Elizabeth I is the only Tudor monarch—and likely the only English monarch—to invoke a biblical analogy in her own words. Scholars, however, have failed to lend this significant fact the attention it deserves, and this chapter seeks to redress this oversight. Analyzing how Elizabeth's supporters and apologists used biblical analogies is of course vital to understanding the religio-political function that they served in early modern England. Nevertheless, the way that Elizabeth herself used the device is essential to understanding its shifting use and impact throughout the course of her reign.

This chapter is concerned with the ways that Elizabeth publicly linked herself—here defined by the analogy's attribution to the Queen and its textual survival—to her biblical antecedents to draw religio-political support. In doing so, I am primarily interested in the way that Elizabeth used these biblical analogies to portray herself as England's providential (Protestant) monarch, and indeed to demonstrate, either implicitly or explicitly, the role of a female king in national debates over religion.

The main focus of the chapter is the two prayer books that Elizabeth wrote prayers for and compiled: Precationes Privatae (1563), and Christian Prayers and Meditations (1569). Both books contain examples of Elizabeth engaging with the people and events of the Old Testament in an attempt to link herself to these biblical antecedents, and to also demonstrate her providential favour (while also praying that it would continue). In addition to these two important publications, however, Elizabeth's other, public engagements with the Old Testament will be used to bookend and contextualize the content of the two prayer books. The first analogy Elizabeth invoked during her reign was at her coronation procession in January 1559, which pre-empted the appearance of another analogy to Deborah in the procession (which is discussed in Chapter 2). Likewise, the example of Solomon, and the wisdom he received from God by asking for it, provided a useful precedent for Elizabeth's non-decision in dealing with Mary, Queen of Scots, in the aftermath of the Babington Plot. The Old Testament, and the way Elizabeth linked herself to it, was thus central to Elizabeth's iconography from the very beginning of her reign.

The Coronation Procession

The first biblical analogy that Elizabeth invoked during her reign was at the start of her coronation procession, on January 14, 1559.