The Ridolfi Plot: How Close Did Elizabeth I Come to Losing Her Throne?

The Ridolfi Plot: How Close Did Elizabeth I Come to Losing Her Throne?

In our last Tudor post, we looked at Elizabeth I’s increasingly dangerous relationship with the Pope and how, in 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated the English queen and declared that her subjects were no longer bound to obey her.

Mary, Queen of Scots

Credit: Mary, Queen of Scots in captivity, after Nicholas Hilliard, inscribed 1578. Via Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain.

But what happened when those religious tensions moved beyond words?

Within a year, Elizabeth’s government uncovered a conspiracy involving Mary, Queen of Scots, one of England’s most powerful noblemen, Spain and a Florentine banker with connections across Europe.

Today I want to look at the Ridolfi Plot of 1571, because it raises a rather unsettling question. How close did Elizabeth actually come to being removed from the throne?

By this point, Mary, Queen of Scots had been in England for several years. She had been forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in 1567 and fled to England the following year, hoping Elizabeth might help restore her. Instead, she found herself kept under increasingly close supervision.

Elizabeth I

Credit: Queen Elizabeth I, the ‘Darnley Portrait’, unknown continental artist, c.1575. Via Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain

Mary was not simply an inconvenient royal cousin. As a Catholic with a strong claim to the English throne, she became a natural focus for those who wanted Elizabeth replaced.

That did not mean England’s Catholics were all plotting against Elizabeth. Many remained loyal to their queen. But Mary’s presence created something potentially dangerous: an alternative monarch around whom Elizabeth’s enemies could gather.

Then came Roberto Ridolfi.

Ridolfi was a Florentine banker who had worked in London and moved comfortably through diplomatic and financial circles. He was also a committed Catholic, with the contacts and freedom to travel between some of the most powerful people in Europe.

The plan that developed around him was extraordinarily ambitious.

Elizabeth would be removed from power. Mary would be freed and placed on the English throne, and she would marry Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, one of the highest-ranking noblemen in England.

But the conspirators needed more than supporters inside England.

They needed soldiers.

Ridolfi travelled through Europe seeking support from the Pope and from Philip II of Spain. The hope was that Spanish troops based in the Netherlands could cross into England while supporters of Mary rose against Elizabeth from within.

And this is where our previous post about Elizabeth and the Pope becomes so important.

Only the year before, Pope Pius V had declared Elizabeth excommunicated. Now a conspiracy was developing that looked towards Catholic powers abroad and planned to place the Catholic Mary on Elizabeth’s throne.

For Elizabeth and her government, religion, foreign policy and the Queen’s own survival were becoming almost impossible to separate.

But the plot had one enormous weakness.

Too many people knew about it.

In 1571, Charles Baillie, a messenger connected with Mary’s supporters, was arrested at Dover carrying suspicious letters. Elizabeth’s government began piecing together the conspiracy. Messages were intercepted, servants were questioned and evidence slowly led investigators towards Norfolk.

Norfolk tried to distance himself from what had happened, but the evidence against him mounted.

He was arrested, imprisoned in the Tower of London and tried for high treason. He was found guilty and executed on Tower Hill on the 2nd of June 1572.

Ridolfi himself escaped. He was abroad when the conspiracy collapsed and never returned to England.

But there was one person whose position became considerably more dangerous.

Mary, Queen of Scots.

Elizabeth did not have Mary executed after the Ridolfi Plot. Mary would remain alive for another fifteen years. Elizabeth repeatedly hesitated over taking the life of another anointed queen, and proving exactly how far Mary had personally agreed to every part of the conspiracy was not straightforward.

But the Ridolfi Plot changed the atmosphere around her.

Mary was no longer simply the former Queen of Scots living under English supervision. She had become the figure around whom plots to replace Elizabeth could form.

And there would be more.

