Character Catalog

These two landmark laws established Elizabeth as Supreme Governor of the Church of England and required the use of the Book of Common Prayer. Together they formed the 'Elizabethan Settlement,' which defined Anglicanism as it still exists today.

Adopted during her reign, these articles of faith set out the Protestant doctrine of the Church of England, positioned between Roman Catholicism and radical Calvinism. They form the theological cornerstone of the Elizabethan religious compromise.

Elizabeth granted a royal charter to the East India Company, laying the foundations for British commercial and colonial expansion across Asia. This decision would have major geopolitical consequences for three centuries.

Delivered before the House of Commons two years before her death, this speech expressed Elizabeth's love for her people and her vision of royal power rooted in the consent of the governed. It was immediately printed and circulated as a political testament.

Under Elizabeth's protection and patronage, English theatre entered its golden age with Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. The Queen attended performances frequently, and her favored acting companies bore the honorary title of 'Queen's Men.'

Elizabeth secretly backed Drake's expedition — the second circumnavigation of the globe in history after Magellan's — allowing him to raid Spanish colonies in the Pacific. By knighting him aboard his own ship, she boldly asserted English naval power against Spain.

I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm.

Be it enacted by the authority of this present Parliament, that the Queen's highness is the only supreme governor of this realm… as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things or causes, as temporal.

And in the end, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall declare that a queen, having reigned such a time, lived and died a virgin.

You have in various ways and manners attempted to take my life and to bring my kingdom to destruction by bloodshed. I have never proceeded so harshly against you, but have, on the contrary, protected and maintained you like myself.

Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves. This makes me that I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people.

Elizabeth I's birthplace in 1533, this palace on the Thames was one of her favourite residences. It was here that she learned she was to become queen upon the death of Mary I in 1558.

Elizabeth was imprisoned here in 1554 during the reign of her half-sister Mary I, suspected of involvement in a Protestant plot. She had also been brought there as a child following the execution of her mother, Anne Boleyn.

The principal seat of government during her reign, Elizabeth held her court here, received foreign ambassadors, and ruled England from its halls. It was here that she died in March 1603.

A royal residence regularly used by Elizabeth, particularly for ceremonies of the Order of the Garter, of which she was Sovereign Head. The castle embodied the continuity of the English monarchy.

It was at this military encampment on the banks of the Thames that Elizabeth delivered her legendary speech to the troops assembled to repel the Spanish Armada in August 1588.

The site of Elizabeth's coronation on 15 January 1559 and her burial following her death in 1603. Her white marble tomb, facing that of Mary I, remains visible today in the Henry VII Lady Chapel.