Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Elizabeth I and the Dilemma of Loyalty

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688

  • 306 Accesses

Abstract

The reign of Elizabeth I was unusual in focusing so closely on the figure of the queen herself, with no heir and no wider royal family to diffuse attention or to distract away from matters of the queen’s own life and death and how she would maintain her authority and control as monarch. The question of loyalty was therefore of central importance to Elizabeth’s reign, particularly as divisions emerged over questions of religion as well as the succession. Her rule was supported by a complicated set of beliefs and values which sustained a profound loyalty to queen and country. This chapter will focus on these ideas and on the disruptions that afflicted members of the Catholic nobility and gentry when they found themselves in opposition to official policy and the will of the queen, contemplating how to reconcile questions of resistance and criticism with the ongoing importance of notions of obedience and loyalty to the crown. Finally, the chapter will turn to consider the significance of the language and ideas of courtly love as a way in which loyalty was expressed and reinforced for Elizabeth and her courtiers, thinking about its possibilities and its limitations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    M. James, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986); G. W. Bernard, ‘The Continuing Power of the Tudor Nobility’, in Power and Politics in Tudor England, ed. G. W. Bernard (Aldershot, 2000), p. 45. See also G. W. Bernard, The Power of the Early Tudor Nobility: A Study of the Fourth and Fifth Earls of Shrewsbury (Sussex, 1985), esp. pp. 1–6, 197–208; B. Coward, ‘A “Crisis of the Aristocracy” in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries? The Case of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, 1504–1642’, Northern History 18 (1982), 54–77.

  2. 2.

    J. Dickinson, Court Politics and the Earl of Essex, 1589–1601 (London, 2012), chapter 1; A. Davis, Chivalry and Romance in the English Renaissance (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 26–32; P. Salzman, English Prose Fiction 1558–1700. A Critical History (Oxford, 1985), pp. 98–101.

  3. 3.

    J. Norden, The Mirror of Honor (London, 1597), p. 30.

  4. 4.

    C. Sharp, Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569 (London, 1840), p. 321.

  5. 5.

    Sharp, Memorials, p. 196.

  6. 6.

    Sharp, Memorials, p. 27.

  7. 7.

    Sharp, Memorials, pp. 77, 41.

  8. 8.

    A. Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill, 1979); S. Tutino, Law and Conscience: Catholicism in Early Modern England, 1570–1625 (Aldershot, 2007).

  9. 9.

    A. Walsham, Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and Confessional Polemic in Early Modern England (London, 1993); M. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern England: Politics, Aristocratic Patronage and Religion, c. 1550–1640 (Cambridge, 2006).

  10. 10.

    ‘Regnans in Excelsis’, issued 25 February 1570, available at: http://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius05/p5regnans.htm (accessed 24 March 2019).

  11. 11.

    S. Kaushik, ‘Resistance, Loyalty and Recusant Politics: Sir Thomas Tresham and the Elizabethan State’, Midland History 21 (1996), 37–72.

  12. 12.

    J. Lock, ‘Tresham, Sir Thomas (1543–1605)’, in ODNB, available at: http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-27712 (accessed 24 March 2019).

  13. 13.

    Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, 8 vols. (London: HMSO, 1901–14) (afterwards HMC), iii, pp. 16, 23, 46, 56–7; for originals, see BL, Add. MS 39828.

  14. 14.

    HMC, iii, p. 121.

  15. 15.

    P. Holmes, Resistance and Compromise: The Political Thought of the Elizabethan Catholics (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 178–9.

  16. 16.

    Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, p. 47.

  17. 17.

    Pritchard, Catholic Loyalism, pp. 47–8.

  18. 18.

    HMC, iii, p. 27.

  19. 19.

    CSPD, 1591–94, pp. 470–1.

  20. 20.

    Letter to the archbishop of Canterbury and the lords of the Privy Council, HMC, iii, p. 53.

  21. 21.

    HMC, iii, p. 56.

  22. 22.

    S. M. Cogan, ‘Building the Badge of God: Architectural Representations of Persecution and Coexistence in Post-Reformation England’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 107 (2016), pp. 174–8.

  23. 23.

