The Rest Is History - 39. Elizabeth I

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

She famously claimed to have the heart and stomach of a king and remains one of Britain’s most talked about monarchs, despite having reigned more than 400 years ago. Tracy Borman, author of the acclaimed Elizabeth’s Women, joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to discuss Elizabeth I. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too. So spoke Elizabeth I as she reviewed her troops at Tilbury on the 18th of August 1588, the summer of the Spanish Armada. That she was by the standards of the age an old woman with black teeth and a red wig did not prevent her words from serving as one of the Spanish Armada. That she was by the standards of the age, an old woman with black teeth and a red wig did not prevent her words from serving as one of the great rallying cries in English history.

And Elizabeth herself from serving in the imaginings of her contemporaries as the very model of a great ruler, Gloriana, the Virgin Queen. And that's a role that basically she continues to serve to the present day. Dominic sandbrook with me as ever um i realized that this is actually the first time we've done a podcast

devoted to one person yes uh and i do you think that she merits this accolade i hope you do well i obviously i obviously was holding out for a podcast on the life of James Callaghan. But weirdly, there doesn't seem as much demand among the listeners as I had thought. So I think Elizabeth I is a good second best. Of course, she is a colossal figure in the kind of iconography of England. And I think actually weirdly post-Brexit, you know, this woman defying, you know, the European invader. I mean, she's sort of enshrined in our collective imagination. Think of all the films and stuff. So actually, I think she's a great subject.

I mean, not least because of stuff that people project onto her. And maybe our guest today can help us, you know, strip away some of the myths and get to the real story. Yes, because a great subject needs a great guest. And our guest is certainly that. It's the historian Tracey Borman, author of a range of highly acclaimed books on Tudor England. And among those, germainly for our purposes, is Elizabeth's Women, the hidden story of the Virgin Queen. Tracey, thank you so much for joining us. It's my great pleasure. Although

I have to say I'm slightly reeling from Dominic referring to Elizabeth as second best. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what's going to happen. To James Callaghan. But to James Callaghan, come on. Tracy, everyone in history is second best to James Callaghan, according to Dominic. OK, fair enough. But not to Imagining History, who sent in a question to us, which I think is the perfect way to kick this off. And he or she says, chances are, if a person only knows of a few kings or queens, then Lizzie One will be on that list. There's countless books and films telling the tale of this monarch with no end in sight. So I'd like to know, what

was it about Elizabeth I that has made her fame so enduring? And that's the big question, isn't it? It is. And you're asking somebody completely biased because Elizabeth is my all-time historical heroine. She's really where my love of history began. Well, I do think she deserves that place in history because she defied all the odds. By the time she came to the throne in 1558, it was seen as an absolute disaster for a woman to bear rule, as it was said. And there hadn't been very happy precedents before Elizabeth, but she changed all of that. She confounded the stereotype of a weak and feeble

woman. And her reign achieved greater stability than throughout the rest of the Tudor period. And I think it's one of history's greatest ironies that Henry VIII, her father, goes to all that trouble for a son. You know, he could have been content with his forgotten younger daughter, really. So Henry VIII, you know, obviously he's also a titanic figure in our imagination. He must have been a... Is he at the back of Elizabeth's mind the whole time? So she comes to the throne. She's had Mary, her sister, before her, Edward VI before her, and then above them all, kind of the daddy, Henry VIII. Is she trying to be another Henry VIII, do you think? Or is she trying to be the opposite? I think that's a really interesting question. Certainly,

Elizabeth publicly identifies with her father. So, you know, she calls herself the lion's cub, and she often refers to, well, that, you know, that wouldn't have happened in my father's time. So I think she does feel his presence, almost like he's there on her shoulder for a lot of her reign, particularly the early days. And it's like she's having to prove herself to her late father. But I think actually that's what she wanted people to identify her as, as the daughter of Henry VIII. Kind of gloss over the fact she's also the daughter of the scandalous Anne Boleyn. But when you look at her actions, not her words, you see how much actually she revered her late mother. The fact she promotes all her Boleyn relatives as soon as she's queen. She adopts her mother's emblem.

