Queen Elizabeth the First (1533-1603) [Orlando, Chapter 2, page 99] was the monarch of England from 1558 to 1603 and was the last ruler of the House of Tudor. She was unmarried and had no children, and is referred to by some as the "Virgin Queen." She was the daughter of Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and her mother was excuted when Elizabeth was only two. Elizabeth came to the throne upon the death of her half-sister, Mary, and ruled with a more moderate hand than her predecessors. She was relatively tolerant of other religions, though she was primarily responible for consolidating the Church of England, and the Pope actually declared her a false queen in 1570. Despite numerous attempts on her life she remained a popular queen, partly due to the fact that her long reign of 44 years brought a measure of stability to a frought and anxious England. Her decision to remain childless was perhaps due, in part, to her unwillingness to compromise her power (Greenblatt, Morrill) but also had the effect of creating her own Virgin cult, resulting in Elizabeth being praised for her purity and self-control. Her reign was a time of relative peace and prosperity where literature and culture flourished and there was a respite from the Christian internal wars of the decades previous. (223 words)

Woolf, Virginia. Orlando, Mariner Books. 1928

Greenblatt, Stephen J. and Morrill, John S.. "Elizabeth I". Encyclopedia Britannica, 3 Sep. 2022, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elizabeth-I. Accessed 13 March 2023.