5 Elizabeth I and the verdicts of history
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Patrick Collinson
Abstract
This chapter asks: Where do we start with the many verdicts of history on such a monarch, such a woman, and where do we end? This chapter draws attention at the outset to Archbishop Matthew Parker's use of the word ‘chronicled’. Although the historical chronicle was a literary genre which saw a good deal of cutthroat competition in Tudor England, there was a notion that there ought to be only one more or less official and reliably authentic account of the recoverable past. Commentators on William Camden's Annales have often assumed that the book was a celebration of a great monarch, if only, it seems, because that must have been what the author intended. The discussion also considers where the idea of Elizabeth the Protestant paragon and national heroine came from.
Abstract
This chapter asks: Where do we start with the many verdicts of history on such a monarch, such a woman, and where do we end? This chapter draws attention at the outset to Archbishop Matthew Parker's use of the word ‘chronicled’. Although the historical chronicle was a literary genre which saw a good deal of cutthroat competition in Tudor England, there was a notion that there ought to be only one more or less official and reliably authentic account of the recoverable past. Commentators on William Camden's Annales have often assumed that the book was a celebration of a great monarch, if only, it seems, because that must have been what the author intended. The discussion also considers where the idea of Elizabeth the Protestant paragon and national heroine came from.
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of abbreviations vi
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction 1
- 1 The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England 36
- 2 The Elizabethan exclusion crisis and the Elizabethan polity 61
- 3 Servants and citizens 98
- 4 Pulling the strings 122
- 5 Elizabeth I and the verdicts of history 143
- 6 Biblical rhetoric 167
- 7 John Foxe and national consciousness 193
- 8 Truth, lies and fiction in sixteenth-century Protestant historiography 216
- 9 One of us? 245
- 10 William Camden and the anti-myth of Elizabeth 270
- 11 John Stow and nostalgic antiquarianism 287
- Index 309
Chapters in this book
- Front matter i
- Contents v
- List of abbreviations vi
- Acknowledgments vii
- Introduction 1
- 1 The politics of religion and the religion of politics in Elizabethan England 36
- 2 The Elizabethan exclusion crisis and the Elizabethan polity 61
- 3 Servants and citizens 98
- 4 Pulling the strings 122
- 5 Elizabeth I and the verdicts of history 143
- 6 Biblical rhetoric 167
- 7 John Foxe and national consciousness 193
- 8 Truth, lies and fiction in sixteenth-century Protestant historiography 216
- 9 One of us? 245
- 10 William Camden and the anti-myth of Elizabeth 270
- 11 John Stow and nostalgic antiquarianism 287
- Index 309
