Elizabeth Jenkins

#2

1958

Countless books have been written about Elizabeth I of England, but rarely has Elizabeth the woman been presented with the vividness, authority, and perception which inform this fascinating and important work. Miss Jenkins brings the great queen, her court, and the whole exciting age to which she gave her name brilliantly to life. There was something almost bewitched in Elizabeth, as though she came from a changeling world, cold, passionate and peculiar. She was only two when the head of her mother, Anne Boleyn, was cut off and at eight she said, "I will never marry." Prince Edward's letter to his dear sister Elizabeth, after they had been ruthlessly separated, shows that both children early knew their dangers; he wrote: "I hope to visit you soon, if nothing happens to us in the meantime." The young Elizabeth was never entirely safe, her position rarely secure. The advisers of her Catholic sister, Mary Tudor, urged that she be put to death, saying, "The Princess Elizabeth is greatly to be feared, she has a spirit full of incantations." But Elizabeth outlived Bloody Mary and came to the throne—even though at her coronation no bishop could be found to put the crown on her head. Queen at last, Elizabeth brought with her to the throne extraordinary gifts which were manifest from the very beginning of her reign: an unfailing instinct choosing her advisers, the great personal magnetism which made her an object of adoration to her subjects, the financial genius which contributed so largely in the later prosperity of her realm, and the apparent vacillation which was to be such a strong weapon in her diplomacy. Elizabeth must surely have been one of the most remarkable women who have ever lived. Her fierce and consuming passion to play her role as Queen of England, her great physical energy, her fantastic vanity, her strange mixture of personal cowardice and extreme bravery, her steadfast loyalty to her trusted friends and her brutal treatment of those who offended her—everything about her is interesting. Miss Jenkins has done much to bring us closer to this woman who was as great as she was complex. Elizabeth the Great is enthralling reading from the first page to the last.

#3

From the moment Elizabeth I ascended the throne of England word spread the length and breadth of the British Isles: if the Queen ever married she would choose her handsome courtier Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. They were inseparable, for Elizabeth had not exaggerated when she told Leicester: "I cannot live without seeing you every day." At the great occasions of state and society, they flaunted the unmistakable intimacy of lovers, whether it was Leicester wiping his brow with the Queen's handkerchief after a tennis match, Elizabeth tickling his neck as she conferred the robes of earldom, their uninhibited kiss in front of 700 startled footmen, or Leicester's visits to Her Majesty's bedchamber. As the world watched and waited for the great announcement, the stage was being set inside the royal palace for the desperate contest between Leicester and his rivals for the most powerful throne in the world. Endangered by the rapacious claims of Elizabeth's sister Mary Queen of Scots, England would not rest until Elizabeth married and provided a direct successor to the crown. Against this demand Elizabeth had to weigh her conviction that an heir would destroy the undivided loyalty she must command to lead Britain to greatness. But a deeper conflict tore at her. Marked by sexual anxiety, she fought the prospect of total surrender even as she felt herself drawn irresistibly to the virile Leicester. Leicester himself thrived as never before—for such a man, the difficulties and intrigues of winning a reluctant Queen only sharpened passion and intensified determination. The royal battle of love and politics had just begun.