Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots: The Controversial History of Cousins Turned Rivals

When Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952, many commentators heralded the beginning of her reign as the second Elizabethan age. The first one, of course, concerned the reign of Henry VIII’s second surviving daughter and middle surviving child, Queen Elizabeth I, one of England’s most famous and influential rulers. It was an age when the arts, commerce and trade flourished. It was the epoch of gallantry and great, enduring literature. It was also an age of wars and military conflicts in which men were the primary drivers and women often were pawns.

Elizabeth I changed the rules of the game and indeed she herself was changed by the game. She was a female monarch of England, a kingdom that had unceremoniously broken with the Catholic Church, and the Vatican and the rest of Christendom was baying for her blood. She had had commercial and militaristic enemies galore. In the end, she helped change the entire structure of female leadership.

Elizabeth was the last Tudor sovereign, the daughter of the cruel and magnificent King Henry VIII and a granddaughter of the Tudor House’s founder, the shrewd Henry VII. Elizabeth, hailed as “Good Queen Bess,” “Gloriana” and “The Virgin Queen” to this day in the public firmament, would improve upon Henry VIII’s successes and mitigate his failures, and despite her own failings would turn out to “have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too”. Indeed, that was the phrase she would utter in describing herself while exhorting her troops to fight for England against the Spanish Armada.

Elizabeth had to fight for her life and position time and again in an era that was already unsafe for female leaders and she probably had remembered the searing feeling of realizing that her mother, Anne Boleyn had been executed by her father on a trumped-up charge. Danger was pervasive, and strategy was needed not just to thrive but to survive.

Perhaps nothing underscored that fact quite like Elizabeth’s relationship with her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary’s fame as a monarch lies less in her personality or achievements than in her position within the dynastic maneuvers and political and religious upheavals taking place in Europe in the 16th century. Most monarchs spent their early years learning in preparation to rule and then spend the latter part of their lives wielding power and status, but Mary was thrust upon the throne when she was only a week old, and she ceased to be queen nearly 20 years before her death.
Mary's tragedy was intertwined with her country's transformation. As a second cousin once removed of England’s Queen Elizabeth I, that potentially made Mary a rival for the throne. Mary was the granddaughter of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister, and her Catholicism made Mary the true and rightful Queen of England in the eyes of many Catholics and the Vatican. These facts, coupled with the realization that several English Catholics (especially rebels active in the Rising of the North movement) supported Mary, ardently made Elizabeth uneasy. Mary also did not help herself when she married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was widely accused of raping her. The Scottish people rebelled, after which Mary abdicated and fled southwards towards England.

Elizabeth I was unsure at first what to do with Mary, so she kept Mary imprisoned in several castles and manor houses inside England, making escape difficult and thus unlikely. After 18 years and 9 months in Elizabeth's custody, it became clear that the situation was becoming untenable mainly due to Catholic efforts on the continent and within England to have Elizabeth I assassinated and to raise Mary to England's throne after marrying her to the recusant Catholic Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk.