amada portrait is the most incredible thing.

• 3:44Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 3:45Speaker 05

  So, tell me why you like the Amada portrait?

• 3:47Dan Snow?

  Because she's got a hand on the globe.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:50Dan Snow?

  There's an enemy fleet foundering in the background, she looks fabulous, I mean, she just looks like summoning charge.

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, but have you noticed, I mean, I'm not surprised that you talk about the naval formations, but have you not noticed the bow, the strategically placed bow at her groin?

• 4:07Dan Snow?

  Ooh.

• 4:08Speaker 05

  This is the per- oh my goodness, it's probably good that you've said you didn't notice, and you were more fixated on the boats behind. I mean, this is the most amazing piece of spin. So, one of the things when we think about Elizabeth I, we think of, oh, the Virgin Queen. And that Armada portrait is the most incredible thing because it's after the Armada. So the Armada is of course fifteen eighty eight, it's the end of her reign. Elizabeth is in her fifties. She is basically a single unmarried, postmenopausal queen. It's not a good look. It's not a good look in the sense of what is the future? It's a dead end. There is no Tudor succession. So everybody's beginning to think, oh dear, this isn't a great thing.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  The prospect of her marrying is now not really a positive one because she's too old to have children anyway. And so what happens is that in that image, Elizabeth's body, which has been massively an issue for the whole of her reign. Because Catholics have basically said, of course, she was the daughter of Anne Boleyn. She's the kind of little whore of Europe. There's all this slander about Elizabeth, you know, famously, of course, with Robert Dudley. But with a whole load of other people, people saying that she wasn't a virgin, absolutely not the virgin queen. That was the kind of scurrilous rumours that ambassadors would circulate around Europe. So what does Elizabeth do?

• 5:32Speaker 05

  She makes a virtue of being basically this postmenopausal virgin queen by saying, just like England's coastline was impenetrable. So is the body of the queen. And so the strategically paced bow is to kind of symbolically represent her virginity. That she is chaste, that she's married to the realm. And this is a great sense of her kind of impenetrability and stability. And so she brings those two ideas together and it becomes this great currency. The fact that she's suddenly the virgin queen, which of course is a nonsense because she may well have been still a virgin. But the idea that she was somehow.

• 6:15Dan Snow?

  That's a good thing.

• 6:15Speaker 05

  Exactly, that it was a good thing was crazy.

• 6:17Dan Snow?

  But no foreign fleet's going to sail up the Thames.

• 6:20Speaker 05

  Well, exactly. But so, I mean, one of the things that I compare very often, Henry VIII, the big Holbein picture, prominent codpiece.

• 6:27Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 6:28Speaker 05

  Because of course virility, sexual potency, political power.

• 6:32Speaker 05

  All are good, it all goes together. For women, chastity was necessary, but also at the time, people believed that women were more sexually voracious than men. So you kind of needed to get married pretty quick. So chastity was not the greatest thing in the world. So here was Elizabeth making a virtue in the most direct way in that portrait. And so in a way, that represents this being a mistress of spin, but covering up, of course, her failure to marry, her failure to produce an heir and ensure a smooth succession.

• 7:05Dan Snow?

  Okay, we're going to come to those failures in a sec, but let's start with the good things, because this is what most people think when they think about Elizabeth. She regularly tops the poll for best English or British monarch. Why do people think that? You tell me. So yes, there's the spin. There is these baby steps towards something we might now call the British Empire. Buccaneers going out, Francis Drake circumnavigates the world. First bits of territory are being claimed, like weirdly in Northern Canada, off the southern coast of South America, Tierra del Fuego, California, weirdly briefly claimed. Anyway, so that's all beginning in this period. And then a bit of William Shakespeare as well. Like, why do people think Elizabeth's so great?

• 7:40Speaker 05

  Partly she lives a long time.

• 7:42Dan Snow?

  That helps. That really helps.

• 7:43Speaker 05

  That really helps. And if we think about some of the most significant English monarchs, there's quite a few women up there. Victoria.

• 7:51Dan Snow?

  Because they live longer.

• 7:51Speaker 05

  Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth II. They look after themselves. You see?

• 7:54Dan Snow?

  Come on, lads. Go to the doctor.

