Young Elizabeth I | The making of a Tudor queen

Ajouté : 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]This is the period of Elizabeth's life certainly to begin with when she first arrives at the tower when she is genuinely in fear for her life. I have to say that I think the fact that she is imprisoned in the same apartments that her mother was, I think that's very cruel. I think that's a deliberate strategy on Mary's behalf to try and torment Elizabeth.

[00:00:25]Hello and welcome to this four-part History Extra podcast series on the life of Elizabeth I. I'm Rachel Denning and today I'm joined by Dr. Nicola Talis, an expert on 16th century history and author of books including Young Elizabeth and Crown of Blood.

[00:01:02]Today, we're stepping back into Elizabeth the First's early life to understand how her formative experiences shaped the queen she would become.

[00:01:11]Nicola, thanks for joining me today.

[00:01:13]It's great to have you on the podcast.

[00:01:15]>> It's great to be here with you, Rachel.

[00:01:17]Thank you for having me. You're very welcome. So before we delve into Elizabeth's childhood, I want to ask you, what is it that has fascinated you in your career about Elizabeth? Give us a little potted potted summary. Well, I think what's really interesting about Elizabeth is when we think of her now, we and indeed we're going to be talking about her today as Elizabeth the First because we know how Elizabeth's story ended. We know that she went on to become one of England's most iconic queens. But what's fascinating to me is that for so much of Elizabeth's early life and her formative years, she had no idea that queenship lay in her future.

[00:02:01]So in many respects, she's almost like an unexpected queen. And I think that that is one of the reasons that makes her so iconic.

[00:02:10]>> That's right. And we'll get on to some more of that later later in this podcast episode. Um but to start off to understand the woman who becomes Elizabeth the first we need to go back to her childhood um and we have to understand the context that produced her. So can you tell us a bit about the world that Elizabeth was born into? It's a very turbulent world. Elizabeth is born on the 7th of September 1533.

[00:02:37]She is a disappointment to her father, Henry VIII, in many respects because he had pinned all of his hopes on Elizabeth being a boy. And in fact, all of the astrologers that Henry VIII had employed to predict the gender of his child. All except one actually had said that yes, this child was going to be a boy. So you can imagine his disappointment when actually Elizabeth is a girl. And this was particularly disappointing for Henry given that he had moved mountains to marry um Berlin Elizabeth's mother and in the course of this he'd separated from his first wife Katherine of Aragan and he had also separated from the Roman Catholic Church and set himself up as the head of the English church instead.

[00:03:29]So this is a very very tumultuous and uncertain time in England's history that's really rife with factions.

[00:03:39]Amberlin is incredibly unpopular.

[00:03:42]Katherine of Aaran is still alive and has a lot of support. So there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of hostility at the time of Elizabeth's birth.

[00:03:54]>> And the stakes as you say are high.

[00:03:57]Henry wants his heir. He wants a male, but along comes Elizabeth. Um, so moving to May 1536, Elizabeth's not yet three.

[00:04:07]Um, and her mother, Anne Berlin, is executed on the orders of Henry. What does this mean for Elizabeth?

[00:04:15]>> Well, it effectively means that she is no longer the most important royal child in the country. She is declared illegitimate and she is deprived of her place in the line of succession. So she is still the king's daughter, but she is no longer deemed worthy of succeeding to England's crown. So in political terms, all of Elizabeth's value has vanished at the stroke of the sword that severed her mother's head. For the rest of Elizabeth's life, um, we have virtually no record of her talking about her mother. Do we know how what she felt about Amberlin? Is there any indication?

[00:04:57]Yeah. So, I think in this respect, we have to think less about what Elizabeth said and more about what Elizabeth did.

[00:05:06]And there are some very subtle indications in some respect as to what she felt about her mother. And I think that really she she did feel a sort of resonance with her and a warmth for her mother. And we see this in the fact that she promoted her mother's relatives. So when she became queen, she was surrounded by bins um by carries who were the relatives of her mother's sister Mary Berlin. So she keeps those who were linked with Anne very very close to her. And she also adopted Anne's symbol of the falcon badge. So we can see this on some of Elizabeth's belongings for example. And I think perhaps most touchingly we know that at the end of her life Elizabeth had a beautiful ring that contained two hidden portraits. And one of them was the queen herself, Elizabeth. and the other is a woman who was almost certainly an. So I think that this was probably a very personal keepsake that reminded Elizabeth of her mother and ensured that she was always close at hand.

[00:06:23]>> That's really lovely. It must have been a really interesting time. Well, her growing up in court, not not only hearing bad things about her mother all around her. Um, what did life look like for Elizabeth as an illegit legitimate princess? Obviously, her mother's gone.

