Elizabeth I, the People's Queen: Her Life and Times, 21 Activities

By Kerrie Logan Hollihan

One of England’s most fascinating monarchs is brought to life in this hands-on study for young minds. Combining projects, pictures, and sidebars with an authoritative biography, children will develop an understanding of the Reformation, Shakespearean England, and how Elizabeth’s 45-year reign set the stage for the English Renaissance and marshaled her country into a chief military power. Providing 21 activities, from singing a madrigal and growing a knot garden to creating a period costumecomplete with a neck ruff and a cloak for the queen’s courtreaders will experience a sliver of life in the Elizabethan age. For those who wish to delve deeper, a time line, online resources, and a reading list are included to aid in further study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Release date: Jun 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781569768853

Book preview

PREFACE

The World’s a Stage

IN DECEMBER 1599, all was aflutter at the court of Elizabeth I, the queen of England. Her Majesty was looking forward to a quiet Christmas Day, followed by a dozen days of merrymaking with the lords and ladies who spent winter with her at Whitehall Palace on the Thames River. In these dark days of December and January, when there were only eight hours of daylight, everyone liked to party.

Elizabeth’s Lord Chamberlain, who oversaw the queen’s giant household of 300 courtiers (political friends and allies and assorted hangers-on who attended the queen) and 1,200 servants, had orders to hire musicians and entertainers for the court’s revels. There were 12 nights to think of, and he needed to plan for music and dancing and plays. He met with an actors’ group, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, to talk about an assignment. They were to write and perform a play to entertain Elizabeth and her guest, an Italian duke.

The performance would take place on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, when Christians honored the visit of the Wise Men to the baby Jesus. Elizabeth and her court also celebrated this date as Twelfth Night, the final night of fun that capped the Twelve Days of Christmas.

The actors got together, making haste as they set their plans. Dame Fortune—good luck—smiled on them. One of the actors was a gifted playwright, a man from Stratford named William Shakespeare.

With just a few days to go before Christmas, Shakespeare sat down at a wooden table with his quill pen, ink, and a sheaf of papers in front of him. There he wrote Twelfth Night, a comedy about mixed-up people living in a fantasy world. One of the characters took his name from the queen’s Italian visitor.

William Shakespeare went on to become the English language’s best-known playwright. Shakespeare understood how people think and act as they live their lives, and he wrote about human nature in his plays and poems. As he said in his play As You Like It:

Queen Elizabeth I and her court enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays in the Globe Theatre.

© iStockphoto/HultonArchive

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances.

Shakespeare and the rest of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men went on stage before Queen Elizabeth on January 6, 1600. He may well have wondered about the queen. Elizabeth, though dressed in a gown heavy with jewels and embroidery, was showing her years. The queen was heavily painted with white makeup, but Shakespeare could see the lines etched on her face. They marked a long and complex life.

Queen Elizabeth’s very life was high drama. Surrounding her was a cast of characters—kings, queens, lords, ladies, heroes, villains, gentlemen, gentlewomen, soldiers, sailors, and ordinary English folk. Like Shakespeare’s actors, they made their entrances and exits as Elizabeth’s drama unfolded.

Each man and woman, together with the queen, played against a bold, brutal backdrop. In the 1500s, there were wars among Europe’s feuding nations about how to worship God. But amid this setting of strife and blood, there was good news: the rise of a tiny island nation called England during the Age of Elizabeth.

William Shakespeare’s characters have stayed famous for more than 400 years. These trading cards came in packages of tea sold in the early 1900s.

Queen Elizabeth I of England.

Library of Congress LC-USZ62-47605

1

A PRINCESS UNWANTED

When beggars die there are no comets seen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.

—William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

THE MIDWIFE must have groaned. Praise God for Queen Anne’s safe delivery in childbed, but this new baby was a maid, not the lusty boy King Henry had been promised. As the midwife displayed the baby girl to the crowd of people in the queen’s chamber, they knew the queen had failed. She had not borne the heir to England’s throne, the son her husband longed for.

Still, the baby girl’s arrival signaled the start of a celebration. It was September 7, 1533. England had a new princess, first in line to the throne. As the news flowed out of Greenwich Palace and up the Thames River to London, people poured out of their houses to make merry. King Henry VIII and his new queen, Anne Boleyn (boe-LIN), had a healthy child. Surely a son would follow in God’s—and King Henry’s—good time.

King Henry VIII of England, Princess Elizabeth’s father, married six wives. Two he divorced, two he executed, one died, and the last outlived him. © iStockphoto/wynnter

With her mother still in bed, where she would stay for a month to recover from the birth, the baby girl was taken to a church in Greenwich. There she was christened with great pomp and style. One of the king’s men shouted her name: God of his infinite goodness, send prosperous life and long to the high and mighty princess of England, Elizabeth!

But in a different household, another English princess refused to celebrate. She was Mary Tudor, 17 years old and daughter of Henry VIII with his first wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon. The new baby meant only bitterness to Mary When her mother could not give Henry a son, he dropped her for the pretty, dark-haired Anne Boleyn. Henry’s wandering eye had spotted Anne, one of Queen Catherine’s ladies at court.

Queen Anne Boleyn, Princess Elizabeth’s mother, was executed when Elizabeth was two.

