Elizabeth I was proclaimed queen on November 17, 1558, after many adventures.
In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of History", Jean des Cars tells you about the journey of this woman of power who, six centuries ago, embodied the implacable authority and the prestige of the crown of 'England.
His first name became the symbol of his reign: it is called the Elizabethan era.
In 1567, Marie Stuart was forced to abdicate. The following year, she escaped from Lochleven Castle where she was locked up and fled to England. In this new episode of the Europe 1 Studio podcast "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars tells you how this bulky refugee weighed on the fate of Elizabeth I and her country.
Marie Stuart shocks Scotland and infuriates Elizabeth
From the 1570s, Elizabeth I encountered a double opposition.
The first is that of the Presbyterian Calvinists who reject the episcopal hierarchy and the Catholic survivals in the Anglican Church.
The second, that of the Catholics of Scotland for whom the soul of revolt and independence is the romantic Marie Stuart.
It should be remembered that the latter, born in 1542 at Linlithgow Castle, west of Edinburgh, did not know her father, King James VI of Scotland, who died shortly after her birth.
Immediately proclaimed queen, Marie Stuart grew up under the tutelage of her mother Marie of Lorraine, Regent of Scotland on behalf of her daughter.
Very quickly, she lived at the court of France, because engaged in 1548 to the Dauphin François.
She married him ten years later.
The following year, after the accidental death, during a tournament, of his father, the dolphin becomes king under the name of François II.
At 17, Marie Stuart is queen of France.
After the untimely death of her husband in 1560, she returned to Scotland.
She finds her kingdom very agitated by the progress of the Reformation.
Although strictly Catholic, Mary Stuart does not oppose the preaching of the severe reformer John Knox and reserves the right to attend mass every day.
In 1565, she married, according to the Catholic rite, her cousin Henri Darnley, a tall, conceited, odious and stupid young man!
Quickly, she begins to hate him and takes for lover an Italian musician, Riccio, who is also his secretary.
Jealous, Darnley had this rival executed in 1566. Edinburgh revolted against this crime and Marie was forced to take refuge in the fortress to give birth to a son, the future Jacques VI.
It was then that Marie's bastard brother, the Count de Moray, intelligent but perverse and who wanted his sister's throne at all costs, conceived a Machiavellian plot.
He charges an adventurer named Bothwell to kill Darnley on February 9, 1567. Then, he pushes the unconscious Marie Stuart to marry, three months later ... the murderer of her husband!
A dramaturgy worthy of Shakespeare!
It was obviously a trap: Marie Stuart is discredited and dishonored.
She is excluded from royal dignity, Catholic opinion is revolted.
Supporters of the uncontrollable Queen of Scots are frowned upon.
The scandalous Marie is locked up in Lochleven Castle, on an island.
The lairds, Scottish equivalents of the lords, Protestants exasperated by the misconduct of their sovereign, wrest her abdication in favor of her son.
She defiled the throne of Scotland.
Honor could only be recovered by this renunciation.
Pretty woman, very tall like all the members of the Guise family from which she comes, Marie Stuart nevertheless always amazes those who approach her.
Her skin is so diaphanous that when she drinks, we see, they say, the wine flowing in the veins of her neck!
She writes poems, sings with a beautiful voice, but her charm cannot make us forget her great flaw: she has a fiery temperament!
His differences in love prevent him from listening to wise advice.
If Elizabeth is unmarried, Marie Stuart the frivolous is only too much and very badly!
It degrades its political cause by tarnishing Catholicism.
The fault: Marie takes refuge in England!
In this soap opera worthy of Alexandre Dumas, only one romantic episode is missing: one night, Marie Stuart escapes from Lochleven.
She left Scotland for England, hoping to receive the protection of her cousin Elizabeth.
It is a serious error, which proves his political unconsciousness!
Indeed, the former Queen of Scotland has rights to the crown of England because her grandmother was the older sister of Henry VIII, which makes her the great-niece of Elizabeth's father.
However, the latter having no heir, Marie Stuart becomes a dangerous rival, capable of fomenting Catholic intrigues with the intention of invading England.
She could perhaps receive the support of French and Spanish troops ... Elizabeth does not hesitate: she has her brainless cousin arrested, who does not understand why!
For eighteen years, Marie Stuart will be kept in semi-captivity, dragged from one castle to another, constantly demanding to be able to meet Elizabeth.