But she knows it's too controversial to talk too much about Anne Boleyn so the public face of Elizabeth and let's remember she's the master of PR is all about her father and Tracy Anne Boleyn is a Protestant and Mary her half-sister her predecessor of course is a Catholic and so this is the yin and yang, the pendulum swinging backwards and forwards through the 16th century. Did the fact that Anne Boleyn was Protestant mean that Elizabeth was always going to reject the Catholicism that Mary had tried to reintroduce? I think so. But also, Elizabeth was very influenced by her tutors in childhood, and they were all of a kind of reformist or Protestant bent, really.

And she also was very close to her half brother, Edward, the future Edward VI, who was probably an even more staunch Protestant than Elizabeth herself. So I think it was it was kind of a generational thing. Mary was much older than Elizabeth, 17 years older, and she was born very much into a Catholic world, whereas things by the time of Elizabeth's birth were very much beginning to change. So that absolutely shaped her worldview. How did Mary and Elizabeth get on? Did they really dislike each other? Well, on the face of it, we tend to think that they were at loggerheads from the beginning, but far from it. And I think Mary deserves credit because she had every reason to hate this child of the despised Anne Boleyn, who'd supplanted her own mother, Catherine of Aragon.

But she seems to have felt sorry for the young Elizabeth after Anne Boleyn's execution. She kind of took her under her wing. And I think she had quite strong maternal instincts. It's quite tragic. Mary never had a child of her own. And so she really looked after Elizabeth and actually persuaded their father, Henry, to sort of forgive Elizabeth for Anne Boleyn's fate and everything that she'd done to him as he saw it. So the two sisters did grow up actually quite close. But then they were driven apart by this eternal issue of religion, particularly after Mary became queen. And that religious side of things, obviously, it's not just a sort of fig leaf.

It's not something that you – Elizabeth genuinely was a Protestant and she believes in it. But she sort of has to navigate it really. England has been torn apart. It's gone one way, then the other um she's a pragmatist right i mean she's sort of navigating through these very tricky kind of waters and actually the weird thing is that we've ended up with her church which is a kind of half catholic half protestant is that is that about right a half catholic half protestant yeah you've you've absolutely hit the nail on the head there dominicic, with the word pragmatist. That's what she was above everything else. Yes, she might have had quite strong beliefs

and she definitely veered more towards Protestantism than Catholicism, but she wanted compromise. She didn't want this issue of religion to continue to divide her people. So we have this wonderful compromise that is the Church of England. And if I may just put in a little pitch, because I always have to mention her, my favourite of the six wives, Anne of Cleves, I think it's she who taught Elizabeth the art of pragmatism. She'd given Henry his annulment. She'd seen what had happened to women who didn't do what Henry wanted. So she went with the flow, became arguably the most successful of Henry's wives. And Elizabeth became very influenced by Anne of Cleves and learned the art of pragmatism. Anne of Cleves lived the longest, didn't she?

She did. She outlived all the rest. She lived well into Mary's reign. And I think it's really to her credit that she didn't fall out with anybody, Catholic, Protestant, whichever side of the royal divide you're on. Everybody liked her. Nobody had a bad word to say against Anne of Cleves. So I love her. She got given a lot of houses in Sussex. She did. They are now owned by the Sussex Archaeological Society, Britain's oldest county archaeological society, which is slightly short of cash. So anyone out there who would like to help them do do chip in and you'll be helping with a bit of history um but tracy i was about elizabeth i mean she's a pragmatist but she's also it seems to me and i i kind of recognize this trait because i

kind of have it myself you're comparing yourself to the virgin queen yes i am sempre adem always the same basically she didn't like change very much did she and i'm feeling this very strong at the moment because my my i i went up for a zoom yesterday came down and found that my wife had completely re-wallpapered the uh the sitting room and i think that elizabeth the first would not have approved of that and i was kind of slightly startled by it as well and there's kind of sense in of sense in which her refusal to get rid, say, of the choirs in cathedrals and churches and things, which I'm very glad she didn't. But basically, she liked it, she didn't want to change it, so she's going to keep it no matter what the firebrand Protestants

