Elizabethan Age, in British history, the time period

(1558–1603) during which Queen Elizabeth I ruled England.

Popularly referred to as a “golden age,” it was a span of time
characterized by relative peace and prosperity and by a flow-
ering of artistic, literary, and intellectual culture to such a
degree that it (along with the succeeding reign of James I) is
sometimes designated as the “English Renaissance.”

Religious conflict and social

relations
The Elizabethan Age began with Elizabeth Tudor’s accession
to the throne, in 1558, and her institution of the Elizabethan
religious Settlement (effected with the Act of Supremacy and
Act of Uniformity) in 1559. In the decades since her father,
Henry VIII, had broken with the Roman Catholic Church,
conflicts between Protestants and Catholics created chaos in
England. The attempt by Elizabeth’s predecessor, Mary I, to
return England to Catholicism intensified this conflict. Eliz-
abeth’s goal was to create a stable peaceful situation by end-
ing direct religious persecution. She would be the “supreme
head” of a state church, the Church of England, but (partly
because England wished to maintain good relations with
powerful Catholic countries, particularly Spain) Catholics
would not be targets of state violence. Moreover, they would
have some amount of religious freedom. Nonetheless, failure
to attend Sunday service in an Anglican church was to be
fined by the government under the Act of Uniformity, which
would stoke resentment and dissent.

This relatively tolerant attitude toward Catholicism eroded

significantly in the ensuing years. At that time, there was no
division in Europe between spiritual and governmental au-
thority, and merely being Protestant or Catholic was often
taken to be a form of political action. There were several or-
ganized attempts by Catholics to undermine, overthrow, or
assassinate Elizabeth, explicitly in order to return England
to the Catholic church. Pope St. Pius V excommunicated
Elizabeth in 1570, declaring that her subjects owed her no
loyalty and fueling plots against her. Mary, Queen of Scots,
Elizabeth’s Catholic cousin, was eventually executed for con-
spiring to unseat Elizabeth. In the mid-1580s, war broke out
between Protestant England and Catholic Spain, during
which the Spanish Armada suffered destruction (1588).
Even after the war ended in 1604, Spain supported attempts
by Irish Catholic groups to undermine English power in Ire-
land.

Throughout this period, Catholics in England were increas-

ingly persecuted. Persuading someone to convert to Catholi-
cism was declared an act of treason (and was therefore an
executable offense), as was questioning the legitimacy of
Elizabeth’s position as queen. About the time that war broke
out with Spain, Catholic priests were expelled from England,
and any who remained or returned there were subject to ex-
ecution. Nonetheless, compared with the upheaval of Eng-
land under Henry VIII and Mary I, and the tumultuous
decades following Elizabeth’s reign, the Elizabethan Age was
a time of calm. The population rose from about three million
to more than four million, and urbanization accelerated sig-
nificantly. Educational levels improved rapidly, in part be-
cause of the Protestant emphasis on being able to read and
interpret the Bible for oneself.

There was increasing ethnic diversity in London, including

the emergence of small Jewish and Black populations. The
middle class also expanded during Elizabeth’s reign, driven
by mercantilism and trade. This presented something of a
challenge to the traditional medieval view of the world as a
strict hierarchy put in place by God. In this worldview,
called the Great Chain of Being, a ruler was put on earth to
rule the people by divine right, and each social class and
profession was arranged below the monarch in a linear or-
der. One manifestation of this worldview was the preponder-
ance of sumptuary laws, which dictated the food, drink, and
dress allowed to people of various classes and professions.

Artistic achievements
The main reason that Elizabeth’s rule is sometimes called
the English Renaissance was the innovative, creative, and
enduring artistic achievements of the age. Elizabeth herself
had a reputation as a lover of the arts, especially music and
theatre, and patronage from her and members of her court
was the foundation of many English writers’ careers. The
most famous of these writers is of course playwright and
poet William Shakespeare. Other writers who rose to promi-
nence under Elizabeth included Sir Philip Sidney, Christo-
pher Marlowe, Roger Ascham, Richard Hooker, John Lyly,
and Edmund Spenser. During Elizabeth’s time there were
also significant developments in music, including composi-
tions for the Anglican church by Thomas Tallis and William
Byrd (both of whom were Catholic), and in architecture, no-
tably the rise of “prodigy houses” (large ostentatious homes
built by the newly “landed” nobility) in rural regions of Eng-
land, the most influential of which were designed by Robert
Smythson.

Artistic creations at this time were considered to be political.

Writers had a duty to honour and glorify the queen, and fail-
ing to do so could damage their standing or even provoke a
backlash. Thus, Elizabethan artists contributed through
their work to the “cult of Gloriana,” the cult of personality
that Elizabeth constructed around herself. Symbolically in-
voking the Virgin Mary and old Catholic practices, Eliza-
beth’s image was disseminated among her subjects through
miniature portraits, and she herself appeared in full regalia
on yearly progresses around the kingdom. Official
propaganda presented her as the God-anointed protector of
England.

Exploration and the slave trade

Elizabeth I knighting Francis DrakeElizabeth I knighting Francis Drake

on board the Golden Hind at Deptford, London, 1581.
(more)
Elizabeth’s reign is also considered a golden age of English
exploration. English sailors traveled around the world (often
serving as privateers, or state-funded pirates), searching for
treasure and claiming lands new to them. In 1583 New-
foundland was claimed for England by Humphrey Gilbert,
and in 1584 Walter Raleigh took the first steps toward
founding the ill-fated Roanoke colony. The most famous
English explorer and privateer of the age was Francis Drake,
who became in 1580 the first Englishman to circumnavigate
the globe (for which the queen knighted him on the deck of
his ship several months after he returned to England).

Another Elizabethan subject, John Hawkins was one of the

first Englishmen to transport enslaved people from Africa to
the Americas. Hawkins was effectively a forerunner of the
so-called triangular trade of the colonial age, as he shipped
goods from Europe to western Africa, where he traded them
for enslaved people, whom he shipped to the Americas and
sold for a variety of goods from Spanish colonies, which he
then shipped to Europe. Queen Elizabeth cosponsored some
of his voyages.

The Elizabethan Age ended with the burial of the queen on

April 28, 1603, roughly a month after her death. She was
succeeded by her cousin James I.
Admiral’s Men, a theatrical company in Elizabethan and
Jacobean England. About 1576–79 they were known as Lord
Howard’s Men, so called after their patron Charles Howard,
1st earl of Nottingham, 2nd Baron Howard of Effingham. In
1585, when Lord Howard became England’s lord high admi-
ral, the company changed its designation to the Admiral’s
Men. It was later known successively as Nottingham’s Men,
Prince Henry’s Men, and the Elector Palatinate’s (Pals-
grave’s) Men.

The chief actor of the Admiral’s Men was Edward Alleyn;

their manager and effectively their employer until his death
in 1616 was Philip Henslowe, whose Diary, covering the
years 1592 to 1603, documents the Elizabethan theatre and
its organization. The company was closely associated with
Christopher Marlowe and performed several of his works in-
cluding Tamburlaine and Faustus. In addition, the Admi-
ral’s Men were the first to produce George Chapman’s plays,
and they staged the first known London comedy, William
Haughton’s Englishmen for My Money (1598). Once consid-
ered the premier Elizabethan theatrical company, the Admi-
ral’s Men began to decline with the rise of the Lord
Chamberlain’s Men (located at the Globe Theatre), their
move to the Fortune Theatre in 1600, and the subsequent
retirement of Alleyn in 1603. By 1631 the company had dis-
banded.