[00:06:39]She's now illegitimate. What What did life look like for her in terms of Elizabeth's daily life? Very little would have changed for her. She was raised in a nursery household, largely away from her father's court under the care of her own household. But we know that Elizabeth was a very very perceptive child and she recognized the change in her status almost instantly and we know this from the account of Sir John Shelton who oversaw Elizabeth's household who reported that Elizabeth had basically gone to him one day and said how haps it yesterday Lady Princess and today Lady Elizabeth. Elizabeth was very very acutely aware of her royal blood and her status. That is something that would have been drumed into her from the moment of her birth, from the moment that she could walk and talk. So yes, she is very very conscious of that. Um but she does still continue to visit her father at court. She continues to exchange gifts with him. She um attends several of his wives because of course she has four stepmothers who come and go in relatively quick succession. So to all intents and purposes, life hasn't changed a great deal for her except in terms of her title and the way in which she's addressed.

[00:08:06]>> She's illegitimate, but she's still very much present at court and in the royal household. Um you mentioned Henry VII there. Do we have any understanding of what Elizabeth thought about her father?

[00:08:18]I mean, this is the man who ordered the execution of her mother.

[00:08:22]>> Yeah, and that's a really interesting question. And I think we know that in later years, Elizabeth does come to revere her father greatly. Um, one contemporary says that she prides herself in her father and glories in him. And I think that Elizabeth probably actually disassociated her father from the execution of her mother. I think she probably actually blamed Thomas Cromwell, who was almost certainly the brains behind Amberlin's fall. And we do see that we have one surviving letter from Elizabeth to her father which was prefaced in a New Year's gift she gave to him in 1546.

[00:09:07]And in this, Elizabeth refers to him as, you know, the high and mighty king Henry VIII. It's very clear that she's trying to get into his good books. And let's face it, she was in a world where her whole status, her whole survival and being depended on being in her father's good graces. That was really, really important. And in this letter, she identifies herself as being Henry's daughter no less than six times. So she's very, very, very keen to remind her father that she is his daughter, that she is here. And this letter, this prefaces a New Year's gift, as I say, that she gave to Henry of a translation of her stepmother, Katherine Par's works. And this is in three languages, Latin, French, and Italian. Elizabeth's 12 years old at this time, so she's also really trying to show off to her dad and to make him aware that she is worthy of his attentions. She's worthy of being his daughter. So, I think it really sort of highlights Elizabeth's vulnerability where her father was concerned. It's a very, very fragile relationship, but I think that in many ways, Elizabeth does sort of look up to him. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, she's illegitimate.

[00:10:29]Um, she's a royal still. Um, and she perhaps felt this need to be like, I am Elizabeth. I am your daughter. I want that approval from you because I don't have it officially.

[00:10:41]>> Exactly. Yeah. And she doesn't have a mother anymore. So, Henry is all that she has.

[00:10:46]>> What about the other influences in her life? Um, what about you mentioned her stepmothers for example. How did they influence young Elizabeth? Well, I think their fates come to influence her very greatly because by the time that Elizabeth is 9 years old or eight years old really, she had gained and lost three stepmothers in relatively quick order. Jane Seymour dies in childbirth.

[00:11:12]An of Cleves is divorced and Katherine Howard is beheaded. So I think that by the time her father married Katherine Parr in the summer of 1543, Elizabeth was desperately craving stability.

[00:11:27]She I don't think had a particularly close relationship with any of those earlier stepmothers. And I think that that's not necessarily a matter of personalities. It's probably timings because none of them were there for for very long. But it's very clear that when Katherine Par arrives on the scene, she takes a very, very close maternal interest in Elizabeth. And Elizabeth reciprocates with warmth and love. And I think that this is sort of the attention that Elizabeth has been craving because Henry VIII is an absent father in many respects. He doesn't really have a great deal to do with overseeing Elizabeth's daily life. So suddenly Katherine Parr is here. She begins writing to Elizabeth. She recognizes that Elizabeth is very academically gifted and she really does her best to nurture this. So it's in 1544 when Elizabeth is just shy of her 11th birthday that for the first time she's appointed a male tutor of her own. And this is almost certainly something that is done under Katherine's influence. and Elizabeth begins to really really thrive. So, it's very very clear that Katherine has a very very positive impact on Elizabeth's development and also her confidence. I think >> was that type of education normal for someone of Elizabeth's standing. You mentioned before she spoke she was translating three languages and things like that. Was that was that the norm for a child of Elizabeth's status?

