Mary’s ascension to the throne of England was marked with extraordinary political and religious circumstance: the return of Catholicism in England marshalled by Mary was a decision met with gratefulness and one that pleased many of those citizens supressed under the Tudor dynasty’s progressive and eventually full protestant stance. However, Mary’s gender meant that she couldn’t enjoy the same levels of independence and power as those wielded by her brother and father. Mary’s announcement that she intended to marry Philip II of Spain in 1554 divided her privy council into two distinct groups; one opposing her marriage, favouring the possible courter, Edward Courtenay (Earl of Devon), and the other, who supported the Spanish Monarch. The reasons for these split alliances were deeply ingrained in foreign policy, with those supporting Philip’s prospects seeking the advantages of a strong Anglo-Spanish alliance, and those against it fearing the consequences of a future hereditary Spanish claim to the English throne and a possible need to aid Spain in future conflict.…
"The state is the highest achievement of man, a progressive and elaborate creation of his free will. The individual, the leader, the people, cooperate in maintaining it." This idea of state was put forth by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince, which was in essence a ruler's handbook to governing and maintaining his land. Machiavelli conjured his theories for government by basing his ideas in his belief that men, especially men in power, tend to follow the same directions, and therefore by looking at past leaders and their follies we can better determine how to run a state. "Men are always the same and are animated by the same passions that lead them fatally to the same decisions, acts, an results . That one can foresee the course of political development by mediating upon the cycles and phases of historical events, and that essential to a statesman is not only the experience of modern events and constant study of the past. But also the ability to exploit this knowledge in actual political actions."…
Elizabeth had inherited the throne of England in 1558 from a Catholic queen Mary who had attempted to re-convert England back to Catholicism and to allow the country to take part in the Catholic reformation of Europe. The accession of Elizabeth was met with anxiety and tension as to discover what she was to do in response to religion and how the Catholic powers of Europe as well as the Catholics within England at the time would treat any changes. The immediate rise to power was met with little hostility as Elizabeth had made very cautious changes to start with as she thought it wise not to provoke hostility from abroad considering the position of England at the time as a small, weak protestant nation. The start of Elizabeth’s reign was fairly peaceful however tensions rose and a Catholic threat seemed more imminent as her reign drew to the end.…
On the one hand, the threat from Mary Queen of Scots was the biggest threat to Elizabeth I. This is because Mary had a legitimate claim to the throne as she was Henry VIII’s sister’s great granddaughter; therefore she was second in line to the throne. Mary Queen of Scots also had a lot of Catholic support, a lot of the European Union wanted England to be Catholic, and so they would have wanted Mary to be on the English throne and not Elizabeth. All of the Catholics in England would want Mary to be Queen, so she was a large threat to Elizabeth because people in England and in the European Union would want Mary Queen of Scots to be Queen and not Elizabeth I. The Spanish Armada was also a large threat to Elizabeth during her reign. This threat was posed by The King of Spain, King Philip II. Philip and the Spanish were attacking England, because they wanted Mary on the throne. The Spanish Armada was a large threat to Elizabeth in 1588, because the Spanish could easily have attacked England; they had a lot more men and boats than the English. The Spanish Armada also posed as a large threat, because it was a new type of threat that no King or Queen had experienced before; the threat was also posed from another country, this makes it a lot more serious than it would have been if it had have been posed from an Englishman. There was also a third threat, The Northern rebellion in 1569. The…
Machiavelli was an author and an aspiring political figure who had a strong influence on several aspects of Europe’s government. Due to his critical writings in The Prince, many historians see Machiavelli as a cruel and diabolical political figure whose true intentions were to gain power for himself. However, after looking further into Machiavelli’s political past, one can see that Machiavelli is in fact an intelligent man who possesses a hidden motive to write his novel. In his work, he covered several topics that were used by future city-state leaders to help them become successful. Machiavelli proves to be an astute political mind who used his political experience to assess the actions of famous princes and to write The Prince as a noteworthy…
Machiavelli was a Florentine man of many skills. He was a renowned politician, author, and philosopher during the Renaissance, whose views and opinions affect the way people still think today. The Prince is his most famous work and in it he essentially states that humans are “ungrateful, fickle, deceptive and deceiving”. For that reason, a leader should rule through fear rather than love. However, what Europeans needed during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries were compassionate rulers. They were already frightened and disunited during the middle ages, thus adding a fearful leader to the mix would not help citizens feel safer.…
Summary Chapter I: The Kinds of Principalities and the Means by Which They Are Acquired…
In The Qualities of a Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli discusses the attributes that he believes make for a good leader. Although Machiavelli wrote The Qualities of a Prince centuries ago, some of the qualities he advises a prince to have can be adapted to the leaders of today. Some of these qualities include being generous and being feared by the public.…