wanted to do. I mean, that is also an aspect of her character, isn't it? It absolutely is. And I wonder, is this a historian's trait? Because I'm exactly the same. I hate change. I cannot abide it. And yeah, I think Elizabeth, certainly, you know, she had an appropriate motto. And I think even though she has gone down as a Protestant monarch, she did retain those bits of the Catholic faith that she'd always rather liked. And actually there's evidence she continued to hear Mass in private and she had Catholic friends, she had Catholic books in her collection. So she did sort of pick and choose a little bit. Let's get to what some people would consider the sort of the big question. I mean, when I say some people, not me, of course, but June or John on Twitter does consider this the big question. I mean, when I say some people, not me, of course, but June or John on Twitter does consider this the big question.

He or she says, of course, there's the debate as to whether she was really a virgin. Historians can't resist probing her private area. I think that's a man, Dominic. That's a man. I apologise for the question.

I think that's actually Tom Holland who's asked that question. Absolutely not. Great respecter of the Virgin Queen's privacy. Do you know, I would be disappointed if I didn't get this question because every single talk I give, I'm asked this question. And when I say every single talk, even if the talk has been on something completely different, I once gave a lecture on Matilda of Flanders, the wife of

William the Conqueror. And in the Q&A, the very first question was, so was Elizabeth really the virgin queen? Which I took offense at. But anyway, so my view is that she absolutely was. That's not to say she didn't dabble in various kind of flirtations and the like with her male favourites. But when you look at it, she had learned from the lessons of her past. There's no wonder she grew up terrified of marriage, of childbirth. She had no positive role models from her childhood and the female kind of influences of her early life. Her mother was executed at the orders of her father. One of her stepmothers was also executed. Her sister, Mary, had phantom pregnancies and

suffered all that humiliation. So there's little wonder Elizabeth grew up thinking, okay, this just isn't for me. But politically as well, she didn't want to give any power away to a man. Now, there are rumours and there were rumours that she had affairs. Okay, she didn't want to marry, but she was still going to have sexual relationships. I don't believe she would ever have taken that risk because she knew the scandal it would visit on her and also, of course, the risk of pregnancy. But I think one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for Elizabeth's virginity came in 1562. Now, I'm going to get a plug in for where I should be right now, which is Hampton Court. This is my day job working for Historic Royal Palaces.

And it's while staying at Hampton Court early in her reign that Elizabeth contracted smallpox, one of the deadliest diseases of the age. She almost died. She was so convinced she was going to die that she summoned her confessor. And she insisted that nothing improper had ever passed between her and her closest male favourite, Robert Dudley. Now you might say, okay, yeah, words are easy. Not in this God-fearing age. She would have thought that she was sacrificing her eternal salvation by telling a lie. So I do think she was the virgin. But, you know, she may have, as I say, dabbled. Isn't it true that Dudley had room?

She moved Dudley into a room next to her or something. Oh, yeah. And you don't think that, you know, in the dead of night? Or do you think what? Well, I mean, this is so prurient, isn't it? It reduces us to sort of people reading, you know, the sidebar of shame and Mail Online or something. No.

But you genuinely don't think, you think she had, I suppose she had an iron self-control, didn't she? She did. And she would have exercised that in her private life as well as her political life. She absolutely did. And I think she'd inherited that self-control from her mother who kept Henry VIII at bay for seven years.

So I do think she'd have exercised that. I think she certainly enjoyed Dudley's company, and absolutely she did things that were completely inappropriate in the eyes of her contemporaries, moving his rooms next to hers, tickling his collar when she conveyed an honour on him, and all sorts of things like that. But I don't think she ever went so far as to have a full sexual relationship with Dudley. I don't think she'd have taken the risk. Tracey, there's two other questions on this theme of Elizabeth's virginity. One from Christopher

Kent. How much of the Virgin Queen persona was a reaction to the scandal with Thomas Seymour? So he was her guardian, wasn't he? And there was rumours perhaps of attempted rape. Absolutely. So could you give us the background on that? Because I think that's very interesting. It is interesting. So Thomas Seymour married Elizabeth's last stepmother, Catherine Parr, scandalously soon after Henry VIII's death. And Elizabeth loved Catherine Parr. So she sort of forgave her for this rather inappropriate, quick marriage. And she went to live with them. As you say, Seymour was sort of her guardian. And not long afterwards, rumours started about Seymour's

behaviour towards the teenage Elizabeth. And it was absolutely out of order as behaviour goes. So he would go into Elizabeth's room early in the morning before she was up and dressed and sort of tickle her in bed. On another occasion, he cut her gown into a hundred pieces while Catherine Parr held Elizabeth down. You know, it's all deeply disturbing. That's pretty weird. It's really weird. I mean, you know, it has been called child abuse. And yet it's interesting how attitudes change, because this was always portrayed by historians as Elizabeth having this early flirtation. And it gave her a kind of taste for surrounding herself with admiring courtiers.

Whereas now, of course, we see it as much more disturbing. And I think rightly so. I think it did teach Elizabeth very valuable lessons. It probably confirmed her belief that really she just didn't want to go there when it came to marriage and relationships with men. But I think as well, it made her very protective of her relationship because this was incredibly damaging to her public image. And it was an absolute scandal, not just in England, but internationally, and it damaged her reputation as a potential bride. So I think this did make her really motivated to protect her reputation going forward. Right. Okay. And so following up on that,

the way in which perhaps the virginity becomes the badge of her political responsibility. There's a question from Mim who asks, how aware and in personal control was she of her image? The replacement Virgin Mary stuff is well known, but the many direct comparisons to pagan deities are multiple and very skillful. So that's all kind of the climate that you get with Spencer and other poets. That is interesting, isn't it? It's really interesting. And I think Elizabeth was absolutely in control of her image. I mentioned she was a master of PR, really, as we would call it today.

And she very carefully controlled her image in paintings with the so-called mask of youth where she never ages. And she also was instrumental in the crafting and the design of her public pageants and progresses. And she created this kind of world in which she was the unattainable kind of virgin in a court full of adoring men and advisors and ambassadors. And her attention to detail was quite extraordinary, all the way down to kind of obliging her ladies to kind of dress in sober colours so that her own glorious gowns were shown off to best effect. I love that. Do you think the idea that she fills a gap, the banishment of the Virgin with the banishment of Catholicism, do you think that's an idea that holds water? I think it is. And I think she publicly identified herself as a sort of Virgin Mary here on earth. And perhaps that's one of those remnants of Catholicism that actually she had quite cherished. but she became something to replace that.

And I think that was a real masterstroke. It was about worshipping her, not just obeying her, as all subjects are required to do. This kind of set her authority on a whole other footing. Tom, I can see Spanish ships ahead. I think we should take a break, play a game of bowls, get our troops together, and then we'll come back.

And yes, we can ask Tracy some more questions. We'll see you our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. Tom and I both have questions for Tracey Borman about Elizabeth I, but since I'm in control of the mic, I'm going to ask my question first. So, Tracey, the Spanish Armada, which is where we began the podcast, how much of a genuine threat to Elizabeth's crown and life

do you think it was, and how much credit should we give her, rather than her captains for or indeed the weather for seeing off Philip II so I think the Armada was the greatest threat that not just Elizabeth but England had faced uh really for many years now on its own uh Philip II assembling a fleet in Spain and setting sail, that fleet was actually pretty well matched with Elizabeth's navy. But the key factor here was that the Spanish armada was going to unite with the Duke of Parma's ships and the Duke of Parma's forces, which were stationed in the Netherlands, perilously close to England.

Now, if that rendezvous had happened successfully, I think the Armada was pretty much unbeatable. But it didn't. And then there was a series of catastrophes, not least the weather. But I think we have to give some credit to Elizabeth's commanders, Lord Howard and the other members of her navy, such as it was in those days, because they were very skilled sailors and they were very skilled tacticians as well. And the use of fire ships was quite instrumental. But I have to say that all of that considered, if it hadn't been for the good old british weather deciding the day then i'm not sure the armada really would have been elizabeth's finest hour but but tracy if they'd if it had worked right if they'd got you know if they if they'd got control of the channel if they got the troops over into england i mean would that have been curtains for elizabeth i mean would it have been an appointment with a chopping block or would she been off to a convent or you know what was the what was the future for her yeah i or would she have been off to a convent? What was the future