The Throckmorton Plot followed in 1583, and then the Babington Plot in 1586 would finally give Elizabeth’s government the evidence it needed to move directly against Mary.

Looking back, the Ridolfi Plot feels almost like a warning of everything that was still to come. Elizabeth had survived religious division and challenges to her legitimacy. Now she faced the possibility that her enemies were prepared to seek foreign military support to remove her.

Perhaps the most interesting question is not why Elizabeth became more suspicious afterwards.

It is how she could possibly have avoided becoming suspicious.

Do you think Elizabeth should have acted against Mary, Queen of Scots after the Ridolfi Plot, or was she right to keep her alive?

The Lumberjills: The Women Who Went Into Britain’s Forests to Help Win the War

The Lumberjills: The Women Who Went Into Britain’s Forests to Help Win the War

When we think about the women who helped keep Britain going during the Second World War, we often picture Land Girls working on farms, nurses caring for the wounded or women filling the factories left behind by men who had gone to war. But thousands of young women were sent somewhere very different. They went into Britain’s forests, where they learned to fell trees, handle enormous saws, operate heavy machinery and carry out work that many people had previously believed women simply could not do.

Today I want to discover more about the women of the Women’s Timber Corps, remembered today as the Lumberjills, because theirs is one of those wartime stories that deserves far more attention. Their work was physically demanding, sometimes dangerous and absolutely necessary, but when the war was over many of them returned home with little recognition for what they had done.

When war broke out in September 1939, Britain faced a serious timber problem. Huge quantities of wood were needed for railway sleepers, pit props for the coal mines, construction, crates, aircraft production and many other parts of the war effort. At the same time, many of the men who would normally have worked in forestry were leaving to join the armed forces. Britain needed more home-grown timber and it needed people who could produce it.

The Women’s Timber Corps was officially established in 1942 as part of the Women’s Land Army. Young women from across the country joined, many of them only in their late teens or early twenties. For some, it was the first time they had ever lived away from home. Some had experience of country life, while others came from towns and cities knowing very little about forestry and suddenly found themselves learning skills they would probably never have imagined needing before the war.

Their jobs varied enormously. Some became fellers, working with axes and long crosscut saws to bring trees down. Others measured timber, worked in sawmills, planted trees, loaded timber, drove tractors and other vehicles or helped move the enormous quantities of wood being taken from Britain’s forests. It was skilled work as well as physical work, and the women had to learn quickly.

The conditions could be extremely tough. Forestry did not stop because it was raining, freezing cold or muddy, and the women could spend long days outside doing exhausting physical labour. Accommodation was not always comfortable either, particularly for women who were moved from one forestry job to another and had to find somewhere to live close to wherever they had been posted.

There was another difficulty too. These women were entering a world which had traditionally been dominated by men, and not everybody believed they belonged there. Some faced prejudice and scepticism from the people around them. But as the war continued, the Lumberjills proved that they were perfectly capable of doing work that had once been dismissed as a man’s job. They developed strength, skill and confidence, and many formed close friendships with the women working beside them.

I think it must have been an extraordinary experience for some of these young women. Imagine being seventeen, eighteen or nineteen, leaving your family behind and suddenly finding yourself in a forest miles from home, learning to use equipment you may never even have seen before. Wartime necessity gave many women opportunities and responsibilities that would have been almost unimaginable only a few years earlier.

Their work continued even after the fighting had ended. The Women’s Timber Corps was finally disbanded in 1946, and many of its members simply returned to ordinary civilian life. The timber they had produced had helped Britain through the war, but the women themselves largely disappeared from the national story.

Decades passed before the contribution of the Women’s Timber Corps began to receive the wider acknowledgement it deserved.

 Memorials now stand in their honour, including one in Scotland dedicated to the women who worked in woodlands throughout the country during the Second World War, but many former Lumberjills had already spent most of their lives with relatively little public recognition.

