She was the most remarkable princess that has appeared in the world for these many centuries. In all her actions she displayed the greatest prudence. ... I say, in conclusion, she was the most prudent in governing, the most active in all business, the most clear-sighted in seeing events, and the most resolute in seeing her resolutions carried into effect ... in a word, [she] possessed, in the highest degree, all the qualities which are required in a great prince.

Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who was executed two and a half years after Elizabeth's birth. Anne's marriage to Henry VIII was annulled, and Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. Her half-brother, Edward VI, ruled until his death in 1553, bequeathing the crown to Lady Jane Grey and ignoring the claims of his two half-sisters, Elizabeth and the Roman Catholic Mary, in spite of statute law to the contrary. Edward's will was set aside and Mary became queen, deposing Lady Jane Grey. During Mary's reign, Elizabeth was imprisoned for nearly a year on suspicion of supporting Protestant rebels.

Chatsworth

S]he united the great body of the people in her and their common interest, she inflamed them with one national spirit, and, thus armed, she maintained tranquillity at home, and carried succour to her friends and terror to her enemies abroad.

O]ur thanks, most due, to Almighty God, what cause have we all Englishmen so to do, that is, to render most ample thanksgiving to the mercifulness of God, who hath granted, conserved, and advanced, to the seat-regal of this realm, so good, godly, and virtuous a queen; such a chosen instrument of his clemency, so virtuously natured, so godly disposed, so merciful without marring, so humble without pride, so moderate without prodigality, so maidenly without pomp.It appears to me that she is a woman of extreme vanity, but acute. I would say that she must have great admiration for the King her father's mode of carrying on matters. The Folger’s Ziegler says that Elizabeth’s marriage would surely have led to turmoil, even if Parliament and her Privy Council failed to realize it. “She was very astute politically,” Ziegler explains. “If she married a Catholic or a foreigner, that would upset a lot of people. If she married an English nobleman, it would create factions among the other nobles.” Elizabeth chose never to marry. If she had chosen a foreign prince, he would have drawn England into foreign policies for his own advantages (as in her sister Mary's marriage to Philip of Spain); marrying a fellow countryman could have drawn the Queen into factional infighting. Elizabeth used her marriage prospects as a political tool in foreign and domestic policies.

Four years later, in 1558, Elizabeth took to the throne with alacrity, slipping into the royal plural on learning that Mary Tudor was dead of cancer: “This is the doing of the Lord, and it is marvellous in our eyes,” she declared on becoming queen, quoting Psalm 118. After Mary’s unpopular reign, much of England was elated at Elizabeth’s accession. She was now 25 years old, slender, with long golden-red hair and a suitably regal comportment. Accompanied by 1,000 mounted courtiers the day before her coronation, in January 1559, she rode smiling through the streets of London. She stopped the procession from time to time to accept bouquets, a purse of coins, a Bible, even a sprig of rosemary from an old woman. “I will be as good unto you as ever queen was to her people,” she vowed to the delight of onlookers. Quotes about Elizabeth I [ edit ] It is difficult to say whether the gifts of nature or of fortune are most to be admired in that illustrious lady. The praise which Aristotle gives wholly centres in her—beauty, stature, prudence, and industry. ~ Roger Ascham As for her government, I assure myself I shall not exceed, if I do affirm that this part of the island never had forty-five years of better times; and yet not through the calmness of the season, but through the wisdom of her regiment. ~ Francis Bacon She disappointed, divided, and weakened her enemies. She prepared the opportunities, which she afterward improved. She united, animated, and enriched her people; and, as difficult as that may seem to be for a prince in such a situation, she maintained her own dignity, and supported the honour of the nation. ~ Lord Bolingbroke She certainly is a great queen, and were she only a Catholic she would be our dearly beloved. Just look how well she governs; she is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, and yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all. ~ Pope Sixtus V

Wealth

Speech to a joint delegation of the House of Lords and the House of Commons (5 November 1566), quoted in Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (2002), p. 95 Lord Bolingbroke, The Idea of a Patriot King (1738), quoted in Lord Bolingbroke, Political Writings, ed. David Armitage (1997), p. 288 Cornelius Burges, Sermon Preached to the Honourable House of Commons...November 17, 1640 (1641), quoted in William Haller, Foxe's Book of Martyrs and the Elect Nation (1963), p. 237 and Hugh Trevor-Roper, Religion, the Reformation and Social Change, and Other Essays (1967), p. 299 From the start, Parliament pressured the new queen to marry, but she was defiant. “A strange thing that the foot should direct the head in so weighty a cause,” she upbraided Parliament in 1566. What to the M.P.s was a matter of state—England needed a king and princes who would grow to be kings—was to Elizabeth a near-treasonous affront. It’s awful. Can you imagine waking up and there’s this much older guy sitting at the end of your bed in his night shirt, his bare legs showing?

Elizabeth succeeded to the throne on her half-sister's death in November 1558. She was very well-educated (fluent in five languages), and had inherited intelligence, determination and shrewdness from both parents. Speech to Parliament (10 April 1593), quoted in Leah Marcus, Janel Mueller and Mary Rose (eds.), Elizabeth I: Collected Works (2002), p. 332 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.”At the other extreme in the Folger’s collection is an enormous English-language Bible that the archbishop of Canterbury presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1568. The tome is bound in red velvet with ornate gilt clasps embossed with Tudor roses. Oddly, the text is accompanied by hand-colored woodcuts of Elizabeth’s court favorites, including Leicester. Vernacular Bibles were a potent symbol of English Protestantism in Elizabeth’s day—under her Catholic sister, Mary, prayers and scripture in any language but Latin were deemed a sacrilege. Playing to the crowd during her coronation parade, Elizabeth had hugged an English Bible to her chest.