• 7:56Speaker 05

  Exactly. So they live for longer. So that really does help. I mean, if you look at some of the early periods of Elizabeth's reign, the sort of disaster in her first French expedition, for example, foreign policy disaster, that's quite bad. But when you look at her foreign policy across the whole reign, and particularly, of course, with the Spanish Armada, the small failures get overshadowed. So I think she's seen as significant because she was a woman, and she is seen as, in a way, exceeded expectation of being a woman in a man's world. Of course, she wasn't the first crowned Queen of England.

• 8:32Dan Snow?

  That's right.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Plug, as you would expect.

• 8:34Dan Snow?

  Exister.

• 8:35Speaker 05

  For Mary, Mary the first Queen of England. But Elizabeth succeeds as a woman. She's a kind of successful woman in a man's world.

• 8:43Dan Snow?

  And she does a long time.

• 8:44Speaker 05

  Long time.

• 8:44Dan Snow?

  So it's very choppy. Her brother, Edward VI, short, scary, little civil war, mini civil war at the end. Again, Mary, very short, religious repression. But it's weird, isn't it, how we do grade quite highly for just being around a long time? Even if they're quite passive, at least you don't get succession disputes, there's no major crises, as long as they're just there, sitting.

• 9:05Speaker 05

  Exactly. And it's also that question about to what extent is a monarch responsible for the period which defines them. So, you know, how much of Elizabeth is responsible for the flourishing of Elizabethan age? So we talk about Elizabeth being a patron of the arts, or the sort of flourishing of individuals like Christopher Marlowe and Shakespeare, and then you think about Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh and some of the overseas exploration. And sure, you know, there was a kind of nod and some support. How much of all of these endeavours were actually down to?

• 9:32Dan Snow?

  Yeah, there was a lot of technology.

• 9:33Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 9:34Dan Snow?

  There was a lot of change. I don't want to sound like a Marxist, but there's a lot going on under the old.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  Totally. And of course, a lot of stuff happens over the period of her, what, 45 year reign. A lot of stuff's going to happen. And so similarly to the reign of Elizabeth II, I mean, huge transformation. And so she is associated with some of that.

• 9:51Dan Snow?

  So she provides a bit of stability.

• 9:52Speaker 05

  Yeah. And that's no small deal, of course, because, as you said, there's been what used to be called, back in the day, back in the 1970s, the mid Tudor crisis. Very infamous question on A level papers, was there a mid Tudor crisis? No, there wasn't a mid Tudor crisis, because ultimately the Tudors endured. There was lots of change.

• 10:11Dan Snow?

  A bit rocky.

• 10:12Speaker 05

  It was rocky with a boy king and then a woman. But Elizabeth, yes, she established his stability.

• 10:17Dan Snow?

  What about Parliament? Does she deserve any credit there? You know, Cromwell and her dad had sort of pushed statutes through Parliament. Is the position of Parliament in our weird English constitution, does she encourage that? Does she work quite collegiately?

• 10:29Speaker 05

  I think she does. I mean, this is where Elizabeth as a political operator becomes quite interesting, because I think Helen Castor, of whom I'm a great fan of, I know she's spoken to you about Elizabeth and her brilliant biography, and she would talk about Elizabeth as deliberately prevaricating at times, but she being a real operator and a strategist and not giving away too much. And I think there was definitely a sense of that. She did rely heavily on William Cecil, for example. She did step back at certain times. She wasn't as interventionist in Parliament and pushing things through, perhaps, as her father had been. And similarly, of course, she's associated with a relative

• 11:08Speaker 05

  Period of religious peace relatively. She tried to create a middle way whereby as many Catholics and Protestants could feel at home within the English church. So she tried to be as liberal as possible. She tried to really stretch the envelope of sort of a definition of loyalty. And in that sense, created stability for a time. And as you say, there was also beginnings of exploration, but there was also war with Spain.

• 11:40Dan Snow?

  We're gonna come to the bad stuff in a second.

• 11:41Speaker 05

  See, I want to talk about the bad stuff.

• 11:43Dan Snow?

  I know, I know, we're gonna come to that. So any other good stuff?

• 11:45Speaker 05

  So yeah, patron of the arts, cultural flourishing. Lots of that came from her wanting to have a court that had a lively cultural scene, for want of a better term. She had these thrusting men around her who were ambitious. Elizabeth couldn't be, as a female monarch, she couldn't lead an army into battle, but she did let some of these men do their thing, often not following her orders. But by letting them do their thing, we do see circumnavigation of the globe and the establishment or the attempt to establish territories in different places. I suppose the Spanish Armada. And although we can as historians now go, yeah, but actually, how much did she do?

• 12:27Speaker 05

  There is no contemporary source that describes the speech.

• 12:31Dan Snow?

  Is there not?

• 12:32Speaker 05

  No, I know. So of course, the famous speech, I have the heart.

• 12:35Dan Snow?

  At Tilbury, yeah, which we know, even if it did happen, happened after the Spanish Armada had already been defeated and we're sailing up the North Sea.

• 12:41Speaker 05

  So Elizabeth rocking up potentially in her armour. Again, it was style over substance because actually the armada wasn't anywhere coming near, but this speech was certainly attributed to her, even though the first source of the speech isn't until 1623.

• 12:57Dan Snow?

  Okay.

• 12:58Speaker 05

  So we don't know if she said it, but certainly she's been celebrated for it.

• 13:02Dan Snow?

  Yeah. But the trouble though, Anna, is the problem with leadership is a lot of it is about style, isn't it? That's the weird thing about it, is legacy. Does a lot come down to just vibe, the vibe you create, doesn't it?

• 13:14Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, yeah, and I think this is the question. I mean, was it a kind of intentional style of being quite elusive at times? I mean, letting factions be created and sort of play themselves out and staying above them.

• 13:28Dan Snow?

  Outliving them.

• 13:29Speaker 05

  Outliving them. Was she very much a skillful political operator? Was she lucky by virtue of the fact that actually she lived a long time? And therefore some of the failures were kind of diluted. I mean, I would think that ultimately, you know, her reign is defined as this moment of, well, nowadays where English nationalism is seen to kind of flourish and be cemented in the popular imagination. And so I think that's why we have this kind of amazing image of her, Gloriana. And of course, films about the Spanish Armada were screened during the Second World War. I mean, it's seen as this

• 14:11Speaker 05

  moment where you can rally England when you think of the Spanish Armada. Come on, everybody. And so she will always have that. And I think that symbol that she becomes of English nationalism covers a multitude of sins.

• 14:26Dan Snow?

  And you say she's surrounded by men, but there's something quite interesting about English government at this point. Like there was, although it's far from being modern in any sense, and it was often catastrophic, is there something about the building of the Queen's ships, the dockyard? She's carrying on her dad Henry's work. She's obviously promoting decent people into these kind of beginnings, these bureaucratic positions, who are doing decent work and helping to prepare a navy, for example, that will be able to fend off the Spanish Armada?

• 14:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think that is true. And of course, she also has the challenge of having to deal with a lot of male egos. And a lot of male egos of people who, for them, it's just about going and defeating the Spanish and piracy, getting treasure, making money from the New World. And she's having to manage these men.

• 15:12Dan Snow?

  Yeah, the West Country lads are like, we can go and steal gold from New World. This is great. Meanwhile, all the sheep farmers in Lincolnshire and Norfolk, like, you've destroyed our entire industry. Because now we can't sell our wool into Europe. So she's balancing that constantly.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think not wanting to be converted to Elizabeth as one of the greatest Brins. That is certainly true. I mean, people think about Margaret Thatcher having to deal with a sort of largely male cabinet. How did she manage? Think about Elizabeth. Think about a Privy Council, a Parliament full of men who undoubtedly felt they could do a better job than her, who would have been jockeying for position, who thought, come on, come on, lads, we need to go and take it to the Spanish. We want war. And of course, she prevaricated. When we think of the Low Countries, you know, she prevaricated until

• 16:03Speaker 05

  1584, when she finally decided that she would send an army in support of the Protestant rebels there. And people have been champing at the bit for years. So the fact that she, I suppose, wasn't deposed, wasn't toppled, and actually managed to balance these egos and keep Parliament. I mean, of course, we see what happens to Parliament during the reign of James and then Charles. Keeping Parliament relatively in check. That's not to say that they don't endlessly petition her to marry. But ultimately, I mean, her actions aren't fundamentally circumscribed by Parliament.