That is perhaps what I find most striking about their story. These were young women who stepped into a difficult and physically demanding world because their country needed them. They proved that many of the assumptions about what women were capable of were simply wrong. 

So when we remember the women who helped Britain through the Second World War, perhaps we should remember those working among the trees as well as those on the farms and factory floors. The Lumberjills may not always appear in the most familiar wartime stories, but without their strength, skill and determination, Britain’s forests could never have supplied the timber the country so desperately needed.

Had you heard of the Lumberjills before, or did anyone in your family work in forestry during the Second World War?

Was William the Conqueror Made by a Childhood of Fear?

Was William the Conqueror Made by a Childhood of Fear?

Was William of Normandy a ruthless invader who stole England’s crown, or was he a man shaped from childhood to believe that if you wanted to keep what was yours, you had to fight for it?

Over the past few posts, we have been looking at the men caught up in the struggle for the English crown in 1066. We have followed Harold Godwinson, the man who actually became King of England, and Tostig, Harold’s own brother, who returned with an invading army.

Now it is time to look at the man most of us immediately associate with 1066: William, Duke of Normandy.

Today I want to look at William before he became “the Conqueror”. He was a child surrounded by violence, rebellion and men who were quite prepared to kill one another for power.

William was born at Falaise in Normandy, probably in 1027 or 1028. His father was Robert I, Duke of Normandy, while his mother, Herleva, was not Robert’s wife, meaning William was illegitimate.

That mattered a lot in the 11th century, and his enemies would later use it against him. He may have been the acknowledged son of a duke, but that did not mean every Norman noble believed he had the right to rule them.

Then, while William was still only a child, everything changed.

In 1035, his father left Normandy on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem after arranging for William to be recognised as his heir. Robert never returned. He died on the journey home, leaving William, at around only seven or eight years old, as Duke of Normandy.

It is difficult to imagine how vulnerable that made him. William held an important title, but he was still a child and had to rely on the adults around him to protect both his position and his life.

Normandy descended into years of instability as rival nobles fought for influence, and several of the men responsible for protecting William were killed. One guardian, Gilbert of Brionne, was assassinated, while another protector, Turold, was also murdered. Later accounts even describe William being moved secretly at night for his own safety.

Some details may have been influenced by later writers, but the wider picture is clear. William grew up in a world where loyalty could disappear very quickly and where powerful men could be killed because somebody else wanted what they had.

I think this gives us a rather different way of looking at the man he eventually became.

We often describe medieval rulers as ruthless without thinking very much about how they became that way. William learned extraordinarily young that a title did not guarantee safety. Family connections did not guarantee loyalty. Promises could be broken, and inheritance meant little if somebody stronger was willing to take it from you.

Power had to be defended.

By his teenage years, William was beginning to take greater control of Normandy, although opposition to him continued. In 1047, a major rebellion broke out against his rule.

With the support of King Henry I of France, William defeated the rebels at the Battle of Val-ès-Dunes. The vulnerable child duke was gradually becoming a ruler his enemies could no longer easily remove.

Over the following years, William strengthened his authority, defeated rivals and increased his power. He married Matilda of Flanders, connecting himself to one of the most important families in northern Europe.

By the 1060s, the boy who had once depended on others to keep him alive had become one of the most formidable rulers in France.

And then England entered the story.

William later claimed that Edward the Confessor had promised him the English throne. He also claimed that Harold Godwinson had sworn an oath supporting William’s succession after Harold travelled to the Continent.

Exactly what was promised, and what Harold believed he was agreeing to, has been argued over ever since.

What we do know is that Edward died on the 5th of January 1066, and William did not become King of England.

Harold did.

Harold Godwinson was crowned on the 6th of January. To his supporters, there were strong reasons for accepting him. Harold was one of the most powerful men in England, Edward may have nominated him before his death, and the leading men of the kingdom accepted him as king.

But imagine the news reaching William in Normandy.

