In 1588 Nicholas Yonge published his ''Musica transalpina'', the collection of Italian madrigals fitted with English texts, which touched off the explosive and colorful vogue for madrigal composition in England. Morley evidently found his compositional direction at this time, and shortly afterwards began publishing his own collections of madrigals (11 in all).
Morley lived for a time in the same parish as Shakespeare, and a connection between the two has been long speculated, though never proven. His famous setting of "It was a lover and his lass" from ''As You Like It'' has never been established as having been used in a performance of Shakespeare's play, though the possibility that it was is obvious. Morley was highly placed by the mid-1590s and would have had easy access to the theatrical community; certainly there was then, as there is now, a close connection between prominent actors and musicians.
While Morley attempted to imitate the spirit of Byrd in some of his early sacred works, it was in the form of the madrigal that he made his principal contribution to music history. His work in the genre has remained in the repertory to the present day, and shows a wider variety of emotional color, form and technique than anything by other composers of the period. Usually his madrigals are light, quick-moving and easily singable, like his well-known "Now is the Month of Maying"; he took the aspects of Italian style that suited his personality and anglicised them. Other composers of the English Madrigal School, for instance Thomas Weelkes and John Wilbye, were to write madrigals in a more serious or sombre vein.
In addition to his madrigals, Morley wrote instrumental music, including keyboard music (some of which has been preserved in the ''Fitzwilliam Virginal Book''), and music for the broken consort, a uniquely English ensemble of two viols, flute, lute, cittern and bandora, notably as published by William Barley in 1599 in ''The First Booke of Consort Lessons, made by diuers exquisite Authors, for six Instruments to play together, the Treble Lute, the Pandora, the Cittern, the Base-Violl, the Flute & Treble-Violl''.
Morley's ''Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke'' (published 1597) remained popular for almost two hundred years after its author's death, and remains an important reference for information about sixteenth century composition and performance.
Category:English composers Category:Renaissance composers Category:English music theorists Category:English organists Category:People of the Tudor period Category:1550s births Category:1602 deaths Category:Madrigal composers Category:16th-century Englsih people Category:17th-century English people
da:Thomas Morley de:Thomas Morley es:Thomas Morley fr:Thomas Morley it:Thomas Morley he:תומאס מורלי nl:Thomas Morley ja:トマス・モーリー no:Thomas Morley nn:Thomas Morley pl:Thomas Morley pt:Thomas Morley (músico) ru:Морли, Томас simple:Thomas Morley uk:Томас МорліThis text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
name | Elizabeth I |
---|---|
succession | Queen of England and Ireland |
moretext | (more...) |
reign | 17 November 1558 – 24 March 1603 |
coronation | 15 January 1559 |
predecessor | Mary I |
successor | James I |
house | House of Tudor |
father | Henry VIII |
mother | Anne Boleyn |
birth date | 7 September 1533 |
birth place | Greenwich, England |
death date | March 24, 1603 |
death place | Richmond, England |
place of burial | Westminster Abbey |
signature | Autograph of Elizabeth I of England.svg }} |
Elizabeth set out to rule by good counsel, and she depended heavily on a group of trusted advisers led by William Cecil, Baron Burghley. One of her first moves as queen was the establishing of an English Protestant church, of which she became the Supreme Governor. This Elizabethan Religious Settlement later evolved into today's Church of England. It was expected that Elizabeth would marry and produce an heir so as to continue the Tudor line. She never did, however, despite numerous courtships. As she grew older, Elizabeth became famous for her virginity, and a cult grew up around her which was celebrated in the portraits, pageants, and literature of the day.
In government, Elizabeth was more moderate than her father, brother and sister had been. One of her mottoes was "''video et taceo''" ("I see, and say nothing"). In religion she was relatively tolerant, avoiding systematic persecution. After 1570, when the pope declared her illegitimate and released her subjects from obedience to her, several conspiracies threatened her life. All plots were defeated, however, with the help of her ministers' secret service. Elizabeth was cautious in foreign affairs, moving between the major powers of France and Spain. She only half-heartedly supported a number of ineffective, poorly resourced military campaigns in the Netherlands, France and Ireland. In the mid-1580s war with Spain could no longer be avoided, and when Spain finally decided to invade and conquer England in 1588, the defeat of the Spanish Armada associated her with what is popularly viewed as one of the greatest victories in English history.
Elizabeth's reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Sir Francis Drake. Some historians are more reserved in their assessment. They depict Elizabeth as a short-tempered, sometimes indecisive ruler, who enjoyed more than her share of luck. Towards the end of her reign, a series of economic and military problems weakened her popularity. Elizabeth is acknowledged as a charismatic performer and a dogged survivor, in an age when government was ramshackle and limited and when monarchs in neighbouring countries faced internal problems that jeopardised their thrones. Such was the case with Elizabeth's rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, whom she imprisoned in 1568 and eventually had executed in 1587. After the short reigns of Elizabeth's brother and sister, her 44 years on the throne provided welcome stability for the kingdom and helped forge a sense of national identity.
Elizabeth was born at Greenwich Palace and was named after both her grandmothers, Elizabeth of York and Elizabeth Howard. She was the second child of Henry VIII of England born in wedlock to survive infancy. Her mother was Henry's second wife, Anne Boleyn. At birth, Elizabeth was the heiress presumptive to the throne of England. Her older half-sister, Mary, had lost her position as a legitimate heir when Henry annulled his marriage to Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in order to marry Anne and sire a male heir to ensure the Tudor succession. Elizabeth was baptised on 10 September; Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the Marquess of Exeter, the Duchess of Norfolk and the Dowager Marchioness of Dorset stood as her four godparents.
When Elizabeth was two years and eight months old her mother was executed on 19 May 1536. Elizabeth was declared illegitimate and deprived of the title of Princess. Eleven days after Anne Boleyn's death, Henry married Jane Seymour, but she died shortly after the birth of their son, Prince Edward, in 1537. Edward now became the undisputed heir to the throne. Elizabeth was placed in Edward's household and carried the chrisom, or baptismal cloth, at his christening.
Elizabeth's first Lady Mistress, Margaret, Lady Bryant, wrote that she was “as toward a child and as gentle of conditions as ever I knew any in my life”. By the autumn of 1537, Elizabeth was in the care of Blanche Herbert, Lady Troy who remained her Lady Mistress until her retirement in late 1545 or early 1546. Catherine Champernowne, better known by her later, married name of Catherine “Kat” Ashley, was appointed as Elizabeth's governess in 1537, and she remained Elizabeth’s friend until her death in 1565, when Blanche Parry succeeded her as Chief Gentlewoman of the Privy Chamber. She clearly made a good job of Elizabeth’s early education: by the time William Grindal became her tutor in 1544, Elizabeth could write English, Latin, and Italian. Under Grindal, a talented and skilful tutor, she also progressed in French and Greek. She is also reputed to have spoken Cornish. After Grindal died in 1548, Elizabeth received her education under Roger Ascham, a sympathetic teacher who believed that learning should be engaging. By the time her formal education ended in 1550, she was the best educated woman of her generation.
Henry VIII died in 1547; Elizabeth's half-brother, Edward VI became king at age 9. Catherine Parr, Henry's widow, soon married Thomas Seymour of Sudeley, Edward VI's uncle and the brother of the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset. The couple took Elizabeth into their household at Chelsea. There Elizabeth experienced an emotional crisis that some historians believe affected her for the rest of her life. Seymour, approaching age 40 but having charm and "a powerful sex appeal", engaged in romps and horseplay with the 14-year-old Elizabeth. These included entering her bedroom in his nightgown, tickling her and slapping her on the buttocks. Catherine Parr, rather than confront her husband over his inappropriate activities, joined in. Twice she accompanied him in tickling Elizabeth, and once held her while he cut her black gown "into a thousand pieces." However, after Catherine Parr discovered the pair in an embrace, she ended this state of affairs. In May 1548, Elizabeth was sent away.