She was able to use it to bring victory to England on the battlefield. Elizabeth was also “taught the art of public speaking, unheard of for women at the time. But the ability to address a large number of people, from ministers in Parliament to troops on the battlefield, stood Elizabeth in good stead for the future. She learnt how to turn the tide of opinion in her favour, and this became one of her most effective weapons” (Briscoe). This became valuable in the 1580s when the war between England and Spain became apparently inevitable. The Spanish Armada was a fleet of 130 ships that King Phillip of Spain planned to sail into the English Channel to meet with an army coming from the Netherlands and simultaneously invade England. However, Elizabeth’s men were maintaining a close watch on the shores of England for the Armada, and when the first ship was spotted fighting erupted. As English soldiers and sailors were fighting for England’s independence, the Queen was headed for Tilbury. “She was not going to sit trembling inside a guarded Palace while her people fought, but was going to go to the coast of the battle and ‘live or die’ with them” (Thomas, “The Spanish Armada”). Here, she made what could be her most famous speech, the Tilbury Speech, where she stated, “I know I have the body of a meek and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a King,…
Mary’s marriage to Philip of Spain, a man whom she clearly loved but who did not love her in return also shaped Mary’s rule. Philip’s many affairs drove Mary, in her loneliness, to become even more extreme in her religious feeling. Philip’s decision to marry Mary was clearly led by his own desire to control England and his own determination to see England entirely Catholic. Her inability to have a child also made Mary more desperate, because without a child she could not ensure the future of England as a Catholic country, and if she died without a heir o the throne it would be given to her sister Elizabeth who supported the opposite religion, Protestant, and all Mary’s hard work and decisions would go to waste. All these issues ensured that…
Upon her succession in 1558, Elizabeth I faced financial problems as well as many other major problems. One such problem was Elizabeth’s gender. In 1558, England had only experience the rule of one female monarch, Mary I, who had fuelled England’s belief that females could not be sufficient rulers of countries. Mary had fuelled this belief by being £300,000 in debt by the end of her reign, being in a war with France, murdering around 300 people due to her religious beliefs and marrying foreign royalty which handed her husband (Phillip II of Spain) joint rule over England. These problems made England believe that women were not capable of ruling countries adequately. The main issue England had with female monarchs was that they ‘needed’ to marry and in Mary I’s case, this meant that England became an ally of Spain (as she married Phillip II of Spain) and…
Elizabeth Alexandra Mary is an inquirer and a caring person because she cared about what's best for her people and she also likes to inquire everything to make them into something better. During the Italian Renaissance, women's rights were vary limited. Therefor, it was really rare when England has a female ruler that has firm control over all forces,major or not, at their will. However, queen Elizabeth didn't just give women rights , she also makes a rules to help the poor, but only the deserving poor and the deserving unemployed because before society shut them out in the medieval ages. Moreover, it was hard for women to get jobs or get tacked seriously by other people before queen Elizabeth 1 became a major influence to England at the…
Elizabeth quickly consolidated power and returned the country to Protestantism, passing the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, although by Reformation standards Catholics fared well under these acts. With the help of able advisors like Sir William Cecil (later Lord Burleigh) and the spy-networks of Francis Walsingham, she ruled the country ably and initiated an era of economic prosperity. In international affairs, Elizabeth manipulated the princes of Europe, using the prospect of marriage to her (and thus joint control over England) as a bargaining tool; indeed, preferring the power that came with perpetual eligibility, she ultimately never married at all. She was, however, involved in a scandalous romance with…
Elizabeth's involvement in the tragic story of Mary, Queen of Scots was possibly the harshest experience of her long reign. Mary had been brought up in the French Court and was married to the Dauphin who became King Francis II a year after Elizabeth's accession to the thrown. 1 Two years later Mary's husband prematurely died and Mary reluctantly returned to Scotland as a youthful widow. 2 Mary's arrival posed an obvious threat to Elizabeth and the recently established Protestant settlement in England, for the presence of an obvious Catholic was likely to attract the support of Catholics on both sides of the border. 3 Mary was also a great-grand-daughter of Henry VII and therefore an heir apparent to the English thrown. 4 Although Elizabeth refused to recognize her cousin's claims to the throne, her policy was to find a working relationship between them. They kept on friendly terms and wrote letters to each other, although they never met. 5 By 1565 Mary had tired of her widowed state and she married her cousin Henry Darnley. Both Mary and Darnley shared a common grandmother, Margaret…
Elizabeth’s refusal to marry, and name an heir caused some discontent within her court, with many of her nobles attempting to court her, or competing for the queen’s favour. There was also the problem of her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who was seen by many English Catholics to be the rightful heir to the throne. Mary became the focus of several Catholic rebellions, which were taken very seriously by Elizabeth. Mary was detained in England by Elizabeth, and was eventually found to have plotted an assassination attempt on Elizabeth, for which she was beheaded. Another cause for concern of the queen was the threats of invasions from foreign shores, including the threats of Phillip II of Spain, and his Spanish…