[00:13:04]>> It was beginning to become the norm. So in the past, women's learning had been very limited, somewhat frowned upon, but times were beginning to change. The world was changing a great deal. We see the onset of the Renaissance, which introduces all of these new ideas, and women's education begins to be encouraged. And we see Elizabeth's halfsister, Mary, had received an excellent education. And so if Elizabeth was to make her mark on the world, it was essential that she should also have a similar education. And it is something that she really did thrive on, I think. And as I say, she was very, very gifted, particularly in terms of languages. Apparently, she actually spoke eight um by the end of her lifetime. So it's something that clearly she had a great talent for. And I imagine that intellectual curiosity helped her when she she did become queen later on. So I want to move on to her path to the throne. Her route to the throne was not simple. She was illegitimate from the age of three. But towards the end of his life, Henry VII had a change of heart. Um and in the third act of succession, both Elizabeth and her older halfsister Mary were restored to the line of succession. Why did Henry take this step? What prompted that? Well, it isn't a matter of sentiment, unfortunately. It's it's more a political move. And at this time, Henry was preparing to invade France, which he does in 1544.

[00:14:39]And he was basically making preparations for the future. And the idea behind restoring both Mary and Elizabeth was really uh a safety precaution. In case the king's son Edward didn't marry and have children of his own, Henry needed a backup plan basically and Mary and Elizabeth were that backup plan.

[00:15:01]>> What would have been the alternative if he hadn't put them in place just as a speculative what was the what was the risk there?

[00:15:08]>> Well, it's quite interesting actually because pretty much all of the candidates were female. So if Henry hadn't um hadn't restored Mary and Elizabeth, then he looked towards the the line of his younger sister Mary who had first of all briefly been Queen of France and then married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffk and Mary was the grandmother of the Gray Sisters, ill- fated gay sisters. So they were the alternatives. Yeah. Should >> Mary or Elizabeth not happen to succeed.

[00:15:42]So obviously Henry passes and Elizabeth's younger brother succeeds the throne as Edward V 6th. What do we know about Elizabeth's relationship with her brother Edward?

[00:15:53]>> That relationship was very very close and I think it was probably one of the most important relationships of Elizabeth's childhood. There was only four years between these two children and they both had a lot in common because they both lost their mothers at a young age. And we know that Elizabeth and Edward shared a nursery at times during their childhood. And Elizabeth almost took a proud older sister role where Edward's concerned. So we know for example that she embroidered shirts for him. She wrote him letters. She was very very fond of him and of course they were bonded by their religious views as well.

[00:16:36]So yes, it's a very very close relationship for Elizabeth.

[00:16:41]>> She must have been very sad when he passed away in 1553.

[00:16:46]Edward died relatively young. Um I think of tuberculosis.

[00:16:51]Um can you explain what then happened with the succession?

[00:16:55]>> Yeah, absolutely. So, as we've spoken about, Henry VIII had said that or had um declared that if Edward were to die childless, as is indeed the case, then the next in line to the throne would be Elizabeth's halfsister, Mary, and then Elizabeth herself.

[00:17:15]However, Edward was a fervent Protestant. He'd spent the entirety of his reign really revolutionizing the English church and placing it firmly in the realms of Protestantism.

[00:17:29]And he was eager that Mary, who was an ardent Catholic, shouldn't be given the opportunity to undo all of his good work in the cause of religious reform. But he recognized that he couldn't exclude one halfsister without also excluding the other. So so determined was Edward to ensure a Protestant succession that he draws up in his own hand this famous document my device for the succession.

[00:17:57]And in this he attempts to overturn the provisions for the succession that have been put in place by Henry VIII. Mary and Elizabeth are completely excluded and instead Edward names his Protestant cousin Lady Jane Gray as his heir.

[00:18:15]Unfortunately for Jane Gray, that doesn't go particularly well. She is an unknown entity in the realm. She's very close in age to Edward. She's probably about 16 or so at this time and she has been spending most of her life living in Leicst. Uh so most people in the realm don't know who she is. She certainly doesn't have the same sort of profile or popularity as Mary and Elizabeth as the king's daughters.

[00:18:45]And so support for Jane does fade at an alarming rate with the result that after 9 or 13 days depending on your opinion, she is deposed and Mary becomes queen in herstead. I want to zoom in on Elizabeth's relationship with Mary. So their bond a bit like Edward and Mary has been quite challenging from the very start. I mean Mary's the daughter firstly of Katherine of Aragan who Anblin became the second wife. Katherine of Aragan was the first wife but then more significantly perhaps the religion question. Mary is Catholic, Elizabeth is Protestant. Do you think with with all of those considerations, was it ever possible for Mary and Elizabeth to have a close sisterly relationship?

