Queen Elizabeth 1: history's greatest public intellectual

By DAVID MYTON

If in some alternative reality I could time travel to interview just one person, who would it be? As someone who was a journalist for many years I have thought often about this hypothetical: it’s almost impossible to choose from the cavalcade of the mad, bad, the dangerous, and the good.

But I always come back to Elizabeth I, Queen of England from 1558 until her death in 1603, aged 70. She embodied courage, determination, intelligence, the capacity for lifelong learning, and the ability to communicate effectively to all manner of people.

In effect, she was a public intellectual (before the term was invented) with “people skills”: knowing how to praise, encourage, criticise and, if need be, to threaten.

Probably the most famous Englishwoman ever to have lived, she “presided over a country undergoing a cultural renaissance previously unimagined”. In a deeply religious era she was spoken of as a rival to the Virgin Mary, a second Queen of Earth and Heaven, as “a woman more than mortal women …” (Susan Bassnett, Elizabeth I. A Feminist Perspective, Berg, Oxford, 1989, p1)

According to her chief advisor and that master of Renaissance statecraft, William Cecil

“There was never so wise a woman born as Queen Elizabeth for she spake and understood all languages, knew all estates and dispositions and princes, and particularly was so expert in the knowledge of her own realm as no counsellor she had could tell her what she knew not before.” (Alison Weir, Elizabeth the Queen, Jonathan Cape, London 1998, p221)

For contemporary writer and politician Sir Robert Naunton “She was absolute and sovereign mistress”, while for soldier, writer and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh she was “Queen of the small as well as the great”. (Weir, passim)

But it is hard to pin her down as a “type”. Even during her lifetime there were “several Elizabeths …

“from the pure, chaste supporter of the Protestant cause who remedied the miseries wrought upon the English people during the reign of her bloody Catholic sister Mary to the diabolically motivated bastard daughter of Henry VIII …” (Bassnett, ibid, p2)

Elizabeth hardly had a good start in life. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed on the orders of King Henry in May 1536 when Elizabeth was just two years old. I’m not going to go through all the ins and outs of Elizabeth’s life before she became Queen, suffice to say she faced grave dangers and many challenges.

‘Outshone all other young women’

Fortunately Elizabeth received, and made the most of, an outstanding Renaissance education. She learned to read, write and speak Latin, Greek, French and Italian, excelled at theology and philosophy, and mastered musical instruments including the lute, lyre and harpsichord.

In 1550, when she was aged 16, her distinguished tutor Roger Ascham wrote that Elizabeth “outshone all other young women” and praised her courtesy, dignity and “ardent love of true religion and the best kind of literature”.

Ascham declared (and remember this was the 16th Century):

“The constitution of her mind is exempt from female weakness, and she is endued within a masculine power of application. No apprehension can be quicker than hers, no memory more retentive. French and Italian she speaks like English; Latin, with fluency, propriety and judgement; she also spoke Greek with me, frequently, willingly, and moderately well. Nothing can be more elegant than her handwriting, whether in Greek or Roman character. In music she is very skilful …” (Bassnett, op cit, pp 22-23)

Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England in Westminster Abbey on January 15, 1559, aged just 25, following the death from cancer of Queen Mary I, her half sister (daughter of Catherine of Aragon) after reigning just five turbulent years (1553-58). Among other dramas, Mary - a devout Roman Catholic - had seen it as her mission to eliminate the country’s new Protestantism and to bring back the growing numbers of these heretics into “the true Church”.

Elizabeth’s education and experience had armed her with a deep insight regarding the power of ritual, signs and symbols. She determined to send positive messages to her people from the very beginning of her reign: thus her coronation was a theatrical spectacle heralding the golden dawn of the Elizabeth Age:

“It was a time that embraced theatre [think for example Shakespeare and Marlowe] not just on the stage but in all aspects of public life and religious ritual. Elizabeth relished the theatre both on the stage and in her own royal life. She eagerly participated in the public ceremonies preceding and surrounding her coronation,” writes Alan Axelrod (Elizabeth I CEO. Strategic Lessons From The Leader Who Built An Empire, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 2000, p52)

On the eve of the coronation, for example, she made the traditional procession through London, stopping occasionally to view the various pageants and shows presented in her honour. At one point Elizabeth paused to pray out loud:

O Lord Almighty and Everlasting God, I give thee most hearty thanks that thou hast been so merciful unto me to spare me to behold this joyful day. And I acknowledge that thou hast dealt as wonderfully and as mercifully with men as thous didst with thy true and faithful servant Daniel, thy prophet whom Thou deliveredst out of the den from the cruelty of the greedy and raging lions. Even so was I overwhelmed and only by thee delivered. To Thee only be thanks, honor, and praise forever, amen.

(LS Marcus, J Mueller & MB Rose (eds), Elizabeth I. Collected Works, University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp54-55)

As Axelrod writes: “Even the least educated who heard her prayer would have grasped the import of what she was saying. Like Daniel, she had been saved from the rapacity of the lions …Mary had been like Antiochus, a tyrant who had attempted to force a false religion on her people…” (ibid, p55)

Wisdom and great powers of analysis

As a pragmatic intellectual possessing extraordinary knowledge, wisdom and powers of analysis, she wrote hundreds of speeches, letters, prayers, poems, scholarly works, formal royal messages, notes, and also made translations of classical writings.

For example, in 1598 (when she was in her 60s, and seeking some relaxation!) she translated from the Latin Horace’s Ars Poetica (an advice to poets written c.15 BCE) and also Plutarch’s Moralia, a collection of 78 essays and speeches.

In 1593 she had also translated Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, a meditation on the nature of good and evil, fortune or chance, and freedom (it took her just one month).

(See below at the end of this essay for my note on Boethius’s influence on JRR Tolkien and The Lord Of The Rings)

Bassnett writes that all her life Elizabeth “maintained a keen interest in the classics, in keeping with the education she received in her youth, and she seems to have made great efforts to keep her knowledge alive … Elizabeth saw herself not only as a patron but also a creator of the arts”. (op cit, p57)

As the years passed, Elizabeth emerged as a “a leader of great personal force and magnetism” devoted to creating and maintaining her popular image as the Virgin Queen - an almost supernatural presence on earth. Yet she did not rule by spirit, personality, or image alone:

“She was eminently practical, a hard-nosed pragmatist with an eye on the bottom line and absolutely no tolerance for waste, excuses, or for the airy and endless arguments of theoreticians … she displayed great understanding and learning, [had] an extremely retentive memory and directed her attention to every significant detail … the fact is that Elizabeth worked tirelessly at her knowledge and grasp of her realm and estate.”

(Axelrod, Elizabeth I CEO, passim pp203-204)

All this learning, knowledge, intellect and pragmatism she poured into her numerous letters and speeches. As Queen, her letters were written “to command, to exhort, to censure, to persuade, and sometimes to prevaricate”, writes G.B Harrison (ed., The Letters Of Queen Elizabeth I, Cassell, London, 1968, p xiv):

“The literary style of her letters was as varied as her character. She could be coy and humorous as well as terse and direct … her irony was keen. In her conduct, and in her letters, she showed she was afraid of no one … The letters do not reveal her innermost secrets, for she never surrendered the key of her mystery, but her personal character, her kingly qualities, and her fundamental beliefs are frequently shown …

“She believed in herself as absolute monarch, and God’s Viceregent on earth, and for this reason would not tolerate any who held a contrary doctrine. In her letters, as in her life, she was always the Queen of England.” (Harrison, op cit, xv-xvi)

Multitude of letters, numerous speeches

As well as writing a multitude of letters throughout her reign, Elizabeth penned numerous speeches ranging from addresses to Parliament to lectures at Oxford and Cambridge universities.

In this final section I will concentrate on just two speeches which I believe reveal her enormous literary, intellectual and analytical abilities.

It's important to note that medieval English was unsettled and constantly developing as the national tongue: punctuation appears random, spelling inconsistent, and contains many archaic words.

New words that appeared in the 16th century (usually imported by travellers from other countries) include, from France, volunteer, comrade, equip, moustache, duel and ticket; from Spain and Portugal, armada, desperado, guitar, and tobacco; and from Holland yacht, cruise, landscape, fokkinge, krappe and buggere.

However, these last three words at that time were not regarded as swear words, writes Melvyn Bragg, adding:

“Again and again we can see how all these new words not only increased the vocabulary but set in train lines of thought which went way beyond the original descriptive function of the word and bred shoals of new English meanings and thought.”

- The Adventure of English, The Biography of a Language 500 CE to 2000, Hodder and Stouton, London, 2004, p11)

The first speech is probably her most famous - ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Armada Speech To The Troops’ at Tilbury, August 9, 1588.

This refers to the Spanish Armada - about 130 warships and converted merchant ships sent by Philip II of Spain in 1588 to invade England in conjunction with a Spanish army from Flanders. Philip was motivated by a desire to restore the Roman Catholic faith in England and to end English piracies against Spanish trade and possessions.

When the Armada was first seen entering the English Channel, Elizabeth - eschewing her personal safety - rode direct to Tilbury where most of her army was camped. As Elizabeth walked through the encampment, her troops fell to their knees and she “wept to behold them”. (Axelrod, op cit, p179).

Armada speech: The Queen addresses her soldiers

The next day she put on the golden breastplate of a cavalry officer and, mounted on her horse, addressed her soldiers:

My loving people, I have been persuaded by some that are careful of my safety to take heed how I committed myself to armed multitudes, for fear of treachery. But I tell you that I would not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people.

Let tyrants fear: I have so behaved myself that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. Wherefore I am come among you at this time but for my recreation and pleasure, being resolved in the midst and heat of the battle to live and die among you all, to lay down for my God and for my kingdom and for my people mine honour and my blood even in the dust.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and a king of England too - and take foul scorn that Parma or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm. To the which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will venter my royal blood; I myself will be your general, judge and rewarder of your virtue in the field.