for her? Yeah, I think it would have been curtains for Elizabeth because Philip II couldn't have allowed her to live really and establish his own authority. I mean, could he have married her or married her to one of his family? Possibly, but I think she would always have been seen as too great a threat. So I think it would have been the end of Elizabeth's life. Whether, in fact, there would have been enough resistance and coordinated resistance to eject Spain and install another English or probably Scottish monarch in Philip II's place is a bit more debatable. But no, this was absolute peril for Elizabeth and the entire Tudor dynasty. Because the thing about Tilbury is basically it was dad's army, wasn't it? And the Spanish troops on the other side are kind of the most lethal killing machine in Europe.

So it really, if they had crossed, it would have all been over. Yeah. There's more than a whiff of Dad's Army about all of this. But by the time that Elizabeth delivered that iconic speech, and let's give her credit for that speech of all of her many public addresses, that was the best, I think. By the time she was at Tilbury saying all those amazing, inspiring words to her troops, the danger had pretty much passed. Yeah, but she didn't know that, did she, by that point?

Is that fair? I can't believe that you're defending her and I'm sort of speaking against her. It should be the other way around, actually. But no, you're right. Probably communications being as it were, she wasn't that aware. It was still a very brave thing for her to do. But, Tracy, if I can jump in, Tom knows I like to be sceptical. That speech, I mean, how do we know that she actually said any of those words?

Are those not just words put in her mouth by a chronicler or something? Well, the thing is, in Elizabeth's defence, and I think we can be pretty certain about this, there wasn't just one account of that speech. There were several written by people who were there. Now, they don't exactly match up, but it's close enough, particularly with certain lines. So I think... I want to believe it. I want to believe it as much as anybody. Yes, absolutely.

One of the reasons for thinking that Elizabeth said that was that she was a great writer. I mean, she was a very, very literate person. And of course, this is the great age of English literature. So the Spanish Armada percolates through into the writings of the poets. It's there in Shakespeare, come the three corners of the world in arms and we shall shock them. To what extent do you think Elizabeth plays a role as the kind of presiding genius of that literary renaissance. And also kind of a matching question, to what extent do you think the genius of that writing then reflects back on the perspective that we have on Elizabeth? I think there is a temptation, and I've fallen prey to this, to give Elizabeth credit for

everything that happened in this glorious kind of Elizabethan flowering of culture and the arts. But I do think that she was a great patron of the arts. I mean, we know that she attended plays by Shakespeare. Obviously, Edmund Spencer was a big favourite as well. So she was an active participant and promoter of the arts. But arguably, there were other influences at play here too. The stability of the regime and of the kingdom that she had helped to establish certainly did promote this flowering of the arts and of literature. And the fact that we were getting influences in from all corners of the globe during the later 16th century. I think that was very profound as well in terms of the kind of

development of the arts. But people followed Elizabeth's lead. She was going to the theatre, she was reading all of these plays and patronising all of these artists and authors and playwrights. And so the great and the good of England at the time absolutely went where Elizabeth followed. And that's why you get sort of the funding for the arts, if you like, if you put it in modern terms, that we see during Elizabeth's reign. But there's another side to Elizabeth's England, isn't there, Tracy,

which Nick Brown has asked a question about on Twitter. And he wants to know about the Burghley-Walsingham surveillance state. And he says, you know, did ordinary citizens feel they had to watch what they said? And there are books like Stephen Alford's book, The Watchers and stuff. You know, this sort of image of Elizabeth in England where she's basically a sort of lunatic with a wig. And, you know, the public are kind of living in fear that, you know,

there's spies everywhere there's paranoia and conspiracies and and it's just this sort of you know this sort of elizabethan east germany is there any you know how do you how do you respond to all that do you think there's a bit of truth in all that um there's certainly truth in the sophistication of the spy networks that uh walsingham and and to a lesser extent, Burley helped to establish. And by the way, I'm a huge fan of Stephen Olsen's book, and I keep recommending it to people. It's amazing. And a real eye-opener to just what went into stabilising the Elizabethan regime. And the fact it isn't just Elizabeth there making her great speeches and these memorable