Seymour continued scheming to control the royal family and tried to have himself appointed the governor of the King’s person. When Catherine Parr died after childbirth on 5 September 1548, he renewed his attentions towards Elizabeth, intent on marrying her. The details of his former behaviour towards Elizabeth emerged and for his brother and the council, this was the last straw. In in January 1549, Seymour was arrested on suspicion of plotting to marry Elizabeth and overthrow his brother. Elizabeth, living at Hatfield House, would admit nothing. Her stubbornness exasperated her interrogator, Sir Robert Tyrwhitt, who reported, "I do see it in her face that she is guilty". Seymour was beheaded on 20 March 1549.
Edward VI died on 6 July 1553, aged 15. His will swept aside the Succession to the Crown Act 1543, excluded both Mary and Elizabeth from the succession, and instead declared as his heir Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter of Henry VIII's sister Mary, Duchess of Suffolk. Lady Jane was proclaimed queen by the Privy Council, but her support quickly crumbled, and she was deposed after nine days. Mary rode triumphantly into London, with Elizabeth at her side.
The show of solidarity between the sisters did not last long. Mary, a devout Catholic, was determined to crush the Protestant faith in which Elizabeth had been educated, and she ordered that everyone attend Catholic Mass; Elizabeth had to outwardly conform. Mary's initial popularity ebbed away in 1554 when she announced plans to marry Prince Philip of Spain, the son of Emperor Charles V and an active Catholic. Discontent spread rapidly through the country, and many looked to Elizabeth as a focus for their opposition to Mary's religious policies.
In January and February 1554, Wyatt's rebellion broke out; it was soon suppressed. Elizabeth was brought to court, and interrogated regarding her role, and on 18 March, she was imprisoned in the Tower of London. Elizabeth fervently protested her innocence. Though it is unlikely that she had plotted with the rebels, some of them were known to have approached her. Mary's closest confidant, Charles V's ambassador Simon Renard, argued that her throne would never be safe while Elizabeth lived; and the Chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, worked to have Elizabeth put on trial. Elizabeth's supporters in the government, including Lord Paget, convinced Mary to spare her sister in the absence of hard evidence against her. Instead, on 22 May, Elizabeth was moved from the Tower to Woodstock, where she was to spend almost a year under house arrest in the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield. Crowds cheered her all along the way. King Philip had little role in England's governance, but he did help protect Elizabeth.
On 17 April 1555, Elizabeth was recalled to court to attend the final stages of Mary's apparent pregnancy. If Mary and her child died, Elizabeth would become queen. If, on the other hand, Mary gave birth to a healthy child, Elizabeth's chances of becoming queen would recede sharply. When it became clear that Mary was not pregnant, no one believed any longer that she could have a child. Elizabeth's succession seemed assured.
King Philip, who also become King of Spain in 1556, acknowledged the new political reality and cultivated Elizabeth. She was a better ally that the chief alternative, Mary, Queen of Scots, who had grown up in France and was betrothed to the Dauphin of France. When his wife Queen Mary fell ill in 1558, King Philip sent the Count of Feria to consult with Elizabeth. This interview was conducted at Hatfield House, where she had returned to live in October 1555. By October 1558, Elizabeth was already making plans for her government. On 6 November, Mary recognised Elizabeth as her heir. On 17 November 1558 Mary died and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne.
My lords, the law of nature moves me to sorrow for my sister; the burden that is fallen upon me makes me amazed, and yet, considering I am God's creature, ordained to obey His appointment, I will thereto yield, desiring from the bottom of my heart that I may have assistance of His grace to be the minister of His heavenly will in this office now committed to me. And as I am but one body naturally considered, though by His permission a body politic to govern, so shall I desire you all ... to be assistant to me, that I with my ruling and you with your service may make a good account to Almighty God and leave some comfort to our posterity on earth. I mean to direct all my actions by good advice and counsel.
As her triumphal progress wound through the city on the eve of the coronation ceremony, she was welcomed wholeheartedly by the citizens and greeted by orations and pageants, most with a strong Protestant flavour. Elizabeth's open and gracious responses endeared her to the spectators, who were "wonderfully ravished". The following day, 15 January 1559, Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey and anointed by the Catholic bishop of Carlisle. She was then presented for the people's acceptance, amidst a deafening noise of organs, fifes, trumpets, drums, and bells.
In terms of public policy she favoured pragmatism in dealing with religious matters. The question of her legitimacy was a key concern: Although she was technically illegitimate under both Protestant and Catholic law, her retroactively declared illegitimacy under the English church was not a serious bar compared to having never been legitimate as the Catholics claimed she was. For this reason alone, it was never in serious doubt that Elizabeth would embrace Protestantism.
Elizabeth and her advisors perceived the threat of a Catholic crusade against heretical England. Elizabeth therefore sought a Protestant solution that would not offend Catholics too greatly while addressing the desires of English Protestants; she would not tolerate the more radical Puritans though, who were pushing for far-reaching reforms. As a result, the parliament of 1559 started to legislate for a church based on the Protestant settlement of Edward VI, with the monarch as its head, but with many Catholic elements, such as priestly vestments.
The House of Commons backed the proposals strongly, but the bill of supremacy met opposition in the House of Lords, particularly from the bishops. Elizabeth was fortunate that many bishoprics were vacant at the time, including the Archbishopric of Canterbury. This enabled supporters amongst peers to outvote the bishops and conservative peers. Nevertheless, Elizabeth was forced to accept the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England rather than the more contentious title of Supreme Head, which many thought unacceptable for a woman to bear. The new Act of Supremacy became law on 8 May 1559. All public officials were to swear an oath of loyalty to the monarch as the supreme governor or risk disqualification from office; the heresy laws were repealed, to avoid a repeat of the persecution of dissenters practised by Mary. At the same time, a new Act of Uniformity was passed, which made attendance at church and the use of an adapted version of the 1552 Book of Common Prayer compulsory, though the penalties for recusancy, or failure to attend and conform, were not extreme.
From the start of Elizabeth's reign, it was expected that she would marry and the question arose whom. She never did, although she received many offers for her hand; the reasons for this are not clear. Historians have speculated that Thomas Seymour had put her off sexual relationships, or that she knew herself to be infertile. She considered several suitors until she was about fifty. Her last courtship was with François, Duke of Anjou, 22 years her junior. While risking possible loss of power like her sister, who played into the hands of King Phillip II of Spain, marriage offered the chance of an heir. However, the choice of a husband might also provoke political instability or even insurrection.
Despite several other marriage projects, Robert Dudley was regarded as a candidate for nearly another decade. Elizabeth was extremely jealous of his affections, even when she no longer meant to marry him herself. In 1564 Elizabeth created Dudley Earl of Leicester. He finally remarried in 1578, to which the queen reacted with repeated scenes of displeasure and lifelong hatred towards his wife. Still, Dudley always "remained at the centre of [Elizabeth's] emotional life", as historian Susan Doran has described the situation. He died shortly after the Armada, and after Elizabeth's own death, a note from him was found among her most personal belongings, marked "his last letter" in her handwriting.
Marriage negotiations constituted a key element in Elizabeth's foreign policy. She turned down Philip II's own hand in 1559, and negotiated for several years to marry his cousin Archduke Charles of Austria. By 1569, relations with the Habsburgs had deteriorated, and Elizabeth considered marriage to two French Valois princes in turn, first Henri, Duke of Anjou, and later, from 1572 to 1581, his brother François, Duke of Anjou, formerly Duke of Alençon. This last proposal was tied to a planned alliance against Spanish control of the Southern Netherlands. Elizabeth seems to have taken the courtship seriously for a time, and wore a frog-shaped earring that Anjou had sent her.
In 1563, Elizabeth told an imperial envoy: "If I follow the inclination of my nature, it is this: beggar-woman and single, far rather than queen and married". Later in the year, following Elizabeth's illness with smallpox, the succession question became a heated issue in Parliament. They urged the queen to marry or nominate an heir, to prevent a civil war upon her death. She refused to do either. In April she prorogued the Parliament, which did not reconvene until she needed its support to raise taxes in 1566. Having promised to marry previously, she told an unruly House:
I will never break the word of a prince spoken in public place, for my honour's sake. And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can conveniently, if God take not him away with whom I mind to marry, or myself, or else some other great let happen.By 1570, senior figures in the government privately accepted that Elizabeth would never marry or name a successor. William Cecil was already seeking solutions to the succession problem. For her failure to marry, Elizabeth was often accused of irresponsibility. Her silence, however, strengthened her own political security: she knew that if she named an heir, her throne would be vulnerable to a coup; she remebered that the way "a second person, as I have been" had been used as the focus of plots against her sister, Queen Mary.
Elizabeth's unmarried status inspired a cult of virginity. In poetry and portraiture, she was depicted as a virgin or a goddess or both, not as a normal woman. At first, only Elizabeth made a virtue of her virginity: in 1559, she told the Commons, "And, in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin". Later on, poets and writers took up the theme and turned it into an iconography that exalted Elizabeth. Public tributes to the Virgin by 1578 acted as as a coded assertion of opposition to the queen's marriage negotiations with the Duc d'Alençon.
Putting a positive spin on her marital status, Elizabeth insisted she was married to her kingdom and subjects, under divine protection. In 1599, Elizabeth spoke of "all my husbands, my good people".
In 1563 Elizabeth proposed her own suitor, Robert Dudley, as a husband for Mary, without asking either of the two people concerned. Both proved unenthusiastic, and in 1565 Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, who carried his own claim to the English throne. The marriage was the first of a series of errors of judgement by Mary that handed the victory to the Scottish Protestants and to Elizabeth. Darnley quickly became unpopular in Scotland and then infamous for presiding over the murder of Mary's Italian secretary David Rizzio. In February 1567, Darnley was murdered by conspirators almost certainly led by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. Shortly afterwards, on 15 May 1567, Mary married Bothwell, arousing suspicions that she had been party to the murder of her husband. Elizabeth wrote to her:
How could a worse choice be made for your honour than in such haste to marry such a subject, who besides other and notorious lacks, public fame has charged with the murder of your late husband, besides the touching of yourself also in some part, though we trust in that behalf falsely.
These events led rapidly to Mary's defeat and imprisonment in Loch Leven Castle. The Scottish lords forced her to abdicate in favour of her son James, who had been born in June 1566. James was taken to Stirling Castle to be raised as a Protestant. Mary escaped from Loch Leven in 1568 but after another defeat fled across the border into England, where she had once been assured of support from Elizabeth. Elizabeth's first instinct was to restore her fellow monarch; but she and her council instead chose to play safe. Rather than risk returning Mary to Scotland with an English army or sending her to France and the Catholic enemies of England, they detained her in England, where she was imprisoned for the next nineteen years.
''Regnans in Excelsis'' gave English Catholics a strong incentive to look to Mary Stuart as the true sovereign of England. Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 (which caused Mary's suitor, the Duke of Norfolk, to lose his head) to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her. At first, Elizabeth resisted calls for Mary's death. By late 1586 she had been persuaded to sanction her trial and execution on the evidence of letters written during the Babington Plot. Elizabeth's proclamation of the sentence announced that "the said Mary, pretending title to the same Crown, had compassed and imagined within the same realm divers things tending to the hurt, death and destruction of our royal person." On 8 February 1587, Mary was beheaded at Fotheringhay Castle, Northamptonshire.
Elizabeth's foreign policy was largely defensive. The exception was the English occupation of Le Havre from October 1562 to June 1563, which ended in failure when Elizabeth's Huguenot allies joined with the Catholics to retake the port. Elizabeth's intention had been to exchange Le Havre for Calais, lost to France in January 1558. Only through the activities of her fleets did Elizabeth pursue an aggressive policy. This paid off in the war against Spain, 80% of which was fought at sea. She knighted Francis Drake after his circumnavigation of the globe from 1577 to 1580, and he won fame for his raids on Spanish ports and fleets. An element of piracy and self-enrichment drove Elizabethan seafarers, over which the queen had little control.
The expedition was led by her former suitor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Elizabeth from the start did not really back this course of action. Her strategy, to support the Dutch on the surface with an English army, while beginning secret peace talks with Spain within days of Leicester's arrival in Holland, had necessarily to be at odds with Leicester's, who wanted and was expected by the Dutch to fight an active campaign. Elizabeth on the other hand, wanted him "to avoid at all costs any decisive action with the enemy". He enraged Elizabeth by accepting the post of Governor-General from the Dutch States-General. Elizabeth saw this as a Dutch ploy to force her to accept sovereignty over the Netherlands, which so far she had always declined. She wrote to Leicester:
We could never have imagined (had we not seen it fall out in experience) that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favoured by us, above any other subject of this land, would have in so contemptible a sort broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touches us in honour....And therefore our express pleasure and commandment is that, all delays and excuses laid apart, you do presently upon the duty of your allegiance obey and fulfill whatsoever the bearer hereof shall direct you to do in our name. Whereof fail you not, as you will answer the contrary at your utmost peril.
Elizabeth's "commandment" was that her emissary read out her letters of disapproval publicly before the Dutch Council of State, Leicester having to stand nearby. This public humiliation of her "Lieutenant-General" combined with her continued talks for a separate peace with Spain, irreversibly undermined his standing among the Dutch. The military campaign was severely hampered by Elizabeth's repeated refusals to send promised funds for her starving soldiers. Her unwillingness to commit herself to the cause, Leicester's own shortcomings as a political and military leader and the faction-ridden and chaotic situation of Dutch politics were reasons for the campaign's failure. Leicester finally resigned his command in December 1587.
On 12 July 1588, the Spanish Armada, a great fleet of ships, set sail for the channel, planning to ferry a Spanish invasion force under the Duke of Parma to the coast of southeast England from the Netherlands. A combination of miscalculation, misfortune, and an attack of English fire ships on 29 July off Gravelines which dispersed the Spanish ships to the northeast defeated the Armada. The Armada straggled home to Spain in shattered remnants, after disastrous losses on the coast of Ireland (after some ships had tried to struggle back to Spain via the North Sea, and then back south past the west coast of Ireland). Unaware of the Armada's fate, English militias mustered to defend the country under the Earl of Leicester's command. He invited Elizabeth to inspect her troops at Tilbury in Essex on 8 August. Wearing a silver breastplate over a white velvet dress, she addressed them in one of her most famous speeches:
My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people ... I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm.
When no invasion came, the nation rejoiced. Elizabeth's procession to a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral rivalled that of her coronation as a spectacle. The defeat of the armada was a potent propaganda victory, both for Elizabeth and for Protestant England. The English took their delivery as a symbol of God's favour and of the nation's inviolability under a virgin queen. However, the victory was not a turning point in the war, which continued and often favoured Spain. The Spanish still controlled the Netherlands, and the threat of invasion remained. Sir Walter Raleigh claimed after her death that Elizabeth's caution had impeded the war against Spain:
If the late queen would have believed her men of war as she did her scribes, we had in her time beaten that great empire in pieces and made their kings of figs and oranges as in old times. But her Majesty did all by halves, and by petty invasions taught the Spaniard how to defend himself, and to see his own weakness.
