All Request Tudor Hour

I received a lovely comment from someone who enjoyed my "Tudor Series" inquiring as to where the Elizabeth entry I promised was. Several months ago I sat down to write one, and then lost patience because her life was so frickin' long (she died at 70 and reigned for 45 years!). However, I am re energized so here goes ..........................

Elizabeth Tudor is better known as "Queen Elizabeth the 1st" and sometimes refereed to as the "Virgin Queen" (though Robert Dudley would probably beg to differ). She was the only surviving child of Henry the VIII and his whore turned 2nd wife, Anne Boleyne.

She is also the 1/2 sister of "bloody Mary" (daughter of Katherine of Aragon) and 1/2 sister of King Edward (son of Poor, Poor Jane Seymore).

History has been good to Elizabeth, but I have no intention of letting her off easily. Let's take a look at some of Elizabeth's highlights, shall we?

1) She had her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots dragged from her lovers arms in Edinburgh and taken to the tower of London, where she was held prisoner for months before being beheaded.

2) She had an affair with Robert Dudly for years but refused to marry him because he was not Royal enough. This did not, however, stop her from having Dudleys wife, Amy Robsart, murdered. Amy was found at the bottom of a narrow staircase with a broken neck and no witnesses. Robert was with Elizabeth at the time.

3) She carried on a long flirtation with her step-father Thomas Seymore (he married Katherine Parr after Henry died). Thomas Seymore happened to also be the uncle of her brother Edward and brother of Poor Poor Jane Seymore (do you see a pattern here?).

4) She had over 900 people executed during her reign as queen. This is more then triple the number of protestants that her sister Mary burned at the stake. Just goes to show you that the "winners write the history books".

Elizabeth never married. Some believe that this was for political reasons and others say it is because she never found "love". Certainly Elizabeth did not view the institution of marriage as "kind to women"? Marriage did not work out very well for her mother or cousin/step mother Katherine Howard. In fact, it was Katherine Howard's violent death that might have had the most lasting impact on the Elizabethan Era. At the age of eight she met one of Prince Edward's classmates, Robert Dudley, and told him of an important decision she had made. "I will never marry," she said. It was a decision that would shape her life.