Category: History

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his second wife, Anne Boleyn. Unfortunately, Henry had desperately wanted a son and showed no interest in baby Elizabeth. Following two miscarriages of boys, Anne was beheaded when Elizabeth was 2 years old.

This tragic start in life may have helped to shape the resilience of one of England’s best-loved monarchs ~ ‘Good Queen Bess’. She bore no children herself as she refused to marry, so she was also known as the ‘Virgin Queen’. Elizabeth was to be the last of the Tudor monarchs. Her two half-siblings from Henry’s first and third wives were crowned before her, one of them shutting her in the Tower of London!

After their deaths, Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 and her reign is known as the ‘Golden Age’, with legendary figures such as Shakespeare, Drake and Raleigh making their mark. She ruled for 45 years, during which time she displayed her intelligence, tolerance and gift for public speaking, as in her famous “I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king…” speech in defiance of the approaching Spanish Armada.

(Image: pixabay.com)

During most of the eighteenth century Britain and France were at war and this gave rise to a huge smuggling and wrecking industry all along the south coast of England. Soldiers were busy elsewhere, leaving Customs and Excise officials without enough support. Small rural communities were poor and, faced with rising Government taxes to help pay for the war, many men were enticed into these well-paid crimes.

Barrels of spirits, wine, tea, coffee and salt, and bales of silk and lace were among the untaxed shipments brought in under cover of darkness. Networks of tunnels in caves and cliffs were carved out for storage and then onward transportation inland.

Wrecking took things a step further and often involved luring a ship onto the rocks with confusing lights, so that a gang of men could then break up the ship and simply steal its cargo. At one time the law said that this could only be done if there was no-one still alive on the ship…. a sure death sentence for the besieged sailors in that situation!

(Image of models of smugglers at tourist attraction on the Isle of Wight: Chalkietom at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0)

English village peasants – poor workers owned by rich landowners – had finally taken enough harsh treatment by 1381. The Peasants’ Revolt was the result.

Although many peasants had died from the Black Death, the survivors were forbidden by a new law to ask for higher wages. Instead, the landowners made more money from the scarcity value of their goods. Not only that, but the peasants were expected to pay a new ‘poll tax’ to help with the cost of the war against France. When the tax was tripled to cover a shortfall, there were riots, killings and arson attacks, and thousands of people marched to London to see the King.

The young King Richard II (1367-1400) faced them and agreed to their demands, but after they had gone home his army searched out hundreds of protesters and executed them. However, the Peasants’ Revolt was not in vain, as the cap on wages was later removed and the poll tax abolished. Peasants were also able to buy their freedom.

Queen Boudica (the exact spelling is uncertain) was born in 30AD and died just 31 years later. Her name was probably a nickname, meaning ‘victory’. Her husband, Prasutagus, was the king of the Iceni tribe in East Anglia. When he died in 60/61AD, the Romans no longer saw any reason not to help themselves to Iceni land. They publicly flogged Queen Boudica and raped her two daughters.

Incensed, she led an uprising which attacked the Roman settlements at Colchester, London and St. Albans, killing 70,000 Roman soldiers in the process. However, the tribes were defeated at the Battle of Watling Street, where a well-equipped, more efficient Roman army awaited them. Boudica and her daughters either died of their wounds or poisoned themselves at the scene.

The statue of  ‘Boadicea and her Daughters’, pictured above, is situated in the middle of London, ironically one of the places she destroyed!

(Image of Boudica statue in Westminster: Paul Walter at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart, 1542-87) had a most unfortunate, tragic life. She became Queen of Scotland just six days after her birth. She married three times. Her French mother, Mary of Guise (1515-60) and her first husband, King Francis II of France (1544-60) died in the same year, when she was only 17 years old. Her second husband, Lord Darnley (1546-67) was murdered, probably by her third husband, the Earl of Bothwell (1534-78), who ran off to Norway after Mary was obliged to abdicate and he died in a Danish prison.

After 19 years of house arrest in England, she was finally found guilty of treason against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. She is said to have told the executioner at her beheading, “I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.”

It was due to Mary’s French relations and time spent living in France that the spelling of her original surname, Stewart, was changed to Stuart. Her son with Lord Darnley, James Stuart, inherited the Scottish throne as a baby and went on to also become King of England (styled King James VI and I) after the death of Elizabeth.

(Image: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)