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His Last Letter: Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester

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Jeane Westin

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“Tame him? You can't tame a Tower rat--they're flea-bitten and vicious." "So are most men!" The girl smiled and stretched her cramped limbs. "Shall I tame one of them instead? They too make diverting pets, you know." Markham laughed nervously. "Wouldn't you rather have a dog, madam?" "Ah no--too loyal! They present no challenge." Behind the girl's steady eyes a shadow stirred. "My mother had a dog once. She used to make it jump through a burning hoop to prove its devotion to her, until she found my father did it better. He jumped through that hoop for over six years. When he finally got tired of performing for her amusement he killed her. And that's what makes men such interesting pets, Markham--you never know when they're going to turn and bite.”

HistoryQueen ElizabethElizabeth I
Author:Susan Kay
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“Only danger is real, and difficulty. Yet we live to make our lives safe - and those of others. (..) I will fight my own people to keep them from fighting, for as long as can be. Never fight, until it is unsafe not to fight, unsafe for our souls as well as our bodies. Then fight for their safety, - but when it is won, remember that safety itself is unsafe. For what is safety? It is sleepy thing. It does not make one happy. It does not remind one that it is good to be alive. Life is taken for granted, so it is no longer surprise. It grows dull and monotonous, one lives as a tree or a cabbage or a cow in the straw of the byre. Our forefathers scorned "a straw death". A straw life is worse.”

Historical FictionElizabeth I
Book:Elizabeth, Captive Princess
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“In no issue of foreign policy could her prevarication and indecisiveness be said to have led to disastrous consequences for her country. On the international stage there was no better survivor. At home her achievement can only be judged with hindsight. A combination of good sense and longevity settled the church, and it was no fault of hers that confessional issues became so divisive forty years after her death. She gave her country pride, and set its commercial development on a course that was eventually to be spectacularly successful; for that she deserves more credit than she is usually given.”

HistoryElizabeth I
Book:Elizabeth I: The Golden Reign of Gloriana
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“It’s not his friendship I miss,’ Elizabeth said bluntly. ‘It’s him. The very person of him. His presence. I want his shadow on my wall, I want the smell of him. I can’t eat without him, I can’t do the business of the realm. I can’t read a book without wanting his opinion, I can’t hear a tune without wanting to sing it to him.”

Queen ElizabethHenry ViiiElizabeth IQueen Elizabeth IRobert Dudley
Book:The Virgin's Lover
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“In a short six weeks, the “Northern Rebellion,” as it was called, was summarily put down by southern forces loyal to the English crown. Elizabeth exacted a terrible revenge by calling for (specifying the number) seven hundred executions of the common people, even though there had been no uprising of the general populace in support of the rebel earls of the North. (Her sister “Bloody” Mary had burned a total of 284 Protestants at the stake, including two babies; another 400 had died of starvation. So the sisters are somewhat even as to numbers of deaths directly attributable to their decisions, although Mary burned Protestants for reasons of religion, while Elizabeth hanged Catholics for reasons of state security. Mary’s executions still historically defined her half a century later as “Bloody Mary.” Elizabeth remained “Gloriana.”)”

HypocrisyTudorsElizabeth IBloody MaryElizabeth TudorCatholics Vs ProtestantsMary IMary TudorGloriana
Book:When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe
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“Mary Stuart and Elizabeth both aimed at toleration in an intolerant age, in the same ways that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law of one and the almost mother-in-law of another English queen, labored her whole life to heal the rift between Catholic and Protestant in France. All three of these queens worked as diligently and as astutely as they might to restrain the fratricidal wars of Christian against Christian. What they had to hold up against that violent seismic shift in human sensibility was the orderly traditions of monarchy. If they did not ultimately succeed, they slowed and tempered the disorder and violence.”

RenaissanceReligious TolerationTudorsElizabeth IMary StuartElizabeth TudorMary Queen Of ScotsCatherine De Médici
Book:When Women Ruled the World: Making the Renaissance in Europe
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