Though some historians have criticised Elizabeth on similar grounds, Raleigh's verdict has more often been judged unfair. Elizabeth had good reason not to place too much trust in her commanders, who once in action tended, as she put it herself, "to be transported with an haviour of vainglory".
Although Ireland was one of her two kingdoms, Elizabeth faced a hostile—and in places virtually autonomous—Irish population that adhered to Catholicism and was willing to defy her authority and plot with her enemies. Her policy there was to grant land to her courtiers and prevent the rebels from giving Spain a base from which to attack England. In the course of a series of uprisings, Crown forces pursued scorched-earth tactics, burning the land and slaughtering man, woman and child. During a revolt in Munster led by Gerald FitzGerald, Earl of Desmond, in 1582, an estimated 30,000 Irish people starved to death. The poet and colonist Edmund Spenser wrote that the victims "were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same". Elizabeth advised her commanders that the Irish, "that rude and barbarous nation", be well treated; but she showed no remorse when force and bloodshed were deemed necessary.
Between 1594 and 1603, Elizabeth faced her most severe test in Ireland during the Nine Years War, a revolt that took place at the height of hostilities with Spain, who backed the rebel leader, Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. In spring 1599, Elizabeth sent Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, to put the revolt down. To her frustration, he made little progress and returned to England in defiance of her orders. He was replaced by Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, who took three years to defeat the rebels. O'Neill finally surrendered in 1603, a few days after Elizabeth's death. Soon after a peace treaty was signed between England and Spain.
Diplomatic relations were also established with the Ottoman Empire with the chartering of the Levant Company and the dispatch of the first English ambassador to the Porte, William Harborne, in 1578. For the first time, a Treaty of Commerce was signed in 1580. Numerous envoys were dispatched in both directions and epistolar exchanges occurred between Elizabeth and Sultan Murad III. In one correspondence, Murad entertained the notion that Islam and Protestantism had "much more in common than either did with Roman Catholicism, as both rejected the worship of idols", and argued for an alliance between England and the Ottoman Empire. To the dismay of Catholic Europe, England exported tin and lead (for cannon-casting) and ammunitions to the Ottoman Empire, and Elizabeth seriously discussed joint military operations with Murad III during the outbreak of war with Spain in 1585, as Francis Walsingham was lobbying for a direct Ottoman military involvement against the common Spanish enemy. Anglo-Turkish piracy also started to thrive during that time.
The period after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 brought new difficulties for Elizabeth that lasted the fifteen years until the end of her reign. The conflicts with Spain and in Ireland dragged on, the tax burden grew heavier, and the economy was hit by poor harvests and the cost of war. Prices rose and the standard of living fell. During this time, repression of Catholics intensified, and Elizabeth authorised commissions in 1591 to interrogate and monitor Catholic householders. To maintain the illusion of peace and prosperity, she increasingly relied on internal spies and propaganda. In her last years, mounting criticism reflected a decline in the public's affection for her.
One of the causes for this "second reign" of Elizabeth, as it is sometimes called, was the different character of Elizabeth's governing body, the privy council in the 1590s. A new generation was in power. With the exception of Lord Burghley, the most important politicians had died around 1590: The Earl of Leicester in 1588, Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, Sir Christopher Hatton in 1591. Factional strife in the government, which had not existed in a noteworthy form before the 1590s, now became its hallmark. A bitter rivalry between the Earl of Essex and Robert Cecil, son of Lord Burghley, and their respective adherents, for the most powerful positions in the state marred politics. The queen's personal authority was lessening, as is shown in the affair of Dr. Lopez, her trusted physician. When he was wrongly accused by the Earl of Essex of treason out of personal pique, she could not prevent his execution, although she had been angry about his arrest and seems not to have believed in his guilt (1594).
Elizabeth, during the last years of her reign, came to rely on granting monopolies as a cost-free system of patronage rather than ask Parliament for more subsidies in a time of war. The practice soon led to price-fixing, the enrichment of courtiers at the public's expense, and widespread resentment. This culminated in agitation in the House of Commons during the parliament of 1601. In her famous "Golden Speech" of 30 November 1601, Elizabeth professed ignorance of the abuses and won the members over with promises and her usual appeal to the emotions:
Who keeps their sovereign from the lapse of error, in which, by ignorance and not by intent they might have fallen, what thank they deserve, we know, though you may guess. And as nothing is more dear to us than the loving conservation of our subjects' hearts, what an undeserved doubt might we have incurred if the abusers of our liberality, the thrallers of our people, the wringers of the poor, had not been told us!
This same period of economic and political uncertainty, however, produced an unsurpassed literary flowering in England. The first signs of a new literary movement had appeared at the end of the second decade of Elizabeth's reign, with John Lyly's ''Euphues'' and Edmund Spenser's ''The Shepheardes Calender'' in 1578. During the 1590s, some of the great names of English literature entered their maturity, including William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. During this period and into the Jacobean era that followed, the English theatre reached its highest peaks. The notion of a great Elizabethan age depends largely on the builders, dramatists, poets, and musicians who were active during Elizabeth's reign. They owed little directly to the queen, who was never a major patron of the arts.
As Elizabeth aged her image gradually changed. She was portrayed as Belphoebe or Astraea, and after the Armada, as Gloriana, the eternally youthful Faerie Queene of Edmund Spenser's poem. Her painted portraits became less realistic and more a set of enigmatic icons that made her look much younger than she was. In fact, her skin had been scarred by smallpox in 1562, leaving her half bald and dependent on wigs and cosmetics. Sir Walter Raleigh called her "a lady whom time had surprised". However, the more Elizabeth's beauty faded, the more her courtiers praised it.
Elizabeth was happy to play the part, but it is possible that in the last decade of her life she began to believe her own performance. She became fond and indulgent of the charming but petulant young Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was Leicester's stepson and took liberties with her for which she forgave him. She repeatedly appointed him to military posts despite his growing record of irresponsibility. After Essex's desertion of his command in Ireland in 1599, Elizabeth had him placed under house arrest and the following year deprived him of his monopolies. In February 1601, the earl tried to raise a rebellion in London. He intended to seize the queen but few rallied to his support, and he was beheaded on 25 February. Elizabeth knew that her own misjudgements were partly to blame for this turn of events. An observer reported in 1602 that "Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes with shedding tears to bewail Essex".
Elizabeth's senior advisor, Burghley, died on 4 August 1598. His political mantle passed to his son, Robert Cecil, who soon became the leader of the government. One task he addressed was to prepare the way for a smooth succession. Since Elizabeth would never name her successor, Cecil was obliged to proceed in secret. He therefore entered into a coded negotiation with James VI of Scotland, who had a strong but unrecognised claim. Cecil coached the impatient James to humour Elizabeth and "secure the heart of the highest, to whose sex and quality nothing is so improper as either needless expostulations or over much curiosity in her own actions". The advice worked. James's tone delighted Elizabeth, who responded: "So trust I that you will not doubt but that your last letters are so acceptably taken as my thanks cannot be lacking for the same, but yield them to you in grateful sort". In historian J. E. Neale's view, Elizabeth may not have declared her wishes openly to James, but she made them known with "unmistakable if veiled phrases".
The Queen's health remained fair until the autumn of 1602, when a series of deaths among her friends plunged her into a severe depression. In February 1603, the death of Catherine Howard, Countess of Nottingham, the niece of her cousin and close friend Catherine, Lady Knollys, came as a particular blow. In March, Elizabeth fell sick and remained in a "settled and unremovable melancholy". She died on 24 March 1603 at Richmond Palace, between two and three in the morning. A few hours later, Cecil and the council set their plans in motion and proclaimed James VI of Scotland as king of England.