• 16:41Dan Snow?

  This is Dan Snow's History here. More after this.

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• 17:33Dan Snow?

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• 19:35Speaker 06

  After civil war, regicide, and Cromwell's Republic, the monarchy returned. But Britain would never be the same.

• 19:45Speaker 05

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• 20:14Dan Snow?

  Let's get into it. Let's give the other side of this, say why she does not deserve to be thought of as one of the greatest monarchs in this island's history. Shall we start with religion? Because that's the bit everyone forgets. Well, let's start with religion and then go on to Ireland, the two are obviously linked. So she is maiming and torturing and killing as many people as her big sister, right, Mary?

• 20:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. So Mary, Bloody Mary, killed 287 men, women and children. We all know the stories. We all know from the John Foxes Book of Martyrs. Elizabeth, we just don't really think about it, but absolutely hung, drawn and quartered many, many Catholics. Brutal murders of Catholic priests and so on. And yet often really overlooked. I mean, I remember doing the Tudors for A level and even at that age thinking, oh, Elizabeth, you know, this just feels entirely bizarre that that's written out of the narrative.

• 21:06Dan Snow?

  Sanctions, use of torture.

• 21:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, but the point of course for Elizabeth is that after 1570 with the excommunication from the Pope and then with the Bond of Association in 1584, the changes that Catholics become traitors.

• 21:23Dan Snow?

  Okay, so the Pope excommunicates her and said, this person is beyond, you can kill her and not suffer any consequences.

• 21:29Speaker 05

  Exactly. She's an infidel, she's a heretic, et cetera.

• 21:32Dan Snow?

  And the bond?

• 21:33Speaker 05

  The Bond of Association is where people were called upon to sign it and basically say that they would not support, well, particularly Mary, Queen of Scots was in mind, but anybody to act against the life of the Queen. And so at that point Catholics became traitors. So it wasn't simply them being religious opposition and religious fanatics, but they were seen as traitors and hence were hung, drawn and quartered as traitors.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  So for Mary, it was about purging souls and burning the souls of Protestants. For Elizabeth, it was about killing traitors. But I mean, in both senses, it was brutal. I mean, to be honest, I don't think you can, I mean, controversial position, but I'm not sure you can hold those killings against either Mary or Elizabeth. The ferocity of the burnings under Mary, fair enough, it was only over a number, you know, three years or so. But actually, this was the accepted form of punishment for heresy, burning was. And being hung, drawn and quartered was the accepted punishment for treason. So that was the currency of the day. So I think we have to be careful when we're evaluating the reins by what our terms of reference are.

• 22:44Dan Snow?

  Sure, but we're just saying that it's not all rosy.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  Oh, it's definitely not all rosy.

• 22:48Dan Snow?

  She did not bring religious harmony to the kingdom.

• 22:50Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 22:50Dan Snow?

  That everyone could be part of. And then let's go to Ireland, which when I talk to Irish colleagues, I mean, they're like, what you Brits are obsessed with Elizabeth. And we remember her as one of the worst, in a pretty strong field, one of the worst English leaders out there.

• 23:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, brutal actions in Ireland. She attempts a colonisation. The brutality that was inflicted upon the native Irish. I know you've talked to a number of Irish historians. I mean, they definitely see the seeds of future conflict as being established and sown during Elizabeth's reign. And not only is there this brutal actions against the Irish stirred up by the English. I mean, there was a sense of let's stir them up so that we can then act against them. But also, of course, there was the Nine Years' War between England and Ireland, which was a huge drain in resources, a very large English army.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  I mean, that's where an English army was sent abroad. It was sent to Ireland. And again, real repression, brutality. And why? The answer to that was in part that Ireland was seen as a springboard potentially for the Spanish. And the Spanish were meddling in Ireland. And so Elizabeth couldn't afford not to. Act in Ireland. But yeah, I mean, the Irish would say both Elizabeth and then, of course, James, who also attempted a colonisation, a plantation of Ulster. Really, the brutality and the the degree to which they attempted to cleanse. I mean, it was an ethnic cleansing of a sort, has sowed the seeds, yeah, for what followed in the centuries to come,

• 24:33Speaker 05

  often overlooked in Elizabeth's reign.