public appearances. There's a whole lot that went into keeping her on her throne. And I think it's incredibly impressive, the communication channels that Walsingham managed to open up across the world, not just in England. But I think it goes too far to say that Elizabeth is some kind of ineffectual puppet at the head of all of this, just a sort of figurehead, and that she isn't kind of pulling her own strings, as I believe she was. And I think you see from the descriptions of the council meetings, of the parliaments that she attended, of her correspondence with her ministers, just how much she is personally involved, how much she is shaping and to a certain extent dictating

affairs. But I think one of Elizabeth's greatest gifts is that she did take advice. She didn't quite have the same ego as her father, who liked to pretend that he was the one solely in charge, coming up with all the ideas when really it's the likes of Thomas Cromwell and Wolsey working behind the scenes. Whereas Elizabeth, she very publicly did depend on advisors such as William Cecil, Lord Burley. I mean, to follow up on that, the darkness that one could see in Elizabethan England, because this is a time of potential terrorist threats, pandemics, recession, isolation from Europe. There are certain parallels there. And I guess the kind of, you know, when I think of Elizabethan England,

I always think of blue skies and, yes, Elizabeth's procession through, you know, merry England and people dancing around maypoles. But of course, the reality must have been grimmer and darker, particularly if you're Catholic, but also for lots of people struggling to make a living in what economically were quite difficult times. And you say, you know, the impact of plague on Elizabethan England.

Obviously, you have a profounder sense of it now than perhaps we might have had, you know, a year and a half ago. I know the contemporary parallels really are very striking. I think throughout the Tudor period, I was asked, oh, about four and a half years ago, to write a piece for a national newspaper that I won't name, on was Henry VIII responsible for Brexit? Oh, yeah, David Starkey did that piece.

Yes, there you go. I think I've done that piece. Oh, okay. Well, I decided not to go there. There you go. That's how little I like controversy, Dominic, but obviously you're braver than me. But there were parallels, certainly.

And I think there is a darker side, undoubtedly, to Elizabethan England, and particularly as the reign progresses and as the succession becomes more of an issue, because of course we have the Virgin Queen. She's not going to leave any direct descendants. And that's when really there is nervousness about the future. And there is an increasing threat from the Catholic community, both within and outside England.

Now, as part of my work for Historic Royal Palaces, I am at the Tower of London a lot. And I think it's striking to look at the physical evidence for this sort of darkness that descended in Elizabeth's later years. And that comes from the Beecham Tower inside the Tower of London, where you see the evidence of graffiti left behind in the sort of 1580s, 1590s by all of the Catholic prisoners who were kept there under suspicion of plotting Elizabeth's assassination. So let's remember the Pope had sanctioned it. He'd encouraged the people of the faith to actually murder their queen. And you really see that chiseled into the stone of the Beecham Tower inside the Tower of London. I think most people who visit the tower tend to make a beeline for the crown jewels.

But I'd like to just put in a pitch for the Beecham Tower. It's really very chilling. Tracey, given how much stability mattered to Elizabeth and how much the question of, I mean, the Tudor dynasty is a new dynasty. You know, it's only been there since 1485. And given how much it obviously and understandably mattered to her father, it seems odd that the succession is kind of that question is just hanging there the whole time, because you'd think succession planning would be the number one priority. So, for example, Paul Bernardi on Twitter says, why do you think she left that in doubt for so long?

Is that a kind of egotism almost, that she can't conceive of anybody other than herself as monarch? in shaping her view because when her sister Mary was dying, people started to flock to Elizabeth as being the most likely heir and they completely shifted their focus away from Mary. And certainly, all of the eyes were on the future queen, not on the present queen. And I think it's not just egotism. I think Elizabeth wanted to retain control and she didn't want to name her successor too early. She gave hints, but she never went so far as to confirm that it would be the King of Scots, James VI, who was her closest blood relative. Although her father, Henry VIII, had actually barred his Scottish descendants we tend to overlook that fact and it doesn't bother her Tracy that it's not going to be a Tudor I mean if it bothered Henry

so much it had to be a Tudor of course because his own father won the crown on the battlefield why doesn't that bother Elizabeth that the dynasty is going to come to an end so quickly I think it does bother her but I think the sticking point with Elizabeth is marriage. And I think this really, of course, is why the whole succession is thrown into doubt, because Elizabeth is faced with this kind of impossible choice between marrying and leaving direct heirs, but then either ceding her authority to a husband, and she made that famous remark, I will have but one mistress here and no master. But also, who do you choose as a husband? If you choose an Englishman, it divides the court.