If William genuinely believed that Edward had promised him England, and that Harold himself had sworn to support his claim, then Harold’s coronation was not just a political disappointment. William may have seen it as a betrayal and, perhaps more importantly, as another moment in his life when somebody appeared to be taking something he believed belonged to him.

This is where his childhood becomes particularly interesting to me.

A man who had spent his earliest years watching rivals challenge his inheritance was now being told that another man had taken the crown he believed had been promised to him.

William responded in the way his life had taught him to respond. He prepared to fight.

But preparing an invasion of England was very different from crushing a rebellion in Normandy. William would need ships, men, money, allies and, perhaps most importantly, a convincing reason why thousands of men should risk their lives for his claim to another kingdom.

In my next Medieval post, I’ll continue William’s story and look at how he turned a disputed claim to the English throne into one of the most famous invasions in history.

But after looking at his childhood, I’m interested to know what you think. Do you think William’s ruthless determination in 1066 was partly shaped by growing up surrounded by violence and threats to his own inheritance- or does that risk making excuses for a man who chose to invade England?

Image info:

Later engraved portrait of William the Conqueror, crowned and holding a sword. Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

The Day a Bomber Fell on a Lancashire School: The Freckleton Air Disaster

The Day a Bomber Fell on a Lancashire School: The Freckleton Air Disaster

Imagine sending your child off to school on an ordinary Wednesday morning. There is a war going on, but this is Lancashire, far away from the battlefields of Europe. The children settle down into their classrooms, the teachers start the day's lessons and, nearby, servicemen stop for something to eat. It seems a day like any other during the war.

First Lieutenant John Bloemendal, pilot of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator “Classy Chassis II”, which crashed at Freckleton, Lancashire, on the 23rd of August 1944. Via Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons – Public Domain.

Then the weather suddenly changed.

Within only minutes, a quiet Lancashire village would become the scene of one of the most heartbreaking accidents of the Second World War.

Today I want to discover more about the Freckleton Air Disaster of the 23rd of August 1944, because although this happened during the war, it was not caused by enemy action. It was a terrible combination of an aircraft, a violent storm and a village that happened to lie in its flight path.

At around 10.30 that morning, two American B-24 Liberator bombers took off from the USAAF base at Warton Aerodrome, near Freckleton. They were newly refurbished aircraft being taken on test flights before returning to operational service. One of them was B-24 Liberator 42-50291, known as Classy Chassis II, it was piloted by First Lieutenant John Bloemendal. With him were Technical Sergeant James Parr and Sergeant Gordon Kinney.

The flight was initially normal, but an extremely violent storm was approaching the area. Conditions deteriorated remarkably quickly. Heavy rain swept across the countryside, strong winds developed and visibility became extremely poor. The aircraft were recalled to Warton.

Bloemendal tried to return to the aerodrome, but as he approached the runway he reported that he was abandoning his landing and going around again.

Those would be among the last moments of the aircraft's flight.

At approximately 10.47am, the Liberator came down over Freckleton. Flying extremely low, it hit a tree and then buildings before tearing through several houses and the Sad Sack Snack Bar, a small café that was popular with servicemen from the nearby airfield.

Then part of the aircraft struck the infants' section of Freckleton Holy Trinity School.

The Liberator was carrying a large quantity of aviation fuel. When the fuel tanks ruptured, fire swept through the wreckage and part of the school. What had been an ordinary classroom only seconds earlier became almost impossible to escape from.

Perhaps one of the details I find most haunting is that a classroom clock stopped at 10.47am.

The children in that part of the school were very young. Thirty-eight children were killed, many of them only four, five or six years old. Two teachers also lost their lives.

There were further casualties elsewhere in the village. People were killed in the café and surrounding buildings, including civilians, British servicemen and American servicemen. All three men aboard the Liberator also sadly died.

Altogether, 61 people lost their lives.

