In 1588, against the advice of her aides, Elizabeth I rode out on her grey gelding to address her troops gathered at Tilbury in Essex awaiting the invasion of the Spanish Armada. Looking out at the assembled faces, she made a speech that would forever define her rule: ‘I know I have the body of a weak, feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king – and of a king of England, too.’
This image of Elizabeth has been the key to our popular perception for centuries, but there’s much more to her than that. When she came to the throne in November 1558, the