[00:19:33]>> Unfortunately, I think despite their best efforts, they probably were doomed from the start. I think Mary harbored such a deep loathing for Amberlin.

[00:19:45]Understandably, Anna treated her very, very badly. But I think that as Elizabeth grew and began to demonstrate more physical characteristics in common with her mother and more uh we could see more of Anne in terms of her personality as well. I think that this really began to rile Mary and it began to reawaken some of the ghosts of the past. So Mary definitely did try her best where Elizabeth was concerned. She cared for her very greatly when she was a child.

[00:20:22]There's no doubt about that. But I think that ultimately Elizabeth's parentage or her mother in particular really doomed that relationship to failure from the start.

[00:20:34]And can you tell our watchers and listeners um how Mary came to the throne? We had Lady Jane Gray. How is it that Mary is crowned? Well, it's quite interesting because it's a bit of a common misconception, I think, that Lady Jane Gay's reign was doomed to failure from the start. But actually to begin with all of the odds were very much stacked in Jane's favor to the extent that Mary's supporters were urging her to flee abroad for her own safety. So it does look as though Mary is going to have to find some other form of life, some other role for herself. Um and she to her credit isn't prepared to accept this. She doesn't think it's right for her father's provisions for the will to be overturned. And I think it shows a great strength of character where Mary's concerned. She really sort of plays to her strengths because when she had heard that Edward was dying, she fled to East Anglia where she was a great landholder and very very popular. And from there she was able to really rally a great network of support. And there were a series of mistakes made on the part of Jane's supporters as well that Mary was able to really capitalize on. But really she builds on her popularity. She is a queen of the people and it is the people that really come through for Mary with the result that on the 19th of July 1553, so not long after her brothers died, she is declared queen of England.

[00:22:09]How does her relationship with Elizabeth unfold from this point? How how did tensions grow between the two?

[00:22:15]>> It's really interesting because throughout the coup to make Lady Jane Grey Queen, Elizabeth, her voice goes completely silent.

[00:22:26]>> Probably wisely.

[00:22:27]>> Yeah, very wisely. Very in keeping with Elizabeth and what we know of her actually. And she the fact that she is the younger sister really plays to her advantage. um because all eyes are on Mary. So she doesn't do anything. She watches to see how things play out. But then as soon as Mary becomes queen, Elizabeth wastes no time in writing to Mary to congratulate her and to ingratiate herself. So she recognized that her safety and her position depended on Mary now all of a sudden.

[00:22:59]And so she was really keen to be seen by Mary's side. And to begin with, the sisters do put on a united front. So when Mary arrives in London to take possession of the capital for the first time, Elizabeth is there by her side.

[00:23:14]They are sisters. Um and Mary's very happy to have Elizabeth there. But there are already tensions partly because of religion, but also there are people who begin whispering in Mary's ear that her younger sister is a threat to her because of course Elizabeth is now the heir to the throne. She's 20 years old by contrast to Mary's 37. So she's much younger. She is a figurehead for disscent against Mary's rule partly on account of the fact that Elizabeth is a Protestant where Mary is a Catholic. So we can already see that the seeds of discord are beginning. Yeah.

[00:23:58]>> Yeah. I mean the hostility became so great that Elizabeth is then accused of treason. Um can you tell our listeners about Wyatt's rebellion of 1554? What happened there? Yeah. So the rebellion is actually orchestrated under the opaces of a gentleman from Kent called Sir Thomas Wyatt and it is a response to Mary's decision to marry the Spanish prince Phillip and there is a huge outcry about about this in England partly because Philillip's a Catholic but also because he's a foreigner and there are great fears about this and Thomas Wyatt decides to orchestrate this rebellion in order to protest against the Spanish marriage. But there's more to it than that because in the process of doing so, he and his co-conspirators also decide to depose Mary and set Elizabeth up in herstead. And it's one of the million-dollar questions as to how much Elizabeth knew about the wire rebellion. It's a really tricky one to answer because she was far too clever to incriminate herself in writing.

[00:25:11]>> No evidence.

[00:25:12]>> No evidence. No, absolutely. She was she was very shrewd. But she did have relationships with some of the plotters and Wyatt did later confess to having written to Elizabeth. So I think that perhaps she was aware of what was going on but didn't inform Mary. maybe turning a slight blind eye unaware of the implications.

