Page 49 - All About History - Issue 08-14

a marriage between him and Mary. This was had begun. As the rebel forces marched south, If Elizabeth’s position at home appeared shaky
Elizabeth showing her political astuteness; she Elizabeth moved Mary to Coventry and mustered it was positively stable compared to how she
knew well that Scotland with a Catholic heir troops of her own. The southern Earls rallied to was viewed abroad. The Pope decreed that anyone
would have too much power, but a heir produced her cause, which stunned the rebel forces, who who murdered the heretical English queen would
by her favourite and Mary Queen of Scots could began to retreat. Elizabeth’s victory was quick and be forgiven, a statement King Philip took to
potentially unite the two countries. However, decisive, with 700 men being executed in a brutal heart. Not wanting to risk open war, Elizabeth
Dudley refused and Mary had no interest in display of power. Norfolk was placed under arrest, found other ways to aggravate her enemies. She
marrying her cousin’s paramour. but a lack of concrete evidence postponed his quietly patronised the piratical exploits of John
Instead, Mary married for love, choosing Lord execution, until he was implicated in the Ridolfi Hawkins and later his cousin Francis Drake. In
Henry Darnley. Seeing this may have prompted plot, which aimed to make Philip II king. Elizabeth 1577, when he planned to travel to South America
Elizabeth to renew her interest in Dudley, ordered and rescinded Norfolk’s execution three to raid Spanish gold, Elizabeth met Drake with
which greatly upset the council, in particular times – a prime example of how indecisive she Walsingham, one of her French ambassadors.
the ambitious Lord Norfolk. When the tension could be at times – before finally deciding that he The cautious Cecil had to be kept in the dark,
between Norfolk and Dudley grew too great, simply had to die. but she told Drake explicitly that she supported
Elizabeth understood that she needed to assert
her authority. “I will have here but one mistress
and no master,” she told Dudley. It was both a
political statement and a personal one. The lack of
a husband and heir was only made worse in 1566
when Mary gave birth to a son, James, but she
was desperately unhappy. Darnley was a violent,
drunken husband who many believed brutally
murdered her secret lover, David Rizzio. Darnley
would meet his own nasty end a year later, when
he was found strangled in the garden of a house.
Mary quickly married the Earl of Bothwell, the
man who had allegedly murdered Darnley, and
Scottish forces rose against her. Imprisoned
and forced to abdicate, she eventually fled to
England. Elizabeth agreed to give Mary shelter,
but her arrival in the north had given Catholics a
figurehead and rebellion brewed.
The northern Earls suggested that Norfolk
should marry Mary: soon, the Northern Rebellion

The return of Mary Queen
of Scots to Edinburgh

Queen Elizabeth I knighting Francis Drake in 1581

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