It is difficult to imagine what the people of Freckleton must have experienced that morning. This was a relatively small community, which meant that the tragedy touched families throughout the village. Parents who had watched their children leave for school only hours earlier suddenly found themselves facing something almost impossible to comprehend.

And yet, amid the devastation, people rushed to help. Local residents joined British and American servicemen in attempting to rescue those trapped in the wreckage and deal with the fires. For the American personnel stationed nearby, the disaster must have been particularly painful. They had come to Britain to take part in the war, only for one of their own aircraft to cause such terrible loss in the community beside their base.

The exact circumstances that caused the aircraft to lose control have never been established with complete certainty, but the extraordinary weather conditions that morning played a major part in the disaster.

Afterwards, Freckleton faced the task of mourning its dead and remembering its children.

A memorial now stands in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church. Its inscription remembers the 38 infant scholars, two teachers and civilians who died, while a plaque near the former school site records the full loss of 61 lives.

There is something particularly difficult about stories involving children during wartime. We often think of the dangers faced by soldiers, sailors and airmen, or of families living through bombing raids. But sometimes tragedy arrived somewhere completely unexpected.

Those children had simply gone to school.

I think that is why the Freckleton Air Disaster still feels so powerful more than eighty years later. Behind the number 61 were children, teachers, servicemen, neighbours and families whose ordinary Wednesday morning changed forever.

Had you heard of the Freckleton Air Disaster before? Perhaps you have a family connection to Freckleton, Warton or the American servicemen stationed in Lancashire during the war. If you do, I would love to hear your story in the comments.

The Night the Tay Bridge Gave Way: Britain’s Shocking Railway Disaster

The Night the Tay Bridge Gave Way: Britain’s Shocking Railway Disaster

Imagine that you are travelling by train on a dark winter evening. There is a violent storm battering the Scottish coast, but ahead of you stands a bridge that has been celebrated as an extraordinary achievement of Victorian engineering. The train begins its journey across the Firth of Tay towards Dundee. Then, somewhere out in the darkness, the lights disappear.

The train never reaches the other side.

This was the Tay Bridge Disaster of the 28th of December 1879, a tragedy that killed everyone aboard the train and raised deeply uncomfortable questions about one of the great engineering achievements of Victorian Britain.

Today I want to look at what happened that night, because the story of the Tay Bridge is about much more than a terrible railway accident. It is also a story of Victorian confidence, engineering ambition and the devastating consequences when something that appeared impressive was not as strong as people believed.

The first Tay railway bridge stretched for more than two miles across the Firth of Tay between Wormit in Fife and Dundee. Designed by engineer Sir Thomas Bouch for the North British Railway, it was an extraordinary structure for its time. Crossing the Tay by railway had previously included a ferry journey. The new bridge promised to transform travel between Edinburgh and Dundee.

To many Victorians, the structures represented progress. Railways were spreading across Britain, enormous bridges were spanning rivers and estuaries, and engineering seemed capable of overcoming almost any obstacle.

But there had already been warning signs.

But there had already been signs of trouble. Parts of the bridge’s bracing had loosened, and adjustments and repairs had been made after it opened. Trains nevertheless continued to cross it. None of this stopped trains continuing to use it.

Then came the evening of Sunday the 28th of December 1879.

The weather was terrible. A powerful gale was blowing across the Tay as the evening passenger train from Edinburgh approached the bridge on its way towards Dundee. At St Fort station, passenger tickets were collected as usual. From those tickets and the railway staff known to be aboard, investigators later estimated that around 74 or 75 people were on the train.

At 7.08pm, it left St Fort.

When it reached the southern end of the bridge a few minutes later, the train slowed so that the driver could collect the staff which authorised him to enter the single-track bridge. Once he had it, the train continued out across the Tay.

At 7.13pm, the signalman recorded that it had entered the bridge.

One railway worker, John Watt, was watching from the signal cabin. He later told the official inquiry that he could see sparks coming from the train as it travelled further across the bridge. Then there was a sudden bright flash.

