Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history, with an effective government, resulting from the reforms of Henry VII and Henry VIII, and a prospering economy boosted by trans-Atlantic trade and privateering. During this time, the Protestant Reformation became more acceptable to the people, and it was the last period in English history before the royal union with Scotland. England began to engage in international exploration and expansion. Culturally, this period represented the apogee of the English Renaissance and saw a flowering of poetry, music, literature, and especially theatre, with playwrights such as William Shakespeare breaking new ground.
The Elizabethan age contrasts sharply with the previous and following reigns. It was a brief period of internal peace between the previous century's Wars of the Roses, the English Reformation, and religious battles between Protestants and Catholics, and the later conflict of the English Civil War and the political battles between parliament and the monarchy that engulfed the remainder of the seventeenth century. Under Elizabeth, the religious conflict was settled for a time by the Elizabethan Religious Settlement, and Parliament was not yet strong enough to challenge royal absolutism.
During this time, England was well-off compared to the other nations of Europe. The Italian Renaissance had come to an end following the end of the Italian Wars, which left the Italian Peninsula impoverished. The Kingdom of France was embroiled in the French Wars of Religion, and the centuries-long Anglo-French Wars was largely suspended for most of Elizabeth's reign.
England's major rival during this time was Habsburg Spain. Their clashes in Europe and the Americas exploded into the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War of 1585–1604. A 1588 attempt by Philip II of Spain to invade England with the Spanish Armada was famously defeated.
Government
Elizabethan England was not particularly successful in a military sense during the period, but it avoided major defeats and built up a powerful navy. On balance, it can be said that Elizabeth provided the country with a long period of general if not total peace and generally increased prosperity due in large part to stealing from Spanish treasure ships, raiding settlements with low defenses, and selling African slaves. Having inherited a virtually bankrupt state from previous reigns, her frugal policies restored fiscal responsibility. Her fiscal restraint cleared the regime of debt by 1574, and ten years later the Crown enjoyed a surplus of £300,000. Economically, Sir Thomas Gresham's founding of the Royal Exchange, the first stock exchange in England and one of the earliest in Europe, proved to be a development of the first importance, for the economic development of England and soon for the world as a whole. With taxes lower than other European countries of the period, the economy expanded; though the wealth was distributed with wild unevenness, there was more wealth to go around at the end of Elizabeth's reign than at the beginning. This general peace and prosperity allowed the attractive developments that "Golden Age" advocates have stressed.Plots, intrigues, and conspiracies
The Elizabethan Age was also an age of plots and conspiracies, frequently political, and often involving the highest levels of Elizabethan society. High officials in Madrid, Paris, and Rome sought to kill Elizabeth, a Protestant, and replace her with Mary, Queen of Scots, a Catholic. That would be a prelude to the religious recovery of England for Catholicism. In 1570, the Ridolfi plot was thwarted. In 1584, the Throckmorton Plot was discovered, after Francis Throckmorton confessed his involvement in a plot to overthrow the Queen and restore the Catholic Church in England. Another major conspiracy was the Babington Plot – the event which most directly led to Mary's execution, the discovery of which involved a double agent, Gilbert Gifford, acting under the direction of Francis Walsingham, the Queen's highly effective spy master.The Essex Rebellion of 1601 has a dramatic element, as just before the uprising, supporters of the Earl of Essex, among them Charles and Joscelyn Percy, paid for a performance of Richard II at the Globe Theatre, apparently to stir public ill will towards the monarchy. It was reported at the trial of Essex by Chamberlain's Men actor Augustine Phillips, that the conspirators paid the company forty shillings "above the ordinary" to stage the play, which the players felt was too old and "out of use" to attract a large audience.
In the last decades of the reign, Elizabeth gave James VI of Scotland an annual annuity or subsidy which contributed to an "amity" or peace between England and Scotland. James's courtiers and diplomats maintained a "secret correspondence" with Elizabeth's ministers. It became clear that he would be her successor. Plots continued in the new reign. In the Bye Plot of 1603, two Catholic priests planned to kidnap King James and hold him in the Tower of London until he agreed to be more tolerant towards Catholics. Most dramatic was the 1605 Gunpowder Plot to blow up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament. It was discovered in time with eight conspirators executed, including Guy Fawkes, who became the iconic evil traitor in English lore.