Under the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, Henry could not divorce his wife. So Henry split from the Catholic Church. The king created a new Protestant religion, the Church of England, and he made himself its supreme head. Now Henry made the laws. He divorced Queen Catherine and packed her off to a home in the country, where she and her servants lived in disgrace.

Under the king’s new rules, Mary became Henry’s illegitimate daughter, a bastard child not born in a legal marriage. Henry stripped away Mary’s title of princess. The king’s older daughter became simply Lady Mary. Her claim to England’s throne came second to baby Elizabeth’s.

A Home at Hatfield

WHEN ELIZABETH was just three months old, King Henry gave her an estate of her own with caregivers and servants. Elizabeth was taken to Hatfield, a royal manor home west of London. There, following the customs of the day, the little girl was raised in the manner befitting a princess. Her mother Queen Anne stayed at court, no doubt in the hope that she would quickly become pregnant with a son for King Henry.

Create Your Family’s Coat of Arms

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S coat of arms, as well as those of noble families in her court, had their roots in the Middle Ages. Knights in combat wore head-to-toe armor and needed a symbol so that other soldiers could identify them. These symbols appeared on the armor and also on a simple shirt that covered the armor to protect it from rust. These became known as coats of arms.

Through the years, these symbols evolved into intricate designs showing a shield and helmet topped by a crest in the family colors. Often they appear with a family motto written on a scroll. You can design a coat of arms for your family and write your own family motto as well.

YOU’LL NEED

Paper

Pencil

Markers

Scissors

Photocopy the pattern on this page to create a full-sized pattern of the shield, helmet, and motto.

Think about what makes you proud of your family. What do you want the world to see on your coat of arms? Coats of arms show all kinds of things: castles, dragons, stars, seashells, arrows, hearts, lions, griffins, crowns, bees, and ships. Depending on what you wish to include, divide your shield in half or in quarters and draw pictures in each space. Then, brainstorm your family motto.

As a queen and head of state, Elizabeth had a complex coat of arms. The three lions shown on two quarters of the shield came from King Richard I, known as Richard the Lionhearted. The other two quarters bear the fleur de lis, the lily of France, reflecting King Edward III’s claim on the French throne.

Surrounded by noble ladies of high birth, common servants, and wet nurses who breast-fed the little princess, baby Elizabeth thrived at Hatfield. Her sister Mary lived at Hatfield as well; the king had ordered her to serve as one of Elizabeth’s ladies.

This fashion illustration shows King Henry VIII standing with key players in his family. From left to right are Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII, Queen Jane Seymour, Queen Katherine Parr (seated), Princess Elizabeth Tudor, Prince Edward Tudor, and Princess Mary Tudor. This scene existed only in the artist’s imagination. © iStockphoto/wynntera

But Mary refused to acknowledge Elizabeth’s royal birth. By insisting that she alone was England’s princess, Mary outraged her father. Over the years, the distance between King Henry and his eldest daughter grew, as did Mary’s dislike of her small sister.

Queen Anne did her best to produce an heir for King Henry. She miscarried one baby and then, in the winter of 1535, she gave birth to a stillborn son. By then, Henry’s eyes had landed on several choices for a new queen. He plotted ways to rid himself of Queen Anne and replace her with his new favorite, one of Anne’s ladies named Jane Seymour.

Hatfield House, where Princess Elizabeth grew up.

Write Your Name in Your Own Typeface

THE PRINTED word can appear in many forms, called typefaces or fonts. When graphic designers plan the layout of a book, they choose typefaces that fit the book’s subject. The typeface you are reading is named Nexus Sans. Now look at the printing on page 4. It has a different look. Its name is Requiem.

When early printing presses came about in the mid-1400s, typesetters placed each letter of type by hand. At first, typefaces mimicked the hand-printed calligraphy of medieval monks. When Johannes Gutenberg printed his first Bible in 1455, it appeared in a heavy typeface that looked like manuscript writing.

As designers put their own ideas to work creating typefaces, the art of typography was born. Often these designs echo the time in history when their designers were working.

The Mayflower typeface

recalls Elizabethan England.

Century Schoolbook type appeared

in children’s literature.

The Franklin Caslon typeface brings

Benjamin Franklin and colonial

America to mind.

The Declaration typeface brings the

Declaration of Independence to mind.

Courier was used on

typewriter keys.

Now it’s your turn to become a graphic designer.

YOU’LL NEED

Writing paper

Pencil or pen

Ruler

Start by studying some of the typefaces printed below.

Think: which typeface looks older to you? Study the letters in the examples on this page. See how the uppercase letters and lowercase letters resemble each other. Note how parts of each letter are long or short, thick or thin. Do you like serifs? How should your typeface look?

Now print your full name in big plain letters on the paper. Start to play around with the letters. It might be easier to start with the capitals first. Or start with all capitals—some fonts are designed that way.

Take your time. Every so often, sit back and look at your work. Do the letters work together in an artistic way?

Keep practicing until your name looks just right in your new typeface.

Henry’s courtiers accused Anne of betraying the king with other men. Anne was removed from the royal household, placed on a boat, and rowed along the Thames River to the forbidding Tower of London, where she entered prison through Traitors’ Gate.

Anne tried to defend herself against

Reviews for Elizabeth I, the People's Queen

[Raven Green · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

yet another beautifully done book to use in our homeschool