What were Elizabeth I goals and accomplishments?
I read the Jenkin’s biography of Elizabeth I a couple months ago and it was very interesting. What a remarkable person. To really understand her, you have to put her in the context of the times. And for that, you have to go back to Elizabeth’s father, King Henry VIII. He established Protestantism as the Church of England because the pope would not give him a divorce from his first wife. (You know this story, right?) Well, Elizabeth was the daughter of Anne Bolyn and was raised a strict Protestant. Protestantism was already spreading like wildfire across central Europe, and now here it was in England. Now this whole thing was pretty scary for the Catholic regimes across Europe. Not just the pope, but also the kings of France and Spain. And it left the crown of England at serious odds with its neighbor Scotland. That conflict persisted throughout the reign of Elizabeth. there was always a threat of a major war with either France, or Spain, or both. And definitely a war with Scotland. All
