And all the great Elizabethans poets as well as pirates looked to Elizabeth

And all the great Elizabethans, poets as well as pirates, looked to Elizabeth for inspiration.She was an autocrat, but not a tyrant; extremely tough but capable of magnanimity and mercy. Having lived through a dangerous and traumatic childhood – in which her mother, Anne Boleyn, was in effect murdered by her father, and she herself narrowly escaped death during the reign of her half-sister, Mary – she had a natural distaste for unnecessary violence. But she did not shrink from killing people when, in her view, vital interests were threatened. She killed Mary Queen of Scots, another anointed sovereign, and she killed Essex, whom she loved. In upholding her Anglican church settlement, she bore down heavily on Roman Catholics and Presbyterians alike.Though her power was absolute in the formal sense, she knew that there were practical limits to it and that the success of her rule depended ultimately upon the loyalty of her people. She was a superb politician, combining her father’s intellect and willpower with her mother’s flirtatious charm. Her political genius can be seen, not least, in her flair for what we now call image-making and public relations.

Describing herself as “mere English” (actually she was a mixture of English and Welsh) she appealed to the growing national pride and xenophobia of her subjects. In her famous speech at Tilbury as the Spanish Armada approached, she said: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king and of a king of England too; and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.” (She had the cunning even to flatter the male chauvinism of her audience.)Addressing members of her last parliament, less than two years before she died, she pulled out all the stops: “We perceive your coming is to present thanks to us. Know that I accept them with no less joy than your loves can have desire to offer such a present, and do esteem it more than any treasure or riches … And though God hath raised me high, yet this I account the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves .. I never was any greedy, scraping grasper … my heart was never set upon any worldly goods, but only for my subjects’ good. What you do bestow on me, I will not hoard up, but receive it to bestow on you again; yea, my own properties I account yours, to be expended for your good, and your eyes shall see the bestowing of it for your welfare.”Four centuries later, in the age of democracy and constitutional monarchy, it is hard to imagine any sovereign or government handling parliament more beguilingly.

Charles I entirely lacked her touch, with consequences that we all know, but few politicians of any period have been more sensitive and adept than she was.Like all political virtuosi, she was a consummate actress At heart she was iron-hard, as rulers have to be. GM Trevelyan’s verdict on her is just: “As a private person she would scarcely have been lovable, perhaps not even admirable. But lonely on the throne she knew all the arts to make herself adored by her court and her people. Without ceasing to be a woman, and while loving life in all its fullness, she made everything subservient to purposes of state.”Her historical significance can hardly be exaggerated. She was the prime mover in a process whereby Britain assumed, for a time, a position of insular and imperial detachment. Despite her profound European culture, Elizabeth was the prophet of “splendid isolation”. The process was gradual, and even in its culminating phase, in the late 19th century, never involved anything like total separation from the Continent and its affairs.