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During Elizabeth's long reign, the nation also suffered from high prices and severe economic depression, especially in the countryside, during the 1590s. The war against Spain was not very successful after the Armada had been beaten and, together with other campaigns, it was very costly. Sometime in 1545, Bess probably became a waiting gentlewoman in the household of Lady Frances Grey, mother of the Nine Days’ Queen, Lady Jane, then about 9 years old. Lady Frances was the niece of Henry VIII, so this was a significant step-up from the Zouches. There she met her next husband, Sir William Cavendish (c.1505-57), a friend of Henry Grey. Cavendish was more than twice her age, and rather fat, but Bess decided to accept his advances, and they married in 1547. Marrying Cavendish, the Lord Treasurer, made Bess Lady Cavendish, and significantly improved her social standing. In 1588] the Queen with a masculine Spirit came and took a View of her Army and Camp at Tilbury, and riding about through the Ranks of Armed men drawn up on both sides her, with a Leader's Truncheon in her Hand, sometimes with a martial Pace, another while gently like a Woman, incredible it is how much she encouraged the Hearts of her Captains and Soldiers by her Presence and Speech to them.
That year, the 25-year-old duke had called on Elizabeth in person, the only foreign suitor to do so. (The queen never set foot outside England.) The pair played at being courtly lovers, and Elizabeth was evidently quite fond of the gallant young man, whom she affectionately called “our frog.” Ultimately, says Carole Levin, a professor of history at the University of Nebraska,“I don’t think she ever wanted to marry. But I think she loved courtship and flirtation. I think she adored it.” She is vain, wrote the Spanish ambassador in 1565, “and would like all the world to be running after her.” As for men at the English court, a number of them, both married and unmarried, vied for Elizabeth’s attentions with flattery and gifts. It was how one did business with the queen. Thus, wrote British historian J. E. Neale in his classic 1934 biography, Queen Elizabeth, “The reign was turned into an idyll, a fine but artificial comedy of young men—and old men—in love.” Elizabeth insisted that her cousin suffer no discomfort, and so Bess refurnished Talbot’s castle at Tutbury for her arrival. The arrangement also required the couple to stay at Tutbury, rather than their beloved Chatsworth or wherever they fancied. In a sense, they, too, were prisoners. In addition, though Bess and Mary were close and spent a lot of time together, Talbot baulked at the prisoner’s ludicrous demands for the upkeep of herself and her enormous retinue, which far exceeded the stipend allocated by Elizabeth. Over the next 15 years, Mary was moved between several of Bess’s homes across the country.
Speech to Parliament (10 April 1593), quoted in Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (2002), p. 332 The end came a little more than a year after the Golden Speech. According to one account, “her appetite to meate grew sensibly worse & worse; whereupon shee became exceeding sad, & seemed to be much grieved at some thing or other.” Enfeebled by rheumatism and possibly pneumonia, the queen died March 24, 1603. She was 69. Jae Jerkins, “Islam in the Early Modern Protestant Imagination: Religious and Political Rhetoric of English Protestant–Ottoman Relations”, (1528-1588), (Florida State University), Eras, Edn13, Issue 2, (June 2012), p. 15 That great Queen has now been lying two hundred and thirty years in Henry the Seventh's Chapel. Yet her memory is still dear to the hearts of a free people. Speech to bishops and other clergy at Somerset Place (27 February 1585), quoted in Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (2002), p. 178
Elizabeth was no doubt sincere, but she was too smart to depend for her power purely on her subjects’ affection. “Machiavelli said it’s better to be feared than loved,” says Clark Hulse. “Elizabeth knew it was better to be both. She used force only as a last resort, but it was always on the table. Plenty of people were hanged during her reign.” Her hands were ever working for the defence of the Faith, defending it at home, defending it abroad, for her selfe defending it, and defending it for others; ever in travell for this holy businesse. I am already bound unto an husband, which is the kingdom of England... for every one of you, and as many as are English, are my children and kinsfolks.
Ancestry
And what a cutthroat world it was. Elizabeth’s father was King Henry VIII, rotund, red-haired and irascible. Her mother was Anne Boleyn, a coquettish young lady of the court who was pregnant with Elizabeth when Henry was still married to Catherine of Aragon. Henry, who was Roman Catholic, established the Church of England largely so he could have his marriage to Catherine annulled and marry Anne (a marriage the Catholic Church never recognized). Princess Elizabeth was born September 7, 1533. Within three years, Henry had her mother beheaded on a trumped-up charge of adultery. He married another fetching young lady of the court, Jane Seymour, 11 days later.
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