Elizabeth I of England

Elizabeth Tudor was born at Greenwich on 7 September 1533, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. When Elizabeth was two and a half, her mother was beheaded on charges of adultery and treason; the child was demoted to bastard. Yet she received the finest classical education of her age — fluent in English, Latin, Italian, French and Greek under Roger Ascham — and emerged as one of the most learned women of the century. Thomas Seymour's sexual approaches when she was fourteen left a lasting mark.

Her half-sister Mary I treated her as a Protestant threat. After Wyatt's Rebellion in 1554, Elizabeth spent two months in the Tower and another year under house arrest. When Bloody Mary died on 17 November 1558, the 25-year-old replied in Latin: "This is the Lord's doing." She named William Cecil her principal secretary; the partnership held for forty years.

Her governing principle was the via media. The 1559 Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity built a Church of England that kept enough Catholic ritual for traditionalists and enough Protestant doctrine for reformers. Her motto Video et taceo — "I see, and say nothing" — drove marriage diplomacy that strung along French dauphins, Habsburgs and Philip II. The shadow side belongs in the record: harsh rule in Ireland, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots in 1587, the execution of her favourite Essex in 1601.

In July 1588 the Armada was defeated by Drake, weather, and the queen's nerve. At Tilbury she addressed her troops: "I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but the heart and stomach of a king — and of a king of England too." In the 1601 Golden Speech she told Parliament that her crown's glory was that she had reigned with their loves. She died on 3 April 1603, aged 69, naming James VI of Scotland her heir. Forty-four years under one queen forged English national consciousness; the golden age was partly retrospective myth.