Born Sept. 7, 1533, at Greenwich Palace; died Mar. 24, 1603, at Richmond Palace. Became queen of England in 1558.
Last of the Tudor dynasty, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I was a typical representative of British absolutism. Her reign saw central administration greatly strengthened; the exchequer set in order; Protestantism, in its moderate Anglican form, conclusively established (the church moreover having been fully subordinated to the state and becoming an important pillar of absolutism); the navy enlarged; and cruel new laws issued against vagrants and beggars, thus furthering the primitive accumulation of capital, a process then fully under way in England.
The foreign policy of Elizabeth I was marked by intensified commercial and colonial expansion, the systematic conquest of Ireland, and successful contention with Spain for dominance on the seas, seen in the crushing defeat of the Invincible Armada in 1588. Toward the end of her rule, British absolutism began turning into a brake on the country’s further capitalist development. Efforts in defense of “parliamentary privileges” and against the “prerogatives of the crown,” initiated under Elizabeth I, proved a prologue to a subsequent contest between the parliamentary opposition and absolutism under the first Stuarts.
V. F. SEMENOV