• 24:35Dan Snow?

  And the plantation of Ulster, we should say Ulster, the northern part of, I'm now much of it in Northern Ireland, still part of the UK, and the plantation is just literally taking people, taking settlers from England, Scotland, and replacing native Irish people with those settlers and

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 24:49Dan Snow?

  taking land, throwing people off, enormous hardship and starvation. Huge scale violence as well, with little quarter given often.

• 24:57Speaker 05

  Exactly. And part of the reason I think that Elizabeth has kind of not been condemned for that is that it's taken a long time, when we think of studying Tudor history, to actually bring in both Scotland and Ireland. I mean, even back in the day when I was doing my A levels, it was really about England and then Ireland was a bit of a headache and Scotland too. It was very much peripheral to it. And people were like, is it English? Is it British? And it was just always a little bit of a mess. And so in many ways, it's only relatively recently that we've understood that Tudor history and the reigns of the Tudor monarchs needs to be understood by looking at relations with Ireland and Scotland too. And I think by looking at them in the round, we do get a rather different view of them.

• 25:43Dan Snow?

  Right. So we've got that. We probably should mention the traffic in enslaved people as well, because there is a little bit of that under Henry VIII, but England starts to get involved more heavily in trading enslaved Africans in this period as well.

• 25:56Speaker 05

  Exactly. John Hawkins, slave trader in the 1560s, I mean, Elizabeth sponsors and supports him. Essentially, he's trading African slaves. So yeah, I mean, the beginning of the slave trade can in part be attributed to Elizabeth, who has actually an African in her household.

• 26:14Dan Snow?

  Also, speaking of Hawkins, her relationship with those maritime Which people say, oh, she was a secret investor and it was great. I mean, she was deeply duplicitous, wasn't she? She sent Francis Drake. She got one of her subordinates to give him permission to go around the world, would not give him an official letter. So if he had been captured by the Spanish, she would have been hanged as a pirate or worse. He could not say, I'm here on the Queen's orders. So deeply double dealing. And then also she would sort of send them orders and then countermand them constantly. And there was this game of cat and mouse about trying to sail out of Plymouth before the Queen could send orders, refusing to let them. I mean, it is quite chaotic.

• 26:48Speaker 05

  That is so interesting. And is this Elizabeth being this amazing politician that is literally trying to make both decisions at the same time? And of course, we see this famously when she's under pressure to sign the death warrant of Mary, Queen of Scots and having prevaricated for years, she eventually signs it. And then literally as the guy is leaving, the messenger carrying it, she basically calls him back and it's exactly the same thing. So when we say, oh, Elizabeth and exploration, and we think of some of these great military men. Did Elizabeth support them? Can Elizabeth be credited with that exploration? As you described, it was lucky that more harm didn't come to them. It could have been a very bloody end.

• 27:27Dan Snow?

  It could have been for many of them. So the Spanish Armada, people will obviously know all about. She interfered constantly with Drake's and Drake used to get furious and Howard furious with the sort of preparations that were made. They carried out an attack on Spain the year before. Elizabeth tried to countermand that after it sailed. So you're perhaps trying to have it both ways. But chillingly, her treatment of the Spanish Armada sailors, the veterans, after that campaign, she let them just die on the quayside in the wars. I mean, it was terrible. They starved to death, disease. I mean, it was absolutely appalling treatment.

• 27:59Speaker 05

  I love how impassioned you are.

• 28:00Dan Snow?

  Yeah, I'm still upset about that.

• 28:01Speaker 05

  I can see you're still upset about that. I can see you channeling your inner Drake.

• 28:04Dan Snow?

  But also I find it difficult to talk about Elizabeth because I just think she is a person of such extraordinary contrast, maybe because of the way I was brought up to think about her and then what you.

• 28:12Speaker 05

  But do you think she's a greatest Brit? I mean, you have a real sense of.

• 28:15Dan Snow?

  Well, I think I've got so old now and so messed up that I've got a problem with greatness anyway. Like what is, I don't even know.