[00:25:36]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:25:37]>> Within months of Wyatt's rebellion, Elizabeth finds herself in the Tower of London. She's suspected of plotting against her sister. She's found herself quite horribly in the very place where her mother, Amberlin, is executed. Um, what was this time like for Elizabeth?

[00:25:52]Well, I think that this is the period of Elizabeth's life, certainly to begin with, when she first arrives at the tower, when she is genuinely in fear for her life. I think to begin with, she does think that there's a possibility that she's going to die. And I have to say that I think the fact that she is imprisoned in the same apartments that her mother was, I think that's very cruel. I think that's a deliberate strategy on Mary's behalf to try and torment Elizabeth and to weaken her resolve. And we know that Elizabeth is she's very very anxious at this time.

[00:26:32]She is heavily reliant on prayer. It's a very very difficult and torturous time for her. But I think that it does that anxiety does begin to lessen because it becomes clear relatively quickly that there isn't any evidence against Elizabeth. Wyatt and his fellow plotters fail to incriminate her in any way, shape, or form. Elizabeth, I think, is still frightened. She does wonder what on earth her fate might be. And she is in a place where she is surrounded by the ghosts of not only her mother but also her stepmother, Katherine Howard, people who have lost their lives, arguably for lesser things than that of which she now stood accused. And I think perhaps most poignantly, Lady Jane Gray had only recently been executed at the time that Elizabeth arrived at the tower. and she had been executed basically because of the fact that her father had been one of the conspirators in the war rebellion. Jane herself had had no involvement but that hadn't prevented Mary from acting against her.

[00:27:47]So I think that Elizabeth would have been very very mindful of that at that time and I mean who knows perhaps Jane scaffold was even still erected at the tower at that time but I think that it must have been a really frightening experience for Elizabeth.

[00:28:04]>> And how close do you think she came to execution? Do you think that was that was Mary was capable of that?

[00:28:10]>> I think in reality she probably wasn't as close as she feared. I think Mary was capable of that most definitely, but I think that Mary's counselors would have protested. I mean, they already were beginning to protest about Elizabeth's imprisonment in the tower. So, I think that Mary would have made herself very, very unpopular if she had executed Elizabeth. So, I think had Mary been left to her own devices, we could have seen that because Mary did definitely believe that Elizabeth was guilty. However, the reality was that Mary had to act as a queen rather than as a woman and there were those in place who were eager to ensure that she did the right thing and that justice was allowed to take its course. And ultimately, Elizabeth's not found guilty of treason. Um Mary's reign progresses and over time it becomes clear that she's not going to produce an heir. Um what happens then in terms of the succession? Does Mary name Elizabeth as her successor?

[00:29:18]>> Um not personally. No. She she is never ever reconciled with Elizabeth. I think the Wyatt rebellion was really the final nail in the coffin in terms of the sister's relationship because even when Elizabeth is freed, Mary never welcomes Elizabeth back into her heart. that is well and truly that ship is well and truly sailed and she becomes quite embittered towards Elizabeth and so by the time that Mary falls gravely ill in 1558 the sisters are still not reconciled and Mary just can't quite bring herself to say Elizabeth's name but she does recognize that Elizabeth is the next in line to the throne and that there's nothing that she can do to avoid that. So she does reluctantly acknowledge that the terms of her father's will are legal and that Elizabeth will become queen after her.

[00:30:19]>> So Mary's death 17th of November 1558.

[00:30:24]What happens next? How is Elizabeth informed? She becomes queen on Mary's death. What is her response to that?

[00:30:30]>> Yeah. So, Elizabeth is at Hatfield when she receives word of Mary's death. And she is not at all surprised because she's been expecting this news for some time. And she says that the law of nature moveth me to sorrow for my sister. And she claims later that she shed tears of grief for Mary's death.

[00:30:54]But very interestingly, there are no reports to confirm this. So I think really she saw Mary's death as a relief.

[00:31:03]It meant that she was safe to an extent from persecution and from her sister's bitterness. So it's really the beginning of a whole new chapter of Elizabeth's life and one that she hadn't seen coming until perhaps later in Mary's reign.

[00:31:19]>> And that brings me to the end of this podcast. So, Elizabeth has claimed the crown. Um, but ascending the throne is only the beginning. And in her early years as queen, she will face a kingdom divided by religion. She will have to navigate the pressures of being a woman in power and see her personal life turned into a matter of state. All of which we're going to be exploring in the next episode. Um, for those at home, if you enjoyed today's episode and want to know more about Elizabeth's life, I've rounded up a selection of wider readings, some by Nicola herself, from our archive. You can find all of that in the episode description below.