Contrary to what Schiller will imagine in her play, the Queen of England will however still refuse to receive it.
Her supporters then multiply the attempts to free her and place her on the throne of the "virgin queen", in particular the Duke of Norfolk.
The Queen of England, exasperated, had him arrested.
He was executed on June 2, 1572.
One can wonder about the paradoxical behavior of Marie Stuart.
On the one hand, she swears to Elizabeth her innocence in the murder of her husband Darnley and on the other, she compromises with clumsy supporters who seek to eliminate the Queen of England.
These two reasons are enough for the latter to keep her impetuous relative under close surveillance.
And the horror of the Saint-Barthélémy massacres in France on August 24, 1572, can only comfort Elizabeth in her repression, also pitiless, of the Catholics.
She shows an intolerance comparable, although reversed, to that of Marie Tudor: the fine, for absence from worship on Sunday, was increased to 20 pounds, a very significant sum for the time.
Later, in 1585, "papist" priests and Jesuits, for no other reason than their religion and in the absence of any conspiracy, will be hanged.
Elizabeth I has to be intractable.
The Invincible Dark Armada: Elizabeth's Victory
As I told you in the first part of this story, the queen will postpone the execution of her cousin for three months.
The martyrdom of Marie Stuart provokes scandalized reactions in the predominantly Catholic states, which is the case in powerful Spain.
On the orders of Philip II, whose husband Elizabeth had not wanted, a fleet of 130 ships and 17,000 men left Lisbon on May 30, 1588. In reality, behind this pretext of dynastic and religious solidarity in memory of Mary Stuart, stood hides the Spanish desire to put an end to the permanent incursions of English corsairs, like Francis Drake, into the colonial empire of Madrid.
For twenty years, the galleons of Philip II have been boarded and attacked by buccaneers who do the dirty work that the Queen of England cannot officially confess.
In addition, Elizabeth supports the Protestant rebels in the Spanish Netherlands.
But the Armada, deemed invincible, is commanded by an incompetent admiral.
The king must quickly give up his invasion plan.
Worse: due to a storm, half of the Spanish ships are wrecked or destroyed.
This astonishing victory reinforces England's maritime vocation.
Elizabeth, very proud, declares: "I have the heart and the stomach of a king. Much more, of a king of England!"
The almost miraculous destruction of the fleet sent by Philip II is at the origin of a true English patriotic ecstasy.
Elizabeth becomes a heroine sung by poets under the name of Gloriana.
This supremacy was accompanied by a remarkable economic boom due to commercial companies, a demographic progression and a first industrial revolution with the installation of forges, the beginnings of coal mining and the commissioning of new looms.
The monarchy is investing in this progress.
Elizabeth opens the London Stock Exchange and invests her own money there.
It draws up the statute of craftsmen and apprentices.
It is also at the origin of the first known public assistance system in Europe: it obliges parishes to come to the aid of the poor.
The queen is adulated.
His reign is staged by the talent of Shakespeare, in a remarkable intellectual and artistic development.
Still, she finds it difficult not to be jealous of women younger than her.
Face painted in white, adorned with jewels and pearls in sumptuous finery, she also faces bad harvests, the rebellion in Ireland and the fall of her favorite, the Earl of Essex.
He's… 34 years younger than her!
It doesn't matter to her, she finds him handsome and charming.
But he is clumsy: he fails in Ireland and, supreme outrage, he secretly gets married!
So Elizabeth takes revenge, she banishes him from the court.
He conspires then with the son of Marie Stuart.
Again, the sovereign will wait a long time, but she will end up having him beheaded ...
Beyond her execution, Marie Stuart took revenge: indeed, on the death of Elizabeth at 70, after 45 years of reign, on March 24, 1603, he was the son of the former Queen of Scotland. , King Jacques VI who succeeds him.
He will also reign over England under the name of Jacques 1st.
True, he is a Protestant, but what posthumous revenge for Catholic martyrdom!
The Stuarts succeeded the Tudors, allowing, finally, the union of the two crowns of England and Scotland.
Bibliographic resources:
Michel Duchein,
Elizabeth 1st of England
(Fayard, 2001).
Kenneth Morgan,
History of Great Britain
(Armand Colin, 1985)
Jean des Cars,
La saga des Reines
(Perrin, 2012)
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"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Production, distribution and edition: Timothée Magot
Director: Jean-François Bussière
Graphics: Karelle Villais