The lights vanished.

In the darkness and storm, it was not immediately obvious exactly what had happened. But when the train failed to arrive at the northern end, the terrible truth gradually became clear.

A huge section of the bridge had collapsed.

The train had fallen with it into the River Tay.

There were no survivors.

Around 75 passengers and railway employees are generally believed to have died, although the precise number could never be established with absolute certainty. The official investigation itself estimated that there had been 74 or 75 people aboard.

The following morning revealed the scale of the disaster. The tall central spans of the bridge were gone, leaving a great empty gap across the river. Twisted ironwork and the wreckage of the train lay in the water below.

For the families waiting in Dundee, there was no miracle.

The disaster caused shock throughout Britain. How could a bridge that had been presented as a triumph of modern engineering simply collapse beneath a passenger train?

An official Court of Inquiry was established, and the investigation examined everything from the strength of the iron columns and cross-bracing to the way parts of the bridge had been manufactured and maintained. Evidence was taken from railway employees, engineers and those who had worked on the structure.

The conclusions were devastating.

The bridge had not been strong enough to withstand the forces placed upon it during the storm. The inquiry criticised its design, construction and maintenance, and Sir Thomas Bouch was held chiefly responsible.

For Bouch, the consequences were catastrophic. Only a short time earlier he had been one of Britain's most celebrated engineers. After the disaster, his reputation was destroyed. Plans he had been developing for another great railway bridge across the Forth were abandoned, and he died less than a year after the Tay Bridge collapse.

But the disaster also had consequences far beyond one man.

Engineers began paying much greater attention to the effect of wind pressure on large structures. The failure of the Tay Bridge influenced the standards applied to later bridges and became one of the most important engineering disasters of the Victorian age.

A replacement Tay railway bridge was eventually built alongside the remains of the original structure and opened in 1887. It was designed very differently, with far greater emphasis placed upon strength and stability.

Even today, some of the old masonry piers from the first bridge can still be seen standing beside the railway bridge that replaced it.

There is something particularly haunting about the Tay Bridge disaster. Those aboard the train were simply making an ordinary railway journey on a Sunday evening. They had no reason to imagine that the bridge beneath them was about to fail.

The signalman watched the train enter the darkness.

There were sparks.

A flash of light.

And then the train was gone.

Had you heard of the Tay Bridge Disaster before, or have you ever seen the remains of the original bridge beside the Tay?

The Night a Place of Safety Became a Trap: The Balham Underground Disaster, 1940

The Night a Place of Safety Became a Trap: The Balham Underground Disaster, 1940

Imagine heading down into an Underground station during an air raid, believing that the streets above were far more dangerous. Around you are hundreds of other people doing exactly the same thing. Families settled themselves on the platforms, waiting for another night of bombing to pass. Then, just after eight o’clock, there is an enormous explosion. In moments, the very place that was supposed to keep you safe starts to fill with water, mud and debris.

A double-decker bus lies in a bomb crater at Balham, South London, following an air raid in October 1940. Unknown photographer, UK Government / Ministry of Information Second World War Press Agency Print Collection. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

This was Balham Underground station on the evening of the 14th of October 1940.

 I want to look at the Balham Underground disaster, one of the most terrible incidents to take place in London’s Tube network during the Second World War. It is also a reminder that, although Underground stations provided vital protection for thousands of Londoners during the Blitz, they could never be completely safe from a direct hit.

By October 1940, London had been dealing with weeks of almost nightly bombing. For many people, going to the underground had become part of their routine. Balham, on the Northern line in south London, was one of the deep-level stations being used as an air raid shelter, and hundreds of people were inside when the raid began that night.

At about 8.02pm, a large German bomb hit the road above the northern end of the station. The explosion ripped open the road and damaged the Underground tunnels. Water mains and sewers were ruptured, and the northbound platform tunnel partially collapsed.