English Navy and defeat of the Armada
While Henry VIII had launched the Royal Navy, Edward and Mary had ignored it and it was little more than a system of coastal defense. Elizabeth made naval strength a high priority. She risked war with Spain by supporting the "Sea Dogs", such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake, who preyed on the Spanish merchant ships carrying gold and silver from the New World. The Navy yards were leaders in technical innovation, and the captains devised new tactics. Parker argues that the full-rigged ship was one of the greatest technological advances of the century and permanently transformed naval warfare. In 1573 English shipwrights introduced designs, first demonstrated in the "Dreadnaught", that allowed the ships to sail faster and maneuver better and permitted heavier guns. Whereas before warships had tried to grapple with each other so that soldiers could board the enemy ship, now they stood off and fired broadsides that would sink the enemy vessel. When Spain finally decided to invade and conquer England it was a fiasco. Superior English ships and seamanship foiled the invasion and led to the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, marking the high point of Elizabeth's reign. Technically, the Armada failed because Spain's over-complex strategy required coordination between the invasion fleet and the Spanish army on shore. Moreover, the poor design of the Spanish cannons meant they were much slower in reloading in a close-range battle. Spain and France still had stronger fleets, but England was catching up.Parker has speculated on the dire consequences if the Spanish had landed their invasion army in 1588. He argues that the Spanish army was larger, more experienced, better equipped, more confident, and had better financing. The English defenses, on the other hand, were thin and outdated; England had too few soldiers and they were at best only partially trained. Spain had chosen England's weakest link and probably could have captured London in a week. Parker adds that a Catholic uprising in the north and in Ireland could have brought total defeat.
The following year England launched an equally unsuccessful expedition to Spain with the Drake–Norris Expedition. The advantage England had won upon the destruction of the Spanish Armada was lost and would mark a revival of Spanish naval power. A second English armada sent in 1596 succeeded in capturing and sacking Cádiz, and was one of the most signal English victories of the war. Further Spanish Armadas also failed - in 1596, 1597 and 1601. The war ended with the Treaty of London the year following Elizabeth's death.
Colonising the New World
The discoveries of Christopher Columbus electrified all of Western Europe, especially maritime powers like England. King Henry VII commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to find a northern route to the Spice Islands of Asia; this began the search for the North West Passage. Cabot sailed in 1497 and reached Newfoundland. He led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of him or his ships again.In 1562 Elizabeth sent privateers also named 'Elizabethan Sea Dogs'; these included the likes of Hawkins and Drake to seize booty from Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa. When the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified after 1585, Elizabeth approved further raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping returning to Europe with treasure. Meanwhile, the influential writers Richard Hakluyt and John Dee were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own overseas empire. Spain was well established in the Americas, while Portugal, in union with Spain from 1580, had an ambitious global empire in Africa, Asia, and South America. France was exploring North America. England was stimulated to create its own colonies, with an emphasis on the West Indies rather than in North America.
Martin Frobisher landed at Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island in August 1576; He returned in 1577, claiming it in Queen Elizabeth's name, and a third voyage tried but failed to find a settlement in Frobisher Bay.
From 1577 to 1580, Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe. Combined with his daring raids against the Spanish and his great victory over them at Cádiz in 1587, he became a famous hero—his exploits are still celebrated—but England did not follow up on his claims. In 1583, Humphrey Gilbert sailed to Newfoundland, taking possession of the harbour of St. John's together with all land within two hundred leagues to the north and south of it.
In 1584, the queen granted Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonisation of Virginia; it was named in her honour. Raleigh and Elizabeth sought both immediate riches and a base for privateers to raid the Spanish treasure fleets. Raleigh sent others to found the Roanoke Colony; it remains a mystery why the settlers all disappeared. In 1600, the queen chartered the East India Company in an attempt to break the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of far Eastern trade. It established trading posts, which in later centuries evolved into British India, on the coasts of what is now India and Bangladesh. Larger scale colonisation to North America began shortly after Elizabeth's death.