• 28:20Speaker 05

  What is greatness?

• 28:20Dan Snow?

  What is greatness? I don't know.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  But also, I mean, for you, your whole, I was going to say affiliation with Drake, would you say? Association with him. You feel that really quite passionately. And also the treatment, as you say, of the Armada veterans.

• 28:36Dan Snow?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  Which is such a disconnect from how we think of Elizabeth in terms of being the great triumph of the Spanish Armada. And of course, all the attempt afterwards to take it to the Spanish.

• 28:45Dan Snow?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 28:46Speaker 05

  Disaster.

• 28:46Dan Snow?

  Absolute disaster. Doesn't send a siege train with Drake and Norris, but now we're getting to the weeds there. But then you find yourself, because there's something about the longevity of the reign and the sort of reasonable domestic stability that does keep you coming back from the English, narrowly English point of view, it's a successful reign, right?

• 29:03Speaker 05

  Well, this is where I'm going to sort of throw my, what I think is my kind of ace card. The succession.

• 29:09Dan Snow?

  Yes, you're right. She messes it up.

• 29:10Speaker 05

  I mean, she doesn't even try. She doesn't even try.

• 29:14Dan Snow?

  And we should come to, it's one of the first duties.

• 29:16Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 29:17Dan Snow?

  Of a monarch in a hereditary system to ensure succession.

• 29:21Speaker 05

  Everybody knows that. That is the thing you have to, Elizabeth the second knew that. Think about all of those images and bits of footage in the last years of her reign, whether it was like stirring the Christmas pudding with Prince Charles and Prince George, the balcony shot at the end of the Jubilee where all her heirs were there. Or the portrait where brilliantly she's got her handbag, almost as an exclamation mark, where she's got the generations of Charles and William and George. She knew that. It was all about the succession. And of course, that was Elizabeth the second when it doesn't really matter. Rewind to Elizabeth the first, it matters. The monarch is the focus of all political power.

• 30:01Speaker 05

  The idea as a monarch that you wouldn't preserve the succession and pass on not only your dynasty, but also the sense of security of the realm is like massively negligent.

• 30:13Dan Snow?

  And so many wars in this period caused by succession crises. I mean.

• 30:16Speaker 05

  Totally. Wars of the Roses. I mean, succession crises all over Europe. I mean, it doesn't get much bigger than this. Failing to ensure the country's security. I mean, it's the number one thing. And so, you know, this isn't just, oh, Elizabeth doesn't get round to writing a will at the end of a reign. This is dynastic insecurity that is absolutely shot through her reign. She refuses to marry.

• 30:40Speaker 05

  And dilly dallys around that. Now you can say, yes, but there wasn't any wine candidate that all the council got behind. True. Wouldn't have caused faction at home, wouldn't have caused potentially instability abroad. Potentially, yes, but Mary the first had had to deal with this. She'd married Philip of Spain and so on. She'd tried to have an heir. Desperate failure, as it turned out, but Elizabeth didn't even try. And of course, she then didn't even name an heir at the end. So there was this sense of what is going on? And although people will go, yeah, but she knew about the correspondence that was going on between James.

• 31:18Dan Snow?

  Right, so she's got cousin James VI of Scotland.

• 31:20Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 31:21Dan Snow?

  A distant-ish cousin. Senior politicians at the English court are sort of writing to him going, yeah, don't worry, you're the guy and we'll make it all happen. So people have said, well, she turned a blind eye to that.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  Well, people are saying, but then at the same time, you know, people are writing and going, it is not for want of heads. In other words, there is so many potential successors here that could be claiming the throne. And there was a sense that the Spanish might try and claim the English throne. They might take advantage of the succession. I mean, it really was the talk of Europe, what was going to happen to England. And there was a real sense of impending civil war and massive crisis. I mean, Elizabeth had acknowledged, I mean, her response to the succession crisis had been one, to put more white makeup on and two, to create this mask of youth, quite literally where no longer was it permissible to show the Queen aging in portraits.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  But actually, we think that her ladies sat for portraits wearing her gowns. But then this approved face mask, which the court sergeant painter approved, would basically then just be inserted. So it didn't show the Queen aging. And that wasn't just because she was vain, which she was. But it was also to try and maintain this fiction that the Queen would kind of live forever because so much instability was being stored up, it was felt, for when she eventually died.