What happened next must have been absolutely terrifying.

Water, earth, mud and debris began pouring down into the station. The mixture spread through the cross-passages towards the other platform, while frightened shelterers tried to escape through the darkness and confusion. People who had gone underground because it seemed safer than remaining on the streets suddenly found themselves desperately trying to get back to the surface.

Above ground, the explosion had left an enormous crater in Balham High Road. In the blackout, a double-decker bus was unable to avoid it and went into the crater. The extraordinary photographs taken afterwards, showing the bus almost disappearing into the shattered road, became some of the most recognisable images associated with the disaster.

More than 400 people managed to escape from the station and more than 70 were injured. Many of those who died were overwhelmed by the flooding and debris before they could reach safety.

The exact number of people who lost their lives has been recorded differently over the years. At least 64 people were killed, although some accounts give a slightly higher figure depending on whether railway staff and those who later died from their injuries are included. Perhaps that uncertainty itself tells us something about the chaos of that night.

The recovery operation was difficult and grim. Water had to be pumped from the tunnels and enormous amounts of mud and rubble removed before the damaged sections could be repaired. The destruction was so extensive that Balham station remained closed for months, eventually reopening in January 1941.

Today, when we look at photographs of Londoners sleeping on Underground platforms during the Blitz, it is easy to think of the Tube as an almost perfect refuge beneath the bombing above.

Balham reminds us that it was not.

Those families sheltering there had made what must have seemed the sensible choice. They had gone under the streets to protect themselves, surrounded by neighbours and strangers all waiting for the all-clear. None of them could have known that, on the 14th of October 1940, danger would reach them even there.

It is one of those wartime stories where the ordinary details make it particularly difficult to imagine. People settling down for the night. Children beside their parents. Bags and blankets on the platforms. A routine they had probably already experienced many times.

And then, in a matter of moments, everything changed.

Had you heard of the Balham Underground disaster before, or do you have family memories of sheltering in London’s Underground stations during the Blitz?

Elizabeth I and the Pope: How England’s Break with Rome Became a Battle for Loyalty

Elizabeth I and the Pope: How England’s Break with Rome Became a Battle for Loyalty

We all know that Henry VIII’s relationship with the Pope and Rome was, to put it mildly, complicated. His determination to end his marriage to Catherine of Aragon eventually helped bring about England’s break with Rome, and in 1534 Henry was declared Supreme Head of the Church of England. But what happened after Henry died? Mary I restored England to the Roman Catholic Church, so when Elizabeth I came to the throne in 1558, the relationship between the English Crown and the Pope was once again about to become enormously important.

Portrait of Pope Pius V by Scipione Pulzone, late 16th century. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

Today I want to look at Elizabeth’s relationship with Rome and the Pope, because it developed very differently from her father’s. There was no single dramatic dispute over a marriage. Instead, Elizabeth’s reign saw a much longer struggle over religion, authority and, eventually, something even more dangerous: whether an English Catholic could remain loyal both to the Pope and to their Queen.

Elizabeth I in Coronation Robes, unknown artist, c.1600–1610, after a lost original of c.1559. Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.

When Elizabeth became Queen on the 17th of November 1558, the Pope was Paul IV. England had officially returned to Roman Catholicism during the reign of Elizabeth’s half-sister Mary I, and Rome was therefore watching closely to see what the new Queen would do. Elizabeth was the daughter of Anne Boleyn, whose marriage to Henry VIII had never been accepted as valid by Rome in the way Henry wanted, and this meant her legitimacy had long been controversial from a Catholic point of view.

There is an old story that Paul IV immediately rejected Elizabeth as illegitimate and refused to recognise her as Queen, but the appears to have been more complicated. French representatives certainly encouraged the Pope to act against Elizabeth, partly because this would have strengthened the position of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, but Paul did not immediately move to excommunicate Elizabeth.