It kind of creates these factions. If you choose a foreigner, well, look how that went for her sister, Mary. And she once remarked, the English hate foreigners, so I can't marry a foreign prince. They are, Elizabeth was. And so she had this impossible choice. There isn't a good option here or an easy option. So that's why she decides not to marry. And of course, that's why the succession becomes such a hot potato, particularly in her later reign. But I mean, I'm surprised because I thought that essentially it's a hot potato while Mary Queen of

Scots is alive. And essentially the elimination of Mary Queen of Scots makes it less of a hot potato because then the heir is a Protestant. As long as you've got Mary Queen of Scots as a potential figurehead for Catholic conspirators and she's going to succeed if Elizabeth dies, that's the real hot potato. Is that not right? Yeah, no, there is an element of truth to that but there were other contenders um as well and notably our bella stewart um who her blood line was slightly weaker than james's but she had been born on english soil so actually she was a favorite among um many members of elizabeth's courts um but sadly our bella kind of upset uh elizabeth when they were introduced, when she visited court as a teenager and she was very haughty, Elizabeth Court. And then she kind of seemed to lose it and

was described as sort of half mad by the time the succession really became a pressing issue. So she almost wrote herself out of the story. So I think Elizabeth probably knew for many years it was going to be James who succeeded her. But it was literally just on her deathbed when finally, you know, her ministers are gathered around her bedside. You say, will it be the King of Scots, ma'am? And she draws a kind of coronet over her head because she's beyond speech. And that was said to have signalled her assent that yes, it's the King of Scots who will now be the King of England too. Tracy, on the subject of Mary Queen of Scots who will now be the King of England too. Tracey, on the subject of Mary Queen of Scots, we've got one from the aptly named Khaleesi,

who asks, did Elizabeth know that William Cecil was going to have Mary Queen of Scots executed? And I guess that that, along with the virginity question, is the, you know, it's the big unknown, isn't it? Yeah. Although, you know, much as I love Elizabeth, she was laying on thick when it came to her reaction to Mary Queen of Scots execution. She knew full well, she sanctioned it, she knew exactly what she was signing with the execution warrant when it was presented to her by her secretary, William Davison. They actually discussed it. And poor old Davison, you know, became a scapegoat afterwards. But Elizabeth was trying desperately to distance herself from Mary's execution because she feared the wrath of Catholic Europe. She feared the wrath of Mary's son, James, although actually he was remarkably

quick to forgive Elizabeth for beheading his mother. So I think it's all pure play acting on Elizabeth's part. This, oh, I didn't realise what I'd signed. I didn't want them to take the warrant up there. And it's like, come on, pull the other one, Elizabeth. But that's clever monarchical leadership, isn't it? You take responsibility for the good and you pretend that your advisors are responsible for the bad. Exactly. So, Tracey, here's a question for you. There have been innumerable screen Elizabeths,

you know, Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, you name it. Who are the best and worst? Ha, yes, and I've watched them all because I'm obsessed. The very first talk I gave ever when I was, you know, kind of a fledgling historian was film representations of Elizabeth. So I've done my research on this. And do you know what I concluded for that? And my view is still the same, that it's Miranda Richardson's Blackadder portrayal that is my favourite.

It's the best. She absolutely nails it in terms of Elizabeth's kind of, you know, fickle behaviour, unpredictability, vanity. But you love her anyway. And the worst? Oh, the worst. I don't know. You see, I'm a bit of a fan of the Cate Blanchett portrayal,

and I shouldn't name that because, you know, hopefully as a credible historian, I'm not saying it's an accurate film. I just quite liked her portrayal. I have to say I can't probably claim that this is the worst because I haven't seen it, but you know, the latest film about Mary, Queen of Scots, and I saw bits of that. Margot Robbie.