Elizabeth's coffin was carried downriver at night to Whitehall, on a barge lit with torches. At her funeral on 28 April, the coffin was taken to Westminster Abbey on a hearse drawn by four horses hung with black velvet. In the words of the chronicler John Stow:
Westminster was surcharged with multitudes of all sorts of people in their streets, houses, windows, leads and gutters, that came out to see the obsequy, and when they beheld her statue lying upon the coffin, there was such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not been seen or known in the memory of man.
[[Image:Funeral Elisabeth.jpg|thumb|left|300px|Elizabeth's funeral cortège, 1603, with banners of her royal ancestors ]]
Elizabeth was interred in Westminster Abbey in a tomb she shares with her half-sister, Mary. The Latin inscription on their tomb, "Regno consortes & urna, hic obdormimus Elizabetha et Maria sorores, in spe resurrectionis", translates to "Consorts in realm and tomb, here we sleep, Elizabeth and Mary, sisters, in hope of resurrection".
The picture of Elizabeth painted by her Protestant admirers of the early 17th century has proved lasting and influential. Her memory was also revived during the Napoleonic Wars, when the nation again found itself on the brink of invasion. In the Victorian era, the Elizabethan legend was adapted to the imperial ideology of the day, and in the mid-20th century, Elizabeth was a romantic symbol of the national resistance to foreign threat. Historians of that period, such as J. E. Neale (1934) and A. L. Rowse (1950), interpreted Elizabeth's reign as a golden age of progress. Neale and Rowse also idealised the Queen personally: she always did everything right; her more unpleasant traits were ignored or explained as signs of stress.
Recent historians, however, have taken a more complicated view of Elizabeth. Her reign is famous for the defeat of the Armada, and for successful raids against the Spanish, such as those on Cádiz in 1587 and 1596, but some historians point to military failures on land and at sea. In Ireland, Elizabeth's forces ultimately prevailed, but their tactics stain her record. Rather than as a brave defender of the Protestant nations against Spain and the Habsburgs, she is more often regarded as cautious in her foreign policies. She offered very limited aid to foreign Protestants and failed to provide her commanders with the funds to make a difference abroad.
Elizabeth established an English church that helped shape a national identity and remains in place today. Those who praised her later as a Protestant heroine overlooked her refusal to drop all practices of Catholic origin from the Church of England. Historians note that in her day, strict Protestants regarded the Acts of Settlement and Uniformity of 1559 as a compromise. In fact, Elizabeth believed that faith was personal and did not wish, as Francis Bacon put it, to "make windows into men's hearts and secret thoughts".
Though Elizabeth followed a largely defensive foreign policy, her reign raised England's status abroad. "She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island," marvelled Pope Sixtus V, "and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all". Under Elizabeth, the nation gained a new self-confidence and sense of sovereignty, as Christendom fragmented. Elizabeth was the first Tudor to recognise that a monarch ruled by popular consent. She therefore always worked with parliament and advisers she could trust to tell her the truth—a style of government that her Stuart successors failed to follow. Some historians have called her lucky; she believed that God was protecting her. Priding herself on being "mere English", Elizabeth trusted in God, honest advice, and the love of her subjects for the success of her rule. In a prayer, she offered thanks to God that:
[At a time] when wars and seditions with grievous persecutions have vexed almost all kings and countries round about me, my reign hath been peacable, and my realm a receptacle to thy afflicted Church. The love of my people hath appeared firm, and the devices of my enemies frustrate.
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type | monarch |
---|---|
name | Elizabeth II |
alt | Elderly Elizabeth with a smile |
reign | since 6 February 1952('''') |
coronation | 2 June 1953 |
cor-type | Coronation |
succession | Queen of the Commonwealth realms |
predecessor | George VI |
successor | Charles, Prince of Wales |
suc-type | Heir-apparent |
reg-type | Prime Ministers |
regent | ''See list'' |
spouse | Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh |
issue | Charles, Prince of WalesAnne, Princess RoyalPrince Andrew, Duke of YorkPrince Edward, Earl of Wessex |
issue-link | #Issue |
full name | Elizabeth Alexandra Mary |
house | House of Windsor |
father | George VI |
mother | Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon |
birth date | April 21, 1926 |
birth place | Mayfair, London,United Kingdom |
religion | Church of England & Church of Scotland }} |
Elizabeth was educated privately at home. Her father ascended to the throne as George VI in 1936. Elizabeth began to undertake public duties during the Second World War, in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. When her father died in 1952, Elizabeth became Head of the Commonwealth and queen of seven independent Commonwealth countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Her coronation service in 1953 was the first to be televised.
During her -year reign, currently the second-longest for a British monarch, she became queen of 25 other Commonwealth countries as they gained independence. Between 1956 and 1992, half of her realms, including South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon (renamed Sri Lanka), became republics. Her Silver and Golden Jubilees were celebrated in 1977 and 2002; planning for her Diamond Jubilee in 2012 is underway.
In 1947, she married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, with whom she has four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward. In 1992, which Elizabeth termed her ''annus horribilis'' ("horrible year"), Charles and Andrew separated from their wives, Anne divorced, and a severe fire destroyed part of Windsor Castle. Revelations continued on the state of Charles's marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, and they divorced in 1996. The following year, Diana died in a Paris car crash, and the media criticised the royal family for remaining in seclusion in the days before her funeral. However, Elizabeth's personal popularity rebounded after she appeared in public and has since remained high.
Elizabeth's only sibling was Princess Margaret, born in 1930. The two princesses were educated at home under the supervision of their mother and their governess, Marion Crawford, who was casually known as "Crawfie". To the dismay of the royal family, Crawford later published a biography of Elizabeth and Margaret's childhood years entitled ''The Little Princesses''. The book describes Elizabeth's love of horses and dogs, her orderliness, and her attitude of responsibility. Others echoed such observations: Winston Churchill described Elizabeth when she was two as "a character. She has an air of authority and reflectiveness astonishing in an infant." Her cousin Margaret Rhodes described her as "a jolly little girl, but fundamentally sensible and well-behaved".
Elizabeth received private tuition in constitutional history from Henry Marten, Vice-Provost of Eton College, and learned French from a succession of native-speaking governesses. A Girl Guides company, the 1st Buckingham Palace Company, was formed specifically so she could socialise with girls her own age. Later she was enrolled as a Sea Ranger.
In 1939, Elizabeth's parents toured Canada and visited the United States. As in 1927, when her parents had toured Australia and New Zealand, Elizabeth remained in Britain as the King thought her too young to undertake public tours. Elizabeth "looked tearful" as her parents departed. They corresponded regularly, and on 18 May, she and her parents made the first royal transatlantic telephone call.
In 1943, at the age of 16, Elizabeth undertook her first solo public appearance on a visit to the Grenadier Guards, of which she had been appointed Colonel-in-Chief the previous year. In February 1945, she joined the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, as an honorary Second Subaltern with the service number of 230873. She trained as a driver and mechanic at the No. 1 Mechanical Training Centre, and was promoted to honorary Junior Commander five months later. During the war, plans were drawn up to quell Welsh nationalism by affiliating Elizabeth more closely with Wales. Welsh politicians proposed that Elizabeth be made Princess of Wales on her 18th birthday. The idea was supported by Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, but rejected by the King because he felt such a title belonged solely to the wife of a Prince of Wales, and the Prince of Wales had always been the heir apparent (usually the Sovereign's eldest surviving son). Elizabeth was only heir presumptive and could be supplanted in the line of succession if the sovereign had a son. In 1946, she was inducted into the Welsh Gorsedd of Bards at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.
At the end of the war in Europe, on Victory in Europe Day, Elizabeth and her sister mingled anonymously with the celebratory crowds in the streets of London. She later said in a rare interview, "we asked my parents if we could go out and see for ourselves. I remember we were terrified of being recognised ... I remember lines of unknown people linking arms and walking down Whitehall, all of us just swept along on a tide of happiness and relief." Two years later, the princess made her first overseas tour, when she accompanied her parents to Southern Africa. During the tour, in a broadcast to the British Commonwealth on her 21st birthday, she pledged: "I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong."
The marriage was not without controversy: Philip had no financial standing, was foreign-born (though a British subject), and had sisters who had married German noblemen with Nazi links. Marion Crawford wrote, "Some of the King's advisors did not think him good enough for her. He was a prince without a home or kingdom. Some of the papers played long and loud tunes on the string of Philip's foreign origin." Elizabeth's mother was reported, in later biographies, to have opposed the union initially, even dubbing Philip "The Hun". In later life, however, she told biographer Tim Heald that Philip was "an English gentleman".
Elizabeth and Philip received 2500 wedding gifts from around the world, but Britain had not yet completely rebounded from the devastation of the war. She still required ration coupons to buy the material for her gown, designed by Norman Hartnell. In post-war Britain, it was not acceptable for the Duke of Edinburgh's German relations to be invited to the wedding, including Philip's three surviving sisters. Other notable absentees were Edward, the former king, who was not invited, and his sister, Mary, Princess Royal, who said she was ill. Ronald Storrs claimed that she did not attend in protest at her brother's exclusion.
Elizabeth gave birth to her first child, Prince Charles, on 14 November 1948, less than one month after letters patent were issued by her father allowing her children to use the style and title of a royal prince or princess. They otherwise would not have been entitled to such a status as their father was no longer a royal prince. A second child, Princess Anne, was born in 1950.
Following their wedding, the couple leased Windlesham Moor near Windsor Castle, until 4 July 1949, when they took up residence at Clarence House in London. At various times between 1949 and 1951, the Duke of Edinburgh was stationed in the British Protectorate of Malta as a serving Royal Navy officer. He and Elizabeth lived intermittently, for several months at a time, in the Maltese hamlet of Gwardamanġia, at the Villa Gwardamanġia, the rented home of Philip's uncle, Lord Mountbatten. The children remained in Britain.
With Elizabeth's accession, it seemed likely that the royal house would bear her husband's name. Lord Mountbatten thought it would be the ''House of Mountbatten'', as Elizabeth would typically have taken Philip's last name on marriage; however, Queen Mary and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill favoured the retention of the House of Windsor, and so Windsor it remained. The Duke complained, "I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children." In 1960, after the death of Queen Mary and the resignation of Churchill, the surname ''Mountbatten-Windsor'' was adopted for Philip and Elizabeth's male-line descendants who do not carry royal titles.
Amid preparations for the coronation, Princess Margaret informed her sister that she wished to marry Peter Townsend, a divorced commoner 16 years older than Margaret with two sons from his previous marriage. The Queen asked them to wait for a year; in the words of Martin Charteris, "the Queen was naturally sympathetic towards the Princess, but I think she thought – she hoped – given time, the affair would peter out." Senior politicians were against the match, and the Church of England did not permit re-marriage after divorce. If Margaret contracted a civil marriage, she would have to renounce her right of succession. Eventually, she decided to abandon her plans with Townsend. In 1960, she married Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. They were divorced in 1978. She did not remarry.
Despite the death of Elizabeth's grandmother Queen Mary on 24 March 1953, the coronation went ahead in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953. Before she died, Mary had asked that the coronation not be delayed. The entire ceremony, except the anointing and communion, was televised, and the coverage was instrumental in boosting the medium's popularity; the number of television licences in the United Kingdom doubled to 3 million, and many of the more than 20 million British viewers watched television for the first time in the homes of their friends or neighbours. In North America, just under 100 million viewers watched recorded broadcasts. Elizabeth wore a gown commissioned from Norman Hartnell, which was embroidered with floral emblems for countries of the Commonwealth: English Tudor rose, Scots thistle, Welsh leek, Irish shamrock, Australian wattle, Canadian maple leaf, New Zealand silver fern, South African protea, lotus flowers for India and Ceylon, and Pakistan's wheat, cotton, and jute.
Elizabeth witnessed, over her life, the ongoing transformation of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations. By the time of Elizabeth's accession in 1952, her role as nominal head of multiple independent states was already established. Spanning 1953–54, the Queen and her husband embarked on a six-month around-the-world tour. She became the first reigning monarch of Australia and New Zealand to visit those nations. During the tour, crowds were immense; three-quarters of the population of Australia were estimated to have seen the Queen. Throughout her reign, Elizabeth has undertaken state visits to foreign countries, and tours of Commonwealth ones. She is the most widely travelled head of state in history.
In 1956, French Prime Minister Guy Mollet and British Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden discussed the possibility of France joining the Commonwealth. The proposal was never accepted, and the following year France signed the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community, the precursor of the European Union. In November 1956, Britain and France invaded Egypt in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to capture the Suez Canal. Lord Mountbatten claimed the Queen was opposed to the invasion, though Eden denied it. Eden resigned two months later.
The absence of a formal mechanism within the Conservative Party for choosing a leader meant that, following Eden's resignation, it fell to the Queen to decide whom to commission to form a government. Eden recommended that Elizabeth consult Lord Salisbury (the Lord President of the Council). Lord Salisbury and Lord Kilmuir (the Lord Chancellor) consulted the Cabinet, Winston Churchill, and the Chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, as a result of which the Queen appointed their recommended candidate: Harold Macmillan. Six years later, Macmillan resigned and advised the Queen to appoint the Earl of Home as prime minister, advice that she followed.
The Suez crisis and the choice of Eden's successor led in 1957 to the first major personal criticism of the Queen. In a magazine, which he owned and edited, Lord Altrincham accused her of being "out of touch". Altrincham was denounced by public figures and physically attacked by a member of the public appalled at his comments. In 1963, the Queen again came under criticism for appointing the Prime Minister on the advice of a small number of ministers, or a single minister. In 1965, the Conservatives adopted a formal mechanism for choosing a leader, thus relieving her of involvement. In 1957, she made a state visit on behalf of the Commonwealth to the United States, where she addressed the United Nations General Assembly. On the same tour, she opened the 23rd Canadian Parliament, becoming the first monarch of Canada to open a parliamentary session. Two years later, she revisited the United States as a representative of Canada. In 1961, she toured Cyprus, India (three separate times), Pakistan, Nepal, and Iran. On a visit to Ghana the same year, she dismissed fears for her safety, even though her host President Kwame Nkrumah, who had replaced her as head of state, was a target for assassins. Harold Macmillan wrote: "The Queen has been absolutely determined all through ... She is impatient of the attitude towards her to treat her as ... a film star ... She has indeed 'the heart and stomach of a man' ... She loves her duty and means to be a Queen." Elizabeth's pregnancies with Princes Andrew and Edward, in 1959 and 1963, mark the only times she has not performed the State Opening of the British Parliament during her reign. Instead, Parliament was opened by Royal Commission, and the Lord Chancellor delivered the speech from the throne.
The 1960s and 1970s saw an acceleration in the decolonisation of Africa and the Caribbean. Over 20 countries gained independence from Britain as part of a planned transition to self-government. In 1965, however, Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith declared unilateral independence in opposition to moves toward majority black rule. Although the Queen dismissed Smith in a formal declaration and the international community applied sanctions against Rhodesia, Smith's regime survived for over a decade.
In February 1974, British Prime Minister Edward Heath called a general election in the middle of the Queen's tour of the Austronesian Pacific Rim, and she had to fly back to Britain, interrupting the tour. The inconclusive result of the election meant that Heath, whose Conservative party had the largest share of the popular vote but no overall majority, could stay in office if he formed a coalition with the Liberals. Heath only resigned when discussions on forming a cooperative government foundered, after which the Queen asked the Leader of the Opposition, Labour's Harold Wilson, to form a government.
A year later, at the height of the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was dismissed from his post by Governor-General Sir John Kerr after the Opposition-controlled Senate rejected Whitlam's budget proposals. As Whitlam had a majority in the House of Representatives, Speaker Gordon Scholes appealed to the Queen to reverse Kerr's decision. Elizabeth declined, stating that she would not interfere in decisions reserved for the Governor-General by the Constitution of Australia. The crisis fuelled Australian republicanism.
According to Paul Martin, Sr., by the end of the 1970s the Queen was worried the Crown "had little meaning for" Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Tony Benn said that the Queen found Trudeau "rather disappointing". Trudeau's supposed republicanism seemed to be confirmed by his antics, such as sliding down banisters at Buckingham Palace and pirouetting behind the Queen's back in 1977, and the removal of various Canadian royal symbols during his term of office. In 1980, Canadian politicians sent to London to discuss the patriation of the Canadian constitution found the Queen "better informed on ... Canada's constitutional case than any of the British politicians or bureaucrats". She was interested in the constitutional debate after the failure of Bill C-60, which would have affected her role as head of state. Patriation removed the role of the British parliament in the Canadian constitution, but the monarchy was retained. Trudeau said in his memoirs: "The Queen favoured my attempt to reform the Constitution. I was always impressed not only by the grace she displayed in public at all times, but by the wisdom she showed in private conversation."
Intense media interest in the opinions and private lives of the royal family during the 1980s led to a series of sensational stories in the press, not all of which were entirely true. As Kelvin MacKenzie, editor of ''The Sun'', told his staff: "Give me a Sunday for Monday splash on the Royals. Don't worry if it's not true – so long as there's not too much of a fuss about it afterwards." The Queen was reportedly worried that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's economic policies fostered social divisions, and was alarmed by high unemployment, a series of riots, the violence of a miners' strike, and Thatcher's refusal to apply sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.|group=fn}} Thatcher reputedly said the Queen would vote for the Social Democratic Party—Thatcher's political opponents. Despite such speculation, Thatcher later conveyed her personal admiration for the Queen on film and in her memoirs. Further belying reports of acrimony between them, after Thatcher's replacement by John Major, the Queen gave two honours in her personal gift to Thatcher: the Order of Merit and the Order of the Garter. She also attended Thatcher's 70th and 80th birthday parties.
By the start of 1991, republican feeling had risen because of press estimates of the Queen's private wealth, which were contradicted by the palace, and reports of affairs and strained marriages among her extended family. The involvement of the younger royals in the charity game show ''It's a Royal Knockout'' was ridiculed, and the Queen was the target of satire.
In the ensuing years, public revelations on the state of Charles and Diana's marriage continued. In consultation with Prime Minister Major, Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, her private secretary Robert Fellowes, and her husband, she wrote to Charles and Diana at the end of December 1995, saying that a divorce was desirable. A year after the divorce, which took place in 1996, Diana was killed in a car crash in Paris on 31 August 1997. The Queen was on holiday at Balmoral with her son and grandchildren. Diana's two sons wanted to attend church, and so their grandparents took them that morning. After that single public appearance, for five days the Queen and the Duke shielded their grandsons from the intense press interest by keeping them at Balmoral where they could grieve in private. The royal family's seclusion caused public dismay. Pressured by the hostile public reaction, the Queen returned to London and agreed to a live broadcast to the world on 5 September, the day before Diana's funeral. In the broadcast, she expressed admiration for Diana, and her feelings "as a grandmother" for Princes William and Harry. As a result, much of the public hostility evaporated. She again undertook an extensive tour of her realms, which began in Jamaica in February, where she called the farewell banquet "memorable" after a power cut plunged the King's House, the official residence of the Governor-General, into darkness. As in 1977, there were street parties and commemorative events, and monuments were named to honour the occasion. A million people attended each day of the three-day main Jubilee celebration in London, and the enthusiasm shown by the public for Elizabeth was greater than many journalists had predicted.
Though Elizabeth has enjoyed good health throughout her life, in 2003 she had keyhole surgery on both knees, and in June 2005 she cancelled several engagements after contracting a bad cold. In October 2006, the Queen missed the opening of the new Emirates Stadium because of a strained back muscle that had been troubling her since the summer. Two months later, she was seen in public with a plaster on her right hand, which led to press speculation of ill health. She had been bitten by one of her corgis while she was separating two that were fighting.
In May 2007, ''The Daily Telegraph'' newspaper reported claims from unnamed sources that the Queen was "exasperated and frustrated" by the policies of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that she had shown concern that the British Armed Forces were overstretched in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that she had raised concerns over rural and countryside issues with Blair repeatedly. She was, however, said to admire Blair's efforts to achieve peace in Northern Ireland. On 20 March 2008, at the Church of Ireland St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh, the Queen attended the first Maundy service held outside of England and Wales.
The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007; their marriage is the longest of any British monarch. The Queen's reign is longer than those of her four immediate predecessors combined (Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, and George VI). She is the longest-lived and second-longest-reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, and the second-longest-serving current head of state (after King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand). She does not intend to abdicate, though the proportion of public duties performed by Prince Charles may increase as Elizabeth reduces her commitments.
Elizabeth addressed the United Nations for a second time in 2010, 53 years after her first address, again in her capacity as queen of all of her realms and Head of the Commonwealth. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon introduced her as "an anchor for our age". In her speech, which followed a tour of Canada and was considered by her staff to be one of her most important recently, she said that she had "witnessed great change, much of it for the better ... but", she continued, "the aims and values which inspired the United Nations Charter endure." She concluded, "In tomorrow's world, we must all work together as hard as ever if we are truly to be united nations." While in New York, she also officially opened a memorial garden for the British victims of the 11 September attacks.
At the invitation of Irish President Mary McAleese, in May 2011 the Queen made the first state visit to the Republic of Ireland by a British monarch. The last visit by a British monarch was in 1911, before Irish independence in 1922.
Elizabeth plans to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, marking 60 years as Queen. She could become the longest-reigning monarch in the history of any of her realms and the longest-reigning queen regnant in world history (surpassing Queen Victoria, who celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897) if she reigns for another }} days, until 10 September 2015.
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Elizabeth is the patron of over 600 charities and other organisations. Her main leisure interests include equestrianism and dogs, especially her Pembroke Welsh Corgis. Her clothes consist mostly of solid-colour overcoats and decorative hats, which allow her to be seen easily in a crowd.
In the 1950s, as a young woman at the start of her reign, Elizabeth was depicted as a glamorous "fairytale Queen". After the trauma of the war, it was a time of hope, a period of progress and achievement heralding a "new Elizabethan age". Lord Altrincham's accusation in 1957 that her speeches sounded like those of a "priggish schoolgirl" was an extremely rare criticism. In the late 1960s, attempts to portray a more modern image of monarchy were made in the television documentary ''Royal Family'', and by televising Prince Charles's investiture as Prince of Wales.
At her Silver Jubilee in 1977, the crowds and celebrations were genuinely enthusiastic, but in the 1980s public criticism of the royal family increased, as the personal and working lives of Elizabeth's children came under media scrutiny. Elizabeth's popularity sank to a low point in the 1990s. Under pressure from public opinion, she began to pay income tax for the first time, and Buckingham Palace was opened to the public. Discontent with the monarchy reached its peak on the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, though the Queen's popularity rebounded after her live broadcast to the world five days after Diana's death.
In November 1999, a referendum in Australia on the future of the monarchy favoured its retention in preference to an indirectly elected head of state. Polls in Britain in 2006 and 2007 revealed strong support for Elizabeth, and referenda in Tuvalu in 2008 and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in 2009 both rejected proposals to abolish the monarchy.
Elizabeth has received honours and awards from countries around the world, and has held honorary military positions throughout the Commonwealth, both before and after her accession.
Name | Marriage !! Children !! Grandchildren | |||||
rowspan="2">Charles, Prince of Wales | 14 November 1948 | 29 July 1981<Divorced 28 August 1996 | | | Diana, Princess of Wales | Prince William, Duke of CambridgePrince Harry of Wales | |
9 April 2005 | Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall| | |||||
rowspan="3">Anne, Princess Royal | rowspan="3"15 August 1950 || | 14 November 1973Divorced 28 April 1992 | Mark Phillips | Peter Phillips | Savannah Phillips | |
Zara Phillips | ||||||
12 December 1992 | Sir Timothy Laurence| | |||||
Prince Andrew, Duke of York | 19 February 1960| | 23 July 1986Divorced 30 May 1996 | Sarah, Duchess of York | Princess Beatrice of YorkPrincess Eugenie of York | ||
Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex | 10 March 1964| | 19 June 1999 | Sophie, Countess of Wessex | Lady Louise WindsorJames, Viscount Severn |
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af:Elizabeth II van die Verenigde Koninkryk als:Elisabeth II. ang:Elisabeþ II ar:إليزابيث الثانية an:Isabel II d'o Reino Unito ast:Sabela II del Reinu Xuníu az:II Yelizaveta bn:দ্বিতীয় এলিজাবেথ bjn:Elizabeth II matan Britania Raya zh-min-nan:Elizabeth 2-sè be:Елізавета II be-x-old:Лізавета II bi:Elisabet II bs:Elizabeta II, kraljica Ujedinjenog Kraljevstva br:Elesbed II bg:Елизабет II (Обединено кралство) ca:Elisabet II del Regne Unit ceb:Elizabeth II sa Hiniusang Gingharian cs:Alžběta II. cbk-zam:Reina Elizabeth, el aca-segundo cy:Elisabeth II, brenhines y Deyrnas Unedig da:Elizabeth 2. af Storbritannien de:Elisabeth II. nv:Kwį́į́n Elizabeth II et:Elizabeth II el:Ελισάβετ Β΄ του Ηνωμένου Βασιλείου es:Isabel II del Reino Unido eo:Elizabeto la 2-a (Britio) ext:Isabel II del Réinu Uniu eu:Elisabet II.a Erresuma Batukoa fa:الیزابت دوم fr:Élisabeth II du Royaume-Uni fy:Elizabeth II fan it Feriene Keninkryk ga:Eilís II na Ríochta Aontaithe gv:Ealisaid II y Reeriaght Unnaneysit gd:Ban-rìgh Ealasaid II gl:Isabel II do Reino Unido hak:Elizabeth Ngi-sṳ ko:엘리자베스 2세 hy:Եղիսաբեթ II hi:संयुक्त राजशाही की एलिज़ाबेथ द्वितीय hr:Elizabeta II. io:Elizabeth 2ma ilo:Isabel II ti Reino Unido id:Elizabeth II dari Britania Raya ie:Elisabeth II os:Елизаветæ II is:Elísabet 2. Bretadrottning it:Elisabetta II del Regno Unito he:אליזבת השנייה, מלכת הממלכה המאוחדת jv:Elizabeth II saking Britania Raya kn:ಎರಡನೇ ಎಲಿಜಬೆಥ್ ka:ელისაბედ II kw:Elisabeth II sw:Elizabeth II wa Uingereza la:Elizabeth II (regina Britanniarum) lv:Elizabete II Vindzora lt:Elžbieta II hu:II. Erzsébet brit királynő mk:Елизабета II mi:Irihapeti te Tuarua mr:एलिझाबेथ दुसरी, इंग्लंड arz:اليزابيث التانيه ms:Elizabeth II dari United Kingdom mn:II Элизабет my:အယ်လီဇဘက် ဒုတိယ (ယူကေဘုရင်မ) nah:Cihuātlahtoāni Elizabeth II nl:Elizabeth II van het Verenigd Koninkrijk ja:エリザベス2世 no:Elisabeth II av Storbritannia nn:Elizabeth II av Storbritannia nrm:Lîzabé II du Rouoyaume Unni nov:Elisabeth II oc:Elisabeta II del Reialme Unit pnb:ملکہ الزبتھ II pap:Elizabet II pcd:HM Queen Elizabeth II pms:Elisabeta II dël Regn Unì tpi:Elisabet 2 pl:Elżbieta II pt:Isabel II do Reino Unido ro:Elisabeta a II-a qu:Elisabeth II ru:Елизавета II se:Elizabeth II sa:एलिज़बेथ २ sco:Elizabeth II sq:Elizabeth II scn:Elisabetta II dû Regnu Unitu si:දෙවන එලිසබෙත් රැජින simple:Elizabeth II ss:Indlovukazi Elizabeth II sk:Alžbeta II. sl:Elizabeta II. Britanska sr:Елизабета II sh:Elizabeta II fi:Elisabet II sv:Elizabeth II tl:Elizabeth II ng Mga Nagkakaisang Kaharian ta:ஐக்கிய இராச்சியத்தின் இரண்டாம் எலிசபெத் kab:Elizabeth II tt:Елизавета II te:ఎలిజబెత్ II, యునైటెడ్ కింగ్డమ్ th:สมเด็จพระราชินีนาถเอลิซาเบธที่ 2 แห่งสหราชอาณาจักร tr:II. Elizabeth uk:Єлизавета II (королева Великої Британії) ur:ایلزبتھ دوم ug:ئېلىزابېت II vi:Elizabeth II của Anh war:Elizabeth II han Reino Unido yi:עליזאבעט די צווייטע yo:Elisabeti Keji zh-yue:伊利沙伯二世 bat-smg:Elžbieta II zh:伊丽莎白二世
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In 1997 he became a member of the Theater Basel. He appeared as a guest at theatres such as the Teatro alla Scala and the Semperoper. In 2000 Christoph Genz sang for the first time at the Hamburg State Opera. He became a member 2001 to 2004, singing parts such as Tamino in Mozart's ''Die Zauberflöte'', Belmonte in ''Die Entführung aus dem Serail'', and the Chevalier in Poulenc's ''Dialogues des Carmélites''.
He recorded Bach cantatas, with John Eliot Gardiner among others, the ''St John Passion'' conducted by Ludwig Güttler, the ''St Matthew Passion'' and the ''Mass in B minor'' with La Petite Bande conducted by Sigiswald Kuijken. In 2005 he appeared with La Petite Bande in a concert of Bach cantatas at the Rheingau Musik Festival in the Eibingen Abbey, together with Siri Thornhill, Petra Noskaiová and Jan van der Crabben. He performed in Mendelssohn's ''Lobgesang'', conducted by Helmuth Rilling.
He sang the part of Brighella in a recording of ''Ariadne auf Naxos'' of Richard Strauss, with the Staatskapelle Dresden and Giuseppe Sinopoli and the part of Tamino in a recording with Sigiswald Kuijken. He performed the ''Mass in B minor'' also with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, conducted by both Herbert Blomstedt and Georg Christoph Biller.
Category:German tenors Category:Operatic tenors Category:Prize-winners of the International Bach Competition Category:1971 births Category:Living people
de:Christoph Genz ru:Генц, Кристоф
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