For a while, there was still uncertainty about exactly what Elizabeth intended to do religiously. That did not last long. In 1559, Elizabeth’s Parliament passed a new Act of Supremacy, reversing Mary I’s reunion with Rome and restoring the monarch’s authority over the English Church. Elizabeth did not use exactly the same title as her father. Henry VIII had been called Supreme Head of the Church of England, whereas Elizabeth became Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

Alongside the Act of Supremacy came the Act of Uniformity, which restored the Book of Common Prayer and established the religious framework that became known as the Elizabethan Religious Settlement. The message was clear: the Pope no longer held religious authority within Elizabeth’s kingdom, and England had once again separated itself from Rome.

Interestingly, Pope Paul IV was not the man who eventually excommunicated Elizabeth. He died in August 1559, only months after the new religious settlement had been introduced. He was succeeded by Pope Pius IV, and there were still moments when Rome appears to have hoped that Elizabeth might somehow be persuaded back towards Catholicism. Elizabeth was even invited to send representatives to the Council of Trent, but she did not accept.

Then came Pope Pius V, who became Pope in 1566, and this was where Elizabeth’s relationship with Rome entered a much more dangerous phase. By the late 1560s, the political situation in England had become increasingly tense. Mary, Queen of Scots had arrived in England in 1568 and provided Catholic opponents of Elizabeth with a possible alternative monarch. Then, in 1569, the Northern Rebellion saw Catholic nobles attempt to challenge Elizabeth’s government and restore Catholic worship.

On the 25th of February 1570, Pope Pius V issued the papal bull Regnans in Excelsis. It formally excommunicated Elizabeth from the Roman Catholic Church, condemned her religious settlement and declared that her subjects were released from their obligation of loyalty to her.

From Elizabeth’s point of view, this was far more dangerous than a simple religious condemnation. The Pope was not just saying that he disapproved of the Queen’s religious policies. He was effectively saying that Catholics did not have to obey her. That was something else entirely.

That placed ordinary English Catholics in an incredibly difficult position. Many had no intention of rebelling against Elizabeth at all. They regarded themselves as loyal English men and women who happened to remain Catholic, but after 1570 it became much harder for the government to separate private faith from political loyalty. Increasingly, Elizabeth’s advisers worried that loyalty to Rome might also mean disloyalty to the Crown.

Those fears were strengthened by a series of plots involving Mary, Queen of Scots. The Ridolfi Plot followed in 1571, while later conspiracies such as the Throckmorton and Babington plots reinforced the belief that foreign Catholic powers might support attempts to overthrow or even assassinate Elizabeth. As a result, laws against Catholic priests, recusants and those accused of helping them became increasingly severe as Elizabeth’s reign continued.

This is what I find so fascinating about Elizabeth’s relationship with Rome. Henry VIII’s break with the Pope began largely with one king’s struggle to secure the annulment of his marriage, but under Elizabeth the conflict had become something much bigger. It was now about who possessed authority in England, whether the Pope could challenge the legitimacy of an English monarch and whether religious belief could be separated from political loyalty.

The papal bull of 1570 may have been intended to weaken Elizabeth, but in many ways it created an enormous problem for English Catholics themselves. People who might previously have quietly practised their faith while remaining loyal to their Queen were increasingly viewed with suspicion because religion and rebellion were now being linked together.

Elizabeth would remain on the throne for another thirty-three years after her excommunication. Rome never succeeded in removing her, and the Church of England survived. But the conflict between Elizabeth and the papacy helped transform religious disagreement into a question of national security, with consequences for thousands of ordinary people caught between faith and loyalty.

I think it is easy to remember Henry VIII as the Tudor monarch who fought with the Pope, but Elizabeth’s relationship with Rome was arguably just as fascinating and perhaps even more dangerous.

If you had been a Catholic living in Elizabethan England after 1570, where do you think your loyalty would have fallen- with your faith, your Queen, or would you have tried somehow to remain loyal to both?