Margot Robbie is in it. Oh, I thought she was quite good in that. Really? Are you just judging on looks, Tom? Are you just judging on looks? It was striking. She had a strong look. A strong look.

She had a strong look. I think, you know the just looking at the trailers for that made me cross because Mary Queen of Scots is always hailed as this great tragic heroine I think she was just a bit stupid

and I I once wrote a piece for a BBC history magazine about was Mary Queen of Scots the most overrated person in history

and I argued that yes she was overrated person in all history that's a brave piece in all of history it's a bold claim, Dominic. I did that and chose Henry V.

Oh, did you? Yeah, I did. Oh, God. Yeah. This is a podcast in and of itself, isn't it? I think that would be a good topic, wouldn't it, Dominic? I think it would be a good topic. People overrated.

But I tell you, an actress who stays in my mind rather oddly is Anita Dobson. Oh, yes. In the Armada series. Yes. Yes. And it was a BBC drama about the Armada. And I think it featured Dan Snow storming around on boats looking Danish. But that actually had a counterfactual where the Spanish succeed and they arrest her and she gets carried off to prison

and she loses all her wig and she's got kind of no teeth and things. Does Leslie Grantham play Philip II? Do you know, I'm so pleased. I am so pleased you raised this, Tom, because one of my greatest claims to fame, so I was talking head in that series, and so I was invited to the kind of you know the airing of it what have you what do you call those the premiere i don't know screening

the preview thank you the preview the preview and uh anita dobson was there and i was sitting behind her and brian may and for that reason i couldn't see the screen because of brian may's hair so because it was so big. And so, you know. It was Elizabethan wig. Who was Brian May playing? Frances Strickland. Yeah, exactly.

That kind of thing. But I thought, yeah, that was just, I was just completely starstruck. But yeah, certainly I'd forgotten about Anita Dobson's portrayal. That was an interesting choice as a casting. So Tracy, we did a World Cup of Prime Ministers, which I'm sure you followed very closely when it was on. If we had a World Cup of English monarchs, do you think Elizabeth would make the final? Oh, she'd be there. She'd be holding aloft the trophy. I think, you know,

this is quite a pertinent question. This is going to sound like I'm doing a shameless plug now, isn't it? But I have just put the finishing touches to my new book on the history of the monarchy. So I feel that I'm pretty well placed to answer this. So who are your finalists? Well, do you know what? I really hesitate to say this now, given what Tom's just said, but Henry V is up there. Oh, dear. We've got to revisit this.

I was hoping for an Elizabeth Darby yeah maybe they'd both be there in the Elizabeth World Cup in the Elizabeth World Cup I also actually quite rate George V who kind of very big on stamps stamps

and just yeah kind of no nonsense priestess trousers on the wrong side no i i'm sorry i'm sorry it's it's got to be it's got to be elizabeth the first and alfred the great oh okay alfred the great you're going back you think i mean you know they're both sorry my phone someone is hassling me on the phone i'm going to put that down um i think before we spiral off into a completely different podcast uh and i think i think tracy you must come back because i think this idea of rating monarchs is a great one and an enormous one and you can never talk about it enough oh um yeah i can't thank you i mean great

to talk about elizabeth thanks so much for coming on it's been my pleasure thanks so much um dominic and i uh we'll be back next week and we are talking about history as entertainment, aren't we? So games. Board games, computer games. And games in history, so like war games and things. All that kind of war games, all that kind of stuff. And also we've got one on Persia and basically why everything comes from Persia with Ali Ansari. So I hope you'll enjoy that.

As ever, send your questions for both those topics on Twitter and an additional date for your diaries, April the 21st, the evening, it's a Wednesday. We will be doing the podcast live on the internet and the subject actually touching on something that we've been mentioning in today's podcast will be assassinations, assassinations over history from Caesar through to Kennedy. And we'll be sending out a link nearer the time everyone is welcome to tune in and watch us make fools of ourselves live but for now that's it thank you Tracey thank you to you for listening bye-bye it's been such a pleasure thank you thanks Tracey bye-bye Thanks for listening to The Rest is History.

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