Elizabeth I

In 1562 the young monarch was cured of a dangerous attack of smallpox.

Historians have often depicted the final years of Elizabeth I’s reign as a period of decline or crisis. Yet her government operated more successfully than is usually thought.

The failure of the Plot, writes Cyril Hamshere, forms a complex story of espionage and counter-espionage; its events caused Elizabeth I to give up all ideas of restoring Mary Queen of Scots to the Scottish throne.

At the end of the sixteenth century, writes David N. Durant, an ostentatious but simple-minded German Duke began pestering Queen Elizabeth to grant him the noblest of all English Orders.

An elaborate hierarchy maintained the royal household of Elizabeth I, writes Alan Haynes, but there was much pilfering and graft among the purveyors of domestic goods.

Helena Snakenborg came to London in the train of a visiting Swedish Princess. Appointed a Maid of Honour to Queen Elizabeth, writes Gunnar Sjögren, she married twice and lived in England for seventy years.

Howard Shaw describes how, during the reign of the Virgin Queen, offices, wardships, pensions, leases, monopolies and titles of honour were distributed to the servants of the Crown.

J.B. James relates how, during the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign, Mountjoy played a leading role as courtier, soldier and faithful lover of Essex’s sister, Penelope Rich.

Eunice H. Turner asserts that much has been written of Elizabeth’s male favourites; less is known of the devoted women friends who served her assiduously throughout her long existence