Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?
- 1 The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective
- 2 Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian perspective of the Court
- 3 Patronage at Court, faction and the earl of Essex
- 4 Peers, patronage and the politics of history
- 5 The fall of Sir John Perrot
- 6 The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity
- 7 Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism
- 8 Ecclesiastical vitriol: the kirk, the puritans and the future king of England
- 9 Social strain and social dislocation, 1585–1603
- 10 Lord of Liberty: Francis Davison and the cult of Elizabeth
- 11 The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s
- 12 Summer's Last Will and Testament: revels' end
- 13 The theatre and the Court in the 1590s
- Index
Introduction The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- List of contributors
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction The 1590s: the second reign of Elizabeth I?
- 1 The patronage of the crown in Elizabethan politics: the 1590s in perspective
- 2 Regnum Cecilianum? A Cecilian perspective of the Court
- 3 Patronage at Court, faction and the earl of Essex
- 4 Peers, patronage and the politics of history
- 5 The fall of Sir John Perrot
- 6 The Elizabethan establishment and the ecclesiastical polity
- 7 Ecclesiastical vitriol: religious satire in the 1590s and the invention of puritanism
- 8 Ecclesiastical vitriol: the kirk, the puritans and the future king of England
- 9 Social strain and social dislocation, 1585–1603
- 10 Lord of Liberty: Francis Davison and the cult of Elizabeth
- 11 The complaint of poetry for the death of liberality: the decline of literary patronage in the 1590s
- 12 Summer's Last Will and Testament: revels' end
- 13 The theatre and the Court in the 1590s
- Index
Summary
This book is about the politics and political culture of the ‘last decade’ of the reign of Elizabeth I, interpreted to mean the years from 1585 to 1603. It will open with a proposition, which goes like this: there were two reigns of Elizabeth I, each with distinctive features. Her ‘first’ reign ended about 1585 with the dispatch of an English expeditionary force to the Netherlands. This seemingly dramatic reversal of the queen's non-interventionist foreign policy was followed by the trial and execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and by the outbreak of war with Spain and her ally, the French Catholic League. Mary's execution resolved one political and constitutional crisis, but precipitated another. For the war engulfed multiple theatres: English forces were deployed in France, the Netherlands, the Atlantic and latterly Ireland. Costs and casualties were high. England was several times threatened with encirclement by the superior forces of the Counter-Reformation.
The physical and emotional strains were acute. In politics the anxiety of courtiers fused with the poverty of the crown and the competition for patronage to kindle factionalism, self-interest and instability which – in the shape of Essex's frustrated ambition – sparked an attempted coup. In the country xenophobia, war-weariness, and the turmoil created by rising prices, bad harvests and outbreaks of plague and influenza, fomented particularism and resistance to the crown's fiscal and military demands. All this, in turn, triggered an authoritarian reaction from privy councillors and magistrates, whose emphasis on state security, the subversiveness of religious nonconformity, and the threat of ‘popularity’ and social revolt became obsessional.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Reign of Elizabeth ICourt and Culture in the Last Decade, pp. 1 - 19Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995
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