    W. Cecil, The Copie of A Letter Sent Ovt of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza… (London, 1588).

  24. 24.

    C. Read, ‘William Cecil and Elizabethan Public Relations’, in Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays presented to Sir John Neale, ed. S. T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C. H. Williams (London, 1961), pp. 45–6; Questier, Catholicism and Community, p. 124.

  25. 25.

    Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 169–75.

  26. 26.

    Cited in Questier, Catholicism and Community, pp. 171–2.

  27. 27.

    F. A. Yates, Astraea: The Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1975), pp. 88–111; S. Simpson, Sir Henry Lee (1533–1611): Elizabethan Courtier (Farnham, 2014), pp. 31–62.

  28. 28.

    R. Strong, Gloriana: The Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (2nd edn., London, 2003).

  29. 29.

    C. S. Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia, 1999).

  30. 30.

    R. Cecil, ‘The State and Dignity of a Secretary of State’s Place with the Care and Perill Thereof’, in P. Croft, ‘Can a Bureaucrat be a Favourite? Robert Cecil and the Strategies of Power’, in The World of the Favourite, ed. J. H. Elliott and L. W. B. Brockliss (New Haven and London, 1999), p. 83.

  31. 31.

    J. Guy, ‘The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?’, in The Reign of Elizabeth: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. J. Guy (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 1–19, 3.

  32. 32.

    For a relevant discussion of the etymology of ‘courtship’ in the Elizabethan period, see C. Bates, The Rhetoric of Courtship in Elizabethan Language and Literature (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 6–20.

  33. 33.

    BL, Add. MS 74286, ff. 6, 12v, 36v, 81r.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., f. 54r.

  35. 35.

    Ibid., f. 18r.

  36. 36.

    Ibid., f. 33v.

  37. 37.

    Ibid., f. 52r.

  38. 38.

    Memoirs of the life and times of sir Christopher Hatton, including his correspondence with the queen and other distinguished persons, ed. Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (London, 1847), pp. 25–6.

  39. 39.

    Memoirs, ed. Nicolas, pp. 26–7; S. W. May, The Elizabethan Courtier Poets: The Poems and their Contexts (London, 1991), pp. 117–18.

  40. 40.

    Memoirs, ed. Nicolas, p. 29.

  41. 41.

    Hatfield House, Cecil Manuscripts, 98.62 (HMC, A Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Hon. The Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., &c, preserved at Hatfield House, Hertfordshire, 24 vols. (London, 1883–1976), iv, p. 632; cited in, P. Croft, ‘Can a Bureaucrat be a Favourite?’, p. 82).

  42. 42.

    For a detailed reading of the iconography of the portrait, see Strong, Gloriana, pp. 157–61.

  43. 43.

    Correspondence of King James VI of England with Sir Robert Cecil and other in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth…, ed. J. Bruce (London: Camden Society, 1861), p. 14.

  44. 44.

    M. A. R. Graves, ‘Howard, Thomas, fourth duke of Norfolk (1538–1572)’, in ODNB, available at: https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-13941 (accessed 20 May 2019); Sharp, Memorials, pp. 77–8.

  45. 45.

    Acts of the Privy Council of England, ed. J. R. Dasent, 32 vols. (London, 1890–1907), xxxi, p. 180; R. C. Strong, ‘Queen Elizabeth I and the Order of the Garter’, The Archaeological Journal 119 (1962), pp. 253–4. See also Sir William Segar, Honor Military, and Civill (London, 1602), pp. 54–5, 75. At the queen’s commandment, Essex was also stripped of his title in the official accounts of events: Francis Bacon, His Apologie, in Certaine Imputations Concerning the late Earle of Essex (London, 1604), p. 72.

  46. 46.

    TNA, SP 12/278/54.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Janet Dickinson

Authors
  1. Janet Dickinson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Janet Dickinson .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Matthew Ward

  2. Department of History, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

    Matthew Hefferan

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Dickinson, J. (2020). Elizabeth I and the Dilemma of Loyalty. In: Ward, M., Hefferan, M. (eds) Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c.1400-1688. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37767-0_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-37766-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-37767-0

  • eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation