Historical Points of the Elizabethan Era

The Elizabethan Era is the period associated with the reign of Queen Elizabeth I ( 1558 – 1603 ) and is often considered to be a golden age in English history. It was the height of the English Renaissance, and saw the flowering of English literature and poetry This was also the time during which Elizabethan theatre flourished and William Shakespeare, among others composed plays that broke away from England’s past style of plays. It was an age of expansion and exploration abroad, while at home the protestant Reformation became entrenched in the national mindset.                              

The Elizabethan Age is viewed so highly because of the contrast with the periods before and after. It was a brief period of largely internal peace between the English Reformation and the battles between protestants and Catholics and the battles between parliament and the monarchy that would engulf the seventeenth century. The Protestant/ Catholic divide was settled, for a time, by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement and parliament was still not strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.

                                

England was also well-off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end under the weight of foreign domination of the peninsula. France was embroiled in its own religious battles that would only be settled in 1598 with the Edict of Nantes. In part because of this, but also because the English had been expelled from their last outposts on the continent, the centuries long conflict between France and England was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth’s reign.

The one great rival was Spain, with which England conflicted both in Europe and the Americas in skirmishes that exploded into the Anglo-Spanish War of 1585 – 1604. An attempt by Philip II of Spain to invade England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 was famously defeated, but the tide of war turned against England

with a disastrously unsuccessful attack upon Spain, the Drake– Norris Expedition of 1589. Thereafter Spain provided some support for Irish Catholics in a draining guerrilla war against England and Spanish naval and land forces inflicted a series of defeats upon English forces. This badly damaged both the English Exchequer and economy that had been so carefully restored under Elizabeth’s prudent guidance. English colonization and trade would be frustrated until the singing of the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeth's death.

England during this period had a centralized, well-organized, and effective government, largely a result of the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII. Economically,the country began to benefit greatly from the new era of trans-Atlantic trade.                                                        

Elizabeth I ( 7 September 1533 – 24 march 1603 ) was Queen of England, Queen of France ( in name only ), and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. She is sometimes referred to as The Virgin Queen ( as she never married ), Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, and was immortalized by Edmund Spenser as the Faerie Queen Elizabeth I was the sixth and final monarch of the Tudor dynasty ( along with Henry VII, Henry VIII, her half-brother Edward VI, her cousin Jane, and her half-sister Mary I).[She reigned for 44 years, during a period marked by increases in English power and influence worldwide, as well as great religious turmoil within England

abuiyad