Read Online All the Queen's Men by Peter Brimacombe - Free Book Online

Elizabeth was a complete novice in the affairs of state and had inherited a weak, divided and dispirited kingdom with a long list of problems awaiting a solution. The new Queen, however, was astute, highly conscientious and hard-working, and she immediately demonstrated an instinctive grasp of how to rule a kingdom and motivate its subjects to best effect. Furthermore, whereas her predecessors had ruled by fear, Elizabeth was to reign with love. It was to be a long and successful affair.
    Her experiences on the long and perilous journey to the throne had instilled the new Queen with considerable caution and bred an inclination for making a lengthy assessment of any situation before coming to a decision or taking any specific course of action. Impulsive gestures, hasty conclusions or instinctive reactions were simply not part of Elizabeth’s character. It was as if she was a new batsman in a game of cricket, determined to settle down and play a long and successful innings, patient, careful and highly focused. The Queen normally listened very carefully to her Privy Council and rarely embarked on a move of any consequence before she had consulted its members often both individually and collectively. Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley, exercised a profound influence over her for nearly forty years until he died, still in office, not very long before the end of her reign. However, while Elizabeth was usually appreciative of the advice of her Privy Council, she always knew her own mind and was rarely open to persuasion or prompted to adopt a course of action contrary to her own instincts or which differed from her strongly held beliefs. ‘Though very capable of Council, she was absolute enough in her own resolution, which was ever apparent even to her last’, 2 a contemporary historian was to note not long after her death.
    Mary’s short reign, unsatisfactory though it may have been, had at least been advantageous in accustoming the English kingdom to the novel concept of a female monarch, an institution which was becoming increasingly prevalent in Europe. In the initial period of Elizabeth’s reign, Catherine de Medici became Regent in France and Mary, Queen of Scots had inherited the Scottish crown. Only Elizabeth, however, possessed the necessary ability as well as the opportunity to be a successful female ruler of a kingdom which, in the second half of the sixteenth century, was essentially a man’s world. Elizabeth was able to use her sex as a potent weapon in this overtly masculine society and skilfully turn a perceived disadvantage into one that could be cleverly exploited to both her own and her kingdom’s benefit. In particular, she realised that the marriage card was a useful one to hold, leaving the Court to wonder when it might be played and what the possible consequences of such a move might be. Elizabeth shrewdly realized it was not a card to use in a hurry – in many respects, its greatest value lay in it being kept in hand. She was relaxed. Time was on her side. She was young, barely twenty-five years of age, yet old enough to know her own mind. She had a confident and mature outlook, was completely self-possessed and still in the full bloom of youth. The Queen was a woman with no parents or dominant elder brother to command her or put pressure on her to do her duty – she was free to make her own decisions. Furthermore, she was cool and unemotional, rarely one to let her heart rule her head, one characteristic that Elizabeth definitely did not inherit from her father. Henry’s younger daughter tended to adopt an altogether more pragmatic approach towards most matters, particularly affairs of the heart.
    In many respects, twenty-five was a highly appropriate age to come to the throne as a healthy single person, footloose, if not entirely fancy free. Both her father and her half-brother Edward had been considerably younger when they inherited the English throne, the latter