I know that already for your forwardness you have deserved rewards and crowns, and I assure you in the word of a prince you shall not fail of them. In the meantime, my lieutenant general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject.

Not doubting but by your concord in the camp and valor in the field and your obedience to myself and my general, we shall shortly have a famous victory over these enemies of my God and my kingdom.

- ‘Queen Elizabeth’s Armada Speech To The Troops At Tilbury, August 9, 1588’ in LS Marcus, J Mueller and MB Rose, Elizabeth I, Collected Works, University of Chicago Press, 2000, pp325-326)

This is a magnificent motivational speech fuelled by urgent circumstance and by all her previous studying, reading, writing, and experience. It surely ranks as one of history’s greatest, up there with the best of 1940s Winston Churchill, the likes of “we shall fight on the beaches”, “never in the field of human conflict”; and “this was their finest hour”.

The Queen’s Golden Speech at Whitehall

Finally is an extract from Elizabeth’s renowned ‘Golden Speech’ at Whitehall, London, on November 30, 1601 regarded by many as “the Queen’s most celebrated parliamentary speech, copied, re-copied and reprinted many times in the course of the 17th century as an example of royal assent to the address of public grievances [that had] created economic hardship for many of her subjects”. (Marcus et al, op cit, pp336, 339-340):

… I do assure you there is no prince that loveth his subjects better, or whose love can countervail our love. There is no jewel, be it of never so rich a price, which I set before this jewel - I mean your loves. For I do more esteem it than any treasure or riches, for that we know how to prize. But love and thanks I count invaluable, and though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves.

This makes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a queen, as to be a queen over so thankful a people. Therefore I have cause to wish nothing more than to content my subjects, and that is a duty which I owe … And as I am that person which still yet under God hath delivered you, so I trust by the almighty God that I shall be His instrument to preserve you from envy, peril, dishonor, shame, tyranny, and oppression, partly by means of your intended helps, which we take very acceptable because it manifesteth the largeness of your loves and loyalties unto your sovereign.

Of myself I must say this: I never was any greedy, scraping grasper, nor a strait fast-holding prince, nor yet a waster. My heart was never set on worldly goods, but only for my subjects' good. What you bestow on me, I will not hoard it up, but receive it to bestow on you again. Yea, my own properties I account yours to be expended for your good … For above all earthly treasures I esteem my people’s love, more than which I desire not to merit …

… There will never be queen sit in my seat with more zeal to my country, care to my subjects, and that will sooner with willingness venture her life for your good and safety, than myself … And though you have had and may have many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had or shall have any that will be more careful and loving … Shall I ascribe anything to myself and my sexly weakness? I have had from God, who hath ever yet given me a heart which yet never feared any foreign or home enemies. I speak it to give God the praise as a testimony before you, and not to attribute anything unto myself …

It’s one more Elizabethan masterpiece among many others, the work of a supreme intellectual.

Boethius and The Lord Of The Rings

Just a geeky digression on Boethius (480-524 CE) … His De Consolatione plays an important role deep within the subtext of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord Of The Rings.

As the Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey writes, in the Boethian view there is no such thing as evil and that what people identify as evil is only the absence of good.

Philosophy, he says, tells Boethius that “all fortune is certainly good”, omnem bonam prosus esse fortunam …

“Corollaries of this belief are, as Frodo says to Sam in ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’, that evil cannot create, ‘not real new things of its own’ and furthermore it was not created, it arose when humans exercised their own free will …” Orcs, Shippey adds, “have a clear idea of what is admirable and what is contemptible behaviour, which is exactly the same as ours. They are moral beings, who talk freely and repeatedly of what is ‘good’, meaning by that more or less what we do ...

“The puzzle is that this has no effect on their actual behaviour, and they seem to have no self-awareness or capacity for self-criticism … evil is just an absence, the shadow of the good.”

(T.A. Shippey, JRR Tolkien, Author Of The Century, Harper Collins, London, 2000 pp 131-133)

REFERENCES

Susan Bassnett, Elizabeth I. A Feminist Perspective, Berg, Oxford, 1989

Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English, The Biography of a Language 500 CE to 2000, Hodder and Stouton, London, 2004

Winston S Churchill, A History Of The English-speaking Peoples, One volume abridgement by Christopher Lee, Cassell, 1999

Susan Frye, Elizabeth I. The Competition for Representation, Oxford University Press, 1993

G.B. Harrison (ed)., The Letters Of Queen Elizabeth I, Cassell, London, 1968

L.S. Marcus, J Mueller and M.B. Rose, Elizabeth I, Collected Works, University of Chicago Press, 2000

T. A. Shippey, JRR Tolkien, Author Of The Century, Harper Collins, London 2000

David Starkey, Elizabeth. Apprenticeship, Vintage, London 2001

Alison Weir, Elizabeth the Queen, Jonathan Cape, London 1998