• 32:42Dan Snow?

  And it's weird because as you're saying that, I'm thinking, given that Henry VIII spent most of his time worrying about a successor. It's extraordinary that his daughter didn't spend any time.

• 32:50Speaker 05

  No, no, exactly. If you think about all the the desire for Henry to have a male heir, all of that going on. I mean, the point is that Elizabeth didn't even try. I mean, commentators at the end of her reign, first of all, there's lots of accounts where she didn't want to go to bed. You know, she had to be sort of carried to bed because it was almost like she knew the game was up and she knew that by going to bed, it would be her deathbed. So she sort of lies on cushions in her privy chamber right at the end of her reign. And then accounts when she finally dies or she loses the ability to speak. And of course, those who want James to succeed, record afterwards that when James's name was mentioned, she does a sort of crown gesture above her head. That's convenient.

• 33:30Dan Snow?

  That's great.

• 33:31Speaker 05

  Um. So she's, you know, doesn't have a great deal of ability to speak, but apparently still had the kind of will to make this crown gesture. I'm not sure. And of course, the great Tudor dynasty that people would go amazing, significant Tudor dynasty, that dies out with Elizabeth. And by her failure to name and provide an heir or name an heir, a Scottish king inherits the throne. And although that turned out to be okay, dot, dot, dot, did it? People didn't know that at the time. Scotland was the great enemy of England. So she'd set up a potential kind of tinderbox of crisis and uncertainty and had made no effort to resolve it. So abdication of responsibility,

• 34:16Speaker 05

  fundamental abdication of responsibility. And that is why, I think, she cannot receive the accolade of one of the greatest Britons.

• 34:24Dan Snow?

  Okay, well, you've made that very clear. But luckily, as in other areas of her life, she was blessed with good subordinates who quietly arranged the whole succession thing and there was no civil war.

• 34:34Speaker 05

  Well, indeed, and some people would say she kind of knew that and she just was being a bit savvy and letting them get on with it. And she did say at various points, all eyes will turn to the rising and not the setting sun. So she knew the minute she said, I'm going to be replaced by James, everybody would look to him and she would become entirely politically impotent. So that's in defence of her.

• 34:59Dan Snow?

  High risk, though.

• 35:00Speaker 05

  Incredibly high risk. I mean, she was playing a very dangerous game with England's security. And this being the woman who, you know, is credited by being the great symbol of English national identity with the Spanish Armada, that in itself was largely a myth. And the fact that she failed to ensure a smooth succession, certainly by her efforts, is not held against her at all.

• 35:24Dan Snow?

  End up with a Scottish guy as king.

• 35:26Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 35:27Dan Snow?

  Thank you very much, Anna Whitelock, for coming on the podcast.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Pleasure. Thank you, Dan.

• 35:31Dan Snow?

  Thank you so much for listening, as always, and thanks for sticking with this podcast for so many years, if you're a long time fan. Now, if you are, you'll remember the days when we used to smash out seven episodes a week. You'll probably notice that we're slowly honing the craft. We're bringing you longer and frankly, better episodes. There's a lot more research that goes into them, and we're trying to focus on more of what you want as well. And that's exactly what we're going to keep doing. So, from November, there's going to be a change in our release schedule. You're going to get new episodes every Monday and Thursday, if you're a subscriber, which I urge you to become, of course. And then if you are, you'll get extra bonus episodes on Fridays, too. The reason I'm doing that is I want to make sure I can put more time into the episodes I'm making for you, try and do more of those explorers, for example, when I just monologue along. People seem

• 36:14Dan Snow?

  to like those. Thank you very much for all the reviews. As you can imagine, those take a lot of time. So with this new release schedule, I'll be able to give you more of those. Worry not, though. Downstairs history isn't changing. It's just getting better.

• 36:35Speaker 01

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  It's one of the first times, really, that you constantly see someone painting teeth. I know that sounds bonkers.

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  In Our Time, listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Tea or coffee? Love a cup of tea.

• 37:58Dan Snow?

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